영어로 읽는 고전 _ 그레이스 리빙스턴 힐의 재창조
그레이스 리빙스턴 힐의 『재창조(Re-creations)』는 20세기 초에 쓰인 장편 소설이다. 이야기의 중심에는 어머니의 건강 악화로 인해 다니던 대학을 갑작스레 그만두고 집으로 돌아와야만 했던 한 젊은 여성 코넬리아 코플리(Cornelia Copley)가 있다. 가족이 처한 새로운 현실 앞에서 그녀는 깊은 환멸을 느끼며 흔들리지만, 작품은 그 흔들림을 따라가며 학업의 꿈을 내려놓는 일과 무너져 가는 가족의 일상을 견뎌 내야 하는 짐이 한 사람의 마음에 어떻게 자리 잡아 가는지를 차분히 들여다본다. 그리고 그 안에서 자연스레 떠오르는 희생과 책임, 그리고 가족이라는 굴레 한가운데에서 자기 자신의 꿈을 어떻게 지켜 갈 것인가 하는 질문들이 작품 전체의 결을 이룬다.소설의 도입부는 학교를 떠나오는 코넬리아의 모습으로부터 시작된다. 이루지 못한 꿈에 대한 슬픔과, 자신의 포부를 끝내 이해해 주지 못하는 가족에 대한 서운함이 그녀의 가슴을 가득 채우고 있다. 아버지로부터 어머니의 병세를 알리는 무거운 편지를 받은 그녀는, 마지못해 기차에 오르며 지나간 즐거웠던 시간들을 떠올리고, 그 위로 어둑하게 드리워진 자신의 앞날을 가만히 한숨짓듯 바라본다. 그러나 막상 집에 도착해 마주한 풍경은 그녀가 떠올렸던 어떤 그림과도 닮아 있지 않다. 아버지가 처한 변화된 형편, 어수선해진 살림살이, 그리고 저마다의 방식으로 힘겨워하는 동생들의 모습이 한꺼번에 그녀의 눈앞에 펼쳐지는 것이다.가족이 얼마나 절실히 자신의 손길을 필요로 하고 있는지를 점차 깨닫게 되면서, 코넬리아는 자기 자신의 실망을 잠시 내려놓고 가정을 다시 일으켜 세우는 일에 조용히 마음을 모으기 시작한다. 비록 자신이 그리던 미래가 부서져 버렸다 해도, 가족의 삶을 한결 따뜻하게 만들어 보겠노라고 가만히 다짐하는 그녀의 모습은 작품 전체에 흐를 큰 흐름의 출발점이 된다. 이렇듯 도입부는 자기만의 꿈과 가족의 현실 사이에서 그 둘을 어떻게 부드럽게 화해시킬 것인가를 끊임없이 묻는 코넬리아의 자기 발견과 성장의 여정을, 잔잔하면서도 분명한 어조로 펼쳐 보이기 시작한다.
Classics Read in English _ Re-creations by Grace Livingston Hill
Re-creations, an early twentieth-century novel by Grace Livingston Hill, gathers its quiet emotional weight around Cornelia Copley, a thoughtful young woman compelled to abandon her college life with painful suddenness when her mother's failing health calls her home. As Cornelia tries to take the measure of the altered, diminished world that now awaits her family, the novel turns its attention with patient care to the themes that will run through everything to come: the inward cost of personal sacrifice, the slow weight of unsought responsibility, and the difficult question of how the dreams of an individual life are to be kept alive within the close enclosure of familial duty.
The opening pages place Cornelia at the very moment of her departure from college, her heart heavy with the grief of an unfinished ambition and a quiet, unspoken hurt at her family's inability to grasp what her studies had meant to her. A grave letter from her father, bringing the news of her mother's illness, has summoned her, and she boards the homeward train almost against her will, allowing herself to look back upon happier scenes even as the future ahead of her seems already shadowed before she has so much as set foot on its threshold. When at last she arrives, however, the home she returns to bears scarcely any resemblance to the one she had pictured. The reduced circumstances into which her father has been thrown, the disordered household that has fallen out of step with itself, and the small private struggles of her younger brothers and sisters all present themselves to her at once, with a frankness she had not been prepared to meet.
As the depth of her family's need becomes gradually clear to her, Cornelia begins — quietly, almost without announcement — to set her own disappointment aside and to gather what is left of the household into her own steady hands. Even as she mourns the future she had hoped to claim for herself, she takes upon herself the unglamorous, daily work of homemaking and silently resolves that, whatever else may be lost, the life of her family shall be made warmer and more whole because she is there. In this gentle but unmistakable turning, the opening section of the novel sets in motion the long and searching journey that follows — Cornelia's own slow self-discovery and growth, and her patient effort to learn how a young woman's dream and her family's reality may, in time, be brought into some quiet and generous reconciliation.
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Cornelia Copley pressed her face against the window-pane of the car and smiled with brave showing of courage as the train moved away from the platform where her college mates huddled eagerly for the last glimpse of her.
“Don’t forget to write, Cornie!” shouted a girl with black eyes and a frantic green sweater over a green and yellow striped sport-skirt.
“Remember you’re to decorate my house when I’m married!” screamed a pink-cheeked damsel with blue eyes and bewitching dimples.
“Be sure to come back for commencement!” chorused three others as the train got fairly under way.
Cornelia watched the staid old gray buildings pencilled over with the fine lines of vines that would burst into green tenderness as soon as the spring should appear, and thought how many good times she had had within those walls, and, how terrible, how simply unthinkable it was that they were over forever, and she would never be able to graduate!
