영어로 읽는 고전 _ 그레이스 리빙스턴 힐의 임재의 천사
그레이스 리빙스턴 힐의 “임재의 천사(The Angel of His Presence)”는 20세기 초에 쓰인 장편 소설이다. 이야기는 두 해에 걸친 유럽 유학과 여행을 마치고 고향 미국으로 돌아오는 길에 오른, 교양 있는 한 청년 존 웬트워스 스탠리(John Wentworth Stanley)의 시선을 따라간다. 그는 떠나 있는 동안 자신 안에서 자라난 미묘한 변화들과, 옛 삶이 자신에게 다시 짊어지우려는 기대 사이에서 깊은 갈등에 빠진다. 작품은 그가 한때 진심으로 마음을 쏟았던 한 선교 학교, 그리고 그곳에서 만나게 되는 따뜻하고 진실한 젊은 교사 마거릿 매닝(Margaret Manning)과의 인연을 통해 신앙과 회복, 그리고 과거에 자신이 맺어 놓은 약속들의 무게라는 주제들을 차분히 풀어 놓는다.
소설의 도입부에서 우리는 대서양을 건너오는 호화로운 여객선 위의 존 스탠리를 만나게 된다. 그는 머지않아 다시 발을 디딜 뉴욕을 떠올리며, 자기 자신이 어떻게 변해 왔는지를 가만히 되짚어 본다. 한때는 그토록 뜨거웠던 포레스트 힐 선교회에서의 일이 어찌 된 까닭인지 지금의 그에게는 멀고 따분하게만 느껴진다는 사실 앞에서, 그는 미묘한 부끄러움과 당혹감을 동시에 느낀다. 그러던 중 우연히 만나게 된 노인 매닝 씨와의 짧은 대화는, 한때 그가 그곳 소년들에게 얼마나 큰 기쁨과 빛을 안겨 주었는지를 새삼 일깨워 주고, 그가 거의 잊고 지내던 자신의 옛 모습을 마치 흐릿한 거울처럼 비춰 보이게 한다.
순수했던 시절의 헌신에 대한 기억이 한꺼번에 되살아나는 순간, 스탠리는 지금의 자신과 한때의 자신 사이에 놓인 그 깊은 간극을 정면으로 마주하지 않을 수 없게 된다. 이렇듯 도입부는 앞으로 그가 자신의 정체성과 가치관을 두고 치러야 할 내적 갈등을 잔잔히 예고하며, 한 사람의 영혼이 다시 본래의 자리로 돌아가는 여정의 첫 페이지를 조용히 펼쳐 보인다.
Classics Read in English _ The angel of his presence; and Gabriel the Acadian by Hill and Nicholl
The Angel of His Presence, an early twentieth-century novel by Grace Livingston Hill, follows the homeward voyage of John Wentworth Stanley, a cultivated young American making his way back across the Atlantic after two long years of study and travel abroad. Even as the ship draws nearer to its harbor, Stanley finds himself caught between the changes that have so quietly taken hold within him during his time away and the older life that is already preparing to lay its accustomed expectations once again upon his shoulders. Out of this tension, Hill draws her familiar themes — faith, redemption, and the long, unrelinquished weight of earlier commitments — and gathers them around his renewed encounter with a small but consequential mission school, and especially around his deepening connection with a gentle, earnest young teacher there named Margaret Manning.
The opening pages place Stanley on the deck of a great Atlantic liner, his thoughts running ahead of him toward the New York that waits at the journey's end. He looks back upon the man he had once been, and is unable wholly to ignore an uneasy truth — that the work at the Forest Hill Mission, which had once kindled in him so fervent an enthusiasm, now feels, almost despite himself, distant and tiresome. A chance conversation upon the ship with an elderly fellow passenger named Manning quietly disturbs this growing detachment: the old gentleman speaks with simple gratitude of the brightness that Stanley's earlier devotion had brought into the lives of the boys he had taught, and his words act, almost involuntarily, as a clouded mirror in which Stanley glimpses the younger and more whole-hearted self he has very nearly forgotten.
As long-buried memories of that earlier, more selfless devotion begin to rise within him, Stanley finds that he can no longer turn his gaze from the painful distance that has opened between the man he is now and the one he used to be. In these quiet opening movements Hill prepares the reader, with great delicacy, for the inward struggle of identity and conviction that is to come — gently opening the first page of what will become a slow, attentive journey by which a wandering soul is led, in time, back toward its truer home.
Among the contents
John Wentworth Stanley stood on the deck of an Atlantic Liner looking off to sea and meditating. The line of smoke that floated away from his costly cigar followed the line of smoke from the steamer as if it were doing honest work to help get Mr. Stanley to New York. The sea in the distance was sparkling and monotonous and the horizon line empty and bright, but Mr. Stanley seemed to see before him the hazy outlines of New York as they would appear in about twenty-four hours more, if all went well. And of course all would go well. He had no doubt of that. Everything had always gone well for him.
Especially well had been these last two years of travel and study abroad. He reflectedwith satisfaction upon the knowledge and experience he had gained in his own special lines, upon the polish he had acquired, and he glanced over himself, metaphorically speaking, and found no fault in John Wentworth Stanley. He was not too Parisian in his deferential manner, he was not too English in his deliberation, neither was he, that worst of all traits in his eyes, too American in his bluntness. He had acquired something from each nation, and considered that the combined result was good. It is a comfortable feeling to be satisfied with one’s self.
