영어로 읽는 고전 _ 헨리크 입센의 로스메르스홀름
『로스메르스홀름』은 1886년에 쓰인 희곡이다. 아내의 자살에 사로잡힌 전직 목사 요하네스 로스메르와 의지가 강한 동반자 레베카 베스트가 조상 대대로 내려온 로스메르스홀름 저택에서 죄책감과 금지된 사랑, 그리고 정치적 격랑을 헤쳐 나가는 이야기다. 두 사람의 관계는 비난과 고백을 거치며 풀려 나가고, 그 과정에서 죽은 아내의 죽음에 레베카가 맡았던 어두운 역할이 드러난다. 도덕적 죄책감에서 벗어나지도, 서로를 믿지도 못한 채 두 사람은 과거를 안고 살아가는 것과 함께 비극적 운명을 받아들이는 것 사이에서 불가능한 선택 앞에 선다.
Classics Read in English _ Rosmersholm by Henrik Ibsen
At Rosmersholm the children have never cried and the grown people have never laughed. It is an old house, hung with the portraits of clergymen and officers, and a footbridge crosses the millrace at the bottom of the garden. A year ago Johannes Rosmer's wife Beata walked out onto that bridge and into the water. Since then Rosmer has stopped taking services, and Rebecca West ? who came to nurse Beata and stayed on ? keeps house for him. They are careful with each other. Neither uses the word that would describe what they are.
Rosmer has also, quietly, changed his mind about everything: he no longer believes, and he intends to say so publicly and to work at making his countrymen noble and free. Rebecca put that idea in him, though she would not have called it that. What follows is the slow discovery of how it was done. Beata was told things ? that her husband would be happier without her, that Rebecca was carrying his child ? and Beata, who was ill and desperate not to stand in the way, did the arithmetic and stepped off the bridge. Rebecca did not push her. Rebecca simply arranged the conditions and let go of the rope.
And then the strangest turn in Ibsen. Having got what she schemed for, Rebecca finds she cannot take it. Rosmersholm has worked on her the way it works on everyone who lives there ? it has ennobled her, she says, and killed the appetite that brought her. He cannot believe her innocence, and she cannot prove it, and the only proof either can imagine is the one Beata gave. So they go down to the mill in the dark, together this time, as bride and groom, and the housekeeper watches from the window and says that the dead wife has taken them. The white horses of Rosmersholm ? the phantom the servants speak of, which no one who lives there quite disbelieves ? have come for the last of the family.
Summary
Mrs. Helseth. Hadn't I better begin and lay the table for supper, miss?
Rebecca. Yes, do. Mr. Rosmer ought to be in directly.
Mrs. Helseth. Isn't there a draught where you are sitting, miss?
Rebecca. There is a little. Will you shut up, please? (MRS. HELSETH goes to the hall door and shuts it. Then she goes to the window, to shut it, and looks out.)
Mrs. Helseth. Isn't that Mr. Rosmer coming there?
Rebecca. Where? (Gets up.) Yes, it is he. (Stands behind the window-curtain.) Stand on one side. Don't let him catch sight of us.
Mrs. Helseth (stepping back). Look, miss?he is beginning to use the mill path again.
Rebecca. He came by the mill path the day before yesterday too. (Peeps out between the curtain and the window-frame). Now we shall see whether?
Mrs. Helseth. Is he going over the wooden bridge?
