영어로 읽는 고전 _ 헨리크 입센의 청년동맹
『헨리크 입센 전집 제6권』은 19세기 후반에 쓰인 희곡들을 엮은 모음집으로, 그중 하나가 「청년 동맹」이다. 이 권은 사회 문제와 인간관계, 그리고 사회 내부의 역학에 대한 입센의 비판적 시선을 잘 보여준다. 등장인물들은 야망과 자기 성장을 좇지만, 대개 사회가 그어놓은 한계와 맞부딪친다.
권두에는 입센이 「청년 동맹」을 집필하던 당시의 창작 과정을 상세히 다룬 서문이 실려 있다. 작품은 노르웨이 제헌절을 기념하는 축제 장면으로 시작한다. 야심가 스텐스고르가 그 한복판에 서서 군중을 선동하며, 시종장을 비롯한 기득권 인사들이 대표하는 낡은 질서에 맞선 변화를 부르짖는다. 축제에 모인 인물들이 차례로 소개되면서 정치와 사회를 바라보는 저마다의 시각이 드러나고, 활기찬 논쟁과 정치적 포부가 오가는 대화 속에서 젊음과 야망, 그리고 사회 개혁이라는 주제가 뚜렷하게 떠오른다.
Classics Read in English _ THE LEAGUE OF YOUTH by Henrik Ibsen
The sixth volume of Ibsen's collected works opens with an introduction tracing the composition of The League of Youth — the play in which Ibsen first put contemporary Norwegian politics on stage in ordinary prose, and in which the machinery of ambition is examined with something close to laboratory detachment.
The curtain rises on the seventeenth of May. Flags are out, the punch bowl is filling, and the whole district has gathered on the Chamberlain's grounds to celebrate the constitution. Into this fête steps Stensgård, a young lawyer with nothing behind him and a considerable talent for saying what a crowd is already feeling. He mounts the platform and denounces the men who have run the district for a generation — the Chamberlain, the ironmaster, the manufacturer — and calls the young men of the county to league themselves together for change. It is a magnificent speech, and it is entirely sincere while he is making it, which is precisely Ibsen's point.
Around him the guests declare themselves. A landowner who mistakes deference for principle, a speculator who has read the wind, a daughter or two whose futures are quietly being priced. Everyone at the fête has a view of where the country should be going, and almost everyone's view happens to coincide with their own advantage. The talk is fast, the wine is good, and by the end of the act the reform movement has been founded, the alliances have begun to shift, and the reader can already see how far a man may travel on conviction alone before conviction becomes a career.
Summary
The Crowd.
Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!
Ringdal.
[As Lundestad descends from the rostrum.] And one cheer more for old Lundestad!
Some of the Crowd.
[Hissing.] Ss! Ss!
Many Voices.
[Drowning the others.] Hurrah for Lundestad! Long live old Lundestad! Hurrah!
[The Crowd gradually disperses. Monsen, his son Bastian, Stensgård, and Aslaksen make their way forward through the throng.
Monsen.
'Pon my soul, it’s time he was laid on the shelf!
