영어로 읽는 고전 _ 헨리크 입센의 들오리
『들오리』는 1884년에 쓰인 희곡이다. 이상주의자인 한 외부인이 오랫동안 묻혀 있던 비밀을 기어이 들추어내면서, 에크달 가족의 위태로운 평화가 무너지는 과정을 그린다. 오랜 유배 생활에서 돌아온 그레게르스 베를레는 아버지와 친구의 아내 사이에 있었던 일의 진실을 밝히기로 결심한다. 정직이 그들을 해방시키리라 믿었기 때문이다. 그러나 그의 폭로는 오히려 가족을 갈가리 찢어놓을 위기를 불러오고, 사람들은 사랑과 혈통, 그리고 진실의 대가와 환상의 위안 사이에서 고통스러운 물음과 마주하게 된다.
Classics Read in English _ The wild duck : A drama in five acts by Henrik Ibsen
In the attic above the Ekdal flat there is a forest. Not a real one — some dead fir trees in pots, a few rabbits, a broken-down water trough, and pigeons — but old Lieutenant Ekdal, who was ruined and imprisoned years ago in a business affair that his partner walked away from unharmed, goes up there in the afternoons with his gun and hunts. And in the deepest corner of the attic lives a wild duck, winged by a shot, retrieved by a dog from the bottom of a lake where it had gone down to drown itself in the weeds. It has been in the attic so long it has forgotten the sky.
Downstairs the family is happy in the way that requires no one to look too closely. Hjalmar Ekdal calls himself a photographer and speaks often of the great invention he is working on, though the retouching is done by his wife Gina and their fourteen-year-old daughter Hedvig, whose eyesight is failing. Gina worked in the Werle household before she married. Hedvig is going blind. Old Werle is going blind. Nobody in the flat has ever put these two facts side by side, and their lives are built on the space between them.
Then Gregers Werle comes home, sick with what he has learned about his father and hungry to make one thing in the world clean. He takes a room in the flat and sets about presenting Hjalmar with the truth, certain that a marriage founded on a lie must be swept out before anything real can stand. The doctor who lodges downstairs warns him plainly: take away the life-lie from an ordinary man and you take his happiness with it. Gregers proceeds anyway.
What follows is not a great reckoning. Hjalmar, given the truth, is not ennobled by it; he becomes theatrical, self-pitying, and cruel, and he tells the child she is nothing to him. And Gregers, still convinced that a grand gesture will restore everything, suggests to Hedvig that she sacrifice the thing she loves most to prove her devotion. She takes the pistol into the attic. Ibsen does not let anyone off. A shot, a child on the floor, and Relling's flat verdict over her body — that within a year Hjalmar will have made a beautiful sorrow of it.
Summary
Jensen (bringing down an arm-chair). Is there any truth in what people say, that there’s something between them?
Pettersen. Goodness knows!
Jensen. For he’s been a great rake in his time.
Pettersen. Maybe.
Jensen. It’s in honor of his son that he’s giving this dinner, they say.
Pettersen. Yes, his son came home yesterday.
Jensen. I never knew before that Mr. Werle had a son.
Pettersen. Oh yes, he has a son. But he’s always stopped up there at the Hojdal Works. He’s not been in town all the years I’ve been in service here.
Another Waiter (at the door of the other room). I say, Pettersen, here’s an old fellow who——
Pettersen (muttering). Who the devil’s here now?
