영어로 읽는 고전 _ 헨리크 입센의 페르귄트
『헨리크 입센 전집 제4권』은 19세기 중반에 쓰인 극시(劇詩) 「페르 귄트」를 담은 극작품 모음집이다. 이 작품은 환상적 요소와 풍자적 요소를 뒤섞어, 노르웨이 시골 출신의 복잡하고 상상력 넘치는 젊은이 페르 귄트가 벌이는 숱한 모험과 자기기만을 따라간다.
「페르 귄트」의 첫 장면은 주인공 페르와 어머니 오세의 팽팽한 관계를 소개한다. 어머니는 이야기를 부풀리고 책임을 회피하는 아들의 버릇을 나무란다. 페르가 사냥에서 겪었다는 황당무계한 무용담을 늘어놓자 오세는 믿지 않으며 답답해하고, 몰락해 버린 집안 형편을 곱씹는다. 두 사람의 실랑이는 앞으로 펼쳐질 페르의 성장 과정을 예고한다. 그는 위대해지기를 꿈꾸면서도 지금의 초라한 처지에 부대끼는 인물이기 때문이다. 이 활기찬 대화 속에는 해학과 비애를 함께 엮는 입센 특유의 솜씨가 드러나며, 극시 전체를 관통할 모험과 자기 발견의 풍성한 토대가 마련된다.
Classics Read in English _ Peer Gyntby Henrik Ibsen
The fourth volume of Ibsen's collected works contains Peer Gynt — the dramatic poem he wrote in Italy in 1867, never expecting it to be staged, and which turned out to be the most Norwegian thing he ever made and the least easy to pin down.
It begins with a boy lying to his mother. Peer has been away for weeks while the barley stood unharvested, and he comes home with a story: a buck the size of a horse, a ride along a knife-edge ridge above the water, the animal leaping and the two of them falling together while his own reflection rose up from the lake to meet him. Åse listens, taken in despite herself, until she recognises the story as one she was told as a girl. She calls him a liar. He picks her up and sets her on the roof of the mill to stop her scolding, and she is furious and laughing at once, and this is the whole relationship in a single scene: a poor widow who cannot let go of a son who cannot stay still, and who half wants the lies because the truth of their farm is a sold-off inheritance and a father who drank it.
What follows is fifty years and four continents of a man running away. Peer carries off a bride from a wedding and abandons her on the mountain; meets a girl called Solveig with a hymn book under her arm and knows immediately she is worth more than anything he will ever have; goes into the mountain with the trolls, who offer him a kingdom on one condition — that a man be true to himself, but a troll be true enough to himself, which is to say that he need never trouble about anyone else. He takes the deal in everything but name. Then slaving in Carolina, prophet in the desert, emperor of a madhouse in Cairo, home at last as a shipwrecked old man with the Button-Moulder waiting on the heath with his ladle, explaining that Peer is not good enough for heaven or bad enough for hell and must be melted down with the other spoiled castings.
And Ibsen, who had every reason to end it there, does not. He sends the old man to the hut where a woman with white hair has been waiting, singing, since she was young — and when Peer asks her where he has been himself all these years, all of himself, she tells him: in my faith, in my hope, in my love. It is the least deserved and most beautiful ending he ever wrote.
Summary
SCENE FIRST.
A wooded hillside near Åse’s farm. A river rushes down the slope. On the farther side of it an old mill-shed. It is a hot day in summer.
Peer Gynt, a strongly-built youth of twenty, comes down the pathway. His mother, Åse, a small, slightly-built woman, follows him, scolding angrily.
Åse.
Peer, you’re lying!
Peer.
[Without stopping.]
No, I am not!
Åse.
Well then, swear that it is true!
Peer.
Swear? Why should I?
Åse.
See, you dare not!
It’s a lie from first to last.
Peer.
[Stopping.]
It is true—each blessed word!
Åse.
[Confronting him.]
