10. Pace for a Third / New Hampshire(1923) - Robert Frost

10. Pace for a Third / New Hampshire(1923) - Robert Frost

Nothing to say to all those marriages!

She had made three herself to three of his.

The score was even for them, three to three.

But come to die she found she cared so much:

She thought of children in a burial row;

Three children in a burial row were sad.

One man's three women in a burial row

Somehow made her impatient with the man.

And so she said to Laban, "You have done

A good deal right; don't do the last thing wrong.

Don't make me lie with those two other women."

Laban said, No, he would not make her lie

With anyone but that she had a mind to,

If that was how she felt, of course, he said.

She went her way. But Laban having caught

This glimpse of lingering person in Eliza,

And anxious to make all he could of it

With something he remembered in himself,

Tried to think how he could exceed his promise,

And give good measure to the dead, though thankless.

If that was how she felt, he kept repeating.

His first thought under pressure was a grave

In a new-boughten grave plot by herself,

Under he didn't care how great a stone:

He'd sell a yoke of steers to pay for it.

And weren't there special cemetery flowers,

That, once grief sets to growing, grief may rest:

The flowers will go on with grief awhile,

And no one seem neglecting or neglected?

A prudent grief will not despise such aids.

He thought of evergreen and everlasting.

And then he had a thought worth many of these.

Somewhere must be the grave of the young boy

Who married her for playmate more than helpmate,

And sometimes laughed at what it was between them.

How would she like to sleep her last with him?

Where was his grave? Did Laban know his name?

He found the grave a town or two away,

The headstone cut with John, Beloved Husband,

Beside it room reserved; the say a sister's,

A never-married sister's of that husband,

Whether Eliza would be welcome there.

The dead was bound to silence: ask the sister.

So Laban saw the sister, and, saying nothing

Of where Eliza wanted not to lie,

And who had thought to lay her with her first love,

Begged simply for the grave. The sister's face

Fell all in wrinkles of responsibility.

She wanted to do right. She'd have to think.

Laban was old and poor, yet seemed to care;

And she was old and poor―but she cared, too.

They sat. She cast one dull, old look at him,

Then turned him out to go on other errands

She said he might attend to in the village,

While she made up her mind how much she cared―

And how much Laban cared―and why he cared.

(She made shrewd eyes to see where he came in.)

She'd looked Eliza up her second time,

A widow at her second husband's grave,

And offered her a home to rest awhile

Before she went the poor man's widow's way,

Housekeeping for the next man out of wedlock.

wedlock : 결혼

She and Eliza had been friends through all.

Who was she to judge marriage in a world

Whose Bible's so confused in marriage counsel?

The sister had not come across this Laban;

A decent product of life's ironing-out;

She must not keep him waiting. Time would press

Between the death day and the funeral day.

So when she saw him coming in the street

She hurried her decision to be ready

To meet him with his answer at the door.

Laban had known about what it would be

From the way she had set her poor old mouth,

To do, as she had put it, what was right.

She gave it through the screen door closed between them:

"No, not with John. There wouldn't be no sense.

Eliza's had too many other men."

Laban was forced to fall back on his plan

To buy Eliza a plot to lie alone in:

Which gives him for himself a choice of lots

When his time comes to die and settle down.

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셋째 아내의 자리

그런 모든 결혼에 할 말은 전혀 없다!

그의 세 번 결혼에 그녀도 세 번 했다.

그들의 스코어는 3대3으로 동등했다.

그녀는 죽음을 앞두고 꽤 근심스러웠다.

그녀는 나란히 묻힌 아이들을 생각했다.

한 줄로 나란히 묻힌 세 아이들은 슬펐다.

한 남자의 세 아내가 한 줄로 묻히는 경우,

암튼 그녀는 그런 남자를 참기 힘들 것이다.

그래서 그녀는 라반에게 말했다. “당신은 옳은

일 많이 했으니, 마지막 일도 그르치지 마세요.

다른 두 여자들과 나를 함께 눕히지 마세요."

라반은 그녀가 그럴 마음이 없으면 그녀를

누구와도 함께 눕히지 않겠노라고 말했다.

그녀가 그렇게 느낀다면, 물론 그렇겠노라 했다.

그녀는 제 갈 길을 갔다. 그러나 라반은 엘리사의

인격이 어른거리고 있음을 얼핏 포착하면서,

그가 간직해온 자신의 어떤 인격을 기억하고,

그것을 최대한 존중하고픈 마음이 간절하여,

그의 약속을 능가하여, 고마워하지 않더라도,

고인(故人)을 극진히 모실 수 있는 방법을 궁리했다.

아내의 느낌을 따르겠노라고, 그는 되뇌었다.

급한 대로 그가 우선 생각한 것은 새로

구입한 묘지에 그녀만의 무덤을 만들고,

그 위에 아낌없이 큰 묘석을 까는 것이었다.

황소 두 마리쯤 팔아서 대금을 지불하리라.

그리고 일단 슬픔이 자라기 시작하면,

그 슬픔을 잠재울 특별한 묘지 꽃도 있을 것이니,

그 꽃들이 얼마간 슬픔과 함께 가면, 아무도

무시하거나 무시당한다고 보이지는 않겠지?

신중한 애도는 그런 보조물들에 소홀하지 않다.

그는 상록수와 영구화(永久花)를 생각했다.

그다음 그는 이보다 더 좋은 생각이 떠올랐다.

반려자로 보다는 놀이친구로 그녀와 결혼해서,

때때로 깨가 쏟아지는 결혼생활을 즐겼던

신랑(新郞)의 무덤이 어디엔가 있을 것이다.

아내가 그와 영면(永眠)하기를 바라지 않을까?

그의 무덤은 어디? 라반은 그의 이름도 알았잖은가?

그는 한 두 타운 떨어진 곳에서 무덤을 찾았다.

묘석에는 ‘총애하는 남편, 존’이라 새겨져 있고,

예약된 공간이 옆에 있었지만, 엘리사가

그곳에 묻힐지 어떨지의 결정권은 그 남편의

결혼하지 않은 누이에게 있었다.

고인은 침묵하고 있으니, 누이에게 물어라.

그래서 라반은 누이를 만났지만, 엘리사가

어디에 눕기를 원하지 않는지, 누가 그녀를

그녀의 첫사랑과 함께 눕힐 생각을 했는지,

전혀 말하지 않고, 그는 무덤만을 간청했다.

누이의 얼굴이 온통 부담스런 주름을 지었다.

그녀는 옳은 일을 하고 싶었다. 생각을 해봐야겠지.

라반은 늙고 가난한데도 이리저리 마음 쓰는 것 같았다.

그녀도 늙고 가난하다―그러나 그녀도 마음이 쓰였다.

그들은 앉았다. 그녀는 그를 멍하니 한참 쳐다본 다음,

혹 마을에서 봐야할 다른 볼일들이 있으면

먼저 그것들을 보라며 그를 집에서 내보내고.

그동안 그녀는 자기가 얼마나 마음이 쓰이는지―

라반은 얼마나 마음을 쓰며―그리고 왜 마음 쓰는지 가늠했다.

(그녀는 그의 의도가 무엇인지 눈을 부릅뜨고 살폈다.)

그녀는 두 번째 남편의 무덤을 찾은 미망인,

그런 엘리사를 두 번째 찾아갔을 때,

잠시 쉴 거처를 그녀에게 제공했지만,

엘리사는 가난뱅이 미망인의 길을 갔다.

다음 남자를 위해 혼외 살림을 차렸다는 말이다.

그녀와 엘리사는 계속해서 친구로 지냈다.

성경(聖經)도 결혼 상담에서 매우 헤매는데,

이런 세상에서 그녀가 감히 결혼을 심판할까?

누이는 지금의 라반과 조우(遭遇)한 적이 없지만,

그는 인생 다리미질의 괜찮은 산물이었다.

그녀는 그가 기다리게 하면 안 된다.

사망일과 장례일 간에 시간이 촉발할 게다.

그래서 그가 오는 모습이 거리에 보이자

그녀는 결정을 서둘러 그가 받을 답을

들고 문에서 그를 맞을 준비를 했다.

라반은 늙고 가련한 그녀의 입 모양을 보고,

그녀의 말대로, 옳은 일을 한다는 것이

어떤 것이 될 것인지 벌써 감을 잡았다.

그녀는 그들 사이에 닫힌 방충망을 통해 말했다.

"안돼요, 존과 함께는 안돼요. 아무런 의미 없어요.

엘리사는 다른 남자들이 너무 많았거든요."

라반은 홀로 누울 땅을 엘리사에게 사줄

그의 계획으로 물러설 수밖에 없었다.

그러면 그가 죽어 묻힐 때가 올 때에

그 자신을 위한 선택의 여지가 생길 것이다.

-신재실 옮김-

단상(斷想): "여자 팔자는 뒤웅박 팔자" 라는 속담이 있다. 남편 만나기에 따라 여자의 운명이 결정된다는 뜻이다. 옛날 말이다. 지금은 남자 팔자가 뒤웅박 팔자 아닐까? 여자나 남자나 배우자를 잘 만나야 팔자가 트인다. 하지만 그게 마음대로 되는 일인가?

엘리자와 라반은 팔자가 세어서 각기 세 번째 맞은 아내이고 남편이다. 배우자라기보다 놀이친구였던 첫 번째 남편과 사별하고 두 번째 남자를 만났지만 또 사별했다. 그녀는 가난하고 별다른 능력도 없기에 더부살이의 길을 갈 수밖에 없었고, 마침내 라반과 세 번째로 결혼했다. 라반 역시 두 번 결혼에 사별하고 세 번째 결혼이었다. 한 줄로 나란히 묻힌 세 자녀가 누구의 자녀인지 알 수 없지만, 엘리사의 자녀이건 라반의 자녀이건, 아니면 다른 누구의 자녀이건, 자녀를 앞세운 부모 역시 팔자가 센 부모이고, 남편과 아내를 두 번이나 앞세운 엘리사와 라반 모두 팔자가 센 아내이자 남편일 것이다.

마침내 엘리사가 임종을 맞이했다. 라반에게는 세 번째 아내를 잃는 불행이다. 엘리사와 라반의 인생은 지치고 해진 인생이다. 엘리사에게 한 가지 소망이 있다. 죽으면 라반의 다른 두 아내와 함께 나란히 묻히지 않는 것이다. 첫 번째 자리를 탐내서가 아니라 세 번째 자리가 서럽기 때문이다. 몇 푼 안 되는 것이긴 하지만 엘리사 나름의 인격과 자존심이 있지 않은가? 아내의 작은 인격과 자존심이 곧 자신의 그것과 상통한다는 것을 깨달은 라반은 아내의 소망을 받아들여 아내의 단독 무덤, 비싼 묘석, 특별한 묘지 꽃을 생각한다. 특별히 사랑해서라기보다는 남편으로서의 도리를 다하겠다는 뜻이리라.

라반에게는 더 좋은 생각이 떠올랐다. 엘리사를 첫 남편 곁에 묻어주는 것이다. 라반은 아내의 첫 남편 무덤을 찾는다. 다행이 옆에 예약된 공간이 있었다. 하지만 첫 남편의 독신 누이의 승낙을 받아야 했다. 라반은 그 누이를 찾아가서 불문곡직하고 무덤을 “간청했다.”그 누이에게 라반은 “인생 다리미질의 괜찮은 산물”로 보였다. 라반의 마음 씀씀이가 가상했기에, 그녀 역시 마음이 쓰였다.

하지만 누이의 결론은 냉정했다. 엘리사는 세 번째 자리가 서러워 라반의 다른 두 아내 옆에 묻히기 실었지만, 그녀의 첫 번째 남편 존 역시 세 번이나 결혼한 아내가 옆에 묻히기를 원하지 않을 것 아니겠는가? 그에게도 작은 인격과 자존심이 있지 않겠는가? 더구나 엘리사가 두 번째 남편을 잃었을 때, 그 누이가 거처를 제공하겠다고 했지만 그 제안을 거절하고 다른 남자를 찾아가지 않았는가? 숙고한 끝에 그녀는 라반의 청을 거절하기로 결정했다. 엘리사에게도 마음이 쓰이긴 하지만, 그녀는 오빠인 존의 마음도 살펴야 했다.

라반은 첫 번째 생각대로 아내에게 단독 무덤을 제공키로 했다. “그러면 그가 죽어 묻힐 때가 올 때에/ 그 자신을 위한 선택의 여지가 생길 것이다.” 그가 죽으면 누가 그의 장지를 결정할지 모르지만, 적어도 첫째, 둘째, 또는 셋째 아내의 옆 자리 중 하나를 고를 수 있지 않겠는가? 이렇게 선택의 폭이 넓은 것은 좋은 팔자일까? 아니면 사나운 팔자일까?

-신재실 씀-

출처 : http://blog.naver.com/PostList.nhn?from=postList&blogId=js9660&categoryNo=31¤tPage=50

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No surprise to me, no surprise to anybody else

The Eugene Register-Guard began its coverage of a press conference that preceded Mr. Frost’s April 4, 1956, University of Oregon talk, which is excerpted here, by reporting, “Poet Robert Frost, four times a Pulitzer Prize-winner, Tuesday confessed he’s never listed his occupation as that of a poet on his income tax returns.” The newspaper quoted him as explaining: “I’ve dodged around it and put down ‘farmer’ or ‘teacher’ or ‘retired.’ I look on ‘poet’ as a praise word which you don’t say about yourself.”

I’M ONE of these people that have wished it, when I was teaching, that I only had about ten lectures to give a year. I’d like the privilege in college of giving ten lectures a year—twelve, fifteen at most; something like that.

I’d like never to have to go to a class unless I had something special to report, about what had either happened to me or occurred to me—something special happened or occurred to me; some adventure of the mind or of society, of company.

I can remember thinking I’d say to a class: “What’s happened to you since I saw you last? Anything happen to you? I’m going to tell you what’s happened to me—and what’s occurred to me, maybe, rather than what’s happened to me; that I value more than what’s happened to me, what’s occurred to me.”

And I’ve tried to teach that way. I’ve said that that would be “progressive” education in its best sense of the word, if I never told anybody, never told a class, anything that hadn’t been something of a surprise to me. No surprise to me, no surprise to anybody else. They say, “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.” And no excitement and no pleasure in the writer, no pleasure in the reader.

That’s a curious thing in our day, speaking of the different kinds of people who set up to be as important as I am. Some of them make an agony out of writing and profess their agony. And they expect you to enjoy their agony.

That’s a curious contradiction, isn’t it? That sounds like Puritanism at the worst. And I take the pleasure in being with you, took the pleasure in making the poems, and take the pleasure in what I’ve thought of.

Now, just take it as I came in the train. I woke up in the night—this particular thing I’m going to talk about—and I remembered in the night that I’d been bothered a great deal by people’s talk about “togetherness”—that horrible word “togetherness.” It had crossed me the wrong way.

And I don’t go out to fight battles about those things. But it occurred to me that Shelley, when I read him fifty or sixty years ago—(I haven’t been looking at him lately, especially. I know some of him by heart. I don’t need to look.) but it occurred to me that he had a poem called “Alastor.” And the additional title I’d clean forgot I remembered. I didn’t know I knew it. But it occurred to me in the night. Do you know what it is? “Alastor; The Spirit of Solitude.” Not togetherness!

This was a poet he was writing about. I remember how it begins:

There was a Poet whose untimely tomb

No human hands with pious reverence reared,

But the charmed eddies of the autumnal wind

Reared o’er his mouldering bones a pyramid

Of the waste leaves….

He waste-wandered through the world alone, you know, and died that way. And there he kept solitude all the way. But he was a poet. I thought of that in my defense. (This isn’t solitude tonight, I admit.) But things occur to me that way.

And I can remember—in my book here, one of the earliest poems I wrote—I can remember just where I was in the street of Lawrence, Massachusetts, when it occurred to me, from having heard about Schopenhauer—(Heard about him; I wasn’t reading him at that age. High school I was.) from having heard about Schopenhauer, that the world—our world, my world, your world, everybody’s world—was a product of our will. You see: The World as Will…. That turned around in my mind.

I remember just where I was in the street. I had one of these things occur to me: that probably I had volunteered to exist—that my own existence was an act of my own will. I volunteered for the particularly bad life I was going to have. It was all read out to me before I was born, and to a number of others. And all of us had a chance to bid on it, and I bid it and went into it. And then I was warned that I wouldn’t have the comfort of remembering that I had volunteered. I’d have to live it out, in spite of the fact that I’d forgotten—live it out mystified about what it all had come from and what might have done it, though I had chosen it myself.

So, I made quite a long poem out of that, called “Trial by Existence.” I remember just as I walked along the street where that came to me. And that’s always been the kind of prompting for the poems and for my talks and for my classes and things.

Many a class I’ve come to with nothing. And then I just treated it as nothing. I would have earned my pay just as well if I’d only gone twelve times that year to class—where I had something of that kind, that had taken me in a large way by surprise and I couldn’t help wanting to make something of it.

I remember hours of it, when I was in a little country academy, high school. I remember days—(Lots of it is all loss to me.)—but I can remember special days when something like that made my hour almost like singing.

People often wonder where the poems come from, and I don’t know where they come from, altogether. But that’s one of the places they come from. Something that’s given, that’s come on to me in a sweeping, large way of great surprise.

For instance, to give you another example—(I use this occasionally this way.)—a little while ago it occurred to me—in the night, that way; walking, that time—it occurred to me that no woman had ever made a name, in the world’s history in any country, in philosophy. That sounds very anti-feminist, doesn’t it? ’Tisn’t.

Plato, as I remember, said that philosophy belonged up in Athens—among all that crowd, you know, of democrats and things—and wisdom belonged down in Sparta. He says so in the Protagoras. (This all went through my head.) Wisdom, in other words, in his mind, is not philosophy.

Now, women have wisdom. And they have too much wisdom to be philosophers. That’s all that means. (I can get something out of that someday. That wouldn’t make a poem necessarily, but it’d make a play. You can get that arranged in three scenes some way and have it out.)

Plato says an amusing thing—(He doesn’t mean to be funny ever. I don’t remember that he ever looked as if he knew he was funny.)—but he says an amusing thing there. He says that down in Sparta, when they had a visitation of wisdom, when they began to make wisecracks to each other, they put all strangers out of town, so they couldn’t profit by them—sayings like, “We all must eat our peck of dirt.” You see, that’s wisdom. That’s wisdom; that isn’t philosophy. And “A word to the wise is sufficient.” Things like that.

And, oh, let’s see: “A cat can look at a king.” You see, some woman probably said that. Somebody had been out visiting and seeing everybody, and came home talking about the important people she’d met or he’d met—she’d met, we’ll say—and some old lady says, “Well, a cat can look at a king.” That was probably said there in Sparta.

And another one, that I’ve used, probably comes down from Sparta: “Good fences make good neighbors.”22 That’s an old, old thing. I didn’t get it up. I wish I had.

That’s what I’d call “wisdom,” not “philosophy.” Philosophy is Thales and Anaximander and all that sort of stuff, you know—and Spinoza and other of spinulose stuff. It has its important place—(Let me be careful; probably a philosopher or two in the audience.)—it has its important place as taking, cleansing, purifying religion.

All philosophy has to do with the great God question. And it tries to cleanse. Its object is to cleanse religion of its mere superstition, its grosser superstition. And it’s not been quite in vain.

But, you see, the religion is very feminine. In philosophy, the only woman we know of in philosophy hated it. Her name was Xanthippi. She hated it; poured slops out the window on the philosophers when they were talking. That’s a fact. It’s a fact; that’s history.

And then you come to science, and that is more feminine than you’d realize. All science is domestic science—has to do with man’s domestication on this planet and our hold on the planet. And as for the laboratories, they’re nothing but glorified kitchens.

And then you come to the side where the wisdom is, the sayings of insight, the penetration into life, and that generally comes under the name of “gossip”—rises from our general talk about each other, guessing at each other. We guess at each other. 

Well, gossip, rising to journalism; then, to chronicle; then, to history; then, to all drama and literature; and finishing off in poetry. But that’s all down at that end, very feminine—has to do with men and women altogether.

The religious end, very feminine, too, you know. Well, all you have to do is to think of Eve and Mary—(You see, there are two women.)—and Venus. Eve, Mary, and Venus; makes religion very feminine. This is a feminist talk, you see—just occurred to me!

It’s just to show you how these things are made. The talk that I’m making about that now, free and easy and sweeping, someday’ll be a long poem, maybe. […]

My wish has been strangely near fulfilled. You see, I’m still a professor, here tonight, teaching. (This is a large class.) I’ve been growing more and more aware that my dream has been realized, that I only have ten or fifteen or twenty classes a year.

I’ll say this, not every one is entirely fresh and new. I can use an idea as it develops—as it develops—and while it’s developing I can use it three times. So, three into twenty-one goes seven lectures a year. I suppose it’s twenty-one; something like that.

Now, the poems have all got to do with things. There’s always a kernel sentence in one of them that is one of these insights that I say belong to the gossip end of life, the wisdom. And I wouldn’t value them unless they had that little touch.

Let’s take one that was quoted from. The line was, “Earth’s the right place for love.” That’s from one of my poems. I’ll say the poem that’s in. “Earth’s the right place for love: / I don’t know where it’s likely to go better,” I say in the poem. I didn’t know when I started the poem I was going to say that. But I came on that flash of the meaning to me, out of much living.I 

One little sentence like that is out of much living. And that’s so hard for some people to understand. It looks so simple, so little. But the triumph of it is that it just comes to a few words out of many days and many, many, many pleasures and pains. […]

[Mr. Frost said his poem “Birches.”]

You notice two lines in it that were what probably the Lord was making me write it for—the muse was making me write it for—to get in the line, “It’s when I’m weary of considerations.” I didn’t know I was going to get it in, but something saw that I got that in. And the other was, “Earth’s the right place for love: / I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.”

And that’s what it’s all about, that and the story—the gossip; the gossip; the story. It’s gossipy; nature gossip.

—at the University of Minnesota, October 18, 1961:

I’M ALMOST as interested in education as I am in poetry. […] I’ve had so much to do with education that I say I’m like some monkeys that Darwin tells about.

He showed them a bagful of snakes. And they looked at ’em and shrieked and threw up their arms and fled. But they couldn’t stay away. They kept coming back and looking into the bag at the snakes and throwing up their arms and shrieking and running away again.

That’s the way I’ve done for education, about the last fifty, sixty years—sixty, sixty-five years. And here I am again.