단상(斷想): 뜬 눈으로 밤을 지새우며 아침을 고대한 적이 있는가? 추운 겨울이다. 소복이 쌓인 눈과 함께 몰아치는 폭풍이 창문 유리를 때린다. 사나운 바람이 맞붙어 싸우면서 흙과 깃털의 회오리를 일으킨다. “나”는 퍼뜩 잠이 깬다. 텅 빈 거리가 사납다. 시간이 정지한 듯 나를 짓누른다. 새벽이 어디쯤에 있는지 가늠할 수 없어 불안하다. 추위에 시계 바늘이 얼어붙지 않았는지 걱정이 된다
마침내 탑시계가 울린다, 원(One)! 저 멀리서 첨탑이 복창한다, 원(One)! 폭풍에 묻혀 약간 죽었지만, 여전히 매끄럽고 신비한 소리로 다가온다. 멀리 떨어져 있음에도 불구하고, 탑과 첨탑이 거의 동시에 맞장구침으로써 일체감(一體感)을 준다. 잠 못 이루고 이런저런 생각에 잠긴 “나” 에게 어떤 메시지를 던지는 것 같다.나의 생각은 갑자기 천체 간의 거리와 우주의 질서로 비상한다.
우선 태양계가 떠오른다. 태양계는 항성인 태양을 중심으로 수성, 금성, 지구, 화성, 목성, 토성, 천왕성, 해왕성 등 8개의 행성으로 구성된다. 그리고 지구는 달을 위성으로 거느린다. 항성, 행성, 위성이 일체가 되어 빈틈없이 회전하지 않는가? 우리의 은하만도 태양을 비롯해 약 1,000억 개의 항성이 있다고 하지 않는가? 항성이 각기 또 다른 태양계를 형성한다고 가정하면, 은하계에만도 수천억 개의 태양계가 존재하지 않을까? 은하를 구성하는 수많은 별과 성좌들이 각각의 별과 서로 맞물려서 시계처럼 정연하게 움직이지 않는가?
그뿐인가? 인간의 관찰과 억측의 범위 너머에도 수많은 별들이 존재한다. 하지만 너무 먼 거리에 있기 때문에, 망원경 렌즈를 아무리 확대해도 아예 잡히지 않거나, 잡혀도 하나의 티끌로 보인다. 그들 또한 시계 소리와 일체가 되어 빠른 속도로 회전한다. 그 너머에 존재하는 신이 바퀴를 돌리는 모양이다. 그러기에 빈틈없이 돌아가는 게 아닐까? 아득히 멀기에 신도 보이지 않고, 신이 돌리는 별들도 제자리에 그대로 서있는 것처럼 보인다. 아주 먼 항성에 사는 우주인이 있다면, 지구 역시 제자리에 정지한 작은 티끌로 보이지 않을까?
이제까지 보이지 않거나 티끌 같던 별이 갑자기 폭발하여 짧은 시간에 수백 배에서 수만 배로 밝아져 새로운 별로 보인다. 우리는 이것을 신성(nova)이라고 부른다. 은하계에는 1년에 수십 개의 신성이 나타난다. 하지만 신성은 수백 일 또는 수년에 걸쳐 점차 빛을 잃고 본래의 상태로 돌아간다. 이처럼 각각의 별은 작은 변화를 거듭한다. 창조와 파괴가 부단히 순환하지만, 장구한 시간으로 보면 본래의 상태를 유지하는 게 아닐까?
그렇다. 창세 이후 지구에서는 인간이 인간을 끌어내리고, 국가가 국가를 끌어내리는 역사가 끊이지 않는다. 또한 우리는 지구의 환경과 기후 변화의 도전을 끊임없이 받는다. 눈보라, 폭풍, 어두운 밤의 위협 앞에서 밝고 평온한 아침을 고대하며 뜬 눈으로 밤을 지새우며 떠는 “나” 아닌가? 하지만 마침내 “원(One)!”하고 울리는 탑시계, 멀리서 “원(One)!”하고 복창하는 첨탑이 주는 우주의 일체감(一體感)에 나는 어떤 비전과 안도를 깨닫는다. 멀리 보면 개인의 생로병사(生老病死), 문명의 흥망성쇠(興亡盛衰)는 지속적으로 움직이는 지구의 거대한 바퀴를 굴리는 바뀌고 바뀌는 톱니 아닐까?
Introduction Getting up things to say for yourself Where poetry comes in Handling figures of speech “Anxiety for the Liberal Arts” A book side to everything Not freedom from, but freedom of Of rapid reading and what we call “completion” No surprise to me, no surprise to anybody else Pieces of knitting to go on with Everything in the world comes in pairs My kind of fooling About “the great misgiving” Wondering how convictions are had Something you live by till you live by something else Some gamble—something of uncertainty The future of the world Hang around for the refinement of sentiment What I think I’m doing when I write a poem Of the “elect” and the “elected” Fall in love at sight Thinking about generalizations “In on the Ground Floor” A certain restlessness About thinking and of perishing to shine A gentler interest in the fine things Let’s say bravely…that poetry counts I’ll tell you a little about my walks Editor’s Note
References
About “the great misgiving”
In beginning his April 10, 1958, lecture to the Great Issues Course at Dartmouth, Mr. Frost spoke of having at last fixed upon the designation for a collection of his poems that had not yet been brought forth in book form. It would, however, be another four years before the long-anticipated volume was finally published carrying as its titleIn the Clearing.
WHAT I’M GOINGto talk about is something I’ve been working toward. I always have a hard time naming a book, and it’s about time I had another book. My publishers expect one of me every seven years, but it’s past seven now. I’ve got to have a book for ’em pretty soon.
But I’ve been stalling. And they think from just laziness and good-for-nothingness, that I just can’t come to a point. But the real fact is I have to feel something that kind of—just for me, privately—pulls the book together.
They’re scattered poems that I write, around. People think I wrote a book calledNorth of Bostonand wrote it as a book. I didn’t. It’s just scattered poems that I pulled together under the headNorth of Boston.And it looks very well, even to outsiders, as a name. But usually the name means just something to me. It’s my reason to finally close the book and get it off my hands.
And I’ve finally got to it. Take you in on this: I’ve finally decided to call the bookThe Great Misgiving.You’d have to look far into the book to find what I mean by that. But I’ll tell you a little about it, what it means to me.
If I could, I’d have handed you for this affair just a littlemap, of about the size of this, of the whole world. (What I think they call a “Mercator’s Projection.” Is that the old name for it?) This would be the whole world, spread out here, exaggerated at both poles. It’s spread too wide at both poles, but it’s just map enough for us.
And then I’d ask you to make on it a black mark. It wouldn’t be much longer than ten inches. And it would begin in the west coast of Asia Minor, and it would stretch, black and rather broad, right across the Aegean, across Greece, across Italy, across Germany. It would be wide enough to take Germany, France, England—and then on to us; just to us.
This thing would be stretching west-northwest, sort of. And there’d be nothing else like it on the map. There couldn’t be anything else like it. It’s the only place where this belongs, this thing. It’s like a cinder path.
I’ll tell you where “the great misgiving” comes in. Only two peoples, Eastern and Western, have had this great misgiving. It belongs to us and becomes us, Eastern and Western—east of that place where I begin the black line and west of it to us; beginning, I like to say, around the Land of Moab or somewhere where the alphabet did—starting from scratch on the Moabite Stone. It’s a kind of a cinder track—starting from scratch on the Moabite Stone; if you get that.
And there’s nothing like it went the other direction. And Africa’s got nothing to do with it. If there’s anything of this in Africa, it’s for the far future; we don’t know.
But this misgiving that becomes us was taken in two ways, the Western way and the Eastern way. […] We have taken it our way, and they have taken it their way. And our way is as much as to say, “The greatest merit of all is to risk the spirit in substantiation, in plunging into matter.” That’s the greatest merit of all.
The second greatest merit would be so worried about the spirit that you’d just clasp your hands and drop on your knees and wait till you’re dead, for fear your spirit should be lost in a material world. That’s the Eastern way, waiting for Nirvana, hoping not to get born again—hoping not to get born again into this bad world. That’s the Eastern way. I presume to call that second best.
It’s well that we should have this misgiving, this fear for the spirit. And I’ve been saying lately to graduate schools when I met them: “Don’t ever let me hear you fellows in the graduate school talk about ‘materialism.’ You’re more in danger of losing the spirit of what you’re dealing, in your material, than almost anybody else.”
It’s the curse of the graduate school, that they get lost in their own material. They think their duty is material, of course. But of course the duty of all of us is to enter into the material. I’ve got to substantiate my claim to being here this morning, substantiate it. I’ve got to materialize it. (I want a different word for it from “materialism.” It’s “materiality.”)
I enter into the material every poem I write, every talk I make. I enter into the material, at the risk of the spirit. We recognize the spirit in various ways, by a show of vanity maybe (sometimes no more than that), by wit, by ideas—bymeaning;that’s the height of it all.
It’s a great wonder to me that the books produced in the graduate school are not thought meaningful enough for anybody to want to buy ’em, in this material world. That’s just speaking of them.
But the whole thing is that. And I say in verses in the book, a verse that goes like this:
Even God’s descent
Into flesh…
See, God descended into flesh, according to our Christian religion.—
He had to substantiate; that is, He had to give meaning to the world.
Now, the two ways that you’ve got. One is to fear it so much, have the misgiving so strong, that you clasp your hands and just pray to be saved from this gross material world. And the other is—(We have a slang word, don’t we? I don’t know whether you ever heard it.)—the Western way has been to “duff” in. You see, duff in—(I presume that’s the same word as you get in “plum duff” and such as that; “duff into the dough.”)—go for it; go for the material, knowing the risk, feeling the risk.
The church has a lot to do with that misgiving, of course. Sometimes the church has stalled it. It’s had a stalling effect, it’s been so afraid of the material.
But, now, make this picture on the map, this charge, this great charge into the material that began with the alphabet, partly—“the greatest analysis of all analyses,” somebody said. Only once in the world.
These are the wonderful things, that these are so individual. Some man must have said—somewhere there on that coast or somewhere near Moab—said to himself, “Look at all these words we say.” He didn’t know how many they were. But he said: “Look at all these words we say. If you stop to analyze them, they can all be reduced to twenty sounds.”
Wasn’t that a feat of analysis? Nobody else ever did it. TheEast never did it. This happened right on that verge there, coming our way.
That was the part of the thing that gave the spirit its chance, a written language. A B C and 1 2 3, those two things had so much to do with it.
But this venture into the material that I call “materiality,” not “materialism,” was an adventure of the spirit into matter, to see if the spirit couldn’t be kept. And it’s kept wherever there’s meaning kept. And it’s lost wherever it goes into just a dump of material.
I was running my eye over a bookcase just before I came, and I saw so many titles—(’Twas books of this time, they seemed to be.)—so many titles that showed this that I could call this “misgiving,” this fear of being lost in the material.
I’m going to see somebody in Washington who’s brother I remember seeing years ago out in Wyoming, up at Laramie, up seven thousand feet nearer heaven. He said to me—(A fine man; he put his hand to his head.) “I’m confused, aren’t you?” That’s what he meant, you know; he was losing the meaning.
And when you talk about “existentialism,” it just means that. (The word for it in the church is “acedia.”) It’s a spirit giving up. An existentialist is a person that wouldn’t be bothered to commit suicide. He wouldn’t be bothered. And the thing is, it’s the failure—just for him and all around him, as he sees it—the failure of the spirit; that there isn’t meaning enough to anything for him to go on with it. […]
I’m not here to find fault, am I? And all I’m saying is that the meaning when lost is “acedia” or “existential” or whatever you want to call it—acedia or existential.
Now, picture it this way, again on this map—this cinder path that I’ve made across it. It’s been the great adventure into the material, at the risk of the spirit. And I call it “materiality,” unless it fails; and then I call it “materialism.”
If I succeed with my material—in writing a poem or in making a speech—if I succeed with my material, I’m dealing with the material, of course, and I’m a material artist. And if I fail, I’m a saddened, sad materialist; that’s all.
And so with your being at college, your being anywhere. Your being in Washington; your being President of the United States—when you lie alone at night, the thing that concerns you, the misgiving, is whether you’re making this almost unwieldy mass, the United States—with a hundred and sixty million people—whether you’re putting something into it, and whether you can go before Congress tomorrow and help put some meaning into it.
And one of the amusing things to me is that the Eastern world has just sort of been lately waked up to our way of doing it. And they’ve started wondering if ours isn’t the better way to take the misgiving. They’ve taken it one way, and we’ve taken it another. And they’ve come West to find out whether our way is better than their way.
Maybe theirs is better. Maybe I better not say. I think ours is better, probably. That’s in my heart. But it might be we’re wrong. Maybe the best way is to go into a cell somewhere and pray our time out. Or will weplunge?Will we go on with the plunging way?
It’s somewhere in the poem, the longish poem somewhere in the book, that I take the title from:
Westerners inherit
A design of living
Deeper into matter…
You see:
Deeper into matter—
Not without some patter
Of the great misgiving.31
You see, always worrying about the spirit—as we should. Have we kept it? Are we keeping it? And that’s without getting religious about it at all. I brought God into it, but the point is justmeaning,plain meaning.
There are lulls in it, when you’re scared entirely. There are lulls in your life, when you wonder what it’s all about—what it’s all about. Are you acting as if you had some clue to what it’s about—some clue?
It needn’t come too clear, but the very confidence you have in being here, the very confidence you have in not committing suicide, means that you think there’s some sort of meaning. There’s something to go on with—in fear and trembling. […]
I belong to the West. I’m not interested in the detachment and the dispassionateness that saves a man from getting born again. That’s the Eastern way, to get off the wheel. You know, according to that, even when you’re an angel, you’re not safe. You can get born again and be a monkey. You gotta look out. And the way out of it is detachment, this fear of the material that detaches you from everything, takes the passion all out of your life, the passion for science or for everything—for action; the passion for action.
Finish the picture; then I’ll change the subject. This cinder path, starting from scratch on the Moabite Stone, makes it a sort of a hundred-yard dash that the Western race has made, right across Greece and all—(Call it a hundred-yard dash.)—to us, ending in a pole vault—always in fear for everything; fear for the track, fear for yourself and everything.
Physical condition has something to do with it, too. You’d think it might not be. If you got sick enough you might write like an existentialist, I suppose, and might prevail that way, sick-spirited.
Remember the church has that wonderful word about it.It’s so old, that “acedia.” Look it up. See how deep a meaning it had for monks and priests and for the church.
Only the great people of the world have had the misgiving, East and West. And they’ve taken it two ways. And whether ours is the right way or theirs is the right way is for someone else to say. I’m not saying. I incline. I’m Western, sort of. But it might be that we could be wrong about it. Maybe we’re going to lose the spirit, in this “derring do.”31
I’ve lived longer than you have. I met the people that made the “pole vault,” the Wright brothers. Look at us now. But that’s all into the material. That’s all; it’s a venture of the spirit into the material.
Do we carry meaning with it? Is the spirit with it? Always scare yourself once in a while for fear it isn’t in your work, isn’t in your life.
There are prescribed ways in the world for being kind of sure that you’re doing something that means something. You can be a doctor or lawyer or Indian chief, you know—some of those things; something that you fall into that has sort of meaning already, been given meaning—and teaching and writing poetry and coaching teams. […]
It’s dangerous for me to say any poems after that, isn’t it? Because, have I put enough meaning into them? I’m a materialist, and the most physical part of my poems are the parts I like best, where they’re reallyphysical.There are other words for that, but I like it: “physical.”
But it’s got to go beyond that. Take a matter like this. We know that the one thing that’s a sign of a real person is that he wants to win. Whether he plays cards or whether he goes into games or into a word contest or something, but he likes to win. Then, he has to find out what it means to win.
In some of these subjects you study, what is winning?Is “A” winning—or “B” winning enough? Is that really victory?
The Romans dragged Christians to the altar of victory. If they wouldn’t bow down to that, they fed ’em to the lions. But they wanted ’em to bow to the idea of victory. […] That’s vitality, to want to win.
But now beyond that—to give that meaning—beyond that is not to be made a fool of by winning or by losing, either. (You can be made a fool of by both.) And then you get up into the spiritual, where the high meaning is, and you say: “Well, what do I want more than victory? Well, I want to behave myself in victory or defeat, ’cause you can have either.”
This is where the spiritual begins. You say: “Why do I want to behave myself? It’s expected of me.” Just say that much. “It seems to be expected of me that I shan’t be made a fool of by either victory or defeat.” And now you’re up in the spiritual world. And the next thing you know you’re at the top of the Golden Stairs.
—at Goucher College, November 29, 1950:
NOBODY EVERtold me anything about my poems that made me write anything any different. […]
My best critic is the other poems that have been written. Every little while I clear my eyes all away and take a fresh look at something that others have written in the past. […]
And then sometimes I go directly from something somebody else has written, other things, and look at mine with that same desire to be clear and face it. And that’s about all it ever amounts to. That’s the only criticism I ever know.