26. The Onset / New Hampshire(1923) - Robert Frost

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26. The Onset

Always the same, when on a fated night

At last the gathered snow lets down as white

As may be in dark woods, and with a song

It shall not make again all winter long

Of hissing on the yet uncovered ground,

I almost stumble looking up and round,

As one who overtaken by the end

Gives up his errand, and lets death descend

Upon him where he is, with nothing done

To evil, no important triumph won,

More than if life had never been begun.

Yet all the precedent is on my side:

I know that winter death has never tried

The earth but it has failed: the snow may heap

In long storms an undrifted four feet deep

As measured against maple, birch, and oak,

It cannot check the peeper's silver croak;

And I shall see the snow all go downhill

In water of a slender April rill

That flashes tail through last year's withered brake

And dead weeds, like a disappearing snake.

Nothing will be left white but here a birch,

And there a clump of houses with a church.

• peeper : 청개구리의 일종
• croak : 개굴개굴울다
• rill : 실개천
• brake : 덤불, 숲
• clump : 응집한 덩어리

습격

늘 그렇듯이, 어느 운명의 밤

마침내 어두운 숲에 집결한 눈이

온통 하얗게 내리니, 긴 겨우내

처음이자 마지막인 듯 쉭쉭 노래하며

아직 덮이지 않은 땅을 습격한다.

나는 하늘과 주변을 쳐다보며 비틀거린다.

마치 종말(終末)에 압도(壓倒)되어

할 일을 포기한 채, 인생의 시작이 없었던 듯,

중요한 승리도 전혀 거두지 못하고,

악도 어찌하지 못하고, 하강하는 죽음을

있는 자리에서 수령(受領)하는 사람 같구나.

그러나 모든 선례(先例)는 내편이니,

겨울의 죽음은 땅을 시험했으나

번번이 실패했음을 나는 안다. 눈이

단풍, 자작나무, 참나무와 맞서듯

오랜 폭설로 4피트까지 푹푹 쌓여도,

끝내 개구리의 은빛 울음을 막을 순 없다.

이윽고 눈이 모두 언덕을 흘러내리니,

사월의 날씬한 실개천의 물이 되어서

작년의 시든 덤불과 죽은 잡초 사이로

꼬리를 번쩍이며 뱀처럼 사라지는 것이다.

희게 남은 것은 여기 자작나무 한 그루,

저기 교회가 있는 한 덩어리 집들뿐이다.

-신재실 옮김-

단상(斷想): 자연 질서와 인간질서 모두 중단 없이 지속된다. 영원한 겨울은 없다. 겨울에도 늪지를 녹이는 운동은 계속되고 있으며 필연적인 봄의 도래를 막을 수 없는 것이 자연의 이치이다.「습격」의 화자는 “예정된” 밤에 어두운 숲 속에서 쉭쉭 소리 내며 퍼붓는 눈의 습격에 손 한번 못쓰고 죽음을 맞이하는 심경이다. 그러나 이내 모든 “선례”가 자기편임을 주목하고 회생의 봄을 경험으로 증거한다.

“겨울의 죽음은 땅을 시험했으나/ 번번이 실패했음을 나는 안다.”그러기에 화자는 눈이“사월의 날씬한 실개천의 물이 되어서/ 작년의 시든 덤불과 죽은 잡초 사이로/ 꼬리를 번쩍이며 뱀처럼 사라질 것”을 예상한다.

뱀의 이미지는 아담과 이브를 유혹했던 뱀을 연상시키면서 죽음의 유혹과 시련의 해방을 기대하게 한다. 매우 낙천적인 결론이다. 그러나 “희게 남은 것은 여기 자작나무 한 그루,/ 저기 교회가 있는 한 덩어리 집들뿐이다.”라는 끝말은 흰 눈이 다 녹아 없어져도 그것을 상기시킬 수 있는 흰색은 여전히 주변에 남을 것을 상기시킨다. “겨울이 오면 봄도 멀지 않으리라”란 셸리(Shelley)적인 낙관을 봄에도 겨울의 흔적은 있으리라는 반명제로 완화시키는 듯하다.

지나치기 쉬운 낙천적 정서를 자작나무, 집, 교회라는 주변의 사실적 현실과 이성으로 통제하고 있다. 화자는 영원한 봄도 없으리라는 것을 잘 알고 있다.

-신재실 씀-

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youtu.be/_cIT6WwWMfg

youtu.be/JwGGY1RCZLg

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ROBERT FROST
 SPEAKING ON CAMPUS

Contents

 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 thinking and of perishing to shine

Mr. Frost’s 1962 appearance at Agnes Scott, for the talk and reading of January twenty-fifth from which this excerpt has been drawn, was heralded in both the student and local-area press as being his twentieth visit (dating from 1935), to the Decatur, Georgia, women’s college.

IHAVE OFTENthought that I like a lot of chances to set myself right with people, and yet not try to be too definite and defining—just sort of feel my way with them.

I’m aninvidious—insidious—no, let’s say that I’m aninsidiousnationalist, if you know what that is. You’d know that without my saying it. It’s all scattered through my poems, what a terrible American I am—terrible.You get used to it. If you see enough of it, you don’t mind it, anyway. You can stand it, no matter what your politics are. […]

Now, I was going to say a few words about a given subject. I’ve told people once or twice that I once gave a lecture on how you can tell when you’re thinking. I go around and tell about the time I gave that lecture. I haven’t repeated it. They’re not written down, you know.

They ask me don’t I want to give it tonight? I say: “That’s a very expensive lecture. I keep that for big money.” It’s a secret, I tell ’em, how you can tell when you’re thinking. But there’s a little you can say about it […].

I mean something beyond just opinionating. That’s like voting, you know. I vote against women’s voting, say. “That’s youropinion,” we’ll say. (You girls don’t believe in voting, I suppose.) “That’s just your opinion. Haven’t you got any more to say about it than that? And if you haven’t got any more to say about it, don’t tell me.”

That’s not thinking. That’s opinionating. Agreeing with me isn’t thinking. That’s not what I mean.

I tell you, all thinking comes down to this word “sharp”—that we use in slang almost: “He’s very sharp. He’s very sharp tonight.” That means he missed no chances to be reminded, by what was going on, of something interesting related to it. His mind is easily reminded—well-reminded; he’s right up, fresh. That’s the best of all things. […]

The readiness with which you’re reminded by what’s going on, reminded of what’s distant in time—books, life, and so on—aptly reminded. The word “reminding” is all there is to thinking. And every good thought that counts as a thought is a feat of association like that.

Just say that, for me. That’s the heart of it all, a feat of association. You make a good, apt association, to the pleasure of everybody.

Now, we use the word “happy” thought, in the wrong way. It’s corrupted. It’s sunk down. What it originally meant was just that: that happy association—not a cheerful association, not something that makes you happy; something that charms you because it’s fresh and original.

The word “original” will do for it. (I don’t like the word too much.) I don’t know; not necessarily greatly original, but it’s a fresh, fresh reminding. […]

I have to speak with some feeling of sorrow. Robinson Jeffers has just died, my distant friend. I never knew him very well. He kept himself in his tower in California, and I never go to towers. But I admired him. I admired his pessimism. And just forthat, that it was a fresh, original pessimism—very dark, bitter.

And what a fine figure this is for throwing life away, you know. It’s not my figure. But it’s his—and a good one and a bad one; the worse it is the better. He says, “Give your heart to the hawks.” It’s the title of the poem.

That’s all you need. That’s all there is to life: “Give your heart to the hawks.” He died in that spirit. Touching.

I never tried to deal with that. I just took it as a good black spot in my thoughts. But he said something that I was confronted with. (That doesn’t confront me. I know all that sentiment in other writers. It’s an ancient one: “Give your heart to the hawks.” It’s a pretty way to put it.) But he says “shine, perishing republic” to us—shine, perishing republic.”43And I used that, happened to use it, in my new book that was gone to press before I knew all about his death. Just one line: “shine, perishing republic.”

What are you going to do with that? Either let it alone or include it in my book. And the way I include it is that everything that shines, shines by perishing—candles, the sun, andme.

And then I don’t know what he does with it. That’s what I do with it. I think he’s darker than that. Mine is everything shines by perishing, everything. And you’ve got to remember that. It’s a great, great thought. But mine includes his.

And how long will the United States shine before it perishes? (I always say—you know, talking about money—I tell ’em I always charge more for prophecy than I do for history.) I don’t know how long we’re going to last. The song says, “It shall wave a thousand years.”44

That’s a good long time. We’ve only spent two hundred of it. Thousand is—if you look in history—it’s a good long time. It’s longer than most have done it. The great days of a nation are seldom anything like that. You’ve got to think of that.

And what shall we do while we are spending, while we’re burning through our lives? That you ask yourself as you look around today. We’re squandering our light, almost, to the world. It’s wonderful we are; wonderful shining thing we are. But you wonder about the economy of it. We have to ask the economists.

I’m not trying to frighten you. I’m not scared if you’re not. But a thousand years evolves, you know. We’ve got lots of time to turn around in that time.

But don’t think we’re forever. We can’t be. Nothing is forever. Everything shines to perish, perishes to shine. And so that takes you out of all the little quibbling thoughts of the day.

Here we are, the richest nation in the world—the richest nation the world has ever seen, with the widest diffusion of wealth that the world has ever seen—and shining as such, so that everybody looks in this direction. And if we’re troubled by our responsibility of shining to perish, we’re a small lot, petty-minded. Big, let’s make it big and shine.

And to measure it all the time, you know. We don’t need to just burn like a prairie fire. That was Tom Paine’s idea of democracy. It was going to be a prairie fire that swept the world. This isn’t like that. This is a great steady flame—like Sirius, like the star Sirius, and like the sun—as we shine.

Nobody knows in the universe anything that isn’t spending. One of the strange things, the confidences, that the scientists get up for themselves is that something must be coming in. They haven’t any evidence of it anywhere, not a glimmer of it. Everything is spending, spending—grand, grand spending.

We’re not talking about terms, what the terms are. They’re vast terms, little terms, and all that.

Well, the point is, though, that’s just my handling of something I encounter. I see that “shine, perishing republic,” and I know there’s a certain note of pessimism in his poem. Withoutreading further, I know just how he’ll take it. But I know another way to take it: everything shines; perishes to shine.

That’s just what I mean by thinking. That’s all there is to thinking: feat of association. And it’s better never to take anything head on, contradict it. If you can, sort of outwit it—go it one better, by some liveness in your own mind, live mind. And remind, remind. […]

I’ve had to say lately, to myself, what I’m around for. I’m around for my poems, chiefly. And I’m not around preaching. And I’m not around teaching. I just found this out: I’m around looking for kindred spirits, for their comfort and mine. And I do it on a percentage basis.

But that’s what is. I’m wandering around—like butterflies in the air, you know—looking for kindred spirits. That’s all, not preaching or teaching.

You don’t have to agree with anything I say. You don’t have to get mad at me, ’cause I don’t get mad at you. And I’m not out for any particular cause. I belong to causes, but I’m very, very, very happy in my relation to ’em. […]

I’ve shown you—sort of what I call in a loose, scattered way; not loose, but a scattered way—about what I mean by thinking—not arguing, not pressing; no, presenting—that I’ve shown myself as a person sharply reminded of this, that, and the other thing in the universe, when I’m feeling right. (Sometimes when I’m not really feeling right, I just wonder where it’s gone.) That’s all there is to it, the condition that makes you kind of sharp about being reminded. You sometimes blame yourself when you should have been reminded by something, and somebody else is better, does it for you.

In history—just one word more—there was a great historian named Gibbon. And I remember reading very young, in a little preface to the history of Rome,The Decline and Fall—a little preface about him, years ago—that as he was dying he was still at—they said—still at his old historical parallels. He was always being reminded of one thing by another. He died with those parallels and surprising people with his parallels; connections, associations, you see.

That had a lot to do with my life—just thinking and beginning to see that—that when you’re good, mentally good, your parallels are good, your life.

—at Amherst College, April 21, 1958:

THIS SUBJECT ISalways the subject up in reading poetry:

There are three meanings, you might say. There’s the first meaning, the surface meaning; and the second, intimation that the poet is more or less aware of. (In painting it’s the same, you know; in any art. There’s the ulterior, always the ulterior.)

And, then, there seems to be another something that is the question, “What’s the matter with the author; what’s eating him?” And, you see, that always bothers me a good deal. I’m willing to have ’em going on that way and glad to have ’em interested in me, of course. […]

My tendency is to simplify the ulterior. There is always something that’s around the edges of it. And you can always make a pretty turn of it. I don’t mind what they do to it, as long as they don’t debase it. If they go me one better in it—make something amusing out of it, make something prettier than I made—that’s all right. But to debase it, it bothers me.