1. Beech / A Witness Tree(1942) - Robert Frost

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1. Beech

Where my imaginary line 
Bends square in woods, an iron spine 
And pile of real rocks have been founded. 
And off this corner in the wild, 
Where these are driven in and piled, 
One tree, by being deeply wounded, 
Has been impressed as Witness Tree 
And made commit to memory 
My proof of being not unbounded. 
Thus truth’s established and borne out, 
Though circumstanced with dark and doubt— 
Though by a world of doubt surrounded 
                          - The Moodie Forester

beech : 너도밤나무

spine : 가시, 철망

unbound : 제책되지 않은, 경계선이 없는

bear out : 지지하다, 지탱하다

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너도밤나무

내 상상(想像)의 선(線)이

숲에서 직각으로 굽은 곳에는,

가시 철망과 진짜 돌무더기가 설치되었다.

그리고 철망을 치거나 돌무더기를 쌓은

바로 이 코너를 벗어난 산지(山地)에도,

<표지나무> 란 마크가 깊은 상처로

새겨진 나무 한 그루가 서있다.

나의 경계선이 없지 않다는 사실을

물증으로 상기시키는 표지나무다.

어둠과 의심에 에워싸여 있어도,

회의의 세계에 둘러싸여 있어도―

이렇게 진실은 확립되고 증명된다.

―침울한 숲 거주자

-신재실  옮김-

단상(斷想): “너도밤나무”는 버몬트 주, 립턴에 있는 프로스트 농장의 한 귀퉁이에 있는 나무로, 프로스트의 개인재산과 외부세계의 경계선을 상징한다. 개인의 재산권 행사는 경계선이라는 물리적 제약에 그 자유가 제한을 받는데, 생각이나 상상의 자유는 과연 무제한일까?

상상의 세계는 그 경계를 제한하는 물리적 표지나무는 없다. 그러나 농부시인 프로스트는 농장의 경계를 표시하는 표지선과 유사한, 자신의 내적 세계의 경계를 표사하는 “상상의 선”을 상정한다.

생각이나 상상도 주어진 테두리의 제약을 받기 마련이고, 진실은 오히려 그러한 테두리 내에서 “확립되고 증명된다.” 이처럼, 이 시는 외적 세계와 내적 세계를 오간다. “가시 철망”과 “돌무더기,” 그리고 깊은 상처 입은 “표지나무”는 사실적이면서 동시에 상징적이다. 이것들은 1938년 아내의 사망, 1940년 아들의 자살 등등 개인 프로스트의 감당하기 힘든 정신적 고통과 압박을 상징하기에 충분하다.

비록 그 상처가 깊어서, “나의 경계선이 없지 않다는 사실을/ 물증으로 상기시키는 표지나무다,”라면서 그 아픔을 과거지사로 돌리면서도, 그것을 받아들일 수밖에 없는 인간의 한계를 실감하게 한다.

그가 겪은 고통은 개인의 문제로 그치는 것이 아니고, 보편적 인간조건일 것이다. 외적으로는 주어진 영역이라는 물리적인 통제를 받고, 내적으로는 주어진 “어둠과 의심”이라는 정신적 제약을 받는다. 외부세계나 내부세계 모두 부단히 인내와 지혜의 투쟁을 요구한다. 이것은 “침울한 숲 거주자”의 체험적 지혜이다.

-신재실 씀-

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A Witness Tree is uneven, although it contains a number of 
poems that count among Frost’s best, including “The Silken 
Tent,” “I Could Give All to Time,” “The Most of It,” “The 
Subverted Flower,” and “The Gift Outright.” As a whole, the 
book testifies to a range of personal feeling that moves well 
beyond the more circumscribed emotional world of his previous 
volume, A Further Range. For a poet approaching his seventieth 
year, this volume represents no small feat. Lyric poets rarely 
continue to produce work of the highest quality at this age 
(although, of course, some of the best work here was written 
much earlier). As William H. Pritchard puts it, “If North of 
Boston reveals the narrative Frost at his best, A Witness Tree— 
so it seems to me—does the same thing for the lyric Frost.”6

Having suffered so many deaths of close family members in a 
brief space of time, and thus “circumstanced with dark and 
doubt,” Frost was nevertheless able to move forward into a 
clearing, to find a lyric space where being “not unbounded” (as he 
said in “Beech”) was a cause for celebration. Once again, limits 
proved, for him, affirming.

The book was dedicated to Kay: “To K.M. for her part in it.” It contains forty-two poems gathered in five sections, with two prefatory poems that shed light on the title and provide the reader with a point of entry. “Beech” sets the tone for the book as a whole and suggests that the title of the book operates on various symbolic levels:

Where my imaginary line Bends square in woods, an iron spine And pile of real rocks have been founded. And off this corner in the wild, Where these are driven in and piled, One tree, by being deeply wounded, Has been impressed as Witness Tree And made commit to memory My proof of being not unbounded. Thus truth’s established and borne out, Though circumstanced with dark and doubt— Though by a world of doubt surrounded.

The poem is founded, literally, on the tree that marked the boundaries of the Homer Noble farm, an old sugar maple marred by a spike, situated near a rock cairn that delineates the poet’s property. This “imaginary” line is imaginary only in that it is “unseen.” It is real enough, just as the poet’s inner life is real, marked off from a “world of doubt” that surrounds it. The tree is “wounded,” as Frost has been wounded in life; but the wounds

are, paradoxically, essential; they are delineating, self-defining. As ever, Frost’s nimble mind cannot help playing with words, such as “impress,” which moves on both literal and symbolic planes. To amplify the symbol of the “witness tree” even further, Frost added some lines from The New England Primer as his second prefatory poem:

Zaccheus he Did climb the tree Our Lord to see.

So the tree becomes a point of vantage, and the book as a whole is meant to become a vantage from which the careful reader can survey Frost and his world.

from "Robert Frost : A Life"

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Though Frost always found some excuse to mock poets who, like Sandburg, presented what seemed to him a threat to his literary reputation, he was often willing to do what he could to help a young and promising writer. One such was the subject of a letter Frost sent to William Sloane on the occasion of his own so-called sixty-seventh birthday, on March twenty-sixth:

 "I'm sending you separately some poems I have had on my mind on my conscience and on the shelf for too long a time. I didn't write them. But I like them rather well though not nearly as well as I like the fellow who did write them. He is the interesting Iowa farmer I may have spoken to you about. Many of us are his admiring friends including the Iowan Vice president of the United States [Henry Wallace]. His name is James Hurst [Hearst] and it is already known for one volume of verse (Prairie Press publishers) that went throug[h] an edition. The story that goes with him helps sell the verse. He is partly paralized from a diving accident and only holds up his end with his brother farming a big Iowa farm by virtue of what he can do with the big machinery once he is lifted into his seat by someone else. His brother has devoted himself to giving him a share in the farm life and has stayed unmarried, I suspect, at a sacrifice. They are a noted pair. Their farm is one of the best in Iowa. I tell you all this for obvious reasons. And I might add that I have wondered if Henry Wallace mightnt be induced to go on the jacket of his book with the idea of bringing Hurst out of his regional existance into a national. Now you've got all the elements, you can be left to judge for yourself. Only please deliver judgement quickly—Hurst mustnt be kept waiting cruelly long. Mind you I am not pressing. Some of the poems I like well. Maybe the book would gain by the elimination of the poems that echo Spoon River."

Within a month Frost's interest in the careers of young poets was pushed into the background by the appearance of his own book, A Witness Tree, his first collection of new verse since 1936. Dedicated "TO K. M. / FOR HER PART IN IT," A Witness Tree contained forty-two poems grouped in five sections, with two introductory poems that gave readers to understand just what Frost meant to imply by the book's title. The first introductory poem, called "Beech," Frost fancifully attributed to "The Moodie Forester" (Moodie having been, of course, his mother's maiden name), and in it he provided essential clues for understanding the symbolic levels of the witness-tree metaphor that governed the organization of the entire book.

 Having evoked the simplest secular dimension of the witness tree, as the scarred-trunk-and-iron-stake marker identifying the corner of a piece of country property (in this case the Homer Noble Farm), and the symbolic dimension of the tree, as marker between the poet's finite, troubled inner world and the only-less-chaotic world around him, Frost added a second tree poem he borrowed from The New England Primer —to which he added his own title, "Sycamore." Here, the witness tree became not a marker, but a vantage point—from which to see beyond the finite world to the infinite, God.

 With these two poems, Frost established for his readers the notion that the others that followed were themselves, taken separately and as a whole, a kind of witness tree—demarcating the secular and spiritual boundaries of the poet's life and times. It was an ambitious design; yet, he felt it was fully justified by the poems he had chosen to include.

 The first of the book's five sections, after the two introductory poems, was called "One or Two," and it included fourteen poems (beginning with "The Silken Tent"), each of which contributed a different perspective to the question implied by the section's title. The second grouping, "Two or More," began with "The Gift Outright" and contained five poems, including "Triple Bronze," "Our Hold on the Planet," and "The Lesson for Today." Next was "Time Out," with eight poems, including "To a Moth Seen in Winter," "A Considerable Speck," "November," and "It Is Almost the Year Two Thousand."

 In "Quantula," the next section, Frost grouped nine short poems, ranging from the gnomic couplet "The Secret Sits" to two eight-line ventures into political commentary, "An Equalizer" and "A Semi-Revolution." As much as any poem in the collection, "A Semi-Revolution" was linked thematically to the second of the introductory poems, "Sycamore." Throughout his life, Frost consistently scoffed at the notions of social planners who believed imperfection could be legislated out of existence. For him, there was only one "salve," and it was the same "Secret" who sat in the middle and knew: God. But only one who, like Frost, had climbed the tree "our Lord to see" would know that. All others must endlessly "dance round in a ring and suppose," spinning out one theory after another to repair what it was God's pleasure to set asunder.

 The last section, entitled "Over Back," began with a poem linked even more closely to "Beech" than "A Semi-Revolution" was linked to "Sycamore." Entitled "Trespass," it concerned one who had chosen to ignore the message of the speaker's witness tree. Five poems more and the book was complete.

from "Robert Frost : A Biograph"