26. Lines Written in Dejection on the Eve of Great Success
I once had a cow that jumped over the moon,
Not onto the moon but over.
I don’t know what made her so lunar a loon;
All she’d been having was clover.
That was back in the days of my godmother Goose.
But though we are goosier now,
And all tanked up with mineral juice,
We haven’t caught up with my cow.
Postscript
But if over the moon I had wanted to go
And had caught my cow by the tail,
I’ll bet she’d have made a melodious low
And put her foot in the pail;
Than which there is no indignity worse.
A cow did that once to a fellow
Who rose from the milking stool with a curse
And cried, “I’ll larn you to bellow.”
He couldn’t lay hands on a pitchfork to hit her
Or give her a stab of the tine,
So he leapt on her hairy back and bit her
Clear into her marrow spine.
No doubt she would have preferred the fork.
She let out a howl of rage
That was heard as far away as New York
And made the papers’ front page.
He answered her back, “Well, who begun it?”
That’s what at the end of a war
We always say—not who won it,
Or what it was foughten for.
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위대한 성공 전야(前夜)에
낙심하여 쓴 시
내게 달을 뛰어넘은 암소가 있었으니,
달에 진입한 것은 아니고 뛰어넘었다.
무엇이 그녀를 그렇게 달 미치광이로 만들었는지 모른다.
그녀가 먹고 있었던 것은 고작 클로버였다.
그것은 옛날 마더 구스 시절에 있었다.
그러나 우리는 이제 더 구스 같고,
모두가 광물질 주스에 만취했지만,
우리는 아직 내 암소를 따라잡지는 못했다.
추신(追伸)
그러나 내가 달을 뛰어넘기를 원했다면
그리고 내 암소의 꼬리를 잡았더라면,
그녀는 ‘음매-’듣기 좋게 울면서
한 발을 우유 들통에 담갔을 것이니,
그보다 더 굴욕적인 치욕은 없다.
어떤 친구가 착유용 3각 걸상에서 욕하며 일어나
“너에게 울부짖는 법을 가르쳐주겠다,”고 외쳤을 때
암소가 그렇게 한 적이 있었다.
그는 쇠스랑을 잡고 그녀를 때리거나
그녀를 뾰족 막대기로 찌를 수도 없었기에,
그녀의 털투성이 등에 뛰어 올라타고
그녀의 척수(脊髓)를 깊숙이 때렸다.
분명 그녀는 쇠스랑을 더 좋아했을 것이다.
그녀는 분노의 울부짖음 소리를 냈으니
저 멀리 뉴욕까지 들렸고
각종 신문의 제1면 기사가 되었다.
그는 그녀에게 대꾸했다, “자, 누가 시작했지?”
전쟁이 끝나면 우리는 항상 이렇게
말하고―이긴 자기 누구인지 또는
왜 전쟁을 했는지는 묻지 않는다.
-신재실 옮김-
단상(斷想): 이 시의 타이틀은 셸리(Shelley)의 “Stanzas Written in Dejection…”과 콜리지(Coleridge)의 ”Dejection: An Ode" 같은 낭만시의 패러디(parody)이지만, 시의 의미에 큰 보탬이 되지는 않는다. 1959년 1월 소련은 달 탐사선 루나1호를 성공적으로 발사했다. 예정된 궤도를 다소 벗어났지만, 처음으로 달에 가까이 다가가는데 성공했다. 미국도 같은 해 3월 달 탐사선을 발사했지만 예정된 궤도를 크게 벗어났다.
엄마 거위(Mother Goose) 노래를 인유(引喩)한 첫 세 연(聯)은 시인은 시적 상상력으로 오래 전에 달을 뛰어 넘었지만, 과학자는 “광물질 주스”로 추진되는 로켓으로 이런 성취를 아직 이루지 못했다는 것을 암시한다.
“추신(追伸)”에서 프로스트는 만약 자신이 실제 암소로 하여금 달을 뛰어 넘게 하려고 시도했다면 성공하지 못했을 것이라고 익살스럽게 주장한다. 왜냐하면 암소가 반발했을 것이기 때문이다.
유사한 시도를 했던 어느 농부가 저항하는 암소에게 무자비한 벌을 가했다는 일화는 미국의 달 탐사선 실패에 대한 미국인의 실망과 분노를 암시한다. 사람들은 미국과 소련 간의 우주 전쟁에서 “이긴 자는 누구인가?” 또는 “왜 우주 전쟁이 벌어졌는가?” 따위는 묻지 않고, “누가 시작했지”란 질문으로 서로 책임을 전가한다. 양식 있는 사람들은 우주 탐사의 무한 경쟁에 대해서 “낙심”하지 않을 수 없을 것이다.
-신재실 씀-
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“Lines Written in Dejection on the Eve of Great Success” (1962)
The Soviet Union’s Luna 2 space probe was the
first to impact Earth’s moon in 1959, just before
this poem was written and in the midst of the Cold
War. This is a poem not about personal success but
about the success of a nation, one that was at the
time in fierce competition with the United States
to be first in space.
Many poem titles have begun “Lines writ ten . . .”
This title also suggests William Butler Yeats’s “Lines
Written in Dejection,” which speaks of “the dark
leopards of the moon,” and Samuel Taylor
Coleridge’s “Dejection: An Ode.” Frost may have
been playing on either or both. The cows in Frost’s
poem jump over the moon, as in the Mother Goose
rhyme; they do not land on it.
Jeffrey Cramer reports that Frost once joked,
during a reading at BREAD LOAF SCHOOL OF EN
GLISH, that this poem was a “joke about science . . .
a comic strip teasing . . .” (176). Certainly the old
farmer has a bit of fun with this one. He harkens
back to the beginning of his poetic life with the
imagination of “godmother Goose” but offers a sar
donic twist, making the poem a nursery rhyme for
grown-ups. The implication is that although as a so
ciety we have gotten more involved in the con
crete, all this dazzling science has yet to match the
beauty of the imagination. Frost’s cow, the imagi
nation, jumps over moons, not onto them as space
craft would.
The postscript, far longer than the rest of the
poem, seems to be an account of the ordinary, a shift
in setting and purpose. The transition between the
poem and the postscript is rough, almost as if to jar
the reader out of a reverie, an immersion in the
dreams of science. It becomes an account of some
thing quite ordinary as if to supplant the initial appeal
of thinking that science and the concrete ever replace
(or compete with) the stuff of imagination.
The poem talks about people’s tendency to think
that science can catch up with human dreams. The
moon used to be the stuff of imagination, of nursery
rhymes and high-flown poetry, connected to the
strenuosities of imagination and the magic of sto
ries. But now the moon is realized in a scientific and
concrete way—it is old, cold rock in the vastness of
space. It is a target for rockets and space vehicles, a
place to land rather than something fantastically
elated cows might jump over. The poem suggests
that all this scientific mumbo-jumbo should not be
seen as a substitute for time-honored imagination.
We are goosier now—more foolish, though more
scientific—but we have not caught up with the
cow, might be his claim.
The postscript ends by hinting at more realistic
and immediate concerns to focus the reader back
to the concrete, to the questions that might be
asked about a space program—not about its overall
goals but about those who promote such programs
simply to make the papers and to compete with
other nations, to outrace them. He is clearly not in
favor of this “Great Success.”
The poem was first published in Frost’s A
Remembrance Collection of New Poems (New York,
1959) without the “Postscript” stanzas and was
later collected in In the Clearing. See SCIENCE and
TECHNOLOGY.
FURTHER READING
Cramer, Jeffrey S. Robert Frost among His Poems: A Liter
ary Companion to the Poet’s Own Biographical Contexts
and Associations. Jefferson, N.C.: MacFarland, 1996.