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24. The Demiurge's Laugh
about science.
It was far in the sameness of the wood;
I was running with joy on the Demon’s trail,
Though I knew what I hunted was no true god.
It was just as the light was beginning to fail
That I suddenly heard—all I needed to hear:
It has lasted me many and many a year.
Demiurge : 데미우르고스, 창조신, 행정관
The sound was behind me instead of before,
A sleepy sound, but mocking half,
As of one who utterly couldn’t care.
The Demon arose from his wallow to laugh,
Brushing the dirt from his eye as he went;
And well I knew what the Demon meant.
wallow : 뒹굴다, 뒹굴기, 빠지기, 움푹 팬 곳, 타락해있음
I shall not forget how his laugh rang out.
I felt as a fool to have been so caught,
And checked my steps to make pretence
It was something among the leaves I sought
(Though doubtful whether he stayed to see).
Thereafter I sat me against a tree.
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물질신(物質神)의 웃음
표지도 없는 깊은 숲 속이었다.
내가 뒤쫓는 것이 진짜 신이 아닌 것을 알면서도,
나는 그 악신의 발자취를 즐겁게 쫓고 있었다.
방금 해가 지기 시작하는 무렵이었다.
나는 갑자기 들었다―다른 것은 들을 필요가 없었다.
그 소리는 여러 해를 두고두고 내 귓전을 울렸다.
그 소리는 내 앞이 아닌 내 뒤에서 들렸다.
졸음 섞인 소리였지만, 반은 조소의 소리였으니,
애정이라곤 전혀 없어 보이는 자의 소리였다.
악신은 그의 진흙탕에서 일어나더니 크게 웃었다.
그는 걸어가면서 눈의 오물을 털어 내었다.
그 악신이 뜻하는 바가 무엇인지 나는 잘 알고 있었다.
나는 그의 웃음이 쩌렁쩌렁 울린 것을 잊지 못할 것이다.
그의 뒤를 쫓다가 들켜버린 나는 바보가 된 기분이었다.
나는 걸음걸이를 멈추고 내가 찾고 있는 것이
나뭇잎 속에 떨어진 어떤 것인 듯 가장했다
(하지만 그가 그러는 나를 보았는지는 의심스럽다).
그런 후에 나는 어느 나무에 몸을 기대고 앉았다.
-신재실 옮김-
단상(斷想): 오늘날의 과학(또는 철학)은 사물의 본질을 이해하고 해명하는가? 아니면 물질의 신을 섬겨서 사물의 현상과 메커니즘에만 관심을 갖는가? 우리가 갈구하는 지식에 아주 기계적인 대답만을 내놓음으로써 우리를 절망에 빠트리고 있지는 않은가? 우리는 표지도 없는 거대한 숲, 수수께끼와도 같은 인생길을 달려가는 존재들이다. 어디로, 어떻게 달려야 할지 난감하지만, 물질신의 힘을 믿고 그의 뒤를 따라 오늘도 기꺼이 달린다.하지만 야속하게도 해는 저물고, 어둠이 숲을 덮친다. 갑자기 나는 내 앞이 아닌 내 뒤에서 물질신의 웃음소리를 듣는다. 나의 안위에 대한 관심은 애초부터 없었던 것 같은 자조(自嘲)의 웃음소리였다. 하기야 신 자신도 해가 지면서 진흙탕에 빠져버리는 신세가 되었으니, 체면을 구겨버린 게 아닌가? 그러니 오히려 그가 나의 뒤를 좇고 자신의 노력을 비웃을 수밖에 없지 않겠는가? 하지만 그의 웃음소리가 나를 비웃는 소리로 들리는 것 또한 당연하지 않은가? 나도 그의 뒤를 따르던 존재였으니 말이다. 나는 짐짓 나의 헛수고를 외면하고, 나무에 기대어 앉는다. 해는 내일 또 뜰 것이다. -신재실 씀-
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philosophy - Deirdre Fagan
Classically schooled, Frost was quite
familiar with the Greek philosopher Plato (427?–
347 B.C.) and his student Aristotle (384–322 B.C.),
and a number of his poems waver as to which phi
losophies Frost more strongly embraced. Plato was
known for articulating that the transcendent is
where the realm of being exists, which contains
permanent unchanging ideas and the ideal “Forms”
of beauty, truth, and so forth. Aristotle disagreed
with his teacher, arguing that “forms” exist only in
the things themselves, as they are perceived in this
world, and that a transcendental realm was not
only unnecessary but also insufficient to give us real
properties, values, and objects.
In “The Bear” the man “paces back and forth”
like the Greeks, philosophizing and moving from
“one extreme” to “the other.” Frost asserts that
these two extremes are the difference between
“agreeing with one Greek” and “agreeing with
another Greek”—the difference between agreeing
with Plato or with Aristotle. By summoning the
two ideas to mind, Frost plays on his own and man’s
constant “back and forth” and his “sway[ing] from
cheek to cheek” between this world and the tran
scendental. Frost closes the poem with an image of
man as a “baggy figure, / equally pathetic / When
sedentary and when peripatetic.” The term “peri
patetic” derives from Aristotle’s constant pacing
while conducting discussions and hence is also the
word for the Aristotelian school of philosophy. In
“The Bear” Frost suggests that Aristotle’s walking
about while teaching led to no more enlightenment
or satisfaction than a sedentary and baggy fellow’s
would.
In “A Passing Glimpse” and “Fragmentary Blue,”
Frost also contrasts the philosophies of Aristotle
and Plato. In the first poem Frost is preoccupied
with the possibility of having direct knowledge of
what is real. From a train car, passing glimpses are
all that the speaker can absorb. The flowers that he
can view from his window “are gone before [he]
can tell what they are.” Indirect perceptions are all
he can grasp, and reality becomes an ideal that is
not quite clear: “I name all the flowers I am sure
they weren’t.” He can gain glimpses of heaven, but
it remains an ideal that eludes his perceptions. A
passing glimpse does not imply a direct perception
of some Platonic ideal. The poem is Aristotelian in
that the speaker comes to embrace his perceptions
as they present images and real objects to him,
instead of attempting to view the world through an
ideal and embracing his perceptions as parasitic
imitations of those ideal objects. In the second
poem, he resists the idea that objects in this world
have value only because they are parasitic on the
transcendental realm when he observes that earth
becomes heaven and our wishes for blue just as eas
ily granted by “a bird, or butterfly, / Or flower, or
wearing-stone, or open eye” as by heaven.
In “The Trial by Existence” Frost considers en
telechy, which in the philosophy of Aristotle was
the condition of a thing whose essence is fully real
ized, a vital force that directs an organism toward
self-fulfillment. In a letter to his friend Louis Un
termeyer dated May 4, 1916, Frost wrote, “The day
I did ‘The Trial by Existence’ says I to myself, this is
the way of all flesh. I was not much over twenty,
but I was wise for my years. I knew that it was a
race between me the poet and that in me that
would be flirting with entelechies or the coming on
of that in me” (Cramer, 23).
In “Boeotian” Frost evokes Plato “toy[ing]” with
the “Platonic notion / That wisdom need not be of
Athens Attic.” He is also playing with the word
attic, since it is a synonym for Athens and refers to
the dialect of Attica, in which the bulk of classical
Greek literature was written. The poem asserts that
if wisdom is practical it cannot also be transcen
dental, as Plato supposes, and that if it is not laconic
and practical, the poet at least does not want it to
be systematic, for Platonic wisdom was completely
systematic. Frost seems to be pushing his assertion
further by asserting that wisdom could “even [be]
‘Boeotian.’ ”
Frost’s early poem “The Demiurge’s Laugh”
draws on a Platonic deity, the demiurge, who fash
ioned the world out of chaos. He was a lesser god, a
demigod, and, more literally, a worker for the peo
ple. He did not create the world but he did help
build it. In the poem the speaker is hunted and
haunted by the Demiurge’s laugh. The poem acts
as a metaphor for Frost’s own doubts about the
transcendent.
“Neither Out Far nor in Deep” offers a Frostian
version of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Frost criti
cizes “The people along the sand,” who “All turn
and look one way.” Their single-mindedness keeps
them from turning toward the land, so they turn
their backs on something meaningful. The people
along the sand are like those in Plato’s Allegory of
the Cave, who, chained inside the cave, are unable
to turn their heads and are therefore unable to see
anything but the shadows cast on the wall of the
cave. These they take to be reality. The people in
Frost’s poem also mistake shadows for reality; the
reflection of the standing gull on the “wetter ground
like glass” seems to also be an allusion to Plato’s
allegory.
In his “Letter to The Amherst Student” Frost
closes by saying that to him “any little form” he
asserts on the chaos of the world is “velvet” and “to
be considered for how much more it is than noth
ing.” He adds, “If I were a Platonist I should have
to consider it, I suppose, for how much less it is
than everything,” making it clear he is not a Pla
tonist but an Aristotelian.
Frost’s concern with value and meaning are
most profoundly expressed in his two masques, A
Masque of Mercy and A Masque of Reason. In A
Masque of Reason he attempts to embrace the clas
sic problem of value and the divine posed in the
book of Job and indirectly in Plato’s Euthyphro.
Pious Job is given a tremendous amount of suffering
through a bet between God and the devil. When
Job asks God for an explanation, God, in the form
of a whirlwind, chastises Job and explains that he is
not to question God’s actions. In Plato’s Euthyphro,
Socrates poses a dilemma about value and the
divine in the form of a question: Is something good
simply because God commands it (making it God’s
whim), or does God command it because it is good
(making what is good independent of, and prior to,
God’s commands)?
In A Masque of Reason Frost tries to give an
account of the aftermath of the book of Job, or
what Job and God might have said after all the suf
fering and chastising played itself out. Even though
there seems to be a residue of tension between Job
and God, Frost provides a rather startling admis
sion of God to Job, namely, that God was just show
ing off for the devil. Throughout the masque, it is
important to keep Plato’s Euthyphro in mind for the
concept of value and morality.
Unlike A Masque of Reason, A Masque of Mercy
is more concerned with the relationship of man to
God than God to man. In A Masque of Mercy the
concern is with how merciful God is and will be. It
invokes not only Frost’s usual skepticism about reli
gion but also his criticism of the modern world that
became more evident as he aged. The question of
mercy is partly explored through Jonah’s book in
the Old Testament, where “Mercy is explicitly the
subject.” The questions raised are whether God can
be trusted to be merciful and whether people should
ever expect God to be unmerciful out of an appe
tite for justice. The closing line is hopeful, suggest
ing that all is worthwhile in the end, even the
injustice that Jonah was dealt, if God’s ultimate
judgment is merciful: “Nothing can make injustice
just but mercy.”
Frost is a poet-philosopher, drawing on his
immersion in the Greeks and sharing with philoso
phers a desire to find meaning where it is at best
obscured. He scrutinizes nature with a philosophi
cal eye, examining it this way and that and fre
quently venturing into it all in an effort to discern
what lies there that may afford some knowledge or
comprehension of what it all means. Nature
becomes a metaphor for everything that we do not
know and cannot know, or for everything that we
will never tire of attempting to know.
FURTHER READING
Cramer, Jeffrey. Robert Frost among His Poems: A Liter
ary Companion to the Poet’s own Biographical Con
texts and Associations. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland,
1996.