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VOLUME I FANTINE
BOOK SECOND - THE FALL(추락)
CHAPTER VII - THE INTERIOR OF DESPAIR(절망의 구렁텅이)
Let us try to say it. It is necessary that society should look at these things, because it is itself which creates them. He was, as we have said, an ignorant man, but he was not a fool. The light of nature was ignited in him. Unhappiness, which also possesses a clearness of vision of its own, augmented the small amount of daylight which existed in this mind. Beneath the cudgel, beneath the chain, in the cell, in hardship, beneath the burning sun of the galleys, upon the plank bed of the convict, he withdrew into his own consciousness and meditated. He constituted himself the tribunal. He began by putting himself on trial. He recognized the fact that he was not an innocent man unjustlypunished. 그것을 말해 보자. 이런 것들을 만들어 내는 것은 사회이니까 사회는 모름지기 그것을 봐야만 한다. 앞서 말했듯이 그는 무지한 사람이었지만 바보는 아니었다. 타고난 비치 그의 마음속에 불을 밝히고 있었다. 불행 역시 나름의 빛을 가지고 있는데 그것이 이 사람의 정신 속에 있는 조금의 빛을 증가시켰다. 곤봉 아랫, 쇠사슬 아래서, 감방 속에서, 피로 속에서, 형무소의 뜨기운 태양 아래서, 죄수들의 마룻바닥 잠자리에서, 그는 양심 속에서 자신을 되돌아보고 심사숙고했다. 그는 자기 자신을 심판대에 올려놓았다. 그는 자기 자신을 심판하기 시작했다. 이제 장발잘의 영혼에 어떤 변화가 있었는지를 알아보기로 하자. 사회는 이런 문제를 등한시해서는 안된다. 이런 문제를 낳는 곳이 바로 사회이기 때문이다. 앞서 말한 바와 것처럼 그는 무식한 사내였다. 하지만 어리석은 자는 아니었다. 그의 내부에는 아직도 자연의 빛이 남아 있었다. 불행한 기운 역시 빛을 가지고 있어서 그 사내의 고유한 정신에 작은 빛을 더해 주었다. 쇠사슬과 몽둥이, 감망, 그리고 뜨겁게 내리쬐던 햇빛과 나무 잠자리, 그 모든 고통 속에서 그는 끝없이 자기 자신을 돌아보았다. 그는 스스로 심판대 위에 섰다. 그는 자기가 부당하게 벌은 받은 결백한 사람이 아니라는 것을 인정했다.
He admitted that he had committed an extreme and blameworthy act; that that loaf of bread would probably not have been refused to him had he asked for it; that, in any case, it would have been better to wait until he could get it through compassion or through work; that it is not an unanswerable argument to say, "Can one wait when one is hungry?" That, in the first place, it is very rare for any one to die of hunger, literally; and next, that, fortunately or unfortunately, man is so constituted that he can suffer long and much, both morally and physically, without dying; that it is therefore necessary to have patience; that that would even have been better for those poor little children; that it had been an act of madness for him, a miserable, unfortunate wretch, to take society at large violently by the collar, and to imagine that one can escape from misery through theft; that that is in any case a poor door through which to escape from misery through which infamy enters; in short, that he was in the wrong. 그는 자기가 비난받을 만한 극단적인 행동을 저질렀다는 것을 자인했다. 그는 이렇게 생각했다. 만약에 달라고 했다면 아마 그 빵을 거절하지은 않았으리라. 동정심에서든, 일을 해서든, 어쨌든 그 빵을 얻을 때까지 기다리는 것이 좋았으리라. “굶주리는 판에 기다릴 수 있는가?” 라고 말하는 건 전혀 이론의 여지가 없는 이유라고는 할 수 없다. 먼저 글자 그대로 굶어 죽는다는 것은 매우 드문 일이다. 다음으로, 다행인지 불행인지, 인간은 정신적, 육체적 고통을 죽지 않고 오래오래, 그리고 수없이 참아 낼 수 있도록 만들어져 있다. 그러므로 참을성이 필요했다. 저 가엾는 어린아이들을 위해서라도 그게 더 나았을 것이다. 저 가엾은 어린아이를 위해사라도 그게 더 나았을 것이다. 사회 전체에 난폭하게 대들고 도둑질로 곤궁에서 벗어나려고 생각한 것은 변변찮고 보잘것 없는 사람인 그로서는 분별없는 생각이었다. 어쨌든 치욕으로 들어가는 문은 곤궁에서 벗어나기 위한 좋은 문은 아니었다. 요컨대 그는 옳지 않았다.
Then he asked himself - Whether he had been the only one in fault in his fatal history. Whether it was not a serious thing, that he, a laborer, out of work, that he, an industrious man, should have lacked bread. And whether, the fault once committed and confessed, the chastisement had not been ferocious and disproportioned. Whether there had not been more abuse on the part of the law, in respect to the penalty, than there had been on the part of the culprit in respect to his fault. Whether there had not been an excess of weights in one balance of the scale, in the one which contains expiation. Whether the over-weight of the penalty was not equivalent to the annihilation of the crime, and did not result in reversing the situation, of replacing the fault of the delinquent by the fault of the repression, of converting the guilty man into the victim, and the debtor into the creditor, and of ranging the law definitely on the side of the man who had violated it. 이어서 그는 자문했다. 이 불행한 사건에서 잘못은 나 한사람에게만 있었던가? 먼저, 노동자인 나에게 일거리가 없었고, 부지런한 나에게 빵이 없었던 것은 중대한 일이 아니던가? 다음으로 과오을 범하고 자백하기는 했지만, 징벌이 가혹하고 과도하지는 않았던가? 범죄인 쪽에서 범행에 잘못이 있었던 것보다도, 법률 쪽에서 형벌에 더 많은 잘못이 있었던 것은 아니던가? 한쪽의 저울판에, 속죄가 실려 있는 저울판에 과중한 무게가 실려 있지는 않았던가? 과중한 형벌은 범죄는 조금도 없애지 못하고, 입장을 뒤집어, 범죄자의 잘못을 억압의 잘못으로 바꾸어 놓고, 죄인을 희생자로 채무자를 채권자로 만들어 놓고, 바로 권리를 침범한 자쪽에 결정적으로 권리를 부여하는 결과를 초래하지 않았던가?
Whether this penalty, complicated by successive aggravations for attempts at escape, had not ended in becoming a sort of outrage perpetrated by the stronger upon the feebler, a crime of society against the individual, a crime which was being committed afresh every day, a crime which had lasted nineteen years. He asked himself whether human society could have the right to force its members to suffer equally in one case for its own unreasonable lack of foresight, and in the other case for its pitiless foresight; and to seize a poor man forever between a defect and an excess, a default of work and an excess of punishment. 탈옥 기도로 계속 가중된 그 형벌은 결국 최약자에 대한 최강자의폭행 같은 거싱 되고, 개인에 대한 사회의 죄악이 되고, 매일 되풀이되는 죄악이 되고, 십구 년간 계속된 죄악이 되지 않았던가? 그는 자문했다. 과연 인간 사회는 그 구성원들에게 어떤 경우에는 부족한 무분별을, 또 어떤 경우에는 무자비한 경계를 모두 똑같이 받아들이게 하고, 결핍과 과다 사이에, 노동의 결핍과 징별의 과당 사이에 한 가련한 인간을 영원히 붙잡아 놓는 권리를 가질 수 있는가?
Whether it was not outrageous for society to treat thus precisely those of its members who were the least well endowed in the division of goods made by chance, and consequently the most deserving of consideration. These questions put and answered, he judged society and condemned it. He condemned it to his hatred. He made it responsible for the fate which he was suffering, and he said to himself that it might be that one day he should not hesitate to call it to account. He declared to himself that there was no equilibrium between the harm which he had caused and the harm which was being done to him; he finally arrived at the conclusion that his punishment was not, in truth, unjust, but that it most assuredly was iniquitous. 우연에 의해 이루어지는 재산 분배에서 가정 적은 몫을 탄, 따라서 가장 배려를 받아 마땅한 구성원들을 사회가 그렇게 대우하는 것은 부당한 일이 아닌가? 이러한 질문들이제기되고 해결되었으므로, 그는 사회를 판결하여 유죄를 선고했다. 그는 자신의 증오심으로 사회를 처벌했다. 그는 자기가 겪은 운명을 사회의 책임으로 돌리고, 아마 언젠가는 서슴지 않고 그 책임을 물으리라 생각했다. 그는 자기가 가한 손해와 자이게게 가해진 손해 사이에 균형이 맞지 않는다고 자신에게 선언해싿. 마지막으로, 그는 자기가 받은 징벌은 사실 부당한 것은 아니지만 확실히 불정한 것이라고 결론지었다.
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Anger may be both foolish and absurd; one can be irritated wrongfully; one is exasperated only when there is some show of right on one's side at bottom. Jean Valjean felt himself exasperated.
And besides, human society had done him nothing but harm; he had never
seen anything of it save that angry face which it calls Justice, and
which it shows to those whom it strikes. Men had only touched him to
bruise him. Every contact with them had been a blow. Never, since
his infancy, since the days of his mother, of his sister, had he ever
encountered a friendly word and a kindly glance. From suffering to
suffering, he had gradually arrived at the conviction that life is a
war; and that in this war he was the conquered. He had no other weapon
than his hate. He resolved to whet it in the galleys and to bear it away
with him when he departed.
There was at Toulon a school for the convicts, kept by the Ignorantin friars, where the most necessary branches were taught to those of the unfortunate men who had a mind for them. He was of the number who had a mind. He went to school at the age of forty, and learned to read, to write, to cipher. He felt that to fortify his intelligence was to fortify his hate. In certain cases, education and enlightenment can serve to eke out evil. 툴롱에는 죄수들을 위하여 이뇨랑탱 수도사들이 경영하는 학교가 있었는데, 거기서는 불행한 죄수들 중 뜻있는 자들에게 가장 필요한 것을 가르쳤다. 그는 그러한 뜻있는 자들 중의 하나였다. 그는 마흔 살에 학교에 가서 읽기, 쓰기, 쎔하기를 배웠다. 그는 자기의 재능을 강화하는 것은 곧 다기의 증오심을 강화하는 것이라고 생각했다. 어떤 경우에는 교육과 지식이 악을 보조하는 구실을 할수도 있다.
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This is a sad thing to say; after having judged society, which had
caused his unhappiness, he judged Providence, which had made society,
and he condemned it also.
Thus during nineteen years of torture and slavery, this soul mounted and at the same time fell. Light entered it on one side, and darkness on the other. Jean Valjean had not, as we have seen, an evil nature. He was still good when he arrived at the galleys. 그리하여 고통과 예속의 십구년 동안 이 영혼은 상승과 추략을 동시에 겪었다. 한쪽으로는 광명이 비쳐 들고 다른 쪽으로는 암흑이 들어왔던 것이다. 장발장은 앞서도 본 바와 같이 본성이 악하지는 않았다. 형무소에 들어갔을 때 그는 아직도 선량했다.
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He there condemned society, and felt that he was becoming wicked; he there condemned Providence, and was
conscious that he was becoming impious.
It is difficult not to indulge in meditation at this point.
Does human nature thus change utterly and from top to bottom? Can the
man created good by God be rendered wicked by man? Can the soul be
completely made over by fate, and become evil, fate being evil? Can
the heart become misshapen and contract incurable deformities and
infirmities under the oppression of a disproportionate unhappiness,
as the vertebral column beneath too low a vault? Is there not in every
human soul, was there not in the soul of Jean Valjean in particular, a
first spark, a divine element, incorruptible in this world, immortal in
the other, which good can develop, fan, ignite, and make to glow with
splendor, and which evil can never wholly extinguish?
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Grave and obscure questions, to the last of which every physiologist
would probably have responded no, and that without hesitation, had
he beheld at Toulon, during the hours of repose, which were for Jean
Valjean hours of revery, this gloomy galley-slave, seated with folded
arms upon the bar of some capstan, with the end of his chain thrust into
his pocket to prevent its dragging, serious, silent, and thoughtful,
a pariah of the laws which regarded the man with wrath, condemned by
civilization, and regarding heaven with severity.
Certainly,--and we make no attempt to dissimulate the fact,--the
observing physiologist would have beheld an irremediable misery; he
would, perchance, have pitied this sick man, of the law's making; but
he would not have even essayed any treatment; he would have turned aside
his gaze from the caverns of which he would have caught a glimpse within
this soul, and, like Dante at the portals of hell, he would have effaced
from this existence the word which the finger of God has, nevertheless,
inscribed upon the brow of every man,--hope.
Was this state of his soul, which we have attempted to analyze, as
perfectly clear to Jean Valjean as we have tried to render it for
those who read us? Did Jean Valjean distinctly perceive, after their
formation, and had he seen distinctly during the process of their
formation, all the elements of which his moral misery was composed? Had
this rough and unlettered man gathered a perfectly clear perception of
the succession of ideas through which he had, by degrees, mounted and
descended to the lugubrious aspects which had, for so many years, formed
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the inner horizon of his spirit? Was he conscious of all that passed
within him, and of all that was working there? That is something
which we do not presume to state; it is something which we do not even
believe. There was too much ignorance in Jean Valjean, even after his
misfortune, to prevent much vagueness from still lingering there. At
times he did not rightly know himself what he felt. Jean Valjean was in
the shadows; he suffered in the shadows; he hated in the shadows; one
might have said that he hated in advance of himself. He dwelt habitually
in this shadow, feeling his way like a blind man and a dreamer. Only, at
intervals, there suddenly came to him, from without and from within, an
access of wrath, a surcharge of suffering, a livid and rapid flash which
illuminated his whole soul, and caused to appear abruptly all around
him, in front, behind, amid the gleams of a frightful light, the hideous
precipices and the sombre perspective of his destiny.
The flash passed, the night closed in again; and where was he? He no
longer knew. The peculiarity of pains of this nature, in which
that which is pitiless--that is to say, that which is
brutalizing--predominates, is to transform a man, little by little, by
a sort of stupid transfiguration, into a wild beast; sometimes into a
ferocious beast.
Jean Valjean's successive and obstinate attempts at escape would alone
suffice to prove this strange working of the law upon the human soul.
Jean Valjean would have renewed these attempts, utterly useless and
foolish as they were, as often as the opportunity had presented itself,
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without reflecting for an instant on the result, nor on the experiences
which he had already gone through. He escaped impetuously, like the wolf
who finds his cage open. Instinct said to him, "Flee!" Reason would have
said, "Remain!" But in the presence of so violent a temptation, reason
vanished; nothing remained but instinct. The beast alone acted. When
he was recaptured, the fresh severities inflicted on him only served to
render him still more wild.
One detail, which we must not omit, is that he possessed a physical
strength which was not approached by a single one of the denizens of the
galleys. At work, at paying out a cable or winding up a capstan, Jean
Valjean was worth four men. He sometimes lifted and sustained enormous
weights on his back; and when the occasion demanded it, he replaced that
implement which is called a jack-screw, and was formerly called orgueil
[pride], whence, we may remark in passing, is derived the name of the
Rue Montorgueil, near the Halles [Fishmarket] in Paris. His comrades had
nicknamed him Jean the Jack-screw. Once, when they were repairing the
balcony of the town-hall at Toulon, one of those admirable caryatids of
Puget, which support the balcony, became loosened, and was on the point
of falling. Jean Valjean, who was present, supported the caryatid with
his shoulder, and gave the workmen time to arrive.
His suppleness even exceeded his strength. Certain convicts who were
forever dreaming of escape, ended by making a veritable science of force
and skill combined. It is the science of muscles. An entire system of
mysterious statics is daily practised by prisoners, men who are forever
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envious of the flies and birds. To climb a vertical surface, and to find
points of support where hardly a projection was visible, was play to
Jean Valjean. An angle of the wall being given, with the tension of his
back and legs, with his elbows and his heels fitted into the unevenness
of the stone, he raised himself as if by magic to the third story. He
sometimes mounted thus even to the roof of the galley prison.
He spoke but little. He laughed not at all. An excessive emotion was
required to wring from him, once or twice a year, that lugubrious laugh
of the convict, which is like the echo of the laugh of a demon. To all
appearance, he seemed to be occupied in the constant contemplation of
something terrible.
He was absorbed, in fact.
Athwart the unhealthy perceptions of an incomplete nature and a crushed
intelligence, he was confusedly conscious that some monstrous thing was
resting on him. In that obscure and wan shadow within which he crawled,
each time that he turned his neck and essayed to raise his glance,
he perceived with terror, mingled with rage, a sort of frightful
accumulation of things, collecting and mounting above him, beyond the
range of his vision,--laws, prejudices, men, and deeds,--whose outlines
escaped him, whose mass terrified him, and which was nothing else than
that prodigious pyramid which we call civilization. He distinguished,
here and there in that swarming and formless mass, now near him, now
afar off and on inaccessible table-lands, some group, some detail,
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vividly illuminated; here the galley-sergeant and his cudgel; there the
gendarme and his sword; yonder the mitred archbishop; away at the top,
like a sort of sun, the Emperor, crowned and dazzling. It seemed to him
that these distant splendors, far from dissipating his night, rendered
it more funereal and more black. All this--laws, prejudices, deeds, men,
things--went and came above him, over his head, in accordance with the
complicated and mysterious movement which God imparts to civilization,
walking over him and crushing him with I know not what peacefulness
in its cruelty and inexorability in its indifference. Souls which have
fallen to the bottom of all possible misfortune, unhappy men lost in the
lowest of those limbos at which no one any longer looks, the reproved of
the law, feel the whole weight of this human society, so formidable for
him who is without, so frightful for him who is beneath, resting upon
their heads.
In this situation Jean Valjean meditated; and what could be the nature
of his meditation?
If the grain of millet beneath the millstone had thoughts, it would,
doubtless, think that same thing which Jean Valjean thought.
All these things, realities full of spectres, phantasmagories full of
realities, had eventually created for him a sort of interior state which
is almost indescribable.
At times, amid his convict toil, he paused. He fell to thinking. His
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reason, at one and the same time riper and more troubled than of yore,
rose in revolt. Everything which had happened to him seemed to him
absurd; everything that surrounded him seemed to him impossible. He said
to himself, "It is a dream." He gazed at the galley-sergeant standing a
few paces from him; the galley-sergeant seemed a phantom to him. All of
a sudden the phantom dealt him a blow with his cudgel.
Visible nature hardly existed for him. It would almost be true to say
that there existed for Jean Valjean neither sun, nor fine summer days,
nor radiant sky, nor fresh April dawns. I know not what vent-hole
daylight habitually illumined his soul.
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To sum up, in conclusion, that which can be summed up and translated into positive results in all that we have just pointed out, we will confine ourselves to the statement that, in the course of nineteen years, Jean Valjean, the inoffensive tree-pruner of Faverolles, the formidable convict of Toulon, had become capable, thanks to the manner in which the galleys had moulded him, of two sorts of evil action: 끝으로, 내가 여태까지 지적한 모든 것을 확실한 귀결로 줄여서 표현할 수 있는 것을 요약하기 위하여 다음 사실만 기록해 두기로 하자. 프브롤의 소심한 가지 치는 일꾼이자 툴롱의 무서운 죄수였던 장 발장은 십구 년 동안 형무소에서 형성해 놓은 그대로 두 가지 악행을 행할 수 있게 되었다.
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firstly, of evil action which was rapid, unpremeditated, dashing,
entirely instinctive, in the nature of reprisals for the evil which
he had undergone; secondly, of evil action which was serious, grave,
consciously argued out and premeditated, with the false ideas which
such a misfortune can furnish. His deliberate deeds passed through
three successive phases, which natures of a certain stamp can alone
traverse,--reasoning, will, perseverance.
He had for moving causes his habitual wrath, bitterness of soul, a profound sense of indignities suffered, the reaction even against the good, the innocent, and the just, if there are any such. The point of departure, like the point of arrival, for all his thoughts, was hatred of human law; that hatred which, if it be not arrested in its development by some providential incident, becomes, within a given time, the hatred of society, then the hatred of the human race, then the hatred of creation, and which manifests itself by a vague, incessant, and brutal desire to do harm to some living being, no matter whom. It will be perceived that it was not without reason that Jean Valjean's passport described him as a very dangerous man. From year to year this soul had dried away slowly, but with fatal sureness. When the heart is dry, the eye is dry. On his departure from the galleys it had been nineteen years since he had shed a tear. 그의 행위의 원동력은 상습적인 분노, 마음의 고통, 자기가 당한 불공평에 대한 뿌리 깊은 감정, 반발(심지어 착하고 순진하고 올바른사람들에 대해서까지도, 만약 그런 사람들이 있다면 말이지만)이었다. 그의 모든 사상의 출발점은 도착점과 마찬가지로 인간의 법률에 대한 증오였는데, 이러한 증오심은 만약 그것이 발전 중에 하늘의 뜻에 의한 사건으로 말미암아 멈추어지지 않는다면, 어느 때엔가는 사회에 대한 증오가 되고, 다음에는 인류에 대한 증오가 되고, 또 다음에는 천지 만물에 대한 증오가 되며, 마침내는 누구든, 어떤 생물이든 상관어벗이 해치고 싶은 끊임없는 막연한 야수적 욕망으로 나타났다. 이러한 것으로 미루어 보아 통행권에 장 발장을 ‘극히 위험한 인물’이라고 규정해 놓은 것은 무리한 일이 아니었다. 해가 감에 따라 이 영혼은 더욱 더, 서서히, 그러나 결정적을 메말라 버렸다. 마음이 메마르면 눈도 마른다. 형무소를 나올 때까지 십구년 동안 그는 눈물 한 방울 흘린 적이 없었다.
VOLUME I FANTINE
BOOK SECOND - THE FALL(추락)
CHAPTER VIII - BILLOWS AND SHADOWS(물결과 어둠)
A man overboard! What matters it? The vessel does not halt. The wind blows. That sombre ship has a path which it is forced to pursue. It passes on. The man disappears, then reappears; he plunges, he rises again to the surface; he calls, he stretches out his arms; he is not heard. The vessel, trembling under the hurricane, is wholly absorbed in its own workings; the passengers and sailors do not even see the drowning man; his miserable head is but a speck amid the immensity of the waves. He gives vent to desperate cries from out of the depths. What a spectre is that retreating sail! He gazes and gazes at it frantically. It retreats, it grows dim, it diminishes in size. He was there but just now, he was one of the crew, he went and came along the deck with the rest, he had his part of breath and of sunlight, he was a living man. Now, what has taken place? He has slipped, he has fallen; all is at an end. 한 사내가 바다에 빠졌다. 어쩔 도리가 없다. 배는 제 갈 길을 간다. 바람이 매섭게 불고 배는 항해를 해야만 한다. 배는 그냥 지나간다. 사내가 시야에서 사라졌다가 다시 보인다. 그는 수면 아래로 고꾸라졌다가 다시 떠올랐다. 그러면서 살려 달라고 울부짖었다. 그러나 아무도 그의 소리를 듣지 못했다. 배는 폭풍 아래 흔ㄷ르리며 항해에만 주의하고, 선원들과 승객들의 눈에는 물에 빠진 사람이 이제 보이지 않는다. 그의 불쌍한 머리는 어마어마한 파도 속에서 하나의 점에 지나지 않는다. 그는 깊은 바다에서 절망의 고함을 지른다. 어떠한 환영이냐, 저 사라져 가는 돛은! 그는 돛을 바라본다. 미친 듯이 바라본다. 돛은 멀어져 가고, 희미해지고 작아진다. 그는 조금 전에 거기에 있었고, 선원 중 한사람이었고, 다른 사람들과 함께 갑판 위를 왔다 갔다 하면 제 몫의 공기와 햇빛을 가졌고, 한 명이 산 사람이었다. 그런데 지금은 대체 어찌 된 일이냐? 그는 미끄려져 떨어져싿. 이제 끝장이다.
He is in the tremendous sea. Under foot he has nothing but what flees and crumbles. The billows, torn and lashed by the wind, encompass him hideously; the tossings of the abyss bear him away; all the tongues of water dash over his head; a populace of waves spits upon him; confused openings half devour him; every time that he sinks, he catches glimpses of precipices filled with night; frightful and unknown vegetations seize him, knot about his feet, draw him to them; he is conscious that he is becoming an abyss, that he forms part of the foam; the waves toss him from one to another; he drinks in the bitterness; the cowardly ocean attacks him furiously, to drown him; the enormity plays with his agony. 그는 무시무시한 바닷속에 있다. 그의 발아래에는 이제 빠르게 흐르고 부서지는 물이 있을 뿐, 바람에 찢어지고 깨지는 파도가 끔찍스럽게 그를 에워싸고, 요동치는 바닷물이 그를 휩쓸어 가고, 모든 물보라가 그의 머리 주위에서 웅성거리고, 어중이떠중이 물결들이 그에게 들이치고, 혼잡하게 열린 구멍들이 그를 절반 정도 삼킨다. 아래로 가라앉을 때마다 캄캄한 심연이 눈앞에 어른거리고, 이름 모를 무서운 해초들이 그를 사로잡고 발에 감겨 붙어 그를 끌어당긴다. 그는 심연이 되고, 물거품의 일부가 되고, 물결에서 물결로 던져지고, 쓴 물을 마신다. 비겁한 태양은 그르 빠뜨려 죽이려고 맹렬히 달려 들고, 그 광막함은 그의 단말마를 희롱한다.
It seems as though all that water were hate. Nevertheless, he struggles. He tries to defend himself; he tries to sustain himself; he makes an effort; he swims. He, his petty strength all exhausted instantly, combats the inexhaustible. Where, then, is the ship? Yonder. Barely visible in the pale shadows of the horizon. The wind blows in gusts; all the foam overwhelms him. He raises his eyes and beholds only the lividness of the clouds. He witnesses, amid his death-pangs, the immense madness of the sea. He is tortured by this madness; he hears noises strange to man, which seem to come from beyond the limits of the earth, and from one knows not what frightful region beyond. 그 모든 바닷물은 흡사 증오와도 같다. 그렇지만 그는 싸우고, 몸을 지키려고, 몸을 떠받치려고 애쓰고, 분발하고 헤엄친다. 그는 이내 지쳐 빠질 그 빈약을 힘을 가지고 지칠 줄 모르는 것과 싸운다. 도대체 배는 어디에 있는가? 저기에 수평선의 캄캄한 어둠 속에 보일락 말락 한다. 광풍이 불어닥치고, 모든 물거품이 그에게 들씌워진다. 눈을 쳐들어 보지만 보이는 거은 검푸른 구름뿐, 그는 단말마의 고통에 허득이며 바다의 어마어마한 횡포를 겪는다. 그는 그 광란에 시달린다. 그는 사람으로서 알 수 없는 이상한 소리를 듣는데, 거것은 마치 이승의 저쪽에서, 어딘지 모를 무서운 외계에서 들려오는 것 같다.
There are birds in the clouds, just as there are angels above human distresses; but what can they do for him? They sing and fly and float, and he, he rattles in the death agony. He feels himself buried in those two infinities, the ocean and the sky, at one and the same time: the one is a tomb; the other is a shroud. Night descends; he has been swimming for hours; his strength is exhausted; that ship, that distant thing in which there were men, has vanished; he is alone in the formidable twilight gulf; he sinks, he stiffens himself, he twists himself; he feels under him the monstrous billows of the invisible; he shouts. There are no more men. Where is God? He shouts. Help! Help! He still shouts on. 구름이 걸린 하늘에는 새가 지나고, 인간의 슬픔 너머에는 천사가 있다. 그러나 천사들이 무엇을 도와줄 수 있는가? 그들은 하늘을 날며 노래하지만, 그는 죽어 가고 있다. 그는 점점 가라앉는 것을 느낀다. 바다의 무덤에 같혀 하늘의 수의를 입는다. 캄캄한 밤, 그는 몇 시간째 허우적거렸다. 몸에 남은 힘이 없었다. 사람들이 타고 있던 저 배도 흔적 없이 사라져 버렸다. 그느 황혼의 심연 속에 홀로 떠 있다. 그는 결국 빨려 들어가고 차갑게 굳어 갔다. 그는 속으로 외쳐싿. 아무도 없구나. 그렇다면 신은 어디에 있는가? 그는 불러 보았다. 누구 없소? 누구 없소? 그렇게 불러 댔다.
Nothing on the horizon; nothing in heaven. He implores the expanse, the waves, the seaweed, the reef; they are deaf. He beseeches the tempest; the imperturbable tempest obeys only the infinite. Around him darkness, fog, solitude, the stormy and nonsentient tumult, the undefined curling of those wild waters. In him horror and fatigue. Beneath him the depths. Not a point of support. He thinks of the gloomy adventures of the corpse in the limitless shadow. The bottomless cold paralyzes him. His hands contract convulsively; they close, and grasp nothingness. Winds, clouds, whirlwinds, gusts, useless stars! What is to be done? The desperate man gives up; he is weary, he chooses the alternative of death; he resists not; he lets himself go; he abandons his grip; and then he tosses forevermore in the lugubrious dreary depths of engulfment. 수평선에도 하늘에도 아무 것도 없었다. 그는 광활한 바다와 물결과 해초와 암초에 대고 절규하지만 아무런 대답도 돌아오지 않는다. 그는 폭풍에 애원했지만, 폭풍은 무한의 명령에 복종할 뿐 아무런 대답도 하지 않았다. 암흑과 안개, 거쎈 파도와 고독이 있을 뿐 그는 공포와 피로에 무너져 갔다. 추락만이 남아 있을 뿐 누구도 그를 구해 줄 수 없다. 그는 깊은 심연을 헤멜 그의 육체를 생각한다. 차가운 바닷물이 그를 마비시켰다. 온몸에 경련이 일어난다. 바람과 구름, 파도, 그리고 별들! 어떻게 해야 한단 말인가? 그는 이제 죽음을 받아들인다. 그렇게 몸을 내맡긴다. 그는 허탈해진다. 그리고 깊은 심연 속으로 빠져들었다.
Oh, implacable march of human societies! Oh, losses of men and of souls on the way! Ocean into which falls all that the law lets slip! Disastrous absence of help! Oh, moral death! The sea is the inexorable social night into which the penal laws fling their condemned. The sea is the immensity of wretchedness. The soul, going down stream in this gulf, may become a corpse. Who shall resuscitate it? 오 인류 사회의 냉혹한 진행이여! 가는 도중에 일어나는 인간과 영혼의 상실이여! 법률이 떨어 뜨리는 모든 것이 떨어지는 바다여! 구원의 서글픈 소멸이여! 오, 정신적 죽음이여! 바다, 그것은 형벌이 벌 받은 자를 던지는 사회의 가혹한 밤이다. 바다, 그것은 엄청난 비참함이다. 영혼이 이 심연 속에 흘러들면 시체가 될 수 있다. 누가 그것을 되살릴 것인가?
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