[촌평]
1910년에 나온 존 버컨의 이 소설은 아프리카를 배경으로 한 해거드 류의 모험소설의 계보를 잇는 작품으로, 흥미로운 점은 제목이 시시하고 있듯이 12세기에서 17세기에 유럽에 널리 퍼져 있던 [프레스터 존]의 전설을 차용하고 있다는 사실이다. 해거드의 작품과 마찬가지로 이 작품도 당시의 상황에 대한 진지한 고찰을 바탕으로 한 것이 아니라 흥미 위주의 소설이라고 할 수 있는데, 그 와중에 당시 유럽 사회에 팽배하던 인종주의와 제국주의적 관점, 아프리카의 식민화의 정당성 등을 여과없이 노정시키고 있다.
이 소설의 주된 뼈대는 문명화된 흑인 목사인 라퓨타가 프레스터 존의 후예로 자칭하면서(에디오피아를 프레스터 존의 왕국으로 생각하여 프레스터 존을 아프리카에 위치시키는 것이 유행했음) 흑인들을 규합하여, 영국에 대해 봉기를 일으키려는 것을 스코틀랜드 출신의 젊은이인 데이비드 크로포드의 활약으로 잠재운다는 것이다.
신체적으로 정신적으로 영웅에 걸맞는 라퓨타라는 인물은 찰스 앨런의 단편 [Reverend John Creedy]의 영향을 많이 받은 듯하며, 그의 이야기에서는 아프리카인들이 진정으로 원하는 것을 어느 정도나마 짐작할 수 있기 때문에, 존 버컨이 당시 아프리카의 상황에 대해 무지하지 않았다는 것도 추론할 수 있다. 특히 이 당시에 이미 [그레이트 짐바브웨] 유적이 아프리카 인들에 의해 건설된 것이라는 이야기가 소설 속에 나오고 있는 점도 흥미롭다.
You know that the old ruins in Rhodesia, called Zimbabwe, were long believed to be Phoenician in origin. I have a book here which tells all about them. But now it is believed that they were built by natives. I maintain that the men who could erect piles like that'—and he showed me a picture—'were something more than petty chiefs.' Presently the object of this conversation appeared. Mr Wardlaw thought that we were underrating the capacity of the native.
그럼에도 이 작품은 당시 줄루 족의 봉기와 전투 등 역사적 사실을 전설 등과 결부시켜 신비화하고 있을 뿐만 아니라, 봉기가 진압되고 난 뒤 교사인 Aitken이 세운 대학에서 하는 교육이라는 것도 흑인들을 식민지의 충직한 신민으로 만들기 위한 것이라는 점을 명백하게 드러내고 있다. 다시 말해 이 작품은 지배자인 백인의 입장에서 피지배자인 흑인들을 열등한 인종으로, 더 나아가 백인들의 지도와 보호 아래서만 조화롭게 살아갈 수 있는 존재로 그려내고 있는 것이다.
이 소설에서 가장 특이한 점은 봉기의 지도자인 라퓨타를 아주 영웅적인 인물로 그려내고 있다는 것인데, 이 문제는 좀 더 고찰해 보아야 할 부분이기도 하지만, 지금의 생각으로는 인종주의와 혈통주의를 기묘하게 결합시키고 있는 것이 아닌가 한다.
해거드와 함께 이 작품 또한 이 당시의 일반적인 사고의 경향이 어떠했는지를 짐작하게 해준다. (그런 점에서 키플링은 좋은 연구 대상이다. 뛰어난 문학가가 제국주의의 대변인 노릇을 했다는 사실은 당시 서구의 지식 체계 전체가 인종 문제에 있어서는 헛다리를 짚고 있었다는 증표이리라.)
Prester John is a 1910 adventure novel by the Scottish author John Buchan. It tells the story of a young Scotsman named David Crawfurd and his adventures in South Africa, where a Zulu uprising is tied to the medieval legend of Prester John.
[전기]
John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir, GCMG, GCVO, CH, PC (/ˈbʌxən/; 26 August 1875 – 11 February 1940) was a Scottish novelist, historian, and Unionist politician who served as Governor General of Canada, the 15th since Canadian Confederation
1901-03년 : 남아프리카 총독의 비서, 고등판무관
[Prester John과 아프리카]
Ethiopia
에티오피아를 Prester John의 왕국으로 생각하기 시작 - 1250년 경
- 이후 Prester John을 아프리카에 위치시키는 것이 유행
- the testimony of Covilhã, the Verdadeira Informação das Terras do Preste João das Indias ("A True Relation of the Lands of Prester John of the Indies") was the first direct account of Ethiopia (1520)
(이후 Prester John은 에티오피아의 황제를 가리키는 말)
- In 1910 Scottish novelist and politician John Buchan used the legend in his sixth book, Prester John, to supplement a plot about a Zulu uprising in South Africa. This book is an archetypal example of the early 20th-century adventure novel, and proved very popular in its day. Perhaps because of Buchan's work, Prester John appeared in pulp fiction and comics throughout the century.
[발췌] Kindle Edition
- He had preached about the heathen in Africa, and how a black man was as good as a white man in the sight of God, and he had forecast a day when the negroes would have something to teach the British in the way of civilization.
- Children of Ham
- Though I only saw it in the turn of a head, the face stamped itself indelibly upon my mind. It was black, black as ebony, but it was different from the ordinary negro. There were no thick lips and flat nostrils; rather, if I could trust my eyes, the nose was high-bridged, and the lines of the mouth sharp and firm. But it was distorted into an ｅxpression of such a devilish fury and amazement that my heart became like water.
[Laputa는 Grant Allen - The Reverend John Creedy라는 작품의 영향이 많이 보임]
Charles Grant Blairfindie Allen (February 24, 1848 – October 25, 1899) was a Canadian science writer and novelist, and a public promoter of Evolution in the second half of the 19th century.
in his mid-twenties became a professor at Queen's College, a black college in Jamaica.
Despite being the son of a minister, Allen became an atheist and a socialist.
He was first influenced by associationist psychology as expounded by Alexander Bain and by Herbert Spencer, the latter often considered[by whom?] the most important individual in the transition from associationist psychology to Darwinian functionalism. In Allen's many articles on flowers and on perception in insects, Darwinian arguments replaced the old Spencerian terms, leading to a radically new vision of plant life that influenced H.G. Wells and helped transform later botanical research.
- There's no house in the country that would take you in except as a common clerk, and you would never earn much more than a hundred pounds a year all your days. If you want to better your future you must go abroad, where white men are at a premium.
(백인들에게는 식민지가 기회의 땅. [Great Expectation, Hard Times(?) 등에서도 이런 이야기가 나옴)
- You'll exploit the pockets of the black men and I'll see what I can do with their minds.
- Laputa / Henriques
[다이아몬드 광산. King Solomon's Mines]
- 'He must have been a big man, Davie. You know that the old ruins in Rhodesia, called Zimbabwe, were long believed to be Phoenician in origin. I have a book here which tells all about them. But now it is believed that they were built by natives. I maintain that the men who could erect piles like that'—and he showed me a picture—'were something more than petty chiefs.' Presently the object of this conversation appeared. Mr Wardlaw thought that we were underrating the capacity of the native.
(이 부분은 특히 중요하다. [그레이트 짐바브웨]가 원주민이 세운 것이라는 이야기가 이미 나와 있다는 것. 그렇다면 존 버컨은 원주민들을 어떻게 보았던 것인가?)
- Prester John?' 'The man that lived in Central Asia?' I asked, with a reminiscence of a story-book I had as a boy. 'No, no,' said Mr Wardlaw, 'he means the King of Abyssinia in the fifteenth century. I've been reading all about him. He was a Christian, and the Portuguese sent expedition after expedition to find him, but they never got there. Albuquerque wanted to make an alliance with him and capture the Holy Sepulchre.'
- 'I said he was an educated man, but he is also a Kaffir. He can see the first stage of a thing, and maybe the second, but no more. That is the native mind. If it was not like that our chance would be the worse.'
(원주민을 열등한 민족으로 묘사하는 예 중 하나)
- 라퓨타의 카리스마에 매료되는 점. 이 작품의 독특한 점.
[c12]
- To be handled by a multitude of Kaffirs is like being shaken by some wild animal. Their skins are insensible to pain, and I have seen a Zulu stand on a piece of red-hot iron without noticing it till he was warned by the smell of burning hide.
[원주민들의 동물성, 그리고 백인과의 차이점을 강조하는 부분]
- Last night I had looked into the heart of darkness, and the sight had terrified me.
[어둠의 심장부라는 말이 이 부분에서 얼마나 증오를 담고 있는가?]
- A Boer farmer on the plateau had his skull, and used to drink whisky out of it when he was merry.
[모든 것이, 에 나오는 장면과 흡사한 이 장면을 백인이 하고 있다. 그것을 어떻게 해석할 것인가?]
- You that are educated and have seen the world, what makes you try to put the clock back? You want to wipe out the civilization of a thousand years, and turn us all into savages. It's the more shame to you when you know better.'
-'You misunderstand me,' he said quietly. 'It is because I have sucked civilization dry that I know the bitterness of the fruit. I want a simpler and better world, and I want that world for my own people. I am a Christian, and will you tell me that your civilization pays much attention to Christ? You call yourself a patriot? Will you not give me leave to be a patriot in turn?'
[라퓨타와 데이브(David Crawfurd)의 이 대화]
- I am lost in admiration of the man.
[데이브는 라퓨타에게 점점 더 찬사를 보낸다.]
- I had no fear, only a great pity—pity for lost romance, for vain endeavour, for fruitless courage. 'Greeting, Inkulu!' I said in Kaffir, as if I had been one of his indunas.
[죽어가는 라퓨타에 대한 연민]
- I was hypnotized by the man. To see him going out was like seeing the fall of a great mountain.
- a fall like the fall of Lucifer.
- There were months of guerrilla fighting, and then months of reprisals, when chief after chief was hunted down and brought to trial. Then the amnesty came and a clean sheet, and white Africa drew breath again with certain grave reflections left in her head.
- he was the last king in Africa, and that without him the rising was at an end.
- I knew then the meaning of the white man's duty. He has to take all risks, recking nothing of his life or his fortunes, and well content to find his reward in the fulfilment of his task. That is the difference between white and black, the gift of responsibility, the power of being in a little way a king; and so long as we know this and practise it, we will rule not in Africa alone but wherever there are dark men who live only for the day and their own bellies.
[백인과 흑인을 구분. 인종차별적인 언사]
- He laid down a big fund for the education and amelioration of the native races, and the first fruit of it was the establishment at Blaauwildebeestefontein itself of a great native training college. It was no factory for making missionaries and black teachers, but an institution for giving the Kaffirs the kind of training which fits them to be good citizens of the state. There you will find every kind of technical workshop, and the finest experimental farms, where the blacks are taught modern agriculture.They have proved themselves apt pupils, and to-day you will see in the glens of the Berg and in the plains Kaffir tillage which is as scientific as any in Africa.
[훌륭한 식민지의 신민, 백성을 만들고 있다는 자찬]
[줄거리는 위키를 볼 것]
- 촌평
* 이 작품은 전체적으로 인종주의와 혈통주의가 교묘하게 결합되어 있는 그런 것이다.