호머, [오딧세이] (Homer, The Odyssey, Penguin) [2001년]

*Homer, The Odyssey, Penguin

<감상>

'호머의 작품을 번역으로 읽는 것은 태피스트리를 뒤에서 보는 것과 다를 바가 없다'(정확한 인용은 아니지만)라고 버지니아 울프가 일침을 놓긴 했지만, 고대 그리스어를 배워서 호머를 읽는다는 것은 너무나도 버겁고, 다른 해야할 일도 많기 때문에 아쉬운 대로, 영어 번역으로나마, 숙원이었던 [오디세이 The Odyssey]를 읽어 냄으로써, 그의 두 작품을 모두 읽은 셈이다. 번역자인 Rieu는 [일리어드 Illiad]를 비극의 효시로, 또 [오디세이 The Odyssey]는 소설의 효시로 보고 있는데, 그의 그러한 정의에 어울리게도 이 작품이 [일리어드]보다는 읽기가 수월하고 재미가 있었다(이야기의 일차적인 조건은 사람을 끌어들이는 마력이 아닌가?).

이 작품의 플롯은 우리에게 너무나 잘 알려져 있고, 원문을 대하지는 않았을 지언정, 만화나 해설 등에서 몇 번씩 접했기 때문에, 작품을 읽으면서 주안점을 둔 것은 호머가 이 이야기를 풀어나가는 방식이었는데, 그 기술 방식이 잘 짠 천처럼 정교한 데에는 놀라지 않을 수 없었다. 이야기를 단순히 추보식으로 이끌어 나가는 것도 아니고, 더군다나 주인공인 오디세우스는 작품이 상당히 전개된 다음에야 등장하게 된다. 또, 우리는 트로이 전쟁 이야기와, 전쟁 후 오디세우스가 겪게 되는 모험담을 가장 그럴 듯한 방식으로 듣게 된다. 그럼에도 Rieu가 이 작품보다도 [일리어드]를 호머의 진정한 걸작으로 손꼽는 것은 이 작품의 주제 의식이 귀향과 복수와 낭만적 해피 엔딩이라는 통속성에서 그다지 벗어나지 못했기 때문이 아닌가 하는 생각을 해보기도 한다.

(고향으로 돌아가고자 하지만, 신들의 방해로 바다를 떠돌아야만 하는 운명의 오디세우스와, 자신의 왕궁에 들어와 양식을 축내며 안하무인격으로 활보하는 어머니의 구혼자들을 어떻게 처리하지 못해 속만 끓이는 왕자 텔레마커스, 그 다음, 구혼자들을 완전히 거절하지도, 또 그들의 청을 받아들이지도 못하고 있는 페넬로페의 여성으로서의 허약함, 그리고 돼지치기의 충절 등은 이 작품에서 잊혀지지 않는 부분이다.)

<인용>

*Nor could anything have intervened to spoil out joy in one another's love, till the darkness of death had swallowed us up. (69)

<Menelaus가 Odysseus를 생각하며 Telemachus에게 하는 말>

 

*Mistress, I throw myself on your mercy. But are you some goddess or a mortal woman? If you are one of the gods who live in the sky, it is of Artemis, the Daughter of almighty Zeus, that your beauty, grace, and stature most remind me. But if you are one of us mortals who live on earth, then lucky indeed are your father and your gentle mother; lucky, your brothers too. How their hearts must glow with pleasure every time they see their darling join the dance! But he is the happiest of them all who with his wedding gifts can win you for his home. For never have I set eyes on such perfection in man or woman. (106)

<Odysseus가 Nausicaa 공주를 처음 보고 던지는 찬사>

 

*But never for a moment did she win my heart. Seven years without a break I stayed, bedewing with my tears the imperishable clothes Calyso gave me. (119)

<Alcinous 궁전에서 Odysseus의 말>

 

*Put me on earth again, and I would rather be a serf in the house of some landless man, with little enough for himself to live on, than king of all these dead men that have done with life. (184)

<지하세계에서 Achilles가 Odysseus에게 한 말>

 

*To us wretched men all forms of death are abominable, but death by starvation is the most miserable end that one can meet. (198)

<Odysseus의 말>

 

*This is the effect of your wine--for wine is a crazy thing. It sets the wisest man singing and giggling like a girl; it lures him on to dance and it makes him blurt out what were better left unsaid. (227)

<Odysseus가 자신의 돼지치기에게>

 

*With that he kissed his son and let a tear roll down his cheek to the ground, though hitherto he had kept himself under strict control. But Telemachus could not yet accept the fact that it was his father, and once more put his feelings into words. 'You are not my father,' he said: 'you are not Odysseus; but to make my grief all the more bitter some power is playing me a trick. No mortal man unaided by a god has wizardry like this at his command, though I know that any god who wished could easily bring about these alterations between youth and age. Why, only a moment ago you were an old man in shabby clothes, and now you look like one of the gods who live in the wide heavens.'

'Telemachus,' replied Odysseus, never at a loss, 'there is no reason why you should feel any excessive surprise at your father's home-coming, or be so taken aback. Be quite certain of this, just as you see me here, back in my own country after nineteen years of misfortune and wandering. As for these changes in me, they are the work of the warrior goddess Athene, who can do anything, and makes me look as she wishes, at one moment like a beggar and at the next like a young man finely dressed. It is easy for the gods in heaven to make or mar a man's appearance.

Odysseus sat down, but Telemachus, softened at last, flung his arms round his noble father's neck and burst into tears. And now they both broke down and sobbed aloud without a pause like birds bereaved, like the sea-eagle or the taloned vulture when villagers have robbed the nest of their unfledged young. So did these two let the piteous tears run streaming from their eyes. (251)

 

*'But enough. Let me ask you to interpret a dream of mine which I shall now describe. I keep a flock of twenty geese in the place. They come in from the pond to pick up their grain and I delight in watching them. In my dream I saw a great eagle swoop down from the hills and break their necks with his crooked beak, killing them all. There they lay in a heap on the floor while he vanished in the open sky. I wept and cried aloud, though it was only a dream, and Achaean ladies gathering about me found me sobbing my heart out because the eagle had slaughtered my geese. But the bird came back. He perched on a jutting timber of the roof, and breaking into human speech he checked my tears. "Take heart," he said, "daughter of the noble Icarius. This is not a dream but a happy reality which you shall see fulfilled. The geese were your lovers, and I that played the eagle's part am now your husband, home again and ready to deal out grim punishment to every man among them." At this point I awoke. I looked around me and there I saw the geese in the yard pecking their grain at the trough in their accustomed place.' (302)

<Penelope가 변장한 Odysseus에게>

 

*As she spoke she left her room and made her way downstairs, a prey to indecision. Should she remain aloof as she questioned her husband, or go straight up to him and kiss his head and hands? What she actually did, when she had crossed the stone threshold into the hall, was to take a chair in the firelight by the wall, on the opposite side to Odysseus, who was sitting by one of the great columns with his eyes on the ground, waiting to see whether his good wife would say anything to him when she saw him. For a lone while Penelope, overwhelmed by wonder, sat there without a word. But her eyes were busy, at one moment resting full on his face, and at the next falling on the ragged clothes that made him seem a stranger once again. It was Telemachus who broke the silence, but only to rebuke her.

"Mother,' he said, 'you strange, hard-hearted mother of mine, why do you keep so far from my father? Why aren't you sitting at his side, talking and asking questions all the while? No other woman would have had the perversity to hold out like this against a husband she had just got back after nineteen years of misadventure. But then your heart was always harder then flint.'

'My child, the shock has numbed it,' she admitted. 'I cannot find a word to say to him; I cannot ask him anything at all; I cannot even look him in the face. But if it really is Odysseus home again, we two shall surely recognize each other, and in an even better way; for there are tokens between us which only we two kwow and no ome else had heard of.' (343)

<Odysseus가 자신의 정체를 드러냄>

 

*Her knees began to tremble as she realized the complete fidelity of his description. All at once her heart melted. Bursting into tears she ran up to Odysseus, threw her arms round his neck and kissed his head. 'Odysseus,' she cried, 'do not be cross with me, you who were always the most reasonable of men. All our unhappiness is due to the gods, who couldn't bear to see us share the joys of youth and reach the threshold of old age together. But don't be angry with me now, or hurt because the moment when I saw you first I did not kiss you as I kiss you now. For I had always had the cold fear in my heart that somebody might come here and bewitch me with his talk. There are plenty of rogues who would seize such a chance; and though Argive Helen would never have slept in her foreign lover's arms had she known that her countrymen would go to war to fetch her back to Argos, even she, the daughter of Zeus, was tempted by the goddes and fell, though the idea of such madness had never entered her head till that moment, which was so fateful for the world and proved the starting-point of all our sorrows too. But now all's well. You have faithfully described our token, the secret of our bed, which no one ever saw but you and I and the maid, Acroris, who was my father's gift when first I came to you, and sat as sentry at our bedroom door. You have convinced your unbelieving wife.'

Penelope's surrender melted Odysseus' heart, and he wept as he held his dear wife in his arms, so loyal and so true. Sweet moment too for her, sweet as the sight of the land to sailors struggling in the sea, when the Sea-god by dint of wind and wave wrecked their gallant ship. (346-7)