Ursula K. Le Guin, "No Time To Spare'

 

 

 

Ursula K. Le Guin, "No Time To Spare: Thinking About What Matters" (2017)

 

 

여기 실린, 작가가 81세이던 해 이후에 쓴, 짤막한 에세이들을 읽으면서

이런저런 화제에 대해 마치 그녀가 말하는 것을 듣는 느낌이다.

그녀의 어떤 면들을 알게 되는것도 재미있다.

 

이를테면, 여가 또는 남는 시간에 대해서 (In Your Spare Time),

 

"The opposite of spare time is, I guess, occupied time.

In my case I still don't know what spare time is because all

my time is occupied. It always has been and

it is now. It is occupied by living.

 

"I am free, but my time is not. My time is fully and vitally

occupied with sleep, with daydreaming, ... with writing

poetry, with writing prose, with thinking."

 

호머에 대해서 (Papa H):

 

"I was THINKING about Homer, and it occurred to me that

his two books are the two basic fantasy stories:

the War  and the Journey.

 

"I think Homer outwits most writers who have written

on the War by not taking side.

 

"Of course you can take sides, and almost everybody

does. I try not to, but it's no use. I just like the Trojans

better than the Greeks. But Homer truly doesn't

take sides, and so he permits the story to be

tragic. By tragedy, mind and soul are

grieved, enlarged, and exalted.

 

"The famous Helen plays a quite small part in the Iliad....

I see her as opportunistic, immoral, emotionally

about as deep as a cookie sheet. But if I believed that

the good guys win, that the reward goes to the

virtuous, I'd have to see her as an innocent beauty

wronged by Fate and saved by the Greeks."

 

존경의 태도에 대해서 (The Diminished Thing):

 

"When there is no social pressure behind it, respectful

behavior becomes a decision. an individual choice.

 

"But when applied in moderation and with judgment,

the social requirement of respectful behavior to others,

by repressing aggression and requiring self-control,

makes room for understanding. It creates a space

where appreciation and affection can grow.

 

Opinion all too often leaves no room for

anything but itself."

 

TGAN and TGOW:

 

"If somebody came up to me in a dark alley with a sharp

knife and said, 'Name The Great American Novel or

die!' I would gasp forth, squeakily,

'The Grapes of Wraths!'"

 

채식주의에 대해서 (A Modest Proposal: Vegempathy):

 

"Many people troubled by the suffering of animals -- animals

who would scarcely exist outside zoos if we did not breed

them for their meat, milk and eggs -- remain strangely

indifferent to the endless, enormous ordeal of the

vegetables we keep in captivity or capture wild."

 

나무에 대해서 (The Tree):

 

"We took down the Christmas tree this morning. it was

a very pretty little fir, three and a half or four feet tall,

a tabletop tree, said the woman at the florist's

next to Trader Joe's, where we bought it.

 

"An unmoving presence that says nothing, but is

there. A very taciturn visitor from Norway, perhaps.

Speaking no English, entirely undemanding, wanting

nothing but a drink of water every few days. Restful.

A pleasure to look at. Holding darkness in it,

a forest darkness, ...

 

"Our tree had not known forest. It was a forest tree

all the same. And it had known rain, sun, ice, storm,

all the weathers, all the winds, and no doubt a few

birds, in its day. And the stars, in its night."

 

 

 

< 덧붙임 >

 

The Literary Prize for the refusal of Literary Prizes

 

By Ursula K. Le Guin  December 6, 2017

the Paris Review

 

* 이 책에도 실려있는 글이다.