Willa Cather 의 소설 "Shadows on the Rock"

 

Willa Cather, "Shadows on the Rock" (1931)

 

 

17세기 Quebec 의 프랑스인 이주민 Euclide Auclair 와 딸 Cecile 의 어느

한 해의 이야기다. 읽을 다른 책들이 많은데도 갑자기 읽고 싶어져서 주문해서

산 책인데, 이 소설 특유의 읽는 즐거움이 연상하고 기대한 그대로였다.

(소설 내용에 대해서는 위의 책 제목을 클릭.)

 

생각나는 대로 그냥 두 구절만 인용한다:

 

"The people have loved miracles for so many hundred

years, not as proof or evidence, but because they are the

actual flowering of desire. In them the vague worship and

devoution of the simple-hearted assumes a form. From

being a shapeless longing, it becomes a beatiful image;

a dumb rapture becomes a melody that can be

remembered and repeated; and the experience of a

moment, which might have been a lost ecstasy, is made

an actual posseion and can be bequeathed to another."

 

"We were both so weak we made poor headway. But by

the mercy of God we met an Indian. He had a gun, and

he had shot two hares. When he saw what a bad way we

were in, he made a fire very quick and cooked the hares,

-- and he ate very little of that meat himself. He said

Indians could bear hunger better than the French. He

was a kind Indian and was glad to give us what he had."

 

 

 

Cap Diamant (Cape Diamond), Quebeck City (in 2015?).

1697년 시월 Euclide Auclair 가 저 꼭대기에 서서 강(St. Lawrence River)을

내려다보고 있는 것으로 소설이 시작된다.