요새 읽은 또 다른 책들

.

 

하루에도 좀처럼 한 책만 읽게 되지 않는다. 그러다 보니 Angie Kim의 소설 "Happiness Falls"과 함께 -- 실은, 하루 내지 한 주쯤 먼저 -- 다 읽은 책이 세 권이다:

 

A. B. Guthrie, Jr., "The Way West: A Novel" (1949),

Max Hastings, "The Korean War" (1987),

Wolfram Eilenberger, "Time of the Magicians: Witgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the Decade that Reinvented Philosophy" (2018).

 

 

A. B. Guthrie, Jr., "The Way West" (1949)

 

책 뒷표지에서

 

The sequel to The Big Sky, this celebrated novel charts a frontierman's return to the untamed West in 1846. Dick Summers, as pilot of a wagon train, guides a group of settlers on the difficult journey from Missouri to Oregon. In sensitive but unsentimental prose, Guthrie illuminates the harsh trials and resounding triumps of pioneer life. With The Way West, he pays homage to the grandeur of the western wilderness, its stark and beautiful scenery, and its extraordinary people.

 

본문 마지막 두 절

 

"They'd made it. They had rolled the miles. And back of them came others. Crossers of plains. Grinders through the dust. Climbers of mountains. Forders of rivers. Meeters of dangers. Sailers at last of the big waters. nation makers, Builders of the country....

 

He winked at his woman and spoke loud above the tremble in his throat. "Becky," he said, "hurrah for Oregon!"

 

 

[덧붙임 9/27/2023] 아래 글과 map은 Susan G. Butruille, "Women's Voice from the Oregon Trail" (1993).

 

One of the most poignant examples of "schooling in" and letting it out was that of Lavinia Porter. who wrote of her 1860 journey:

 

         I would make a brave effort to be

      cheerful and patient until the camp

      work was done. Then starting out

      ahead of the the team and my men folks,

      when I thought I had gone beyond

      hearing distance, I would throw myself

      down on the unfriendly desert and give

      way like a child to sobs and tears,

      wishing myself back home with my

      friends and chiding myself for

      consenting to take this wild goose

      chase.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Max Hastings, "The Korean War" (1987)

 

 

이 책을 읽어보니 해방 후 한국이 공산주의 국가가 되지 않은 것은 미 군정 덕이고 남한에 이승만 독재 정권이 들어서고 일제 시대 관료나 경찰이 요직을 차지하게 된 것은 나라를 세울 준비가 된, 공산주의자 아닌, 지도자들이 없은 탓이란 생각이 든다.

 

 

아래는 책 본문에서:

 

On July 10[, 1951], Communist and UN delegations met for the first time in the town of Kaesong to open cease-fire negotiations. (p. 230)

 

Throughout the war, Rhee conducted his own dictatorship without reference to allied sensibilities, almost indeed as if the war did not exist. The National Assembly fought a long series of political battle with him ... and lost all of them, The last, and most dramatic, came in May 1952, when the Assembly voted to overrule Rhee and lift martial law in the Pusan district. On May 27 the Assembly building was surrounded by military police. Some fifty assemblymen in shuttle buses were towed by army trucks to a military police station.... At midnight on July 4, eighty [assemblymen] were dragged into the Assembly hall under police guard to prevent their escape. None were allowed to leave until constitutional amendments had been passed, placing all effective power in South Korea in Rhee's hands. (p. 236)

 

No aspect of the Korean War was more grotesque than the manner in which the struggle was allowed to continue for a further sixteen months after the last substantial territorial obstacle to armistice had been removed by negotiations in February 1952. From that day until the end of July 1953, on-the-line men endured the miseries of summer heat and winter cold, were murdered by mines and killed by napalm, small arms, and high explosives, while at Panmunjom the contestants wrangled around one bitterly contentious issue: the post-armistice exchange of prisoners. (p. 305)

 

But in the spring of 1953, the Russians and Chinese almost certainly allowed themselves to be persuaded that the new Administration [of Eisenhower] was willing to use nuclear weapons if the United States was denied an honorable escape from Korea. After so many months of deadlock, the talks at Panmunjom suddenly began to move with remarkable speed. (p. 320)

 

"I see Koreans today, and the respect they show for us," said Private Bill Norris of the 27th Infantry, "and I contrast this with the animosity I saw for us in Europe, after World War II ended. They didn't want us over there. In Korea , I see gratitude." (p. 342)

 

 

 

Wolfram Eilenberger, "Time of the Magicians" (2018)

 

 

사람을 읽으려 집어든 책

읽는 내내

철학자의 철학의 하찮음!

그리고 그런 사람인 줄 알고 읽었지만

Walter Benjamin! 또 Heiddger!

 

"Is such a poem an instrument of knowledge?

Yes, of knowledge, and on a more

profound level than philosophy,"*

천 년 전 일본 여성 시인의 시 한 편을 두고 쓴

체스와프 미워시나 또 들먹일 밖에.

Izumi Shikibu의 그 시를 읊어본다.

 

       If he whom I wait for

       Should come now, what will I do?

       This morning the snow-covered garden

       Is so beautuful without a trace of footprints.

 

* Czeslaw Milosz, "A Year of the Hunter" (1994)에서.