Thornton Wilder 소설 "The Eighth Day"

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Thornton Wilder, "The Eighth Day" (1967)

 

Overview

 

책에서

 

-- John Updike, Foreword 에서 

 

The Eighth Day revisits  and extends the small-town world of Our Town (1938), the stark and dreamy drama which turns out to be one of the most enduring and beloved of American plays. (p. xi)

 

Wilder, called "tirelessly eclectic" by one critic, wove a number of borrowed ideas into The Eighth Day. The idea of the title, that we are entering a new week of Creation, though expressed by Coaltown's omniscient Dr. Gillies, was taken from Teilhard de Chardin. Quiet, unobtrusive John Ashley, "odd through a very lack of striking characteristics," was meant to represent Kierkegard's "knight of faith," of whom the Danish philosopher writes in Fear and Trembling, "No heavenly glance or any other token of the incommensurable betrays him; if one did not know him, it would be impossible to distinguish him from the rest of the congregation." (p. xv)

 

   (카톨릭 신학자/생물학자 Teilhard de Chardin 떼아르 드 샤르댕의 책도 읽고 우리 모임에서 서남동 교수를 초빙해 강의를 듣기도 했던 1968-69년 그 시절이 떠오른다. 미국 대학가 서점에서 발견한 The Phenomena of Man (1959)을 읽은 건 70년대 후반, 마지막으로 읽은 Chardin의 책은 Hymn of the Universe(1974).

   엊그제 다른 책에서, 9세기 철학자 Scotus Erigena의 "Theology was 'a kind of poetry'" 라는 구절을 읽으면서도 카톨릭 신학자/철학자 Jacques_Maritain의 Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry와 함께 Chardin의 The Phenomena of Man이 생각났었다. "철학/신학은 상상이다" 라고 말하곤 하는 내게 이 두 책이 '아름다운' 상상의 작품으로 읽혀서다. )

 

 

 

The Eighth Day -- his one real novel, he said, and much his longest -- opens itself to the digression, the sermonite, the stray inspiration that might capture the simultaneous largeness and samallness of the human adventure. Untidily, self-delightingly, it brims with wonder and wisdom, and aspires to prophecy. We marvel at a novel of such spiritual ambition and benign flamboyance. (p. xvii)

 

-- 본문에서

 

   "Life! Why life? What for? To what end? Something came out of the ooze. Where was it going?"

   He paused. His gaze rested with such inquiry on the boys that they felt impelled to answer. They murmured. "To man."

   "Yes," said Dr. Gillies, "to all kinds of men." (p. 17)

 

Like another young man in a story book thousnas of miles away, he thought: "In infinite space, in infinite time, in infinite matter, an organism like a bubble is formed; it lasts a short while and then bursts; and that bubble is myself." (p. 147)

 

   "A visit once a month's good enough for them. Mr. Tolland, let me tell you something: Roman Catholicism is childish superstitions at best; in Chile it is beneath conempt."

   "I think we're all bad judges of what goes on in other people's minds about God, Mr. Smith. It's a bad thing to force a God on a man who doesn't want one. It's worse to stand in the way of a man who wants one badly. I know them! I live there!" (p. 171)

 

He was filled with awe -- with grateful wonder -- that life permits us to pay old debts, to redeem old blindness, old stpidities. His grandmother had promised him that. (p. 178)

 

If Roger had much to learn, he had much to unlearn. (p. 235)

 

One of the reasons for Roger's patience now was his search for an answer to that question: why does each of us do what we do -- the petty, the favored, the aggressive, the meek? Always there lurked the fear that one's own view of truth was merely a small window in a small house. (p. 236)

 

It made him uncomfortable to think that perhaps his happiness rendered him conspicuous. He had the sensation that he 'shone." ("Good morning, Jack. How are you?" "Fine, Bill, how are you?") His natural taciturnity increased. That fear abated. No one noticed. (p. 301)

 

Dr, Gillies explained it to himself -- an explanation based on a farfetched notion and condenced in a phrase that never failed to exasperate his wife, who said that it was in bad grammar: "We keep saying that we 'live our lives.' Shucks! Life lives us." (p. 309)

 

"Well, maybe NATURE after hundreds of millions of years has begun selecting for intelligence and mind and spitit. Maybe NATURE is moving into a new era. Breed out the stupid; breed in the wise. Maybe that's why Stacy married Breck. NATURE commanded it. She wanted some interesting babies for her new idea. -- We keep on saying that we 'live our lives.' Shucks; Life lives us." (p. 318)

 

It is only in appearance that time is a river. It is rather a vast landscape and it is the eye of the beholder that moves. Look about you in all directions -- rise higher, rise higher! -- and see hills beyond hills, plains and rivers. (p. 395)

 

"Your father had eyes wide open, Mr. Ashley. Did you know it was your father who sent Aristides to Springfield to learn the shoemaking trade?"

   "No, Deacon."

   "Your father's mouth wasn't wide open, like his eyes were." (p. 424)