밑줄 친 구절 : Wendell Berry, The Poetry of William Carlos Williams of Rutherford

 

책을 읽고서 독후감을 쓴다는 건 내겐 쉽지 않은 일이다. 새 책이 기다리고

있는데, 읽은 책의 뒤치다꺼리 같은 일엔 마음의 여유가 없는 걸까. 하여튼

그러니 딱히 독후감이라고 쓴 기억이 사실 없다. 나중에 나를 위해서라면,

대신, 나는 읽으면서 책에 밑줄을 긋는다.

 

오래 전에 읽은 책의 밑줄 친 부분을 다시 읽는 것은, 마치, 내가 가끔 추억

속의 그녀를 생각할 때 그녀가 했던 말, 목소리, 그때의 표정을 떠올리는 거와

같다. 그때 그 구절을 만나던 즐거움을 다시 느낄 수 있다.

 

밑줄 친 구절을, 또는 도서관에서 빌려다 보는 책인 경우 내 책이었다면

밑줄 쳤을 구절을, 어디 노트해 놓는 법도 원래 없었다. 그랬는데, 요즘

이 블로그에서 책에 대해 언급하면서는 자연스레 몇 구절씩 인용하게 됐다.

 

중국 작가 Ha Jin 의 소설 War Trash 를 빌리러 월요일에 동네 도서관에

갔다가, 눈에 띈 Wendell Berry 의 The Poetry of William Carlos

Williams of Rutherford (2011)도 함께 빌려왔다. 우선 각각의 서문부터

읽어볼 생각이었는데, 결국, 먼저 잡은 Berry 를 이틀 동안에 다 읽고

나서야 Ha Jin 의 프롤로그를 읽게 됐다.

 

Berry 의 책은 오늘 반납했는데, 아래는, 읽으면서 '포스트 잇 (Post It)'

조각을 붙여놨던 구절을 어제 여기 옮겨 놓은 거다 (번호는 내가 붙였다).

내게 뭔가 생각나게 하거나 재미있게 읽한 것들인데, 글쎄 모르겠다.

 

Wendell Berry, The Poetry of William Carlos

Williams of Rutherford (2011) 에서

 

1.

 

No ideas but in things.  [William Carlos Williams]

 

The tangible defines and dsciplines the intangible. Concern

for ideas in the absence of a concern for things, or at the

expense of things, is capricious and dangerous both to

things and to ideas.

 

(*) Williams 의 "관념은 구체적인 것들을 통해서만"은

Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to A Young Poet 의 한 구절이

생각나게 한다. 그 구절을 포함한 몇 구절을 끝에 덧붙인다.

 

2.

 

When what is to be said has been said, stop.

 

Say only what needs to be said.

 

[A] poem, like a machine, should have no redundant parts.

 

3.

 

[Williams] says, "I have never been one to write by rule, even

by my own rules."

 

4.

 

[I]t is by our sense of rhythm that we know we have the form

right, that we have put everything in the right place at the right

time.

 

5.

 

But Sense is necessarily always involved, for the structure of

sound and the structure of sense, like the structures of lines

and sentences, relate by collaboration and mutual influence,

and can never be clearly divided.

 

6.

 

        The Red Wheel Barrow

                   

                      William Carlos Williams

 

 

     so much depends

     upon

 

     a red wheel

     barrow

 

     glazed with rain

     water

 

     beside the white

     chickens

 

 

[T]his poem's charm depends wholly upon its prosody. To

write it out as a prose sentence would reduce it to a bland

assertion followed by a mere list of things of little interest or

consequence.

 

7.

 

[Meaning] is a distancing word of abstrction and displacement,

seeming always to refer to an idea that is separable and

separate from anything. If you say, "The poem means ...," you

are about to say something in a language different form that

of the poem, ...

 

I think, in all of Williams' poetry, there is no difference between

what the lines say and what they mean.

 

8.

 

We may read only the imagination is real" as only what we

have imagined is real to us," which is right enough. But by

"imagination" I think Williams means also a mental faculty or

realm in which, only in which, the reality of the real is fully

recognized.

 

9. [William Carlos Williams]

 

The stomach is full, the ocean no fuller, both have the same

quality of fullness. In that, then, one is equal to the other.

Having eaten, the man has released his mind.

 

[Describing a painting, The Open Window, by Juan Gris]

Here is a shutter, abunch of grapes, a sheet of music, a

picture of sea and mountains ... which the onlooker is not

for a moment permitted to witness as an illusion.

 

(*) 아래, 책 표지 사진 속 그림이 Gris 의 그 그림인데 따로

덧붙인다.

 

[A work by Cezanne or Gris] escapes plagiarism after nature

and becomes a creation.

 

The value of the imagination to the writer consists in its ability

to make words. Its unique power is to give created forms

reality, actual existence.

 

It is the imagination on which reality rides ...

 

It is for this reason that I have always placed art first and

esteemed it over science ...

 

 

Rainer Maria Rlke, Letters to A Yong Poet 에서

 

Try to express what you see and experience and love and lose

as if you were the first man alive. Do not write love-poems.

Avoid those forms which are too trite and commonplace ...

 

Paint your sadnesses and your desires, your passing thoughts

and your belief in some kind of beauty—paint all that with quiet

and modest inward sincerity; and to express yourself use the

things that surround you, the pictures of your dreams and the

objects of your recollections.

 

When your daily life seems barren, do not blame it ...

 

And even if you were in a prison, ... even then would you not

still have your childhood, that precious, kingly wealth, that

treasure-house of memories?

 

And when from this turning inwards, from this retreat into

your own world verses come into being, then you will not

think of asking anyone, whether they are good verses.

 

A work of art is good, when it is born of necessity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                           

                                             Juan Gris,The Open Window