이디스 워튼 <순수의 시대> 원서
라떼(In my youth)로 요약할 수 있는 19세기 뉴욕 상류사회를 배경으로 그 중심에 있지만 작고 폐쇄적인 동류의 규범이 답답하고 조금 시야가 넓고 조금 이기적인 한 남자가 있었다. 모계로 대물림되는 우아한 여성들의 가식적인 친절함 속에 갇힌 그의 우왕좌왕이 제대로 웃픈 시대극, <순수의 시대>에 등장하는 남주인공이다.
옛날이야기라고 마냥 웃기만 할 수 없다. 여전히 존재하는 사회적 가면들이 여전히 남다른 이들을 배척하고 있다. 심지어 어떤 사회는 이렇게 폭로할 수 있는 언어(sarcasm)조차 메말라가고 있는, 영혼없는 사교생활이 영원히 계속될 것만 같은 모습이다. 사회의 전복이 가장 극심했던 20세기를 기점으로 그 이후는 마치 모든 것이 개인의 역량이라는 듯이, 모두들 가식적인 냉소만 짓고 있다.
현대 미국드라마에서, 한국드라마에서, 일본소설에서 반복해서 등장하지만 등잔 및이 어두운 것처럼 당장 우리 주변에도 이런 가식적인 사교집단이 없다고 할 수는 없을 것이다. 대놓고 배척하는 적보다, 웃으면서 무시하는 친구(?)들 때문에 더욱 외로움을 느낀다면 이 현상이 현대사회(21세기)만의 문제가 아니라는 위안을 줄 수도 있는 작품이다.
Untrained human nature was not frank and
innocent; it was full of the twists and
defences of an instinctive guile. -37p
Why not make one's own fashions? -60p
But on condition that they don't hear
anything unpleasant. Does no one want to
know the truth here? The real loneliness is
living among all these kind people who
only ask one to pretend! -63p
No doubt she simply echoed what was
said to her; but she was nearing her
twenty-second birthday, and he wondered
at what age "nice" women began to
speak for themselves. -67p
Our legislation favours divorce-
our social customs don't. -90p
Is there nowhere in an American house
where one may be by one's self?
I always feel as if I were in the convent
again-or on the stage, before a dreadfully
polite audience that never applauds. -109p
But in another moment she seemed to
have descended from her womanly
eminence to helpless and timorous
girlhood; and he understood that her
courage and initiative were all for others,
and that she had none for herself. -122p
'After that I suppose we shall have pretty
nearly finished rubbing off each other's
angles,' he reflected; but the worst of it
was that May's pressure was already
bearing on the very angles whose
sharpness he most wanted to keep. -166p
Outside it, in the scene of his actual life,
he moved with a growing sense of unreality
and insufficiency, blundering against
familiar prejudices and traditional points of
view as an absent-minded man goes on
bumping into the furniture of his own room.
-214p
"No: but my going is," he answered,
cursing the unnecessary explanations that
he had given when he had announced his
intention of going to Washington, and
wondering where he had read that clever
liars give details, but that the cleverest
do not. -231p
If May had spoken out her grievances (he
suspected her of many) he might have
laughed them away;
but she was trained to conceal
imaginary wounds under a Spartan smile.
-240p
In my youth young men didn't desert pretty women unless they were made to! -244p
Conformity to the discipline of a small society had become almost his second nature.
-262p
르네상스와 혁명의 혜택으로 풍요로움이 번져나갔던 19세기 파리와 20세기 뉴욕(이 책의 배경은 19세기 말의 뉴욕이다.)에 이어 21세기 서울의 공통점이 있다면, 그것은 다름아닌 권태와 가식일 것이다.