The ancients called beauty the flowering of virtue. Who can analyze the nameless charm which glances from one and another face and form? We are touched with emotions of tenderness and complacency, but we cannot find whereat this dainty emotion, this wandering gleam, points. It is destroyed for the imagination by any attempt to refer it to organization. Nor does it point to any relations of friendship or love known and described in society, but, as it seems to me, to a quite other and unattainable sphere, to relations of transcendent delicacy and sweetness, to what roses and violets hint and fore-show. We cannot approach beauty. Its nature is like opaline doves'-neck lustres, hovering and evanescent. Herein it resembles the most excellent things, which all have this rainbow character, defying all attempts at appropriation and use. What else did Jean Paul Richter signify, when he said to music, "Away! away! thou speakest to me of things which in all my endless life I have not found, and shall not find." The same fluency may be observed in every work of the plastic arts. The statue is then beautiful when it begins to be incomprehensible, when it is passing out of criticism, and can no longer be defined by compass and measuring-wand, but demands an active imagination to go with it, and to say what it is in the act of doing. The god or hero of the sculptor is always represented in a transition from that which is representable to the senses, to that which is not. Then first it ceases to be a stone. The same remark holds of painting. And of poetry, the success is not attained when it lulls and satisfies, but when it astonishes and fires us with new endeavours after the unattainable. Concerning it, Landor inquires "whether it is not to be referred to some purer state of sensation and existence."

 

virtue : 선, 선행 / 미덕, 덕목

complacency : 현 상태에 만족함, 안주 

dainty : 앙증맞은 (=delicate) / 조심스러운, 얌전한 (=delicate) 

gleam : (흔히 어디에 반사된) 어슴푸레한, 흐릿한

transcendent : 초월하는, 초월적인, 탁월한 

delicacy : 여림, 연약함 

violet : 제비꽃, 바이올렛 

fore-show : 예고[예언]하다, 예시하다, …의 전조를 보이다 

opaline : 오팔 같은, 유백광을 내는 

lustre : 윤(기), 광택 (=sheen) / (특별함을 부여하는) 빛 (→lacklustre) 

evanescent : 쉬이 사라지는, 덧없는, 무상한 

incomprehensible : 이해할 수 없는 (↔comprehensible), (=unintelligible) 

wand : 지팡이

cease : 중단되다, 그치다, 중단시키다 (→cessation) 

 

 

In like manner, personal beauty is then first charming and itself, when it dissatisfies us with any end; when it becomes a story without an end; when it suggests gleams and visions, and not earthly satisfactions; when it makes the beholder feel his unworthiness; when he cannot feel his right to it, though he were Caesar; he cannot feel more right to it than to the firmament and the splendors of a sunset.

 

beholder : 보는 사람, 구경꾼(spectator)

firmament : [옛글투 또는 문예체] 창공, 하늘 

splendor : 훌륭함, 장려(壯麗), 화려함 / (명성 등의) 현저, 탁월, 영예, 영광 / 빛남, 광휘, 광채(brilliance) 

 

 

Hence arose the saying, "If I love you, what is that to you?" We say so, because we feel that what we love is not in your will, but above it. It is not you, but your radiance. It is that which you know not in yourself, and can never know.

 

radiance : (행복감·건강 등이 얼굴에 나타나는) 빛[광채] / (따스하고 밝은) 빛[광휘] 

 

 

 

 

 

※ 출처 : Essays, First Series (1841) 중 5장 LOVE by Ralph Waldo Emerson

※ 랄프 왈도 에머슨 (Ralph Waldo Emerson) : 미국 사상가 겸 시인. 자연과의 접촉에서 고독과 희열을 발견하고 자연의 효용으로서 실리(實利)·미(美)·언어(言語)·훈련(訓練)의 4종을 제시했다. 정신을 물질보다도 중시하고 직관에 의하여 진리를 알고, 자아의 소리와 진리를 깨달으며, 논리적인 모순을 관대히 보는 신비적 이상주의였다. 주요 저서에는《자연론》,《대표적 위인론》등이 있다.

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THERE is grey in your hair.
Young men no longer suddenly catch their breath
When you are passing;
But maybe some old gaffer mutters a blessing
Because it was your prayer
Recovered him upon the bed of death.
For your sole sake - that all heart's ache have known,
And given to others all heart's ache,
From meagre girlhood's putting on
Burdensome beauty - for your sole sake
Heaven has put away the stroke of her doom,
So great her portion in that peace you make
By merely walking in a room.
Your beauty can but leave among us
Vague memories, nothing but memories.
A young man when the old men are done talking
Will say to an old man, "Tell me of that lady
The poet stubborn with his passion sang us
When age might well have chilled his blood.'
Vague memories, nothing but memories,
But in the grave all, all, shall be renewed.
The certainty that I shall see that lady
Leaning or standing or walking
In the first loveliness of womanhood,
And with the fervour of my youthful eyes,
Has set me muttering like a fool.
You are more beautiful than any one,
And yet your body had a flaw:
Your small hands were not beautiful,
And I am afraid that you will run
And paddle to the wrist
In that mysterious, always brimming lake
Where those What have obeyed the holy law
paddle and are perfect. Leave unchanged
The hands that I have kissed,
For old sake's sake.
The last stroke of midnight dies.
All day in the one chair
From dream to dream and rhyme to rhyme I have
ranged
In rambling talk with an image of air:
Vague memories, nothing but memories.

 

gaffer : (공장 노동자·운동 팀 등의) 감독 / (영화·텔레비전의) 조명 담당자 

mutter : 중얼거림

meagre : (양·질이) 빈약한[변변찮은] (=paltry) 

fervour (fervor) : 열정 (=enthusiasm) 

paddle : (작은 보트, 특히 카누용의 짧은) 노 

brimming : 넘쳐흐르는, 가득 차게 부은 

rhyme : 운(음조가 비슷한 글자) / (두 단어나 음절이) 운이 맞다[각운을 이루다] 

rambling : (특별한 패턴이 없이) 되는 대로 퍼져 나가는 (=sprawling) / 횡설수설하는, 장황하고 두서없는 (=incoherent) 

 

 

 

 

 

윌리엄 버틀러 예이츠 (William Butler Yeats, 1865년 6월 13일, 아일랜드 - 1939년 1월 28일): 아일랜드 시인 겸 극작가. 환상적이며 시적인《캐서린 백작부인》을 비롯하여 몇 편의 뛰어난 극작품을 발표했으며 1923년에는 노벨문학상을 수상하였다. 독자적 신화로써 자연(자아)의 세계와 자연 부정(예술)의 세계의 상극을 극복하려 노력했다.  

 

"Thou art not gone being gone, where'er thou art,

Thou leav'st in him thy watchful eyes, in him thy loving heart." [John Donne]

 

 

In the noon and the afternoon of life we still throb at the recollection of days when happiness was not happy enough, but must be drugged with the relish of pain and fear; for he touched the secret of the matter, who said of love,--

 

throb : 욱신거리다, 지끈거리다 

recollection : 기억

drugged with : ~에 취한, ~에 중독된

relish : (큰) 즐거움[기쁨] 

 

 

"All other pleasures are not worth its pains";

 

and when the day was not long enough, but the night, too, must be consumed in keen recollections; when the head boiled all night on the pillow with the generous deed it resolved on; when the moonlight was a pleasing fever, and the stars were letters, and the flowers ciphers, and the air was coined into song; when all business seemed an impertinence, and all the men and women running to and fro in the streets, mere pictures.

 

keen : 날카로운, 예리한

resolve on : …를 하겠다고 결정[결심]하다. 

cipher : 암호

impertinence : 건방짐, 뻔뻔함, 주제넘게 굴기, 무례, 버릇없음

 

 

The passion rebuilds the world for the youth. It makes all things alive and significant. Nature grows conscious. Every bird on the boughs of the tree sings now to his heart and soul. The notes are almost articulate. The clouds have faces as he looks on them. The trees of the forest, the waving grass, and the peeping flowers have grown intelligent; and he almost fears to trust them with the secret which they seem to invite. Yet nature soothes and sympathizes. In the green solitude he finds a dearer home than with men.

 

bough : 가지

articulate : (생각느낌을) 잘[분명히] 표현하는 

peeping : 기웃기웃

 

 

"Fountain-heads and pathless groves,

Places which pale passion loves,

Moonlight walks, when all the fowls

Are safely housed, save bats and owls,

A midnight bell, a passing groan,--

These are the sounds we feed upon." [Fletcher]

 

fowl : 가금, 새

groan : 신음

 

 

Behold there in the wood the fine madman! He is a palace of sweet sounds and sights; he dilates; he is twice a man; he walks with arms akimbo; he soliloquizes; he accosts the grass and the trees; he feels the blood of the violet, the clover, and the lily in his veins; and he talks with the brook that wets his foot.

 

dilate : 확장[팽창]하다[시키다], 키우다[커지다] (↔contract) 

akimbo : 손을 허리에 대고 팔꿈치를 양 옆으로 펴고 

soliloquize : 혼잣말을 하다, [연극] 독백하다 

accost : (특히 위협적으로) 다가가 말을 걸다 

 

 

The heats that have opened his perceptions of natural beauty have made him love music and verse. It is a fact often observed, that men have written good verses under the inspiration of passion, who cannot write well under any other circumstances.

 

perception : 지각, 자각 / 통찰력

inspiration : 영감

 

 

The like force has the passion over all his nature. It expands the sentiment; it makes the clown gentle, and gives the coward heart. Into the most pitiful and abject it will infuse a heart and courage to defy the world, so only it have the countenance of the beloved object. In giving him to another, it still more gives him to himself. He is a new man, with new perceptions, new and keener purposes, and a religious solemnity of character and aims. He does not longer appertain to his family and society; _he_ is somewhat; he is a person; he is a soul.

 

sentiment : 정서, 감정

pitiful : 측은한, 가련한 (=pathetic) 

infuse : (특정한 특성을) 불어넣다[스미게 하다] 

defy : (권위·법률·규칙 등에) 반항[저항/거역]하다 / 믿기, 설명하기, 묘사하기 등이 (거의) 불가능하다 

countenance : 얼굴 (표정)

solemnity : 침통함, 근엄함, 엄숙함 

appertain to : ~에 속하다, 관계되다 / ~에 적절하다

 

 

And here let us examine a little nearer the nature of that influence which is thus potent over the human youth. Beauty, whose revelation to man we now celebrate, welcome as the sun wherever it pleases to shine, which pleases everybody with it and with themselves, seems sufficient to itself. The lover cannot paint his maiden to his fancy poor and solitary. Like a tree in flower, so much soft, budding, informing love-liness is society for itself, and she teaches his eye why Beauty was pictured with Loves and Graces attending her steps. Her existence makes the world rich. Though she extrudes all other persons from his attention as cheap and unworthy, she indemnifies him by carrying out her own being into somewhat impersonal, large, mundane, so that the maiden stands to him for a representative of all select things and virtues. For that reason, the lover never sees personal resemblances in his mistress to her kindred or to others. His friends find in her a likeness to her mother, or her sisters, or to persons not of her blood. The lover sees no resemblance except to summer evenings and diamond mornings, to rainbows and the song of birds.

 

potent : (사람의 심신에 미치는 영향이) 강한[강력한] 

maiden : 처녀, 아가씨

solitary : (다른 사람 없이) 혼자 하는 / 혼자 있기를 좋아하는, 혼자서 잘 지내는 

budding : 싹트기 시작하는 / 신예의

extrude : (무엇을 압력을 가하여) 밀어내다, 밀려 나가다 

indemnify : 배상[보상]을 약속하다 

impersonal : 인간미 없는, 비인격적인

mundane : 재미없는, 일상적인

resemblance : 닮음, 비슷함, 유사함

kindred : 일가친척

 

 

 

 

 

※ 출처 : Essays, First Series (1841) 중 5장 LOVE by Ralph Waldo Emerson

※ 랄프 왈도 에머슨 (Ralph Waldo Emerson) : 미국 사상가 겸 시인. 자연과의 접촉에서 고독과 희열을 발견하고 자연의 효용으로서 실리(實利)·미(美)·언어(言語)·훈련(訓練)의 4종을 제시했다. 정신을 물질보다도 중시하고 직관에 의하여 진리를 알고, 자아의 소리와 진리를 깨달으며, 논리적인 모순을 관대히 보는 신비적 이상주의였다. 주요 저서에는《자연론》,《대표적 위인론》등이 있다.

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