영어공부법: 원서 읽기 (C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed)

At the very least it gets in the idea of something older than yourself, something that knows more, something you can’t fathom.

-at the very least 뜻, 뉘앙스: 아무리 못해도. ‘적어도 이것만큼은’ 하는 뉘앙스.

-get in (the idea): understand or grasp the concept of being discussed.

-fathom: understand

 

It preserves mystery. Therefore room for hope. Therefore room for a dread or awe that needn’t be mere fear of mischief from a spiteful potentate. 

-potentate: (주로 부정적인 뉘앙스) 강한 억압자, 지배자

-dread or awe that needn’t be mere fear of mischief: 악의적 장난이 주는 단순한 두려움일 필요는 없는 두려움과 경외심. (악의적인 장난으로 인해생기는 두려움을 필요는 없는, 즉 그것을 넘어서는 두려움과 경외심.)

 

But the picture I was building up last night is simply the picture of man like S.C.—who used to sit next to me at dinner and tell me what he’d been doing to the cats that afternoon.

-하지만 내가 지난 밤에 만든 이미지(상)은 S.C. 같은 인물상이다. 저녁에 내 곁에 앉아서 그날 오후 자신이 고양이들에게 무슨 짓을 했는지 말해주곤 하는.

 

He would set traps and try to bait them.

-이 문장은 맥락상 If절이 생략된 가정법 구문이다. 

-앞 뒤 문맥에 따라, ‘만일 신이 S.C. 같은 존재라면’이라는 조건절이 생략되어 있고, would는 가정법 구문의 would로 이해하면 된다. 

 

Or could one seriously introduce the idea of a bad God, as it were by the back door, through a sort of extreme Calvinism?

-as it were 뜻: 일반적으로는 ‘이를테면,’ ‘말하자면’ 정도로 해석하면 된다. 

-as it were 해석해보면, 말하자면 뒷문을 통해서=부정적으로, 뒷구멍으로, 은밀하게, 일종의 극단적 칼뱅주의를 통해?

-‘by the back door’는 은밀하게, 부정적인 방식으로, 직접적이지 않은 방식으로, 많은 주의를 끌지 않고 뭔가를 하는 것을 뜻한다. 어렵게 생각하지 말고 우리도 ‘뒷구멍으로 가자’ 정도로 말할 때의 뉘앙스를 상상해 보면 될듯.

-by the back door 뜻: achieving something indirectly or subtly, often without attracting much attention or in a way that is not immediately obvious. It can also refer to achieving something in an unconventional or unintended manner.

 

You could say we are fallen and depraved.

-depraved: morally corrupt

 

The very fact that we think something good is presumptive evidence that it is really bad.

-presumption: 가정

 

[…]all the characteristics we regard as bad: unreasonableness, vanity, vindictiveness, injustice, cruelty.

-vindictiveness: a strong desire to get back at someone

 

This, for all practical (and speculative) purposes, sponges God off the slate. 

-sponge off: 이러한 목적은 신을 slate로부터 (스폰지가 물을 쫙쫙 빨아들이듯) 없애버린다. 특히 들러붙어 좋은 것만 쪽쪽 빨아먹듯이 없애버린다.

 

‘다르게 말해서’를 영어로 하면? 다음 예문을 참조하자.

Finally, if reality at its very root is so meaningless to us—or, putting it the other way round, if we are such total imbeciles—what is the point of trying to think either about God or about anything else?

-put it the other way round 뜻: 다르게 말하다

 

This knot comes undone when you try to pull it tight.

-이 줄(매듭)은 풀어진다, 당신이 꽉 조이려고 할 때

-'매듭 안 풀리게 묶는 법'은 영어로 'the best knot that won't come undone' 이라고도 표현할 수 있다. 

 

 

Do I hope that if feeling disguises itself as though I shall feel less? Aren’t all these notes the senseless writhings of a man who won’t accept the fact that there is nothing we can do with suffering except to suffer it?

-writhing: to make large twisting movements with the body.  

 

It gives life a permanently provisional feeling. 

-provisional: 임시의(temporary); 잠정적인

 

I yawn, I fidget, I smoke too much.

-fidget: 꼼지락거리다

 

The starboard engine has gone.

-starboard engine: 배나 항공기의 우현 엔진

 

I, the port engine, must chug along somehow till we make harbour.

-chug: 엔진 따위가 통통거리는 소리를 내다. 

-port engine: 좌현 엔진

 

 

A lee shore, more likely, a black night, a deafening gale, breakers ahead - and any lights shown from the land probably being waved by wreckers. Such was H.'s landfall. Such was my mother's. I say their landfalls; not their arrivals.

-Lee shore: A lee shore, sometimes also called a leeward, is a nautical term to describe a stretch of shoreline that is to the lee side of a vessel—meaning the wind is blowing towards land. Its opposite, the shore on the windward side of the vessel, is called the weather or windward shore.

-Gale: a very strong wind

-Landfall: destination

-이 구문을 다시 보자. Such was H.'s landfall. Such was my mother's. I say their landfalls; not their arrivals. 

-in this context, "landfall"은 은유적으로 중요한 사건, 도착한 사건‘을 의미하기 위해 쓰였고, 그런 의미에서 단순히 도착한 지점(도착지, arrivals)과 다르다. 

 

 

Like in those dreams where noth­ ing terrible occurs - nothing that would sound even remarkable if you told it at breakfast-time - but the atmosphere, the taste, of the whole thing is deadly. So with this.

-so with this: 이게 그렇다. 일종의 transition phrase. similarly; in the case of this situation; in the same way as described earlier.

 

I see the rowan berries reddening and don't know for a moment why they, of all things, should be depressing.

-of all things: 하필이면, 모든 것들 중에서도 왜

-depressing: 여기서는 ‘우울하게’ 보이느냐는 이거다. ‘음울하게’ 보이느냐 이거다. 그것들이 왜, 하필, 음울해 보여야 하냐(should의 뉘앙스)는 거다. 

 

I hear a clock strike and some quality it always had before has gone out of the sound.

-and 뒤의 문장: some quality (it always had before) has gone. 이것이 이전에는 항상 가지고 있었던 어떤 특징이 그 소리로부터 사라져버렸다. 

 

무감각함, 무미건조함을 영어로 표현하면? 아래 예문을 참조하자.

-Just this apathy, this dead flatness?

-apathy가 무감각한 상태를 말한다면, dead flatness를 끔찍하게 건조한 상태, 무미건조한 상태로 이해할 수 있다. 

 

Will there come a time when I no longer ask why the world is like a mean street, because I shall take the squalor as normal ? Does grief finally subside into boredom tinged by faint nausea?

-squalor: filthiness; degradation

 

I've got nothing that I hadn't bargained for.

-아무것도 없다, 내가 계산하지 않은 것은. = 모든 것을 다 계산해봤다. 

 

The case is too plain.

-이 경우(the case)는 너무 단순하다. 

 

If my house has collapsed at one blow, that is because it was a house of cards. The faith which ‘took these things into account’ was not faith but imagination.

-‘모든 것을 계산한 믿음‘은 믿음이 아니라 상상이다.

 

It has been an imaginary faith playing with innocuous counters labelled 'Illness,' 'Pain,' 'Death,' and 'Lone­liness.' I thought I trusted the rope until it mattered to me whether it would bear me. Now it matters, and I find I didn't.

-innocuous: harmless

-until it[가주어] mattered to me whether it[the rope] would bear me: 이것[the rope]이 나를 견뎌줄 지 아닐지가 나에게 중요해질 때까지는. it가주어 whether진주어 구문.

-now it[the rope] matters, and I find I didn’t (trust the rope)

 

Bridge-players tell me that there must be some money on the game ‘or else people won't take it seriously.’ Apparently it's like that. Your bid-for God or no God, for a good God or the Cosmic Sadist, for eternal life or nonentity-will not be serious if nothing much is staked on it. 

-nonentity: 아무것도 아닌 것; 가끔 nobody의 의미로 쓰이기도 하는 듯.

-if nothing much is staked on it: 그만한 것이 아무것도 그것에(bid) 걸려 있지 않다면

-브릿지 게임자들은 게임에 돈을 걸어야만 하지, ’그렇지 않은 사람들은 게임을 진지하게 하지 않는다‘고 말한다. 정말 그와 같다. 신이 있다고 걸든, 없다고 걸든, 신은 선한 쪽에 걸든, 신은 우주의 사디스트라고 걸든, 영생에 걸든, 아무것도 없는 쪽에 걸든, 걸린 것이 아무것도 없으면 진지할 것이 없다. 

 

And you will never discover how serious it was until the stakes are raised horribly high, until you find that you are playing not for counters or for sixpences but for every penny you have in the world. Nothing less will shake a man or at any rate a man like me-out of his merely verbal thinking and his merely notional beliefs. He has to be knocked silly before he comes to his senses. Only torture will bring out the truth. Only under torture does he discover it himself.

-nothing less will shake a man or (at any rate) a man like me out of his merely verbal thinking and his merely notional beliefs: (그보다덜한) 어떤 것도 사람을, 적어도 나같은 사람을 말로(만) 하는 생각, 그저 개념적인 믿음으로부터 흔들어댈 수 없다. 

-he has to be knocked silly 그는 한 대 맞아 silly, 멍청해져야 한다. before he comes to his senses. 그가 정신을 차리기 전에. (한 대 맞고 멍해져야 정신 차릴 수 있다)

-Only under torture does he discover it[the truth] himself = he discovers it himself only under torture.