페리스코프

Muteness and talkativeness appear to be opposite things, but they belong to the same 'alienating culture' that exasperates us. Living quite a number of months and years in this prison culture, I keep trying to place myself among the small group of people who seek another culture of opening up the silence and damping down the garrulity.

Distrust and falsity, illusion and exaggeration, in the form of stone and wind, cloak the lives in this prisonhouse. The bottom there is filled thick with grief. Grief which, like rubber shoes, will not rot away even buried underground and keep inflicting pains on us for numberless days.

I do not suppose that the new culture is located somewhere between silence and garrulity. I expect to find it somewhere on the road to the self realization, where we launder our regretful and pain-stricken minds and hang them out in the sunshine to dry. [Shenzi]

"In the wasteland where no grass grows and no flower blooms,

there is no way to perceive the coming of the spring. (胡地無花草 春來不似春)"

Li Bai(李白, 701-762) complained that the spring is not like a spring in uncivilized realms because there were no flowertrees to indicate it. My reason for failing to feel the spring here is a different one. As long as we do not see a spring that penetrates the troubled lives of our neighbors to comfort and encourage them, what April brings along will be merely an empty shell of a spring. [Shenzi]

Though Li Bai was widely known as "an angel in exile(謫仙)", he was sent on exile only once in his actual life, to a place in present Guizhou. And he did not even reach the "uncivilized realm" either. He was extremely slow in proceeding, and the pardon caught up with him while he was still on his way after more than a year since the departure. I am sorry about his failure to get to the destination. What would he have said when he saw lots and lots of flowers in the supposedly springless realm? [Orun]

Robert Silverberg, The Realm of Prester John 을 읽다가 동양학자 Gustav Oppert의 이름에 마주쳤을 때 문득 남연군묘 도굴을 시도한 Ernst Oppert 생각이 나서 검색해 보니 형제간이다. 또 하나의 형제 Julius도 당대의 저명한 동양학자였다.

1860년대 상하이에서 사업 하던 서양인 중에는 온갖 기기괴괴한 인물들이 다 있었고, 오페르트는 그 소행으로 보아 그중 천박하고 난폭한 부류일 것으로 인상이 박여 있었는데, 당대 유럽에서 손꼽히던 학자들과 형제간이라니 어리둥절하다. 그 시절 동아시아에 와서 일 저지르던 서양인들의 머릿속에 무엇이 들어 있었는지, 대충 생각해 온 것보다 흥미로운 것을 많이 찾을 수 있을 것 같다는 예감이 든다.