소리와 분노

“ It was Grandfather’s and when Father gave it to me he said I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire; it’s rather excruciating-ly apt that you will use it to gain the reducto absurdum of all human experience which can fit your individual needs no better than it fitted his or his father’s. ”

“ You can be oblivious to the sound for a long while, then in a second ticking it can create in the mind unbroken the long diminishing parade of time you didn’t hear. ”

“ A sparrow slanted across the sunlight, onto the window ledge, and cocked his head at me. His eye was round and bright. First he’d watch me with one eye, then flick! and it would be the other one, his throat pumping faster than any pulse. The hour began to strike. The sparrow quit swapping eyes and watched me steadily with the same one until the chimes ceased, as if he were listening too. Then he flicked off the ledge and was gone. ”

“ It stayed in the air, more felt than heard, for a long time. Like all the bells that ever rang still ringing in the long dying light-rays and Jesus and Saint Francis talking about his sister. Because if it were just to hell; if that were all of it. Finished. If things just finished themselves. Nobody else there but her and me. If we could just have done something so dreadful that they would have fled hell except us. I have committed incest I said Father it was I it was not Dalton Ames. ”

“ There were about a dozen watches in the window, a dozen different hours and each with the same assertive and contradictory assurance that mine had, without any hands at all. Contradicting one another. I could hear mine, ticking away inside my pocket, even though nobody could see it, even though it could tell nothing if anyone could. ”

“ They all talked at once, their voices insistent and contradictory and impatient, making of unreality a possibility, then a probability, then an incontrovertible fact, as people will when their desires become words. ”

“ …, they too partaking of that adult trait of being convinced of anything by an assumption of silent superiority. I suppose that people, using themselves and each other so much by words, are at least consistent in attributing wisdom to a still tongue, … ”

“ Some days in late August at home are like this, the air thin and eager like this, with something in it sad and nostalgic and familiar. Man the sum of his climatic experiences Father said. Man the sum of what have you. A problem in impure properties carried tediously to an unvarying nil: stalemate of dust and desire. ”

“ 나는 언제 그치지 언제 그치지 하며 침대에 누워 있곤 했다. 문틈으로 들어오는 외풍에서 물냄새가, 축축하고 한결같은 호흡 냄새가 났다. 어떤 때는 그 말을 되뇌다 인동덩굴 냄새가 쏟아지는 잠에 섞여들기도 해 그 모든 것은 밤과 불안을 상징하게 되었고, 잠들지도 깨지도 않은 상태로 누워 회색빛 어스름 속 긴 복도를 응시하면 모든 안정적인 것들이 허망하고 불합리해졌으며 내가 행한 모든 것이 나의 모든 느낌과 고통들 그 그림자들은 기묘하고 비뚤어진 형태를 띠고 스스로 긍정했어야 할 의미를 부인함으로써 그들 자체에 내재하는 일관성이 없이 조롱하였으되 나는 생각하기를 나는 존재했다 나는 존재히지 않았다 존재하지 않았다면 그것은 존재가 아니었다. ”

“ The day dawned bleak and chill, a moving wall of gray light out of the northeast which, instead of dissolving into moisture, seemed to disintegrate into minute and venomous particles, like dust that, when Dilsey opened the door of the cabin and emerged, needled laterally into her flesh, precipitating not so much a moisture as a substance partaking of the quality of thin, not quite congealed oil. ”

“ With his body he seemed to feed the voice that, succubus like, had fleshed its teeth in him. And the congregation seemed to watch with its own eyes while the voice consumed him, until he was nothing and they were nothing and there was not even a voice but instead their hearts were speaking to one another in chanting measures beyond the need for words, … ”