영어권 최고의 작가들이 뽑은 최고의 문학작품 리스트를 다룬 책이 영국에서는 다음주에 출간된다고 한다. 작가들에 대한 이 설문조사에서 최고 중의 '최고 작품'으로 선정된 건 톨스토이의 <안나 카레니나>이다(그래서 이 페이퍼는 '러시아 이야기'로 분류해놓는다). 사실 영어권 작가들의 톨스토이에 대한 선호와 경탄은 20세기 내내 지속돼 온 것이기 때문에 특별히 놀라운 결과는 아니다. 이미 비평가 F. R. 리비스가 자신의 비평집 제목을 <안나 카레니나와 기타 에세이들>(1967)이라고 붙였을 때도 징후적으로 드러난 게 아닌가 싶다.
어쨌거나 강의시간에 자주 다루는 작품들이 상위권에 랭크돼 있어서 반갑다. <롤리타>가 4위, 체홉의 단편집이 9위이고, 도스토예프스키의 <죄와 벌>은 의외로 좀 처져서 17위이다. 흥미로운 건 독어권 작품이 탑10은 물론, 20권 안에 한 작품도 포함돼 있지 않다는 것. 20위까지를 보면 과반수를 차지하고 있는 영문학에 이어서 러시아문학 5, 프랑스문학 2, 스페인/남미문학 2, 그리스문학 1의 순이다. 영문학 작품 가운데는 동시대 작품이 단 한편도 포함돼 있지 않아서 특이한데, 작가들의 안목이 상당히 보수적이라는 걸 보여주는 게 아닌가 싶다. 한국일보의 관련기사와 함께 '더 타임즈'의 원기사를 옮겨놓는다. 우리에게도 소개된 몇몇 작가들의 탑10 리스트도 붙여놓았다.
출판사 W W 노튼이 노먼 메일러, 피터 캐리, 스티븐 킹, 톰 울프 등 미국, 영국, 호주의 유명 작가 125명에게 가장 좋아하는 최고의 문학작품 10권을 물은 결과 이 같은 결과가 나왔다고 영국 일간 더 타임스가 3월1일 발매되는 신간 <톱 텐(The top 10)>을 인용해 23일 보도했다.
영어권 소설 중에는 마크 트웨인의 <허클베리 핀의 모험>이 5위에 올라 작가들에게 가장 인기 있는 영어소설의 영예를 차지했다. 여성 작가로는 <미들 마치>의 작가 조지 엘리엇이 10에 올라 톱10에 턱걸이했다.
2. 구스타프 플로베르 <마담 보바리>
5. 마크 트웨인 <허클베리 핀의 모험>
6. 셰익스피어 <햄릿>
7. 스콧 F 피츠제럴드 <위대한 개츠비>
8. 마르셀 푸르스트 <잃어버린 시간을 찾아서>
10. 조지 엘리엇 <미들마치>
11. 세르반테스 <돈 키호테>
12. 허먼 멜빌 <백경>
13. 찰스 디킨스 <위대한 유산>
14. 제임스 조이스 <율리시즈>
15. 호머 <오디세이>
16. 제임스 조이스 <더블린 사람들>
18. 셰익스피어 <리어왕>
19. 제인 오스틴 <엠마>
20. 가브리엘 마르케스 <백년 동안의 고독>
자료 : 더 타임스(07. 02. 23)
Dalya Alberge, Arts Correspondent
Have you ever wondered what books your favourite author would choose as their favourites? Well, here is your chance to find out. Leading writers from Britain, America and Australia have been asked to list their top ten works of literature, and the results will be published in a book next month.
The top-rated work was Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. His other great epic, War and Peace, came third. Two other Russians also made the top ten. Vladimir Nabokov’s infamous novel Lolita came fourth and the stories of Anton Chekov ninth.
Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary came second. Shakespeare was the highest rated British author, coming sixth with Hamlet. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain was voted the greatest American novel. The only woman to make the top ten was George Eliot with Middlemarch.
The 125 authors selected 544 titles. Contemporary authors were conspicuous by their absence. Ian McEwan’s Atonement, now being made into a film starring Keira Knightley, had only one nomination, as did Martin Amis’s London Fields. Even Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie, which won the “Booker of Bookers”, gained only one nomination.
Peter Carey, the Australian author who won the Booker Prize twice — for Oscar and Lucinda and True History of the Kelly Gang — picked Madame Bovary as his favourite novel. Margaret Drabble, author of 17 novels, was the only author to name Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. Thomas Keneally, who won the Booker for Schindler’s Ark, his historical novel about the Holocaust, picked Brontë’s Wuthering Heights.
The horror writer Stephen King chose as his favourite book The Golden Argosy, an anthology of 55 short stories from authors including Hemingway and Fitzgerald, first published in 1947 and reissued in 1955, which he bought in a sale for $2.25. He tells the editors of The Top Ten: “At that time I only had $4 and spending over half of it on one book was a hard decision. I’ve never regretted it. [It] taught me more about good writing than all the classes I’ve ever taken.” Independent People, a chronicle of endurance and survival by the Icelandic Nobel laureate Haldór Laxness, appeared on 19 lists.
J. Peder Zane, editor of The Top Ten, said: “We live in a Golden Age. Never before have so many books been within such easy reach. But when anything is possible, choice becomes torture. What to pick? Where to start?” The premise of the book was simple, he said: “Who knows more about great books than great writers?”
Sven Birkerts, a lecturer at Harvard University and one of the book’s contributors, said: “One thing that stands out so clearly in the list of top choices is the outsized vividness of the characters. . . They are our representatives in the world of life imagined — Prince Andrei and Natasha, Pierre, Anna and Vronsky, Levin and Kitty, Tom and Huck, Emma, Gatsby and Daisy, Hamlet, Ophelia, Humbert Humbert and Lolita, Dorothea Brooke and Casaubon. Even to name them is to recall their compact human resonance. To read their lives is to be forced to reconsider our own.”
He said that he was surprised that classics such as Joyce’s Ulyssesdid not make the overall top ten. “There is no disputing tastes,” he said. “But there is also no disputing that collective preferences exist. The collective preference reflected in the list of greats is clearly for memorable character-driven dramas of love and death delineated in sensuous nuanced prose.” The Top Ten is published by W W Norton on March 1, price £9.99.
Norman Mailer
1 Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy
2 War and Peace Leo Tolstoy
3 Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoevsky
4 The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky
5 Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen
6 U.S.A. (trilogy) John Dos Passos
7 Moby-Dick Herman Melville
8 The Red and the Black Stendhal
9 Buddenbrooks Thomas Mann
10 Labyrinths Jorge Luis Borges
Stephen King
1 The Golden Argosy edited by Van H. Cartmell and Charles Grayson
2 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain
3 The Satanic Verses Salman Rushdie
4 McTeague Frank Norris
5 Lord of the Flies William Golding
6 Bleak House Charles Dickens
7 1984 George Orwell
8 The Raj Quartet Paul Scott
9 Light in August William Faulkner
10 Blood Meridian Cormac McCarthy
Margaret Drabble
1 Antony and Cleopatra William Shakespeare
2 Emma Jane Austen
3 Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert
4 The Three Sisters Anton Chekhov
5 The Aeneid Virgil
6 The Divine Comedy Dante Alighieri
7 Germinal Émile Zola
8 The Golden Notebook Doris Lessing
9 To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf
10 The Old Wives’ Tale Arnold Bennett
Thomas Keneally
1 Wuthering Heights Emily Brontë
2 Treasure Island Robert Louis Stevenson
3 The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne
4 Great Expectations Charles Dickens
5 War and Peace Leo Tolstoy
6 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce
7 Mrs Dalloway Virginia Woolf
8 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald
9 Voss Patrick White
10 The Tin Drum Gönter Grass
The Top Twenty
1 Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy
2 Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert
3 War and Peace Leo Tolstoy
4 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov
5 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain
6 Hamlet William Shakespeare
7 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald
8 In Search of Lost Time Marcel Proust
9 Stories of Anton Chekhov Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
10 Middlemarch George Eliot
11 Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes
12 Moby-Dick Herman Melville
13 Great Expectations Charles Dickens
14 Ulysses James Joyce
15 The Odyssey Homer
16 Dubliners James Joyce
17 Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoevsky
18 King Lear William Shakespeare
19 Emma Jane Austen
20 One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel GarcÍa Márquez
07. 02. 25.