20th century British history

65. Fired up by dread

A sense of dread
Apr 23rd 2009 From The Economist print edition

The Morbid Age: Britain Between the Wars.
By Richard Orvey. Allen Lane522 pages￡25

The period between the two world wars was a time of anxiety and foreboding. Much like our own ageonly more so

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A FEW weeks ago, the British government's chief scientific adviser, John Beddington, made a bloodcurdling speech about the horrors lying in wait for us. By 2030, he said, the world will be facing a perfect storm of food, energy and water shortages caused by population growth and exacerbated by climate change. James Lovelock, the creator of the Gaia theory, receives extensive, largely uncritical, coverage when he predicts that global warming will have wiped out 80% of humankind by the end of the century. In the meantime, we are living through what many people believe (and some hope) to be the final collapse of capitalism, while attempting with only limited success to fight a 'global war on terror' against an enemy that threatens to destroy 'our way of life'.
There is nothing new in society being gripped by anxiety about the present and pessimism about the future. In his latest book, Richard Overy, a distinguished British historian of the second world war, has turned his attention to the period between the wars when, he argues, the presentiment of impending disaster was even more deeply felt (and perhaps with better reason) than it is today. Indeed, Mr Overy sets out to show that it was a uniquely gloomy and fearful era, a morbid age that saw the future of civilisation in terms of disease, decay and death.

A. 어휘
dread 공포, 불안. morbid 陰鬱(음울)한, 병적인. period 기간. anxiety 불안, 걱정.
foreboding 前兆(전조), 예언, 예감. adviser 고문, 상담역.
bloodcurdling 등골이 오싹한, 간담이 서늘한. horror 공포.
lying in wait for 숨어서 기다리고 있는. cf. wait 潛伏(잠복). by ...까지는.
exacerbate 한층 악화시키다. climate change 기후변화.
Gaia theory 지구를 환경과 생물로 구성된 하나의 유기체, 즉 스스로 조절하는 하나의 생명체로 간주하는 이론으로 1978년 영국의 과학자 James Lovelock이 주장하였다.
cf. Gaia=Gaea (그리스 신화) 大地(대지)의 여신. extensive 광범위한.
uncritical 무비판의. coverage 신문보도. predict 예언하다.
wipe out 一掃(일소)하다, 파괴하다. in the meantime 그 사이에, 그 중간에.
collapse 崩壞(붕괴). grip 단단히 쥐다, 세게 붙들다, 마음을 사로잡다
pessimism 비관주의. distinguished 저명한. historian 역사학자.
cf. the wars 1차 세계대전과 2차 세계대전. presentiment 예감, 肉感(육감).
impending 臨迫(임박)한. disaster 災殃(재앙), 慘事(참사). uniquely 유례 없이.
gloomy 암흑의. in terms of ...의 견지에서. decay 衰退(쇠퇴).

B. 구문
- There is nothing new in society . . . pessimism about the future.
cf. nothing new in society being gripped →nothing new in which society is gripped. 동명사 구문. society는 being gripped 의 의미상 주어.
[현재에 대한 불안과 미래에 대한 비관으로 사회가 사로잡히는 것은 전혀 새로운 현상은 아니다.]

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The author concentrates on Britain. This is partly because it saw itself (and was seen by others) as the most powerful expression of modern Western civilisation and partly because it was a liberal, open society in which ideas flowed freely and reached an ever-larger audience of concerned and educated citizens. Although Britain was relatively fortunate compared with other developed countriesits economy suffered less during the Great Depression and it escaped the intense social upheaval, political extremism and civil war that blighted lives elsewhere in Europethe sense of doom was as strong there as anywhere. Nor did Britons think of themselves as being in any way isolated from the many violent intellectual currents of the time.
If the cataclysm of the first world war had destroyed any belief in the immutability of a civilisation based on liberal, progressive British values, the origins of the morbid age can also be found in developments in the natural and social sciences that occurred well before 1914. Marx had foretold that capitalism would eventually be destroyed by its own contradictions. Darwin's theories of natural selection and genetic inheritance had spawned fears about racial decline. Freud and psychoanalysis had exposed unconscious, primitive impulses lurking deep within all of us. Similarly, advances in chemistry, physics and mechanical engineering had produced weapons that made possible slaughter on a scale never before experienced.

A. 어휘
audience 청중. concerned 사회문제에 관심이 있는. relatively 상대적으로.
suffer 고통받다. the Great Depression 1930년대의 세계 경제대공황.
escape 탈출하다. upheaval 동란, 격동. extremism 극단주의. civil war 內戰(내전).
blight 시들다, 말라죽다. doom 파멸, 최후(죽음), 운명, 멸망.
isolate 격리시키다, 고립하다. current 思潮(사조), 사상의 흐름. the time 그 시대.
cataclysm 격변, 대변동. immutability 불변성. foretell 예언하다.
capitalism 자본주의. eventually 결국에는. contradiction 矛盾(모순).
natural selection 자연선택(도태). genetic 유전의.
inheritance 물려받는 성질, 유전, 상속. spawn ...을 많이 낳다, 알을 낳다.
racial decline 종족(인류)의 쇠망. psychoanalysis 精神分析(정신분석).
expose 노출시키다. unconscious 무의식적. primitive 원시적. impulse 충동.
lurk 잠복하다. similarly 마찬가지로, 비슷하게. physics 물리학.
mechanical engineering 기계공학. slaughter 학살.

B. 구문
- This is partly because . . . concerned and educated citizens.
[이것은 영국은 자신을 서수문명의 가장 강력한 모습(표현)으로 간주하였기(다른 나라도 영국을 그렇게 보았다) 때문이고 또 영국은 사상이 자유롭게 흐르고 사회에 관심이 있고 교육을 받은 보다 큰 청중(사람들)들에게 사상이 자유롭게 도달하고 있는 자유롭고 개방적인 사회였기 때문이다.]