Not for Children

THERE was no hope for him this time: it was the third stroke. Night after night I had passed the house (it was vacation time) and studied the lighted square of window: and night after night I had found it lighted in the same way, faintly and evenly. If he was dead, I thought, I would see the reflection of candles on the darkened blind for I knew that two candles must be set at the head of a corpse. He had often said to me: "I am not long for this world," and I had thought his words idle. Now I knew they were true. Every night as I gazed up at the window I said softly to myself the word paralysis. It had always sounded strangely in my ears, like the word gnomon in the Euclid and the word simony in the Catechism. But now it sounded to me like the name of some maleficent and sinful being. It filled me with fear, and yet I longed to be nearer to it and to look upon its deadly work.

Old Cotter was sitting at the fire, smoking, when I came downstairs to supper. While my aunt was serving my stirabout he said, as if returning to some former remark of his:

"No, I wouldn't say he was exactly... but there was something queer... there was something strange about him. I'll tell you my opinion...."

M. Swann

En esas noches en que nos sentábamos frente a la casa, bajo el árbol de castaño y alrededor de una mesa de hierro, y escuchábamos desde el otro extremo del jardín, no el ensordecedor sonido del timbre que anunciaba a algún miembro de la familia sino las dobles campanadas de algún visitante. Todos se preguntaban quién podría ser. Sin embargo sabían muy bien que sólo podía ser M. Swann. Mi tía, hablando en voz alta, para dar el ejemplo, en un tono que trataba de hacer sonar como natural, les diría a los demás que no susurraran pues no había nada más desagradable para un extraño que entrar en un sitio y ver que la gente estaba diciendo cosas acerca de su persona que no debía escuchar. Entonces mi abuela, siempre dispuesta a encontrar una excusa para dar una vuelta más en el jardín, sería enviada como exploradora, y al pasar sacaría los sostenes de algún rosal, para hacer que las rosas parecieran más naturales.

Y ahí nos quedábamos todos, esperando las palabras que saldrían de los labios de mi abuela cuando reportaba sobre el enemigo, como si hubiera habido una cierta incertidumbre entre un gran número de posibles invasores, y luego, poco después, mi abuelo decía: "Puedo oír la voz de Swann." Y, de hecho, uno podía reconocerlo por su voz, pues era difícil distinguir su rostro con su nariz arqueada y ojos verdes, bajo una frente alta con flecos de pelo rubio, casi rojo, vestido con el estilo Bressant, porque en el jardín se usaba tan poca luz como fuera posible a fin de no atraer a los mosquitos. Yo me deslizaba sin llamar la atención para decirles que llevaran los jarabes pues mi abuela pensaba que era mejor que las visitas no se enteraran que era algo fuera de lo común.

Mamá

… Pero después de la cena, por desgracia, estaba obligado a dejar a mamá, que se quedaba hablando con los otros, en el jardín si el tiempo estaba bien o en el pequeño salón donde todo el mundo se refugiaba cuando estaba húmedo. Todos estaban de acuerdo excepto mi abuela, quien sostenía que "es una lástima encerrarse en el campo", y solía mantener largas discusiones con mi padre sobre los días muy húmedos, porque me enviaba a mi cuarto con un libro en vez de dejarme afuera. "Esa no es la manera de hacerlo fuerte y activo," decía con tristeza, "especialmente este pequeño que necesita toda la fuerza y ​​el carácter que pueda conseguir." Mi padre se encogía de hombros y estudiaba el barómetro porque se interesaba por la meteorología, mientras mi madre, manteniéndose muy tranquila, lo miraba con tierno respeto, no queriendo penetrar en los misterios de la mente superior. Pero mi abuela, en cualquier tiempo, incluso cuando la lluvia caía a torrentes y Françoise se había precipitado en el interior con los preciosos sillones de mimbre para que no se mojaran, caminaba por el desierto jardín, empujando hacia atrás su cabello gris para que las cejas pudieran ser más libres para empaparse de las corrientes de aire que provenían del viento y la lluvia. Ella decía: "¡Por fin se puede respirar!" y caminaba por los empapados senderos, demasiado rectos para su gusto,  debido a la falta de cualquier sentimiento por la naturaleza en el nuevo jardinero, a quien mi padre había estado preguntando toda la mañana si el tiempo iba a mejorar, con sus pequeños pasos regulados por la embriaguez de la tormenta, la fuerza de la higiene, la estupidez de mi educación y de la simetría en los jardines, en lugar de la ansiedad por salvar su falda de color ciruela de las manchas de barro en las que desaparecería gradualmente a una profundidad que siempre proporcionaba preocupación a su sirvienta.

The Room

Una muy buena historia de Marcel Proust la que desarrolla aquí, Swann´s Way. Para leer en inglés y practicar la pronunciación…

Certainly I was now well awake; my body had turned about for the last time and the good angel of certainty had made all the surrounding objects stand still, had set me down under my bedclothes, in my bedroom, and had fixed, approximately in their right places in the uncertain light, my chest of drawers, my writing-table, my fireplace, the window overlooking the street, and both the doors. But it was no good my knowing that I was not in any of those houses of which, in the stupid moment of waking, if I had not caught sight exactly, I could still believe in their possible presence; for memory was now set in motion; as a rule I did not attempt to go to sleep again at once, but used to spend the greater part of the night recalling our life in the old days at Combray with my great-aunt, at Balbec, Paris, Doncières, Venice, and the rest; remembering again all the places and people that I had known, what I had actually seen of them, and what others had told me.

One State

Then would come up the memory of a fresh position; the wall slid away in another direction; I was in my room in Mme. de Saint-Loup's house in the country; good heavens, it must be ten o'clock, they will have finished dinner! I must have overslept myself, in the little nap which I always take when I come in from my walk with Mme. de Saint-Loup, before dressing for the evening. For many years have now elapsed since the Combray days, when, coming in from the longest and latest walks, I would still be in time to see the reflection of the sunset glowing in the panes of my bedroom window. It is a very different kind of existence at Tansonville now with Mme. de Saint-Loup, and a different kind of pleasure that I now derive from taking walks only in the evenings, from visiting by moonlight the roads on which I used to play, as a child, in the sunshine; while the bedroom, in which I shall presently fall asleep instead of dressing for dinner, from far away I can see it, as we return from our walk, with its lamp shining through the window, a solitary fire in the night.

These shifting and confused movements of memory never lasted for more than a few seconds; it often happened that, in my spell of uncertainty as to where I was, I did not distinguish the successive theories of which that uncertainty was composed any more than, when we watch a horse running, we isolate the successive positions of its body as they appear upon a bioscope. But I had seen first one and then another of the rooms in which I had slept during my life, and in the end I would revisit them all in the long course of my waking dream: rooms in winter, where on going to bed I would at once bury my head in a nest, built up out of the most diverse materials, the corner of my pillow, the top of my blankets, a piece of a shawl, the edge of my bed, and a

Sleeping

The narrator tells his experiences when going to bed and trying to sleep, the noises, the feelings and the awakenings while trying to sleep…

Sometimes, too, just as Eve was created from a rib of Adam, so a woman would come into existence while I was sleeping, conceived from some strain in the position of my limbs. Formed by the appetite that I was on the point of gratifying, she it was, I imagined, who offered me that gratification. My body, conscious that its own warmth was permeating hers, would strive to become one with her, and I would awake. The rest of humanity seemed very remote in comparison with this woman whose company I had left but a moment ago: my cheek was still warm with her kiss, my body bent beneath the weight of hers. If, as would sometimes happen, she had the appearance of some woman whom I had known in waking hours, I would abandon myself altogether to the sole quest of her, like people who set out on a journey to see with their own eyes some city that they have always longed to visit, and imagine that they can taste in reality what has charmed their fancy. And then, gradually, the memory of her would dissolve and vanish, until I had forgotten the maiden of my dream.

When a man is asleep, he has in a circle round him the chain of the hours, the sequence of the years, the order of the heavenly host. Instinctively, when he awakes, he looks to these, and in an instant reads off his own position on the earth's surface and the amount of time that has elapsed during his sleep; but this ordered procession is apt to grow confused, and to break its ranks.

Swann´s Way

For a long time I used to go to bed early. Sometimes, when I had put out my candle, my eyes would close so quickly that I had not even time to say "I'm going to sleep." And half an hour later the thought that it was time to go to sleep would awaken me; I would try to put away the book which, I imagined, was still in my hands, and to blow out the light; I had been thinking all the time, while I was asleep, of what I had just been reading, but my thoughts had run into a channel of their own, until I myself seemed actually to have become the subject of my book: a church, a quartet, the rivalry between François I and Charles V. This impression would persist for some moments after I was awake; it did not disturb my mind, but it lay like scales upon my eyes and prevented them from registering the fact that the candle was no longer burning. Then it would begin to seem unintelligible, as the thoughts of a former existence must be to a reincarnate spirit; the subject of my book would separate itself from me, leaving me free to choose whether I would form part of it or no; and at the same time my sight would return and I would be astonished to find myself in a state of darkness, pleasant and restful enough for the eyes, and even more, perhaps, for my mind, to which it appeared incomprehensible, without a cause, a matter dark indeed.

Mi Antonia, resumen

My Antonia, novela de Willa Cather, cuenta las historias de huérfanos, Jim y Antonia, que son criados por pioneros en Nebraska a fines del siglo 19; y como sus vidas son afectadas por esas primeras impresiones.

La historia es relatada por Jim que llega, a sus diez años, para vivir con sus abuelos.

Buscamos la palabra belatedly en vocabulario y aclaramos sobre Bohemia, la región de donde proviene Antonia.

 

Resumen

A Farm

This basement was divided into a dining-room at the right of the stairs and a kitchen at the left. Both rooms were plastered and whitewashed—the plaster laid directly upon the earth walls, as it used to be in dugouts. The floor was of hard cement. Up under the wooden ceiling there were little half-windows with white curtains, and pots of geraniums and wandering Jew in the deep sills. As I entered the kitchen, I sniffed a pleasant smell of gingerbread baking.

The stove was very large, with bright nickel trimmings, and behind it there was a long wooden bench against the wall, and a tin washtub, into which grandmother poured hot and cold water. When she brought the soap and towels, I told her that I was used to taking my bath without help. 'Can you do your ears, Jimmy? Are you sure? Well, now, I call you a right smart little boy.'

It was pleasant there in the kitchen. The sun shone into my bath-water through the west half-window, and a big Maltese cat came up and rubbed himself against the tub, watching me curiously. While I scrubbed, my grandmother busied herself in the dining-room until I called anxiously, 'Grandmother, I'm afraid the cakes are burning!' Then she came laughing, waving her apron before her as if she were frightened chickens.

She was a lean, tall woman, a little stooped, and she was apt to carry her head thrust forward in an attitude of attention, as if she were looking at something, or listening to something, far away. As I grew older, I came to believe that it was only because she was so often thinking of things that were far away. She was quick-footed and energetic in all her movements. Her voice was high and rather shrill, and she often spoke with an anxious inflection, for she was exceedingly desirous that everything should go with due order and decorum. Her laugh, too, was high, and perhaps a little strident, but there was a lively intelligence in it. She was then fifty-five years old, a strong woman, of unusual endurance.