Donde
se comenta la primera experiencia en el mar de Jim, su accidente y el hospital
donde se recupera. Del original inglés Lord Jim, de Joseph Conrad
After two years
of training he went to sea, and entering the regions so well known to his
imagination, found them strangely barren
of adventure. He made many voyages. He knew the magic monotony of existence
between sky and water: he had to bear the criticism of men, the exactions of the sea, and the prosaic severity of the daily task that
gives bread—but whose only reward is in the perfect love of the work. This
reward eluded him. Yet he could not go back, because there is nothing more enticing, disenchanting, and enslaving
than the life at sea. Besides, his prospects were good. He was gentlemanly,
steady, tractable, with a thorough knowledge of his duties; and in time, when
yet very young, he became chief mate
of a fine ship, without ever having been tested by those events of the sea that
show in the light of day the inner worth of a man, the edge of his temper, and
the fibre of his stuff; that reveal the quality of his resistance and the
secret truth of his pretences, not only to others but also to himself.
Only once in all
that time he had again a glimpse of the earnestness
in the anger of the sea. That truth is not so often made apparent as people
might think. There are many shades in the danger of adventures and gales, and
it is only now and then that there appears on the face of facts a sinister
violence of intention—that indefinable something which forces it upon the mind
and the heart of a man, that this complication of accidents or these elemental
furies are coming at him with a purpose of malice, with a strength beyond
control, with an unbridled cruelty that means to tear out of him his hope and
his fear, the pain of his fatigue and his longing for rest: which means to
smash, to destroy, to annihilate all he has seen, known, loved, enjoyed, or
hated; all that is priceless and necessary—the sunshine, the memories, the
future; which means to sweep the whole precious world utterly away from his
sight by the simple and appalling act of taking his life.
Jim, disabled by
a falling spar at the beginning of a week of which his Scottish captain used to
say afterwards, 'Man! it's a pairfect meeracle to me how she lived through it!'
spent many days stretched on his back, dazed,
battered, hopeless, and tormented as
if at the bottom of an abyss of unrest. He did not care what the end would be,
and in his lucid moments overvalued his indifference. The danger, when not
seen, has the imperfect vagueness of human thought. The fear grows shadowy; and
Imagination, the enemy of men, the father of all terrors, unstimulated, sinks
to rest in the dullness of exhausted emotion. Jim saw nothing but the disorder
of his tossed cabin. He lay there battened down in the midst of a small
devastation, and felt secretly glad he had not to go on deck. But now and again
an uncontrollable rush of anguish would grip him bodily, make him gasp and writhe under the blankets, and then the
unintelligent brutality of an existence liable to the agony of such sensations
filled him with a despairing desire to escape at any cost. Then fine weather
returned, and he thought no more about It.
His lameness,
however, persisted, and when the ship arrived at an Eastern port he had to go
to the hospital. His recovery was slow, and he was left behind.
There were only
two other patients in the white men's ward: the purser of a gunboat, who had broken his leg falling
down a hatchway; and a kind of railway contractor from a neighbouring province,
afflicted by some mysterious tropical disease, who held the doctor for an ass,
and indulged in secret debaucheries
of patent medicine which his Tamil servant used to smuggle in with unwearied devotion. They told each
other the story of their lives, played cards a little, or, yawning and in
pyjamas, lounged through the day in
easy-chairs without saying a word. The hospital stood on a hill, and a gentle
breeze entering through the windows, always flung wide open, brought into the
bare room the softness of the sky, the languor of the earth, the bewitching
breath of the Eastern waters. There were perfumes in it, suggestions of
infinite repose, the gift of endless dreams. Jim looked every day over the
thickets of gardens, beyond the roofs of the town, over the fronds of palms
growing on the shore, at that roadstead
which is a thoroughfare to the
East,—at the roadstead dotted by garlanded islets, lighted by festal sunshine,
its ships like toys, its brilliant activity resembling a holiday pageant, with
the eternal serenity of the Eastern sky overhead and the smiling peace of the
Eastern seas possessing the space as far as the horizon.
Sintesis
Jim empezó su vida en el mar. Su trabajo lo sentía
rutinario pero al mismo tiempo era una excelente oportunidad para él pues conocía
su oficio. Fue elegido como chief mate de un barco. Luego tuvo la desgracia de
accidentarse y fue confinado a su cabina donde permaneció reflexionando en
forma pesimista sobre su futuro. Al llegar a puerto fue dejado en un hospital.
Allí estaban internados otros dos blancos que pasaban sus dias conversando,
especulando sobre el futuro o hablando sobre sus camaradas.
Vocabulario
Barren - Exactions
– Prosaic – Enticing – Earnestness – Dazed – Battered – Tossed – Battened – Writhe
- Chief mate – Gunboat – Debaucheries – Unwearied – Lounged – Roadstead – Thoroughfare
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