Winesburg, Ohio

Estos días leemos Winesburg, Ohio; una novela de Sherwood Anderson, que definitivamente vale la pena y lo que es mejor es gratis porque está en Gutenberg, en inglés.

En The Book of the Grotesque, uno de las historias de Winesburg, Ohio, un viejo escritor llama a un carpintero para que arregle su cama, generando una conversación sobre la guerra civil.

En vocabulario bob, beset, flutter

Para saber: story cycle

 

Winesburg, Ohio es un cuento en ciclo de 1919 del autor norteamericano Sherwood Anderson. El cuento está estructurado alrededor de la vida del protagonista George Willard, desde su niñez hasta su independencia y salida de Winesburg como adulto. Se desarrolla en el pueblo ficticio de Winesburg,  basado en los recuerdos de la niñez del autor de otro pueblo en Ohio: Clyde.

Principalmente escrito desde 1915 hasta 1916, con algunas pocas historias completadas cerca de su publicación, fue concebido como partes complementarias del todo, centrado alrededor de una comunidad única. El libro consiste en veintidós historias, con la primera, “The Book of the Grotesque”, como una introducción. Cada una de las historias comparte la lucha de un personaje específico para vencer la soledad y el aislamiento que parece rodear el pueblo. Debido al énfasis en las partes psicológicas de los personajes Winesburg, Ohio es considerada como uno de los primeros trabajos de la literatura modernista.

El libro está escrito desde el punto de vista del narrador omnisciente, ocasionalmente desviándose de la historia para dirigirse al lector o hacer tímidos comentarios. Aunque el título de cada historia denota a un personaje, hay un total de más de 100 personajes nombrados en el libro, algunos apareciendo solamente una vez. Mucha de la acción tiene lugar durante los años de adolescencia de George Willard, pero varios episodios vuelven varias generaciones atrás.

Winesburg, Ohio fue bien recibida por los críticos a pesar de algunas reservas sobre su moral. Aunque su reputación bajó en los ´30, ha crecido desde entonces y ahora es considerada uno de los retratos más influyentes de los pequeños pueblos pre-industriales en los Estados Unidos.

 

Winesburg, Ohio

Género

Algunos estudiosos han concluido que Winesburg, Ohio cumple los estándares de la novela convencional. Es típicamente colocada “…en el medio entre la novela propiamente dicha y una colección de cuentos”, conocidos como cuentos en ciclo (story cycle).

 

El ciclo consiste en 22 cuentos, uno de los cuales consiste de cuatro partes:

The Book of the Grotesque

Hands—concerning Wing Biddlebaum

Paper Pills—concerning Doctor Reefy

Mother—concerning Elizabeth Willard

The Philosopher—concerning Doctor Parcival

Nobody knows—concerning Louise Trunnion

Godliness

Parts I and II—concerning Jesse Bentley

Surrender (Part III)—concerning Louise Bentley

Terror (Part IV)—concerning David Hardy

A Man of Ideas—concerning Joe Welling

Adventure—concerning Alice Hindman

Respectability—concerning Wash Williams

The Thinker—concerning Seth Richmond

Tandy—concerning Tandy Hard

The Strength of God—concerning The Reverend Curtis Hartman

The Teacher—concerning Kate Swift

Loneliness—concerning Enoch Robinson

An Awakening—concerning Belle Carpenter

"Queer"—concerning Elmer Cowley

The Untold Lie—concerning Ray Pearson

Drink—concerning Tom Foster

Death—concerning Doctor Reefy and Elizabeth Willard

Sophistication—concerning Helen White

Departure—concerning George Willard

 

Los temas prominentes

La inhabilidad para comunicarse, la soledad y la aislación.

El escapar la aislación.

El crecimiento de George Willard.

 

Winesburg, Ohio, comienza así:

The book of the grotesque

The writer, an old man with a white mustache, had some difficulty in getting into bed. The windows of the house in which he lived were high and he wanted to look at the trees when he awoke in the morning. A carpenter came to fix the bed so that it would be on a level with the window.

Quite a fuss was made about the matter. The carpenter, who had been a soldier in the Civil War, came into the writer's room and sat down to talk of building a platform for the purpose of raising the bed. The writer had cigars lying about and the carpenter smoked.

For a time the two men talked of the raising of the bed and then they talked of other things. The soldier got on the subject of the war. The writer, in fact, led him to that subject. The carpenter had once been a prisoner in Andersonville prison and had lost a brother. The brother had died of starvation, and whenever the carpenter got upon that subject he cried. He, like the old writer, had a white mustache, and when he cried he puckered up his lips and the mustache bobbed up and down. The weeping old man with the cigar in his mouth was ludicrous. The plan the writer had for the raising of his bed was forgotten and later the carpenter did it in his own way and the writer, who was past sixty, had to help himself with a chair when he went to bed at night.

In his bed the writer rolled over on his side and lay quite still. For years he had been beset with notions concerning his heart. He was a hard smoker and his heart fluttered. The idea had got into his mind that he would some time die unexpectedly and always when he got into bed he thought of that. It did not alarm him. The effect in fact was quite a special thing and not easily explained. It made him more alive, there in bed, than at any other time. Perfectly still he lay and his body was old and not of much use any more, but something inside him was altogether young. He was like a pregnant woman, only that the thing inside him was not a baby but a youth. No, it wasn't a youth, it was a woman, young, and wearing a coat of mail like a knight. It is absurd, you see, to try to tell what was inside the old writer as he lay on his high bed and listened to the fluttering of his heart. The thing to get at is what the writer, or the young thing within the writer, was thinking about.

The old writer, like all of the people in the world, had got, during his long life, a great many notions in his head. He had once been quite handsome and a number of women had been in love with him. And then, of course, he had known people, many people, known them in a peculiarly intimate way that was different from the way in which you and I know people. At least that is what the writer thought and the thought pleased him. Why quarrel with an old man concerning his thoughts?

In the bed the writer had a dream that was not a dream. As he grew somewhat sleepy but was still conscious, figures began to appear before his eyes. He imagined the young indescribable thing within himself was driving a long procession of figures before his eyes…

 

Un viejo escritor llama a un carpintero para que nivele  su cama con la ventana. Pero resulta que el carpintero había estado en la guerra civil y el tema de los prisioneros y la muerte aparece, por lo que la razón de su ida se olvida.

El viejo escritor siente que tiene una molestia en su corazón, fuma demasiado y existe una mujer en su interior…  (Winesburg, Ohio, de Sherwood Anderson. Adaptación propia)

 

Vocabulario

Bobbed: se movía.

The little girl bobbed before the visitor.

Beset: trouble (someone or something) persistently.

The social problems that beset the UK.

Fluttered: move with a light irregular or trembling motion.

Flags of different countries fluttered in the breeze.

 

Para saber

Un cuento en ciclo (short story cycle) en una colección de cuentos en los cuales los hechos narrados están arreglados con el objetivo de crear una experiencia diferente cuando se lee como un todo o cuando se lee como partes individuales.

Los short story cycles son diferentes de las novelas porque las partes que harían los capítulos pueden ser considerados como cuentos, individualmente conteniendo un comienzo, una parte media y una conclusión.

 

Artículos relacionados

Un carpintero tiene que modificar una cama para que su dueño, un escritor, pueda ver el jardín desde su cama… El libro de lo grotesco

Hablaba con sus alumnos, se sentaba en las escaleras y acariciaba sus hombros y despeinaba sus cabezas. Hasta que un día uno de esos jóvenes se enamoró de él… Hands

… en la novela aparece el huracán Okeechobee, que realmente pasó por los Estados Unidos…  Their Eyes Were Watching God