La hija de don Amberson, rico y poderoso, elige a su
candidato para casarse y se desatan varias opiniones de los lugareños. Del clásico ingles The Magnificent Ambersons,
de Booth Tarkington…
One citizen,
having thus discoursed to a visitor, came to a thoughtful pause, and then
added, "Does seem pretty much like squandering, yet when you see that dog
out walking with this Miss Isabel, he seems worth the money."
"What's she
look like?"
"Well,
sir," said the citizen, "she's not more than just about eighteen or
maybe nineteen years old, and I don't know as I know just how to put it—but
she's kind of a delightful lookin' young lady!"
Another citizen
said an eloquent thing about Miss Isabel Amberson's looks. This was Mrs. Henry
Franklin Foster, the foremost literary authority and intellectual leader of the
community—-for both the daily newspapers thus described Mrs. Foster when she
founded the Women's Tennyson Club; and her word upon art, letters, and the
drama was accepted more as law than as opinion. Naturally, when "Hazel Kirke" finally reached the
town, after its long triumph in larger places, many people waited to hear what
Mrs. Henry Franklin Foster thought of it before they felt warranted in
expressing any estimate of the play. In fact, some of them waited in the lobby
of the theatre, as they came out, and formed an inquiring group about her.
"I didn't
see the play," she informed them.
"What! Why,
we saw you, right in the middle of the fourth row!"
"Yes,"
she said, smiling, "but I was sitting just behind Isabelle Amberson. I
couldn't look at anything except her wavy brown hair and the wonderful back of
her neck."
Hazel Kirke, 1881 |
The ineligible
young men of the town (they were all ineligible) were unable to content
themselves with the view that had so charmed Mrs. Henry Franklin Foster: they
spent their time struggling to keep Miss Amberson's face turned toward them.
She turned it most often, observers said, toward two: one excelling in the
general struggle by his sparkle, and the other by that winning if not charming old
trait, persistence. The sparkling gentleman "led germans" with her,
and sent sonnets to her with his bouquets—sonnets lacking neither music nor
wit. He was generous, poor, well-dressed, and his amazing persuasiveness was
one reason why he was always in debt. No one doubted that he would be able to
persuade Isabel, but he unfortunately joined too merry a party one night, and,
during a moonlight serenade upon the lawn before the Amberson Mansion, was
easily identified from the windows as the person who stepped through the bass
viol and had to be assisted to a waiting carriage. One of Miss Amberson's
brothers was among the serenaders, and, when the party had dispersed, remained propped against the front door in a
state of helpless liveliness; the Major going down in a dressing-gown and
slippers to bring him in, and scolding mildly, while imperfectly concealing
strong impulses to laughter. Miss Amberson also laughed at this brother, the next
day, but for the suitor it was a different matter: she refused to see him when
he called to apologize. "You seem to care a great deal about bass
viols!" he wrote her. "I promise never to break another." She
made no response to the note, unless it was an answer, two weeks later, when
her engagement was announced. She took the persistent one, Wilbur Minafer, no
breaker of bass viols or of hearts, no serenader at all.
A few people,
who always foresaw everything, claimed that they were not surprised, because
though Wilbur Minafer "might not be an Apollo, as it were," he was
"a steady young business man, and a good church-goer," and Isabel
Amberson was "pretty sensible… (Párrafos de The Magnificent Ambersons,
de Booth Tarkington)
Vocabulario
Hazel
Kirke es una obra de teatro en cuatro actos escrita por el actor y
dramaturgo norteamericano Steele MacKaye.
Propped: apoyado
El autor
Booth
Tarkington ganó el Pulitzer por ficción dos veces, en 1919 y
1922, por sus novelas The Magnificent Ambersons y Alice Adams. En 1921 los libreros lo
ranquearon como el autor más significativo en una encuesta realizada por
Publishers´Weekly. También ganó el O. Henry Memorial Award en 1931 por su
cuento Cider of Normandy. Sus obras
aparecieron frecuentemente en listas de best sellers a través de su vida.
Además de los doctorados honorarios de Purdue y Princeton, Tarkington fue
premiado por la Columbia University, y muchas otras universidades.
De
la web
The Magnificent
Ambersons. Summary
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