Rosinante
to the Road Again, de 1922, muestra las aventuras de dos
caminantes en viaje de Madrid a Toledo
en los años posteriores a los de la primera
guerra mundial. Aquí John Dos Passos
construye de sus propias aventuras en el
paisaje español.
En vocabulario encontramos dais.
Nuestras vidas son los ríos
Que van a dar en la mar,
Que es el morir...
Paragraphs
Telemachus had wandered so far in search of his
father he had quite forgotten what he was looking for. He sat on a yellow plush
bench in the café El Oro del Rhin, Plaza Santa Ana, Madrid, swabbing up with a
bit of bread the last smudges of brown sauce off a plate of which the edges
were piled with the dismembered skeleton of a pigeon. Opposite his plate was a
similar plate his companion had already polished. Telemachus put the last piece
of bread into his mouth, drank down a glass of beer at one spasmodic gulp,
sighed, leaned across the table and said:
"I wonder why I'm here."
"Why anywhere else than here?" said
Lyaeus, a young man with hollow cheeks and slow-moving hands, about whose mouth
a faint pained smile was continually hovering, and he too drank down his beer.
At the end of a perspective of white marble tables,
faces thrust forward over yellow plush cushions under twining veils of tobacco
smoke, four German women on a little dais were playing Tannhauser. Smells of
beer, sawdust, shrimps, roast pigeon.
"Do you know Jorge Manrique? That's one reason,
Tel," the other man continued slowly. With one hand he gestured to the
waiter for more beer, the other he waved across his face as if to brush away
the music; then he recited, pronouncing the words haltingly:
'Recuerde el alma dormida,
Avive el seso y despierte
Contemplando
Cómo se pasa la vida,
Cómo se viene la muerte
Tan callando:
Cuán presto se va el placer,
Cómo después de acordado
Da dolor,
Cómo a nuestro parecer
Cualquier tiempo pasado
Fué mejor.'
"It's always death," said Telemachus,
"but we must go on."
It had been raining. Lights rippled red and orange
and yellow and green on the clean paving-stones. A cold wind off the Sierra
shrilled through clattering streets. As they walked, the other man was telling
how this Castilian nobleman, courtier, man-at-arms, had shut himself up when
his father, the Master of Santiago, died and had written this poem, created
this tremendous rhythm of death sweeping like a wind over the world. He had
never written anything else. They thought of him in the court of his great
dust-colored mansion at Ocaña, where the broad eaves were full of a cooing of
pigeons and the wide halls had dark rafters painted with arabesques in
vermilion, in a suit of black velvet, writing at a table under a lemon tree.
Down the sun-scarred street, in the cathedral that was building in those days,
full of a smell of scaffolding and stone dust, there must have stood a
tremendous catafalque where lay with his arms around him the Master of
Santiago; in the carved seats of the choirs the stout canons intoned an endless
growling litany; at the sacristy door, the flare of the candles flashing
occasionally on the jewels of his mitre, the bishop fingered his crosier
restlessly, asking his favorite choir-boy from time to time why Don Jorge had
not arrived. And messengers must have come running to Don Jorge, telling him
the service was on the point of beginning, and he must have waved them away
with a grave gesture of a long white hand, while in his mind the distant sound
of chanting, the jingle of the silver bit of his roan horse stamping nervously
where he was tied to a twined Moorish column, memories of cavalcades filing
with braying of trumpets and flutter of crimson damask into conquered towns, of
court ladies dancing, and the noise of pigeons in the eaves, drew together like
strings plucked in succession on a guitar into a great wave of rhythm in which
his life was sucked away into this one poem in praise of death.
Nuestras vidas son los ríos
Que van a dar en la mar,
Que es el morir...
Telemachus was saying the words over softly to
himself as they went into the theatre. The orchestra was playing a Sevillana;
as they found their seats they caught glimpses beyond people's heads and
shoulders of a huge woman with a comb that pushed the tip of her mantilla a
foot and a half above her head, dancing with ponderous dignity. Her dress was
pink flounced with lace; under it the bulge of breasts and belly and three
chins quaked with every thump of her tiny heels on the stage. As they sat down
she retreated bowing like a full-rigged ship in a squall. The curtain fell, the
theatre became very still; next was Pastora… (Rosinante
to the Road Again, by John
Dos Passos)
Vocabulario
A dais or daïs (/ˈdeɪ.əs/ or /ˈdeɪs/, American
English also /ˈdaɪ.əs/) is a raised platform at the front of a room or hall,
usually for one or more speakers or honored guests.
Historically, the dais
was a part of the floor at the end of a medieval hall, raised a step above the
rest of the room.
At military parades, the dais is
the raised, sometimes covered, platform from where the troops are reviewed,
addresses are made, and salutes are taken. It can also have stairs and a
throne.
Victory Parade, 1946 |
Artículos relacionados
Las calles están vacías. La gente se amontona en los
subtes o sube a los buses o taxis. Van a alojamientos y… U.S.A.,
la novela de John Dos Passos
… the procession plunged into one of the gruesome
horrible doorways. They crawled up dark stairways and along cold, gloomy… El
Hogar de Maggi
… muchos críticos comentaron sobre el parecido entre
los gestos de actuación de Dean y los de Marlon Brando… Al
Este del Paraíso
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario
Deja aquí tus mensajes, comentarios o críticas. Serán bienvenidos