Phantastes

En los párrafos siguientes de Phantastes un joven decide abrir un cajón que había estado abandonado por años para descubrir a un extraño ser que le dice:

“… el tamaño no es nada. Es simplemente cuestión de relación. Supongo que seis pies no es insignificante, aunque para otros te ves pequeño al lado de tu tío…”

Phantastes, de George MacDonald, se puede leer, y gratis, en este link de más abajo.

Más abajo investigamos un poco sobre el autor y encontramos una foto de MacDonald en 1.860.

MacDonald

Introducción

Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women es una novela de fantasía del autor escocés George MacDonald, publicada en Londres en 1858.

La historia se centra en Anodos quién es atraído a un mundo de fantasía donde trata de encontrar su ideal de belleza femenina.

Paragraphs

... I awoke one morning with the usual perplexity of mind which accompanies the return of consciousness. As I lay and looked through the eastern window of my room, a faint streak of peach-colour, dividing a cloud that just rose above the low swell of the horizon, announced the approach of the sun. As my thoughts, which a deep and apparently dreamless sleep had dissolved, began again to assume crystalline forms, the strange events of the foregoing night presented themselves anew to my wondering consciousness.

The day before had been my one-and-twentieth birthday. Among other ceremonies investing me with my legal rights, the keys of an old secretary, in which my father had kept his private papers, had been delivered up to me. As soon as I was left alone, I ordered lights in the chamber where the secretary stood, the first lights that had been there for many a year; for, since my father’s death, the room had been left undisturbed…

I approached the secretary; and having found the key that fitted the upper portion, I opened it with some difficulty, drew near it a heavy high-backed chair, and sat down before a multitude of little drawers and slides and pigeon-holes. But the door of a little cupboard in the centre especially attracted my interest, as if there lay the secret of this long-hidden world. Its key I found.

One of the rusty hinges cracked and broke as I opened the door… disclosed a chamber—empty, except that in one corner lay a little heap of withered rose-leaves, whose long-lived scent had long since departed; and, in another, a small packet of papers, tied with a bit of ribbon, whose colour had gone with the rose-scent.

Almost fearing to touch them, they witnessed so mutely to the law of oblivion, I leaned back in my chair, and regarded them for a moment; when suddenly there stood on the threshold of the little chamber, as though she had just emerged from its depth, a tiny woman-form, as perfect in shape as if she had been a small Greek statuette roused to life and motion. Her dress was of a kind that could never grow old-fashioned, because it was simply natural: a robe plaited in a band around the neck, and confined by a belt about the waist, descended to her feet. It was only afterwards, however, that I took notice of her dress, although my surprise was by no means of so overpowering a degree as such an apparition might naturally be expected to excite.

Seeing, however, as I suppose, some astonishment in my countenance, she came forward within a yard of me, and said, in a voice that strangely recalled a sensation of twilight, and reedy river banks, and a low wind, even in this deathly room:—

“Anodos, you never saw such a little creature before, did you?”

“No,” said I; “and indeed I hardly believe I do now.”

“Ah! that is always the way with you men; you believe nothing the first time; and it is foolish enough to let mere repetition convince you of what you consider in itself unbelievable. I am not going to argue with you, however, but to grant you a wish.”

Here I could not help interrupting her with the foolish speech, of which, however, I had no cause to repent—

“How can such a very little creature as you grant or refuse anything?”

“Is that all the philosophy you have gained in one-and-twenty years?” said she. “Form is much, but size is nothing. It is a mere matter of relation. I suppose your six-foot lordship does not feel altogether insignificant, though to others you do look small beside your old Uncle Ralph, who rises above you a great half-foot at least. But size is of so little consequence with old me, that I may as well accommodate myself to your foolish prejudices.”

So saying, she leapt from the desk upon the floor, where she stood a tall, gracious lady, with pale face and large blue eyes. Her dark hair flowed behind, wavy but uncurled, down to her waist, and against it her form stood clear in its robe of white.

“Now,” said she, “you will believe me.”

Overcome with the presence of a beauty which I could now perceive, and drawn towards her by an attraction irresistible as incomprehensible, I suppose I stretched out my arms towards her, for she drew back a step or two, and said—

“Foolish boy, if you could touch me, I should hurt you. Besides, I was two hundred and thirty-seven years old, last Midsummer eve; and a man must not fall in love with his grandmother, you know.”… (Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women, George MacDonald, chapter 1)

Para saber

George MacDonald, autor escocés, fue pionero en el campo de la literatura fantástica. Sus escritos han sido citados como una gran influencia por autores como W. H. Auden, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Walter de la Mare, E. Nesbit y Madeleine L'Engle.

Aún Mark Twain, que inicialmente no gustaba del autor, se hizo amigo de él. G. K. Chesterton citó The Princess and the Goblin como el libro que hizo una diferencia en su existencia.

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Fuentes

Great Expectations, Wikipedia

 

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