Bartleby

El Secretario

Scribener resulta ser la persona que copia un documento, realiza tareas administrativas en una oficina, lleva papeles; por lo tanto Bartleby, the Scribener podría resultar en un Bartleby, el secretario. A continuación mi visión de lo que significa la obra de Herman Melville, Bartleby, el Secretario…

Un abogado, en la época de la colonia en EEUU, necesita contratar un nuevo secretario para ayudar a copiar los documentos en su oficina. Al principio el nuevo empleado se desempeña en forma eficiente. Es callado y no participa en ninguna polémica. En aquellos días se acostumbraba copiar los papeles legales y luego leerlos en busca de errores. Cuando se requiere que el empleado, Bartleby, corrija una documentación responde con un “preferiría que no”. Su jefe no termina de comprender la respuesta. Tal vez lo haga más adelante. A lo mejor ahora tiene una especie de crisis. ¿Sería mejor despedirlo?

Bartleby, the Scrivener

A Story of Wall-Street

I am a rather elderly man. The nature of my activities for the last thirty years has brought me into more than ordinary contact with what would seem an interesting and somewhat singular set of men, of whom as yet nothing that I know of has ever been written:—I mean the law-copyists or scriveners. I have known very many of them, professionally and privately, and if I pleased, could relate several histories, at which good-natured gentlemen might smile, and sentimental souls might weep. But I ignore the biographies of all other scriveners for a few passages in the life of Bartleby, who was a scrivener of the strangest I ever saw or heard of. While of other law-copyists I might write the complete life, of Bartleby nothing of that sort can be done. I believe that no materials exist for a full and satisfactory biography of this man. It is an irreparable loss to literature. Bartleby was one of those beings of whom nothing is ascertainable, except from the original sources, and in his case those are very small. What my own astonished eyes saw of Bartleby, that is all I know of him, except, indeed, one vague report which will appear in the sequel.