lunes, 17 de julio de 2017

A Ghost Story

Revisamos un párrafo del cuento de Mark Twain, A Ghost Story. El ítulo alternativo es A Ghost's Tale, y fue escrito en 1870. A Ghost Story es la variación única de Twain del género de las historias de fantasmas, burlándose de las supersticiones y probándose como el maestro del humor satírico.

El Gigante de Cardiff, había sido un invento, un truco publicitario; para sacarle dinero a la gente, allá por principios del siglo 20. El empresario P.T. Barnum había estado implicado en el asunto.

Twain toma al gigante para usarlo en su cuento de miedo, convirtiéndolo en un gigante bueno y dócil.

En vocabulario encontramos varias palabras como waver o housings y una que llamó mi atención: musty.

Adelante, pasen… pasen

 

A 14-year-old domestic servant, Therese Selles, experiences poltergeist / spontaneous PK activity in the home of her employer, the Todeschini family at Chéraga, Algeria, as featured on the cover of the French magazine La Vie Mysterieuse in 1911.
A servant experiences Poltergeist in the home of her employer as featured on La Vie Mysterieuse

Inglés

… When everything was still once more, I crept out of bed, sick and feeble, and lit the gas with a hand that trembled as if it were aged with a hundred years. The light brought some little cheer to my spirits. I sat down and fell into a dreamy contemplation of that great footprint in the ashes. By and by its outlines began to waver and grow dim. I glanced up and the broad gas-flame was slowly wilting away. In the same moment I heard that elephantine tread again. I noted its approach, nearer and nearer, along the musty halls, and dimmer and dimmer the light waned. The tread reached my very door and paused—the light had dwindled to a sickly blue, and all things about me lay in a spectral twilight. The door did not open, and yet I felt a faint gust of air fan my cheek, and presently was conscious of a huge, cloudy presence before me. I watched it with fascinated eyes. A pale glow stole over the Thing; gradually its cloudy folds took shape—an arm appeared, then legs, then a body, and last a great sad face looked out of the vapor. Stripped of its filmy housings, naked, muscular and comely, the majestic Cardiff Giant loomed above me!... (A Ghost Story, by Mark Twain. Aquí podés escuchar y leer la historia a la vez.)

 

Síntesis

Básicamente este párrafo nos muestra la sensación de miedo que siente el protagonista en un cuarto, donde intenta dormir, pero que es sacudido por pisadas ruidosas. Pero no es solo una sensación, las pisadas enormes quedan marcadas en el piso. Finalmente una figura toma cuerpo junto a él. Es la del gigante de Cardiff, que con su cara triste se acerca a conversar…

 

Vocabulario

Crept out: pasado de creep (to move slowly with the body close to the ground, as a reptile or an insect, or a person on hands and knees.).

Other words for creep: inch, crawl, dawdle, poke.

Waver: to sway to and fro; flutter:

Foliage wavers in the breeze.

To flicker or quiver, as light:

A distant beam wavered and then disappeared.

Wilting: weakening. Wilt: To lose strength, vigor, assurance.

Tread: the action of treading, stepping, or walking. The sound of footsteps.

Musty: having an odor or flavor suggestive of mold, as old buildings, long-closed rooms, or stale food.

En castellano: rancio.

Dwindle: to become smaller and smaller; shrink; waste away:

His vast fortune has dwindled away.

Gust: a sudden, strong blast of wind.

Filmy: thin and light; fine and gauzy:

A gown of a filmy material.

Housing: anything that covers or protects.

Comely: attractive

 

De la web

A Ghost Story, to listen the story from Librivox.

 

Artículos relacionados

La puerta no se abrió y, sin embargo, sentí una leve ráfaga de aire en mi mejilla… Una historia de fantasmas

Los arqueólogos se pronunciaron en contra de la autenticidad del gigante, sin embargo algunos teólogos lo defendieron… El gigante de Cardiff

… He llegado a ver que es esencial para los judíos tener algún país que sea de ellos, alguna región donde no se sospeche que sean extraterrestres... Bertrand Russell

 

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