Quinze de novembre 2015

Llegit (15-XI-2015), de Peter de Vries, The Mackerel Plaza (1958).

Llibre divertit i agradable, i prou intel·ligent, si fem abstracció del darrer capítol diguem-ne resolutiu, que és una abaixada de pantalons.

Un "ministre" de religió protestant, no gaire creient, havent perdut la dona, els imbècils de la seua parròquia en volen fer un monument. Els negociants aprofitats s'hi apunten per a fer calers a costa dels "fidels". Mentretant, el diguem-ne "pastor" només pensa en cardar, en trobar parella i enfilar-la.
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[El seu escepticisme patent.]
—Let's bury the awfulness and the nothingness with somethingness we've made with our own two hands. Let's make the lie so big and so convincing, and worship it so bitterly, bitterly much, that it becomes a truth.
—I am always amazed at the infantilism one encounters in supposedly adult people. They are those whom the rest of us must make up for; must "carry," so to speak, in the round of social transactions that go to make up mature human life. [Els no enganyats per la ximpleria religiosa havent d'empènyer, per bon cor, el pes podrit dels inútils degenerats fanocs.]
—"There's only one thing I fear and hate," I said, shaking my face in his, "and that's people shirking the obligation to evolve!"
[La "salvació" només pot vindre per via d'educació. Hà.] —I thought, Can this man be educated? Or is he beyond salvation?"
[Això entre gent d'església, entre ell i la seua cunyada. Hà.] —"Families are the links in the chain that gives man the only immortality he has."
[L'acusen d'ésser poc religiós.] —"You also once said (...) 'It is the final proof of God's omnipotence that he need not exist in order to save us.'"
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[Uns quants tocs.]
—I remembered Freud's having defined melancholia as grief at the loss of libido.
—The only weapon in the war of nerves [is] calm.
—Who make a lot of the darn things up? [Facècies que corren.] Prisoners. They've got nothing to do all day and can't live a normal sex life so that energy gets turned inward.
—Never kid a kraut.
—The Americans mumble correct pronunciations while the British clearly articulate faulty ones.
—In one of those bursts of profanity whose roots lie so close to those of reverence.
[Ben veritat.] —Purity carried to an extreme becomes its own opposite. Rémy de Gourmont classifies chastity as a form of sexual perversion.
[Ple de verriny, versifica oblidosament.] —I must have a woman. A woman who would envelop my existence and befriend my spirit and leave her musk in my bed. The secret where the stocking ends. The flower where the fancy tends. The delta where the river wends. The garden where the hunger ends.
[Diguem-ne una curiositat.] "—Negro toe?" she said thrusting at me a bowl dominated by salted Brazil nuts.
[Algú qui s'escanya.] —[She] gasped in a piping whisper. Evidently some of it had gone down her Sunday throat.
[Bon metge. I raríssim. Tots haurien d'ésser com ell, lluny de voler enganyar.] —He was one of those doctors who run their practice on the firm theory that ninety-nine per cent of their patients are quacks.
[Ben cert!] —Women were always spurring men on to hit the boss for a raise or to speak to so and so about this or that — generally to wage aggressions they themselves harbored.
[Un internacionalista li fa costat.] —"Hear! hear!" shouted a voice in the gallery. It was a bull-necked man in a red mackinaw. "National sovereignity must go! Only world government will save us!"

Tot plegat, bo.

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També llegit, de na M.À. Anglada, El violí d'Auschwitz (1994) [tr. anglesa de M. Tennent (2010)]

No sé per què la novel·leta em duu a l'esment certs contes d'ETA Hoffmann [potser pel Violí de Cremona, o pels Somnis són bromeres (pel fet que la discussió és vora els cruanys o les brases d'un foc somort?) etc], però un conte d'en Hoffmann massa pobre, mancat de fantasia, de misteri, d'anècdota, de màgia, de gir de cargol — d'on que no vagi enlloc.

I doncs, relat insuls, suat, adotzenat. Un fuster qui amb penes i treballs fa un violí en un camp de concentració nazi, i el violí se salva i també el fuster, però no el violinista.

No sé si la traducció espatlla la diguem-ne poesia romàntica de l'original (suposant que en porti). En tot cas, el resultat no és gran cosa.


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