Lo que hago cuando no hago nada
Los selectos lectores de este blog habrán notado la ausencia de posts entre junio y agosto. Los imagino a todos contentísimos suponiendo que ahora sí vale ventar. ¡Pues no!
Ghetta no descansa, sino que entra a veces en modo "por defecto". Y su modo por defecto, es decir lo que hace por amor al arte o porque le divierte -tanto en el ejercicio de sus escasas dotes verbales o lo que haría si tuviera el privilegio de correr en Fórmula 1- es volcar al español. Es decir que cuando no tengo nada que hacer, traduzco. O más Well, when I have no obligation to translate by translating for pleasure. Bread and bread, rains but it pours, after shock sticks, rice again, yeap.
time ago I started to translate one of Salinger's stories appeared in the New Yorker but has not been published in book form. Which completes the saga of the Glass. The only handwriting written by Seymour (although this assertion is problematic).
The story is Hapworth 16, 1924. You can download it in English here. (As this link works somewhat erratically and then try to find a nice free webhosting, I opted for the easiest solution: blogger. It is not easy but at least works )
The preliminary warning is that Hapworth is a story just for fans of Salinger.
Any reader who is unfamiliar with the Glass family will find not only incomprehensible but unfriendly, poorly written, pretentious, false and even ridiculous. Indeed many fans of Salinger think exactly the same. I do not.
At some point I thought to write something about Hapworth. It's almost ridiculous, but at this stage know this better than any other text of Salinger. Clear that the text alone does not deserve that relevant, but I've come to understand things I can not explain, because I dare to say that not even fully in the text. I also know that there are many parts that must be translated into a slight or even mistakenly. I can not fix a conscience, because it translates back and then conclude by leaving it in original language. Fall in what Borges tale, so this is a map Hapworth translated, not the territory. The pathetic translation we used to have make any errors that may have made at most come to join in the universal history of infamy, but at least I have not taken a good sum for not making them.
is impossible for me to reconstruct the various levels of sympathy and antipathy Hapworth has caused me. I believe this to translate has given me a clear sign of the ease with which one approaches a text in a simple reading. If you have translated each book I've reviewed would review each of my legs up. Eventually
have come to love and enjoy Hapworth sling. I think this text is in no way the best of Salinger, but obviously could not be. I also think it would be a very significant act of Salinger if it ever publish a book (from 1997 announcing its publication in Orchid Press and over and over again is delayed now until 2006. I believe that publication date is the one that Salinger thinks he will die).
I have read several reviews Hapworth, I've been salingeritas fan forums and I think no one has understood a lot this story. Almost everyone makes fun of it or refuse to consider it part of the corpus salingeriano, which is terribly stupid. Oh, of course, the only one I understood ME. Well, you may well be that this is the only act of total arrogance to commit in my life, so no longer comical and banal. It is almost honorable and may be a good epitaph: "The only act of pride he made in his life was believed to have been the only one who understood Hapworth 16, 1924."
There are many aspects to a story again Hapworth fundamental. The most important is to supplement the Glass saga, though I suspect JDS has written much about them (some say that Salinger has not stopped writing since she published her last book. You appear to have a huge amount of manuscripts classified colors: what is to burn with a color, to be published posthumously with another, which must be donated to other libraries, and so on).
Another interesting thing about this story is that, except for brief intervention of Buddy's first, is the only one that is written almost entirely by the pen of Seymour. While this aspect is important is not to the extent that critics have pointed JDS. Back in 'Seymour, an introduction' Buddy Seymour reproduced letters and 'Lift, carpenters' There are long passages from his diary. There is great consistency between Seymour Hapworth the letter and the other examples of your writing and while Hapworth, Seymour expands on the theme of the embodiments, this theme is also present in other of his letters. What just might be new is that Hapworth, Seymour reveals not only a child can see the past and the future but realize their visions. But in truth, the visionary Seymour has already been discussed before: see, if not all of the first part of "Raise ..."
I do not want to spoil the reading talking too much about the story. And you read it, but from my point of view, one of the most beautiful is when Hapworth Seymour referred to his vision of Buddy writing a story in the future and their hopes for the approach of the narrative. In fact, it is this vision that leads to transcribe Buddy Seymour's letter to us. And I can not resist the temptation to say that the episode of the rabbit at the end of the letter made me laugh to tears. Do not know what I mean? Well stop right here reading this post and go to dive into Hapworth.
Salinger has been achieved with a rather small and work extremely limited what other talented writers has led them to having to build an entire world. Stop a minute to Tolkien. Not for me to diminish the obvious talent behind his work but will work! He invented things, worlds, alphabets, languages! He has written thousands of pages to provide a framework for the fight between good and evil! However, Salinger has created an equally or more fascinating universe in a grain of sand, has put the universe at the top of a salt shaker. And indeed, Hapworth are more than 25,000 words open up a world of possibilities. Each piece in the series changes all this, even stories that do not refer to Glass. I know that from now reread all Salinger and in that sense I say that the story is just for fans. But back to Hapworth ...
There is a critical, petty, which has been made regarding Hapworth Salinger. It has been said that the whole saga of the Glass is an attempt to mystify Buddy and his brother Hapworth is the result of complacency and Machiavellian Salinger, considered as the real person behind Buddy Glass, and Seymour not does nothing but praise for his younger brother and also because writing Hapworth Seymour in the distance too the myth built by Buddy. According to these critics Hapworth reading should be: "All credit goes to Buddy" or "Buddy is the real genius." However I think it is Hapworth becomes plausible story that Seymour and Buddy is a gesture aimed at his brother put in perspective. That's why this story can not be one of the best in Salinger: is a letter from a child without the intervention of Buddy as a storyteller. The relevance of the story is not on your bill and literary critic or the reader will not see this should not understand anything. Criticism is fun (in the sense of distraction) discussing whether Buddy is the alter-ego of Salinger and, as you well know, this is an absolutely irrelevant. Best would make a stop in analyzing the great sense of humor Salinger to publish this letter to Seymour. It is, in all cases, the Seymour most immediate and most poignant, at times almost ridiculous. Seymour's prose is pretentious, yes it is, but uh, right! Is it that they are all blind? There's nothing funnier that Seymour, or more tragic, or more tender, no more problematic. It is in this letter where Seymour is terribly human, more fully divine. Seymour is in every sense of the vehicle, equally shaken by the passions and visions.
Here I go back to that saying that this text is not one of the best of Salinger. I would say it is very difficult to establish because it would have to completely redefine the literature as such. Perhaps Hapworth excellence is in the Salinger will be less good in order to complete the portrait of a character. No longer a gift and an act of literary masters be less teacher when the text demands. In that sense, Hapworth masterfully fulfills its purpose. The result is not palatable to the common readers is understandable because this story is dedicated to those who are willing to see literature not only as a text. Or remove the pleasure of the text of the altar of the saga. It is not literature, is practically metaliterature.
OK, all this would make me expelled from the Faculty of Humanities (not required, and pressed the autoeject). I hope you will forgive me when I say that is almost metaliterature Hapworth or no intervention of a narrator and is obviously not metaliterature and if there is a narrator or two may be the subject of endless discussions. That's what I mean when I say it is difficult to judge the literary quality of Hapworth or must be judged taking into account the different levels that move the categories of author and narrator and there is even a third category, which is that of writer. And if all this were not enough, the story has its little mysteries that my limited understanding could not figure out and maybe you can. For example, the name of the story. Why Hapworth 16, 1924? Ah, I can not bear to think that perhaps the meaning is crystal clear and I am simply in the dark (Tom Lantern help me!). OK, Hapworth is the place, maybe it's 16 days and 1924 is undoubtedly the year. But what month? Is it wrong to Seymour due to the structure of the header of your letter?. Another interesting aspect has to do with the vision of Seymour about his death or for Buddy since he said that one of the two will be present at the death of another. We know that Buddy was not in the suicide of Seymour. Is it wrong vision of Seymour? Or is this somehow Seymour when Buddy die? Okay, no answers, but I can not stop thinking about these issues ... And we can still discuss what Buddy says "Lift up ...", that Seymour committed suicide in" A Perfect Day ... " is much closer to Buddy than Seymour or even discuss if, when Buddy said that readers of the novel only published tell you that the protagonist has a lot of Seymour-less readers who have actually met Seymour, is valid to assume you're talking about Holden Caulfield. Go to the genius of JD Salinger! Take off your hat, JRR Tolkien!
