Lord Dunsany: "Caronte".

¡Hola a todos!

Hoy quería mostraros algo que me descubrieron en clase hace poco, uno de los relatos de un escritor y dramaturgo inglés famoso por sus trabajos de fantasía dentro de la corriente romántica-gótica [es decir, no la romántica que se conoce ahora como tal, sino la del s.XIX, dentro de la cual se engloban libros como Drácula (de Bram Stoker) o Frankenstein (de Mary Shelley)]. Famoso por haber inspirado con sus novelas y relatos a Lovecraft (entre otros), uno de sus relatos está incluido dentro de la primera parte de Los mitos de Cthulhu.

Esta imagen debería daros una pista acerca de la entrada si es que el título no lo ha hecho ya.

Estoy hablando de Lord Dunsany (pincha aquí por si quieres saber un poco más de él) y en particular de su relato “Caronte”, incluido dentro de la antología Cincuenta y un cuentos. El relato es corto, apenas una página; pero tanto el género, una parábola distópica, como el estilo, que transita entre el épico y el lírico, muestran una gran profundidad y una reflexión sobrecogedora. No os quiero desvelar quién es el protagonista (pero ya os digo que no es Caronte) o el tema, espero que lo leáis y lo descubráis vosotros.

Como la traducción del relato al español deja un poco que desear he decidido ponerlo aquí en su idioma original (lo he sacado de The Victorian Web, por si tenéis curiosidad y queréis buscar más trabajos de Lord Dunsany —u otros autores— en inglés). Y para todos los que no leéis en inglés os dejo aquí el link al relato en castellano (aunque de verdad recomiendo leerlo en el idioma original).

Dicho esto, os dejo con el relato.

CHARON

Lord Dunsany (1878-1957), Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett

Charon leaned forward and rowed. All things were one with his weariness.
It was not with him a matter of years or of centuries, but of wide floods of time, and an old heaviness and a pain in the arms that had become for him part of the scheme that the gods had made and was of a piece with Eternity.
If the gods had even sent him a contrary wind it would have divided all time in his memory into two equal slabs.
So grey were all things always where he was that if any radiance lingered a moment among the dead, on the face of such a queen perhaps as Cleopatra, his eyes could not have perceived it.
It was strange that the dead nowadays were coming in such numbers. They were coming in thousands where they used to come in fifties. It was neither Charon's duty nor his wont to ponder in his grey soul why these things might be. Charon leaned forward and rowed.
Then no one came for a while. It was not usual for the gods to send no one down from Earth for such a space. But the gods knew best.
Then one man came alone. And the little shade sat shivering on a lonely bench and the great boat pushed off. Only one passenger: the gods knew best. And great and weary Charon rowed on and on beside the little, silent, shivering ghost.
And the sound of the river was like a mighty sigh that Grief in the beginning had sighed among her sisters, and that could not die like the echoes of human sorrow failing on earthly hills, but was as old as time and the pain in Charon's arms.
Then the boat from the slow, grey river loomed up to the coast of Dis and the little, silent shade still shivering stepped ashore, and Charon turned the boat to go wearily back to the world. Then the little shadow spoke, that had been a man.
—I am the last —, he said.
No one had ever made Charon smile before, no one before had ever made him weep.

¿Qué os ha parecido el relato de este escritor? Estremecedor, ¿verdad? Pero a la vez, precioso.

¡Y hasta aquí la entrada de hoy! Espero que os haya gustado y os haya descubierto un nuevo autor o, para los que ya le conocíais, un nuevo relato. Yo aquí me despido, ¡hasta la semana que viene!