Robert William Chambers: The Yellow sign (The King in Yellow)

...
"Along the shore the cloud waves breaks,
The twin suns sink behind the lake,
The shadows lengthen
........................................In Carcosa.
Strange is the night where black stars rise,
And strange moons circle through the skies,
But stranger still is
..................................Lost Carcosa.
Songs that the Hyades shall sing,
Where flap the tatters of the King,
Must die unheard in
....................................Dim Carcosa.
Song of my soul, my voice is dead,
Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed
Shall dry and die in
...................................Lost Carcosa."

Cassilda's Song in The King in Yellow. Act I. Scene 2.
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...

"Let the red dawn surmise
What we shall do,
When this blue starlight dies

And all is through."

I. BEING THE CONTENTS OF AN UNSIGNED LETTER SENT TO THE AUTHOR

There are so many things which are impossible to explain! Why should certain chords in music make me think of the brown and golden tints of autumn foliage? Why should the Mass of Sainte Cécile send my thoughts wandering among the caverns whose walls blaze with ragged masses of virgin silver? What was it in the roar and turmoil of Broadway at six o'clock that flashed before my eyes the picture of a still Breton forest where sunlight filtered through spring foliage and Sylvia bent, half curiously, half tenderly, over a small green lizard, murmuring: "To think that this also is a little ward of God!"

When I first saw the watchman his back was toward me. I paid no more attention to him than I had to any other man who lounged through Washington Square that morning, and when I shut my window and turned back into the my studio I had forgotten him. Late in the afternoon, the day being warm, I raised the window again and leaned out to get a sniff of air. A man was standing in the courtyard of the church, and I noticed him again with as little interest as I had that morning. I looked across the square to where the fountain was playing and then, with my mind filled with vague impressions of trees, asphalt drives, and the moving groups of nursemaids and holiday-makers, I started to walk back to my easel. As I turned, my listless glance included the man below in the churchyard. His face was toward me now, and with a perfectly involuntary movement I bent to see it. At the same moment he raised his head and looked at me. Instantly I thought of a coffin-worm. Whatever it was about the man that repelled me I did not know, but the impression of a plump white grave-worm was so intense and nauseating that I must have shown it in my expression, for he turned his puffy face away with a movement which made me think of a disturbed grub in a chestnut.

I went back to my easel and motioned the model to resume her pose. After working awhile I was satisfied that I was spoiling what I had down as rapidly as possible, and I took up a palette knife and scraped the color out again. The flesh tones were sallow and unhealthy, and I did not understand how I could have painted such sickly color into a study which before that had glowed with healthy tones.

I looked at Tessie. She had not changed, and the clear flush of health dyed her neck and cheeks as I frowned.

"Is it something I've done?" she said.

"No, I've made a mess of this arm, and for the life of me I can't see how I came to paint such mud as that into the canvas," I replied.

"Don't I pose well?" she insisted.

"Of course, perfectly."

"Then isn't not my fault?"

"No. It's my own."

"I'm very sorry," she said.

I told her she could rest while I applied rag and turpentine to the plague spot on my canvas, and she went off to smoke a cigarette and look over the illustrations in the Courier Français.

Salomé Guadalupe Ingelmo: A un gringo viejo / To an old gringo

Los cuerpos, caballos y soldados, yacen esparcidos, desordenados. Uniformes embarrados, desgarrados, ensangrentados... Ni rastro de dignidad en la agonía. Ni rastro de pompa o gloria en la muerte. La misma sordidez y brutalizad en cada batalla, en cada guerra, sin importar el lugar o sus banderas. Podrían ser los campos en los que perdió a tantos compañeros y él mismo fue herido. Por un momento se pregunta si, después de haberlo visto todo, habrá tenido sentido el ir a buscar la muerte en una tierra extranjera.

Pero a sus espaldas sólo deja un matrimonio fallido, hijos muertos o enfermos y, eso sí, un buen puñado de historias por las que ha valido la pena. Así que sigue adelante; ya no hay razón para regresar. Y caminando se adentra en la niebla. Es tan espesa que sólo le permite ver unos pocos pasos por delante de él. Sin embargo no resulta gélida sino inusualmente cálida y acogedora. Tanto que, en ese siniestro paraje, le embargaba una inefable sensación de bienestar. Inexplicablemente ya no se asfixia ni siente la fatiga. Como si el cuerpo ya no le pesase y los años se hubiesen desvanecido.

–Hola, Ambrose –saluda el sargento Halcrow, jovial como siempre.

No le sobresalta su aparición. Tiene buen aspecto, igual que aquel día de hace 52 años en Shiloh, antes de la batalla. Unas horas después sus intestinos se desparramaban por el suelo, mientras alrededor hozaban los cerdos. El escritor le recibe con una palmada en el hombro. Juntos continúan el camino. Prosiguen la charla interrumpida décadas atrás como si el tiempo se hubiera detenido.

“Desapareció, señor. Sin más. Marchaba delante de mí, le veía con tanta claridad como le veo a usted ahora. Y de repente dejé de verle. Se desmaterializó. Las huellas de sus pisadas desaparecen ahí, en la nada. Algo sobrenatural, cosa de fantasmas”.

Posteriormente muchos aseguraron sentir una presencia en el paraje, y escuchar una carcajada que sobrecogía. No por maligna o amenazadora, sino por enérgica y vital. Algunos dicen que era el viejo gringo extraviado, que había encontrado su lugar.

The bodies, horses and soldiers, lie scattered, disordered. Uniforms muddy, torn, bloodied ... No sign of dignity in agony. No sign of pomp or glory in death. The same squalor and brutality in every battle, in every war, regardless of location or flags. These could be the fields in which he lost many comrades and he himself was wounded. For a moment he wonders whether, after having seen it all, would have a meaning going to seek death in a foreign land.

August Derleth: The Seal of R’lyeh

 MY PATERNAL GRANDFATHER, whom I never saw except in a darkened room, used to say of me to my parents, “Keep him away from the sea!” as if I had some reason to fearwater, when, in fact, I have always been drawn to it. But those born under one of thewater signs—mine is Pisces—have a natural affinity for water, so much is well known.They are said to be psychic, too, but that is another matter, perhaps. At any rate, that was my grandfather’s judgement; a strange man, whom I could not have described to save my soul—though that, in the light of day, is an ambiguity indeed! That was beforemy father was killed in an automobile accident, and afterward it was never said in vain,for my mother kept me back in the hills, well away from the sight and sound and thesmells of the sea.

But what is meant to be will be. I was in college in a mid-western city when mymother died, and the week after, my Uncle Sylvan died too, leaving everything he had to me. Him I had never seen. He was the eccentric one of the family, the queer one, theblack sheep; he was known by a variety of names, and disparaged in all of them, exceptby my grandfather, who did not speak of him at all without sighing. I was, in fact, thelast of my grandfather’s direct line; there was a great-uncle living somewhere—in Asia,I always understood, though what he did there no one seemed to know, except that ithad something to do with the sea, shipping, perhaps—and so it was only natural that Ishould inherit my Uncle Sylvan’s places.

For he had two, and both, as luck would have it, were on the sea, one in aMassachusetts town called Innsmouth, and the other isolated on the coast well abovethat town. Even after the inheritance taxes, there was enough money to make it unnecessary for me to go back to college, or to do anything I had no mind to do, and theonly thing I had a mind to do was that which had been forbidden me for these twenty-two years, to go to the sea, perhaps to buy a sailboat or a yacht or whatever I liked. But that was not quite the way it was to be. I saw the lawyer in Boston and wenton to Innsmouth. A strange town, I found it. Not friendly, though there were those whosmiled when they learned who I was, smiled with a strange, secretive air, as if theyknew something they would not say of my Uncle Sylvan. Fortunately, the place at Innsmouth was the lesser of his places; it was plain that he had not occupied it much; itwas a dreary, somber old mansion, and I discovered, much to my surprise, that it wasthe family homestead, having been built by my great-grandfather, who had been in the China trade, and lived in by my grandfather for a good share of his life, and the name of Phillips was still held in a kind of awe in that town.

No, it was the other place in which my Uncle Sylvan had spent most of his life. Hewas only fifty when he died, but he had lived much like my grandfather; he had not been seen about much, being seldom away from that darkly overgrown house which crowned a rocky bluff on the coast above Innsmouth. It was not a lovely house, not such a one as would call to the lover of beauty, but it had its own attraction, nevertheless, and I felt it at once. I thought of it as a house that belonged to the sea, for the sound of the Atlantic was always in it, and trees shut it from the land, while to the sea it was open, itswide windows looking ever east. It was not an old house, like that other—thirty years, Iwas told—though it had been built by my uncle himself on the site of a far older housethat had belonged to my great-grandfather, too.

Juan Ángel Laguna Edroso: Las funestas obsesiones del capitán Ahab

Como todas las mañanas desde que la infernal ballena blanca le arrancara la pierna junto a un pedazo de su propia alma, el capitán Ahab bajó de su hamaca con el pie izquierdo. Aquel gesto se había integrado tanto en su rutina que se había convertido en un acto reflejo muy conveniente para su equilibrio. Solo cuando tenía bien afianzado el pie sano podía acompañar a este la pata de marfil que sustituía al miembro amputado. El golpe seco que daba esta en el tablazón del camarote era la señal de que la caza se reanudaba —si es que, de algún modo, se había detenido durante la noche-, de que la vida, aun en condena, seguía su curso. Era un tañido que, irremediablemente, le robaba una sonrisa feroz.

Se aseó y se vistió con febril parsimonia, con la mente puesta en el fantasma del sanguinario animal como una inquietante extensión de sus propias pesadillas, y todavía se tomó un momento para recortarse la barba y afeitarse el bigote y bajo los pómulos. Aquel día iba a necesitar toda su presencia para imponerse a la tripulación. Lo sabía como buen lobo de mar que ha aprendido a leer en las señales que siempre, si se sabe dónde buscarlas, se encuentran a bordo. Los marineros, pensaba, son como libros abiertos para quien ha aprendido a leer en ellos. Gentes de carácter. Supersticiosos. Como él mismo. No podía ser de otra forma, ya que se encontraban constantemente afrontados a las profundidades abisales...

Desde hacía una semana corrían rumores por la cubierta de que había un Jonás en el Pequod. Aquella era la explicación que encontraban tanto marineros como arponeros a la desoladora escasez de cetáceos. La pesca estaba siendo particularmente mala: apenas avistaban ballenas y, cuando por fin siete días atrás consiguieron alcanzar una, esta se revolvió de tal manera que destrozó una de las lanchas y por poco no dejó sepultados en el mar a tres de sus hombres. Suerte tuvieron de que los remos los mantuvieran a flote el tiempo suficiente. Buena suerte, no mala como les quería hacer creer el carpintero, ese cura malogrado que mataba su soledad en alta mar. 

Poco importaba. Desde aquel incidente cualquier nimiedad se había convertido en un funesto presagio. Si las gaviotas se obcecaban en seguir al Pequod aun lejos de tierra firme, seguramente atraídas por el olor de los despojos, era un mal augurio. Si el viento llega racheado y timorato, incapaz de impulsarlos más hacia el oriente alguien leía un futuro de perdición en los cielos. Cuando las ballenas no daban señales de vida era la señal inequívoca de que los perseguía la mala fortuna, siempre un paso por delante. Si daban con una y conseguían darle muerte, de que más les valdría poner proa al primer puerto y exorcizar el navío con agua bendita o la ayuda de algún santero.

Frank R. Stockton: Old Applejoy's ghost

The large and commodious apartments in the upper part of the old Applejoy mansion were occupied exclusively, at the time of our story, by the ghost of the grandfather of the present owner of the estate.

For many years old Applejoy's ghost had wandered freely about the grand old house and the fine estate of which he had once been the lord and master. But early in that spring a change had come over the household of his grandson, John Applejoy, an elderly man, a bachelor, and--for the later portion of his life--almost a recluse. His young niece, Bertha, had come to live with him, and it was since her arrival that old Applejoy's ghost had confined himself to the upper portions of the house.

This secluded existence, so different from his ordinary habits, was adopted entirely on account of the kindness of his heart. During the lives of two generations of his descendants he knew that he had frequently been seen by members of the family, but this did not disturb him, for in life he had been a man who had liked to assert his position, and the disposition to do so had not left him now. His skeptical grandson John had seen him and spoken with him, but declared that these ghostly interviews were only dreams or hallucinations. As to other people, it might be a very good thing if they believed that the house was haunted. People with uneasy consciences would not care to live in such a place.

But when this fresh young girl came upon the scene the case was entirely different. She was not twenty yet, and if anything should happen which would lead her to suspect that the house was haunted she might not be willing to live there. If that should come to pass, it would be a great shock to the ghost.

For a long time the venerable mansion had been a quiet, darkened, melancholy house. A few rooms only were occupied by John Applejoy and his housekeeper, Mrs. Dipperton, who for years had needed little space in which to pass the monotonous days of their lives. Bertha sang; she danced by herself on the broad piazza; she brought flowers into the house from the gardens, and, sometimes, it almost might have been imagined that the days which were gone had come back again.

One winter evening, when the light of the full moon entered softly through every unshaded window of the house, old Applejoy's ghost sat in a high-backed chair, which on account of an accident to one of its legs had been banished to the garret. Throwing one shadowy leg over the other, he clasped the long fingers of his hazy hands and gazed thoughtfully out the window.

"Winter has come," he said to himself. "And in two days it will be Christmas!" Suddenly he started to his feet. "Can it be," he exclaimed, "that my close-fisted grandson John does not intend to celebrate Christmas! It has been years since he has done so, but now that Bertha is in the house, will he dare to pass over it as though it were but a common day? It is almost incredible that such a thing could happen, but so far there have been no signs of any preparations. I have seen nothing, heard nothing, smelt nothing. I will go this moment and investigate."

Inés Arredondo: Orfandad

Creí que todo era este sueño: sobre una cama dura, cubierta por una blanquísima sábana, estaba yo, pequeña, una niña con los brazos cortados arriba de los codos y las piernas cercenadas por encima de las rodillas, vestida con un pequeño batoncillo que descubría los cuatro muñones.

La pieza donde estaba era a ojos vistas un consultorio pobre, con vitrinas anticuadas. Yo sabía que estábamos a la orilla de una carretera de Estados Unidos por donde todo el mundo, tarde o temprano, tendría que pasar. Y digo estábamos porque junto a la cama, de perfil, había un médico joven, alegre, perfectamente rasurado y limpio. Esperaba.

Entraron los parientes de mi madre: altos, hermosos, que llenaron el cuarto de sol y de bullicio. El médico les explico:

-Sí, es ella. Sus padres tuvieron un accidente no lejos de aquí y ambos murieron, pero a ella pude salvarla. Por eso puse el anuncio, para que se detuvieran ustedes.

Una mujer muy blanca, que me recordaba vivamente a mi madre, me acarició las mejillas.

― ¡Qué bonita es!

― ¡Mira qué ojos!

― ¡Y ese pelo rubio y rizado!

Mi corazón palpitó con alegría. Había llegado el momento de los parecidos, y en medio de aquella fiesta de alabanzas no hubo ni una sola mención a mis mutilaciones. Había llegado la hora de la aceptación: yo era parte de ellos.

Pero por alguna razón misteriosa, en medio de sus risas y parloteo, fueron saliendo alegremente y no volvieron la cabeza.

Luego vinieron los parientes de mi padre. Cerré los ojos. El doctor repitió lo que dijo a los primeros parientes:

― ¿Para qué salvó eso?

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu: An account of some strange disturbances in Aungier Street

It is not worth telling, this story of mine--at least, not worth writing. Told, indeed, as I have sometimes been called upon to tell it, to a circle of intelligent and eager faces, lighted up by a good after-dinner fire on a winter's evening, with a cold wind rising and wailing outside, and all snug and cosy within, it has gone off--though I say it, who should not--indifferent well. But it is a venture to do as you would have me. Pen, ink, and paper are cold vehicles for the marvellous, and a "reader" decidedly a more critical animal than a "listener." If, however, you can induce your friends to read it after nightfall, and when the fireside talk has run for a while on thrilling tales of shapeless terror; in short, if you will secure me the mollia tempora fandi, I will go to my work, and say my say, with better heart. Well, then, these conditions presupposed, I shall waste no more words, but tell you simply how it all happened.

My cousin (Tom Ludlow) and I studied medicine together. I think he would have succeeded, had he stuck to the profession; but he preferred the Church, poor fellow, and died early, a sacrifice to contagion, contracted in the noble discharge of his duties. For my present purpose, I say enough of his character when I mention that he was of a sedate but frank and cheerful nature; very exact in his observance of truth, and not by any means like myself--of an excitable or nervous temperament.

My Uncle Ludlow--Tom's father--while we were attending lectures, purchased three or four old houses in Aungier Street, one of which was unoccupied. He resided in the country, and Tom proposed that we should take up our abode in the untenanted house, so long as it should continue unlet; a move which would accomplish the double end of settling us nearer alike to our lecture-rooms and to our amusements, and of relieving us from the weekly charge of rent for our lodgings.

Our furniture was very scant--our whole equipage remarkably modest and primitive; and, in short, our arrangements pretty nearly as simple as those of a bivouac. Our new plan was, therefore, executed almost as soon as conceived. The front drawing-room was our sitting-room. I had the bedroom over it, and Tom the back bedroom on the same floor, which nothing could have induced me to occupy.

The house, to begin with, was a very old one. It had been, I believe, newly fronted about fifty years before; but with this exception, it had nothing modern about it. The agent who bought it and looked into the titles for my uncle, told me that it was sold, along with much other forfeited property, at Chichester House, I think, in 1702; and had belonged to Sir Thomas Hacket, who was Lord Mayor of Dublin in James II's time. How old it was then, I can't say; but, at all events, it had seen years and changes enough to have contracted all that mysterious and saddened air, at once exciting and depressing, which belongs to most old mansions.

There had been very little done in the way of modernising details; and, perhaps, it was better so; for there was something queer and by-gone in the very walls and ceilings--in the shape of doors and windows--in the odd diagonal site of the chimney- pieces--in the beams and ponderous cornices--not to mention the singular solidity of all the woodwork, from the banisters to the window-frames, which hopelessly defied disguise, and would have emphatically proclaimed their antiquity through any conceivable amount of modern finery and varnish.

Fernando Iwasaki: El parásito

No era un fibroma, ni un tumor, ni un folículo infectado, sino un mellizo marchito enquistado en su espalda como un inquilino perpetuo y satisfecho. Quizás nunca debí decirle lo que era y dejar que pensara que se trataba de un bulto de grasa cualquiera, pero aquel hombre me pareció inteligente y no dudé en mostrarle aquella miniatura atrofiada de sí mismo.Algunos pacientes no están preparados para saber lo que tienen y para contemplar sin prejuicios el infinito paisaje de las patologías humanas. Como aquel hombre que sostenía desconsolado a su gemelo nonato y que incluso le cortó el pelo y las uñitas diminutas hasta encontrarle un pálido destello, un reflejo remoto, un melancólico parecido. Soy un científico, ¿cómo podía saber si sentía o si soñaba?Dos días después de la operación falleció por causas desconocidas. El parásito le sobrevivió un día más.

Stanley Waterloo: An ulm

"IT is as you say; he is not handsome, certainly not beautiful as flowers and the stars and a woman are but he has another sort of beauty, I think, such a beauty as made Victor Hugo's monster, Gwynplaine, fascinating, or gives a certain sort of charm to a banded rattlesnake. He is not much like the dove-eyed setter over whom we shot woodcock this afternoon, but to me he is the fairest object on the face of the earth, this gaunt brindled Ulm.

"What is there about an Ulm especially attractive? Well, I don't know. About Ulms in the abstract, very little, I imagine. About an Ulm in the concrete, particularly the brute near us a great deal. The Ulm is a morbid development in dog-breeding, anyhow. I remember, as doubtless you do as well, when the animals first made their appearance in this country a few years ago. The big, dirty-white beasts, dappled with dark blotches and with countenances unexplainably threatening, reminded one of hyenas with huge dog forms. Germans brought them over first, and they were affected by saloon-keepers and their class. They called them Siberian blood-hounds then, but the dog-fanciers got hold of them, and they became, with their sinister obtrusiveness, a feature of the shows; the breed was defined more clearly, and now they are known as Great Danes or Ulms, indifferently. How they originated I never cared to learn. I imagine it sometimes. I fancy some jilted, jaundiced descendant of the sea-rovers, retiring to his castle, and endeavouring, by mating some ugly bloodhound with a wild wolf, to produce a quadruped as fierce and cowardly and treacherous as a man or woman may be.

"Never mind about the dog, and tell you why I've been gentleman, farmer, sportsman and half-hermit here for the last five years — leaving everything just as I was getting a grip on reputation in town, leaving a pretty wife, too, after only a year of marriage? I can hardly do that — that is, I can hardly drop the dog, because, you see, he's part of the story. No need for going far back with the legend. You know it all up to the time I was married. You dined with me once or twice later. You remember my wife? Certainly she was a pretty woman, well bred, too, and wise, in a woman's way. I've seen a good deal of the world, but I don't know that I ever saw a more tactful entertainer, or in private a more adorable woman when she chose to be affectionate. I was in that fool's paradise which is so big and holds so many people, sometimes for a year and a half after marriage. Then one day I found myself outside the wall.

"There was a beautiful set to my wife's chin, you may recollect — a trifle strong for a woman; but I used to say to myself that, as students know, the mother most impresses the male offspring, and that my sons would be men of will. There was a fulness to her lips. Well, so there is to mine. There was a delicious, languorous craft in the look of her eyes at times. I care not at all for that. I thought she loved me and knew me. Love of me would give all faithfulness; knowledge of me, even were the inclination to wrong existent, would beget a dread of consequences. My dear boy, we don't know women. Sometimes women don't know men. She did not know me any more than she loved me. She has become better informed.

"What happened? Well, now come in the dog and the man. The dog was given me by a friend who was dog-mad, and who said to me the puppy would develop into a marvel of his kind, so long a pedigree he had. The man came in the form of an accidental new friend, an old friend of my wife, as subsequently developed. I invited him to my house, and he came often. I liked to have him there. I wanted to go to Congress — you know all about that — and wasn't often at home in the evening. He made the evenings less lonely for my wife, and I was glad of it.

Santiago Eximeno: Días de peste, José Hernanpérez

Siempre he sentido predilección por los géneros literarios considerados menores —entre ellos, por ejemplo, la ficción mínima, que tan a menudo he cultivado—, lo que me ha llevado una y otra vez a bucear en un mar poblado de cardúmenes de letras en busca de esa pieza especial, ese coral oculto que me ofreciera algo distinto, sugerente, alejado de las corrientes literarias más recorridas.

En esa búsqueda me he topado con todo tipo de obras y autores, pero si existe un autor cuya obra me ha marcado profundamente ese es, sin duda, José Hernampérez. No encontrarás nada de él en la red, me temo, pues sus libros apenas se han distribuido más allá de la provincia que le vio nacer, Soria. José Hernampérez, oriundo de Castillejo de Robledo, un pequeño pueblo perdido en la confluencia de las provincias de Segovia, Burgos y Soria, escribió toda su obra en el silencio del que se sabe querido por los suyos pero teme abrirse a otro público quizá más exigente, quizá menos preparado para lo que él quería mostrarles. Me imagino al autor con su pequeño teatrillo a cuestas, recorriendo en su carro el camino de tierra que conducía a Maderuelo, deteniéndose sobre el puente que hoy cubre el agua a contemplar el pueblo y preparar su obra, y siento nostalgia de tiempos y personas que no he conocido. Falsa nostalgia de un pasado que no es el mío, pero que me hubiera gustado compartir. Porque José Hernampérez llevó una vida tranquila, oculta tras bastidores y títeres, ajeno a glorias y famas pero siempre ofreciendo a su público fiel lo mejor de sí mismo.

La obra de José Hernampérez abarca desde el poema hasta el relato —nunca cultivó la novela, al menos yo no he logrado encontrar referencias ni textos en el exhaustivo recorrido que he realizado de su obra—, si bien la mayor parte de su creación se centra en los títeres. He recorrido los pueblos de la zona que frecuentaba para hablar con los más ancianos, aquellos que quizá recordaban su carro y su teatro (el Teatro de la Tía Norica lo llamaba), pero no he tenido fortuna. Apenas una sonrisa a medias, un comentario fugaz, una recomendación para hablar con otro parroquiano. Cuando les he mostrado el legajo con parte de sus obras he visto el brillo del reconocimiento en sus ojos, pero nada más me han dicho. Yo siempre les preguntaba lo mismo: ¿han visto a José Hernampérez representando estas obras?

Porque los papeles que yo poseo, encontrados bajo uno de los bancos de la pequeña iglesia románica de Castillejo de Robledo cuando realizaron las obras de restauración, muestran obras escritas que, francamente, no veo cómo un hombre pudo representar. Y no me detengo a valorar su temática, ya de por sí extremadamente grotesca e inusual para la época, sino a su estructura alejada de las formas clásicas, a sus diálogos faltos de ritmo y a la gran cantidad de personajes y decorados que algunas de ellas implican. ¿Fue capaz José Hernampérez de representar estas obras, tal y como nos cuenta en su diario de viaje? Si fue así, ¿por qué nadie le recuerda? ¿Por qué parece haber sido olvidado?

Incluso en Castillejo de Robledo poco o nada saben de él. Visité el viejo cementerio, situado en una colina a poca distancia del pueblo, y allí encontré su tumba, apenas una cruz oxidada y un pequeño túmulo perdido junto al muro de piedra desmoronado. Algunos le recordaban, o habían oído hablar de él. Un ermitaño, un hombre de pocos amigos que nunca pisó el único bar del pueblo. Ahora, claro, es distinto.

Vincent O'Sullivan: When I was dead

"And yet my heart
Will not confess he owes the malady
That doth my life besiege."
All's Well that Ends Well

That was the worst of Ravenel Hall. The passages were long and gloomy, the rooms were musty and dull, even the pictures were sombre and their subjects dire. On an autumn evening, when the wind soughed and ailed through the trees in the park, and the dead leaves whistled and chattered, while the rain clamoured at the windows, small wonder that folks with gentle nerves went a-straying in their wits! An acute nervous system is a grievous burthen on the deck of a yacht under sunlit skies: at Ravenel the chain of nerves was prone to clash and jangle a funeral march. Nerves must be pampered in a tea-drinking community; and the ghost that your grandfather, with a skinful of port, could face and never tremble, sets you, in your sobriety, sweating and shivering; or, becoming scared (poor ghost!) of your bulged eyes and dropping jaw, he quenches expectation by not appearing at all. So I am left to conclude that it was tea which made my acquaintance afraid to stay at Ravenel. Even Wilvern gave over; and as he is in the Guards, and a polo player his nerves ought to be strong enough. On the night before he went I was explaining to him my theory, that if you place some drops of human blood near you, and then concentrate your thoughts, you will after a while see before you a man or a woman who will stay with you during long hours of the night, and even meet you at unexpected places during the day. I was explaining this theory, I repeat, when he interrupted me with words, senseless enough, which sent me fencing and parrying strangers, — on my guard.

"I say, Alistair, my dear chap!" he began, "you ought to get out of this place and go up to Town and knock about a bit — you really ought, you know."

"Yes," I replied, "and get poisoned at the hotels by bad food and at the clubs by bad talk, I suppose. No, thank you: and let me say that your care for my health enervates me."

"Well, you can do as you like," says he, rapping with his feet on the floor. "I'm hanged if I stay here after to-morrow I'll be staring mad if I do!"

He was my last visitor. Some weeks after his departure I was sitting in the library with my drops of blood by me. I had got my theory nearly perfect by this time; but there was one difficulty. The figure which I had ever before me was the figure of an old woman with her hair divided in the middle, and her hair fell to her shoulders, white on one side and black on the other. She as a very complete old woman; but, alas! she was eyeless, and when I tried to construct the eyes she would shrivel and rot in my sight. But to-night I was thinking, thinking, as I had never thought before, and the eyes were just creeping into the head when I heard terrible crash outside as if some heavy substance had fallen. Of a sudden the door was flung open and two maid-servants entered they glanced at the rug under my chair, and at that they turned a sick white, cried on God, and huddled out.

Ángel Olgoso: Extremidades

Iban a demoler el viejo hospital y citaron a los ciudadanos interesados en reclamar sus antiguos despojos corporales, objeto de observación y estudio durante decenios. Fue la curiosidad lo que me llevó a solicitar la pierna que me amputaron, por encima de la rodilla, cuando aún no había cumplido veinte meses. A aquella tragedia le siguieron años de trato preferente con el mejor artífice de piezas ortopédicas, apéndices más apropiados para la vida en sociedad, y no demasiado molestos; por lo demás, mi muñón y todo mi organismo aceptaban de buen grado cada nueva incorporación, como si se supieran regenerados al entrelazar su borde de carne ya endurecida con esos tejidos fríos, inertes, metálicos. Ahora, frente a mis ojos, en el formol de un recipiente de cristal, flotaba la extremidad sorprendentemente diminuta, blanca e infantil de un hombre de cuarenta y nueve años. Su visión resultaba más tierna que grotesca: los dedos del pie como migajitas de pan, la rodilla sin señales de hueso, el revoltillo de cabello de ángel de las arterias seccionadas del muslo. Este espíritu gemelo, en su soledad, en su meridiana inocencia, había permanecido inmutable, intacto, a salvo de la carcoma del cansancio, libre del veneno que todos los seres llevamos dentro. Yo crecía, mientras tanto, ajeno a la entereza de mi extremidad cercenada; me desarrollaba con la indiferencia de la mala hierba que se reconoce inútil, destinada a una absurda vida de sacrificio y condenada a la fumigación final. Cuando días después comencé a observar desapasionadamente aquella extremidad mínima, a pesar del insondable vínculo que nos unía, a pesar de su plena indefensión, a pesar de todo, me pareció de pronto un objeto inconcebible, casi monstruoso. Bastaba imaginar su mórbido tacto —tan distinto del tranquilizador pulimento de mi pierna ortopédica— para sentir una cierta inquietud, un temor originado más allá de las fantasías de suplantación. Alojé al ente y a su receptáculo de cristal en las baldas más altas del sótano. Allí lo espiaba día y noche, sintiéndome observado. Seguía sus delicadas pero obsesivas evoluciones, meciéndose imputrescible en su mundo de infusión, maligno, ignominioso, como esas hienas que al saberse heridas devoran sus propias vísceras.

Algernon Blackwood: The House of the Past

One night a Dream came to me and brought with her an old and rusty key. She led me across fields and sweet smelling lanes, where the hedges were already whispering to one another in the dark of the spring, till we came to a huge, gaunt house with staring windows and lofty roof half hidden in the shadows of very early morning. I noticed that the blinds were of heavy black, and that the house seemed wrapped in absolute stillness.

“This,” she whispered in my ear, “is the House of the Past. Come with me and we will go through some of its rooms and passages; but quickly, for I have not the key for long, and the night is very nearly over. Yet, perchance, you shall remember!”

The key made a dreadful noise as she turned it in the lock, and when the great door swung open into an empty hall and we went in, I heard sounds of whispering and weeping, and the rustling of clothes, as of people moving in their sleep and about to wake. Then, instantly, a spirit of intense sadness came over me, drenching me to the soul; my eyes began to burn and smart, and in my heart I became aware of a strange sensation as of the uncoiling of something that had been asleep for ages. My whole being, unable to resist, at once surrendered itself to the spirit of deepest melancholy, and the pain of my heart, as the Things moved and woke, became in a moment of time too strong for words…

As we advanced, the faint voices and sobbings fled away before us into the interior of the House, and I became conscious that the air was full of hands held aloft, of swaying garments, of drooping tresses, and of eyes so sad and wistful that the tears, which were already brimming in my own, held back for wonder at the sight of such intolerable yearning.

“Do not allow this sadness to overwhelm you,” whispered the Dream at my side. “It is not often They wake. They sleep for years and years and years. The chambers are all full, and unless visitors such as we come to disturb them, they will never wake of their own accord. But, when one stirs, the sleep of the others is troubled, and they too awake, till the motion is communicated from one room to another and thus finally throughout the whole House…. Then, sometimes, the sadness is too great to be borne, and the mind weakens. For this reason Memory gives to them the sweetest and deepest sleep she has and she keeps this old key rusty from little use. But, listen now,” she added, holding up her hand: “do you not hear all through the House that trembling of the air like the distant murmur of falling water? And do you not now… perhaps… remember?”

Salvador Elizondo: El grafógrafo

Escribo. Escribo que escribo. Mentalmente me veo escribir que escribo y también puedo verme ver que escribo. Me recuerdo escribiendo ya y también viéndome que escribía. Y me veo recordando que me veo escribir y me recuerdo viéndome recordar que escribía y escribo viéndome escribir que recuerdo haberme visto escribir que me veía escribir que recordaba haberme visto escribir que escribía y que escribía que escribo que escribía. También puedo imaginarme escribiendo que ya había escrito que me imaginaría escribiendo que había escrito que me imaginaba escribiendo que me veo escribir que escribo.