Enrique Congrains Martín

 

The exaggerated life of a man named Enrique Congrains

 Martín

Source: Letralia Tierra de Letras

The interview of Hispanic American writers on the internet

By Abraham Prudencio Sánchez

The life of Enrique Congrains could easily be the wild story of a man who turned his life into a complex and exaggerated novel. As if driven by a powerful and limitless mystery, in 1954, at the age of 22, he published a set of four stories under the title Lima, Hora Zero; The following year, delving even deeper into social problems, he published Kikuyo.

 

With the same abandon and fervour, he collaborates in literary magazines such as Ya and Pan, with a marked leftist tendency. Dissatisfied with his reality, he immerses himself in intense political activity; this passion led him to join the Trotskyist lines. So blind was his passion for the future of the new ideology that one winter afternoon he found himself involved in an assault, with a gun in hand, at a banking agency; The argument was simple and irrefutable: the guerrilla needed funds to prevail over his new reality. However, his disproportionate actions had immediate consequences, and as it could not be otherwise, he ended up with his bones in the jail of the courthouse. The audacity cost him three months of confinement.

 

To fulfil his mission, analysing the hostile terrain of the 50s in that convulsed Lima, he not only stayed with the ink and the pen. Such an undertaking required a publishing house, and since in those years none of the publishing houses, which could barely be counted on the fingers of one hand, would endorse his madness, he created his own publishing house. This is how, under his humble but own seal, he published his first books. It was not unusual to find him on the streets, package in hand, promoting, like a fair vendor, his own texts. Mario Vargas Llosa says that he introduced himself like this: “Buy me this book, of which I am the author. Have a fun time and help Peruvian literature.” Obviously, with such an effective argument, people had no choice but to put their hands on their chests.

 

With the same intensity as always, but this time already established in Argentina, he published not one but many deaths (1957), a novel that was made into a film in 1983 with the devastating title of Maruja in hell, directed by Francisco Lombardi with a script by poet José Watanabe. After the publication of this book, when he was at the best of his production and to the surprise of Christians and Moors, Enrique Congrains abandoned literature and, as if that were not enough, in 1963 he left Peru for an indefinite period. From that moment, he became a globetrotter, from Argentina he went to Venezuela, Chile, Mexico, Cuba, Colombia.

 

His entrepreneurial spirit takes him from a soap inventor who started in Lima to a promoter of speed reading contests. He creates incredible projects such as tube chess and the art of the microwave. He writes recipe books on Peruvian cuisine and natural medicine; As a cultural promoter, he is tempted to create a large publishing house whose infrastructure would cross borders; as a publisher, he breaks records by selling more than 250,000 of his already famous biographical collections of scientists. Together with a group of friends he is tempted to create Multidic, which was nothing less than a dictionary of dictionaries (he composed 108 specialized dictionaries); However, this project was ruined by the unexpected appearance of a man named Bill Gates, who came to our stone age with a fabulous invention: Encarta. Enrique Congrains and his friends had to step aside and follow in the footsteps of other crazy things.

Such feats were not the result of simple chimeras but required a strong investment, and to the admiration of many disbelievers, there were not only people but also institutions that approved his daring projects by lending him money.

 

He had ideas that, after their application, turned out to be a complete success; overnight fortune seemed to smile on him, but most of the time, if not all, “his madness” turned out to be a total failure, the consequences were obvious, instead of winning it, the money seemed to go up in smoke in his hands, bankruptcy was a common state of mind, he was thus pursued by the nightmare of debts; Many times he was forced to leave a country between roosters and midnight.

 

Many of his friends, with the dream of becoming rich overnight, were left in the most complete ruin, and many institutions, not obtaining results through cordial means, were forced to open legal proceedings against him left and right. Sinister It is said that under this situation he had more than 20 seizure orders.

 

Faced with such a pressing situation, there was only one option: disappear from the place and settle in another to start from scratch, until one jump at a time he ended up in Bolivia. Here he settled, a little calmer, because he had personally found out that in this peaceful place there was no extradition for debts.

He thus remained immersed in almost complete anonymity. He disappeared so much from sight that some thought he was dead, and it was no wonder, because to avoid lawsuits and claims he had no choice but to change his name. Many say that our beloved writer introduced himself as Antonio Rodríguez Solís. This solicitous businessman had taken the place of the indebted narrator Enrique Congrains; The creditors, unable to find him even though they had him face to face and in person, would turn around and return after his steps, totally convinced that the devil had taken the soul of that poor debtor. But neither they nor Antonio Rodríguez Solís himself really knew who Enrique Congrains was.

The early emergence of this author on the Peruvian literary scene marked a turning point in the prevailing themes of the moment. Lima, Hora Zero, thus becomes the founding text, with this book inaugurating urban realism in Peru.

 

 

 

The immigrant, before the emergence of Congrains, is heading towards the Promised Land; Young people, especially, see Lima as the city where they can fulfil their dreams, because there were so many businesses that it was impossible not to have work.

 

 

 

The pen of this young author tells us about those same characters but already settled in young towns, in the sandy areas, in places where in those years it was impossible to think of settling and being able to live as long as they wanted. This is how the San Cosme, Agustino, San Juan de Miraflores, Zárate, Comas, Los Olivos, and a long etcetera hill were formed.

 

 

 

He is the migrant subject from the Sierra who arrives loaded with dreams. There is no other solution, Lima is the only city where they will be able to progress and stop being “forgotten”, but from forgotten they will have another category perhaps worse than the previous one, from that moment on they will be “marginalized” and will be treated that way. for those who had already been there from the beginning, but especially for those who have arrived a few days before.

 

 

 

In “The Boy Next to Heaven,” perhaps one of his best stories, he portrays this reality: Esteban, recently arrived from his native Tarma, asks for “permission to visit the city,” he wants to tour the place, but he is not in Miraflores. or San Isidro as he would have liked but in the periphery, far from everything, “he had descended from the hill to the road,” and as he submerged he asked himself in disbelief: “Was that Lima, Lima, Lima?” At just ten years old, he had no better phrase to name that reality; that place was not the one he imagined but “the beast with a million heads.”

 

 

 

That great “beast” made up of people coming from all over, trying to survive as best they could. However, that million-headed beast receives him with a “surprise”: just after getting off the San Cosme hill, Esteban finds ten soles; This apparent “luck” was another game of fate, since he not only finds the ten suns but also Pedro, a child without parents who survived thanks to his cunning. We could say that Pedro was the same as him, only that he had arrived earlier and had already become accustomed to that reality; Life experience had taught him that if he wanted to survive in that world he had to lose all kinds of morals and feelings; It is for this reason that upon learning of the “good luck” of his lucky friend, he does not hesitate to propose a prosperous business, Esteban would invest the ten soles and he would invest the “knowledge of life” in him.

 

 

 

Esteban, excited, thinking that the Beast was not as bad as he had believed, lets himself go without knowing how ruthless he could be. Pedro, to finish his plan, distracts the naive boy by sending him to buy something to eat; This carelessness is well taken advantage of to disappear with the money and all the profit from the sale of the magazines. Esteban, hours later, resigns himself, “Pedro was not in that place, nor in any other”, the Beast did not forgive the naive or people of good faith. While he returned home, it was surely in his “little head” that if he wanted to live in that place he should act like Pedro or perhaps worse.

 

 

 

With a language typical of the 50s, Enrique Congrains captures that Lima full of contrasts, violent and difficult. He inserts himself into the life of the immigrant to tell us in simple and direct language the series of misfortunes that uprooted people go through in their eagerness to settle into this new reality. The migrant subject of the mountains will be a recurring theme in his first three books.

When everyone had already forgotten about him and when the schoolbooks republished his stories as the best tribute to who Enrique Congrains was in life, one winter morning in 2007 he burst onto the Lima literary scene with kicks and punches. But he did not come alone, he had a couple of books under his arm, The Storyteller and 999 Words for Planet Earth, and as if that were not enough he also brought with him a monkey's paw that he brandished in the air like a blunt weapon.

 

 

 

Many took him, whether from near or far, as a madman, and others as an unparalleled eccentric, but in reality he was just a person who wanted to make his life whatever he wanted; He went where he wanted and wrote what he wanted, he resisted until the last second of his life to be part of that every day and frivolous world, and if he could have continued with his madness, but death had been following him for a long time with the same urgency as their creditors.

 

 

 

 

 

On July 6, 2009, in peaceful Cochabamba, plagued by respiratory problems, he left this world to go to the world of imagination that he had created so precociously.

With affection,

Ruben

 

 

 

 

 

Story : Fear

 

FEAR

Guy de Maupassant

AFTER dinner we gathered on deck. The Mediterranean lay without a ripple, its surface shot with the silver radiance of the full moon. The great ship glided along, sending up to the star strewn sky a snaky column of black smoke. In our wake foamed and whirled a white streak of water, ploughed up by the swift passage of the vessel, churned by the screw, and emitting such brilliant flashes of brightness that it seemed like liquid moonlight, all bubbling and boiling.

Six or seven of us stood there in silent admiration, our eyes turned towards the distant shores of Africa, whither we were bound. The captain, who had joined us and was smoking a cigar, resumed a conversation begun at the dinner table.

‘Yes, I knew what fear was that day. My ship lay for six hours spiked on a rock with the seas breaking over her. Luckily towards evening we were sighted and picked up by an English collier.’

A man, who had not yet spoken, now broke silence. He was tall, of tanned complexion and grave aspect, the type of man whom one instinctively assumes to have travelled through vast tracts of unexplored countries amid ever-threatening dangers; whose steady eyes retain in their depths something of the strange lands through which he has wandered, and who is courageous through and through.

You say, captain, that you knew what fear was. I do not believe it. You are mistaken both as to the term you used and as the sensation you experienced. A brave man has never any fear in the presence of imminent danger. He may be excited, agitated, and anxious, but as for fear, that is quite another thing.’

The captain laughed. Stuff and nonsense! I tell you I was in a blue funk.’ The bronze-faced man replied in deliberate tones:

Allow me to explain. Fear and the bravest of men can experience fear-is a dreadful thing; it is an appalling sensation, as if one’s soul were disintegrating; it is a torturing pang, convulsing mind and heart; a horror, of which the mere remembrance evokes a shudder of anguish. But a brave man is not subject to it at the prospect of a hostile attack, or when confronted with certain death or any familiar form of danger. It comes upon him in certain abnormal conditions, when certain mysterious influences are at work, in the face of perils, which he does not understand. True fear has in it something of the memory of fantastic terrors of long ago. Now a man who believes in ghosts, and thinks he sees a spectre in the night, is bound to experience fear in all its devastating horror.

‘About ten years ago I myself had this feeling in broad day light, and last winter it came upon me again, one December night. Yet I have often run risks and had death hanging over me, and I have seen a lot of fighting. I have been left for dead by brigands. I have been sentenced to be hanged as a rebel in America, and flung into the sea from the deck of a ship off the coast of China. Each time I gave myself up for lost, and accepted the situation without emotion, even without regret.

‘But fear is a very different thing. I felt a first hint of it in Africa. Yet the North is its real home; the sun disperses it like a fog. This is an interesting point. With Orientals, life is of no account; they are fatalists, one and all. The clear eastern nights foster none of those sinister forebodings, which haunt the minds of those who dwell in cold countries. In the East, there is such a thing as panic, but fear is unknown.

‘Well, this is what happened to me over there in Africa. I was crossing the vast sandhills south of Ouargla, one of the strangest tracts of country in the world. You all know what the smooth level sands of a sea beach are like, running on and on interminably. Now picture in your minds the ocean itself turned to sand in the middle of a hurricane. Imagine a tempest without sound and with billows of yellow sand that never move. To the height of mountains they rise, these irregular waves of all shapes and sizes, surging like the ungovernable waters of ocean, but vaster, and streaked like watered silk. And the pitiless rays of the devastating southern sun beat straight down upon that raging sea, lying there without sound or motion. A journey across these billows of golden dust is one continual Ascent and descent, without a moment of respite or a vestige of shade. The horses pant and sink in up to their knees, and flounder down the slopes of these extraordinary hills.

Our party consisted of my friend and myself, with an escort of eight spahis, four camels and their drivers. Overcome with heat and fatigue, parched with thirst as the burning desert itself, we rode in silence. Suddenly one of our men uttered a cry; every one halted; and we remained rooted to the spot, surprised by a phenomenon, which, though familiar to travellers in those God-forsaken parts, has never been explained. From some where near at hand, but in a direction difficult to determine, came the roll of a drum, the mysterious drum of the sand hills. Its beating was distinct, now loud, now soft, now dying away, now resuming its weird tattoo.

‘The Arabs looked at one another in horror, and one of them said in his own tongue:

‘ "Death is upon us."

‘And as he spoke, my comrade, my friend, who was almost like a brother to me, fell headlong from his horse, struck down by sunstroke.

‘For two hours, while I laboured in vain to save his life, that phantom drum filled my ears with its monotonous, intermittent, and baffling throbbing. And I felt fear, real fear, ghastly fear, glide into my bones, as I gazed at the body of the man I loved, there in that sun-baked hollow, between four sand hills, six hundred miles from the nearest French settlement, with that rapid, mysterious drumming echoing in our ears.

That day I knew what fear was. I realized it even more profoundly on another occasion.’

The captain interrupted him:

‘Excuse me, sir, but what was that drum?’

’I don’t know,’ the traveller replied, ’nobody knows. Military officers, who have often been startled at this singular sound, are generally of opinion that it is caused by sand scudding before the wind and brushing against tufts of dry grass, the echo being intensified and multiplied to prodigious volume by the valley formation of that desert region. It has been observed that the phenomenon always occurs near small plants burnt up by the sun and as hard as parchment. According to this theory, the drum was simply a sort of sound mirage, nothing more. But I did not learn this till later.

 

’I come to my second experience.

‘It was last winter in a forest in the north-east of France. The sky was so overcast that night fell two hours before its time. My guide was a peasant, who walked beside me along 1 narrow path beneath over-arching fir-trees, through which the wind howled. Through the tree-tops I saw the clouds scurrying past in wild confusion, as if fleeing in dismay and terror. Now and then, struck by a furious blast, the whole forest groaned as if in pain and swayed in one direction. In spite of my rapid pace and my thick clothes, I was perishing with cold. We were to sup and sleep at the house of a forest-guard, who lived not far away. I had come for some shooting.

‘Now and then my guide looked up and muttered:

‘ " Miserable weather!"

‘Then he talked about the people to whose house we were going. The master of the house had killed a poacher two years before, and ever since he had seemed depressed as if haunted by the memory. His two married sons lived with him.

‘The darkness was intense. I could see nothing before me or around me, and the boughs of the trees, clashing together, filled the night with a ceaseless uproar. At last I saw a light, and my companion was soon knocking at a door. Shrill cries of women answered us. Then a man, speaking in a strangled voice, asked:

‘ "Who goes there?"

‘My guide gave his name and we entered. It was a scene I shall never forget. A white-haired, wild-eyed old man stood waiting for us in the middle of the kitchen with a loaded gun in his hand, while two stout lads, armed with axes, guarded the door. I could make out two women kneeling in the dark comers of the room with their faces hidden against the wall.

‘We explained our business. The old man replaced his weapon against the wall, and ordered my room to be made ready. As the women did not stir, he said to me abruptly:

‘ “You see, sir, two years ago to-night I killed a man. Last year he appeared and called me. I expect him again this evening.”

‘And he added in a tone which made me smile:

‘ “So we are rather uneasy.”

‘I did what I could to soothe him and felt glad that I had come that evening, just in the nick of time to witness this exhibition of superstitious terror. I told stories and almost succeeded in calming them all down.

‘By the fire lay an old dog, asleep with his head on his paws. He was nearly blind, and with his moustached muzzle he was the sort of dog that reminds one of some acquaintance.

‘Outside the tempest beat fiercely on the little house, and through a small square opening, a sort of peep-hole near the door, I suddenly saw, by the glare of vivid lightning, a confused mass of trees, tossed about by the wind.

’I realized that, in spite of my efforts, these people were under the sway of some deep-seated terror. Whenever I stopped talking, every ear was straining into the distance. Tired of the spectacle of these foolish fears, I was about to retire to bed when the old forest-guard suddenly jumped up from his chair, seized his gun again, and gasped in frenzied tones:

‘ “There he is. There he is. I can hear him.”

‘The two women fell on their knees again and hid their faces; the sons picked up their axes. I was preparing to attempt to calm them when the sleeping dog suddenly raised his head and stretched his neck and, looking into the fire with his dim eyes, uttered one of those melancholy howls, which startle the benighted traveller. All eyes turned towards him. He stood there perfectly rigid, as if he had seen a ghost. And again he howled at something invisible, something unknown, and, to judge from his bristling coat, something that frightened him.

’Livid with terror, the forest-guard cried out:

‘ “He scents him. He scents him. He was with me when I killed him.’

‘The two distracted women began to mingle their howls with those of the dog. In spite of myself, a cold shudder ran down my spine. The dog’s clairvoyance, in that place, at that hour of the night, in the midst of those terror-stricken people, was an uncanny thing to see.

‘For a whole hour that dog went on howling without stirring from the spot. He howled as if in the agony of a nightmare, and fear, appalling fear, came upon me. Fear of what? I have no idea. All I can say is that it was fear.

‘We remained there pale and motionless, awaiting some dreadful sequel, with ears intent and beating hearts, convulsed by the slightest sound. Then the dog began to roam about the room, sniffing walls, and whining incessantly. The brute was driving us mad. At last the peasant, my guide, seized him in A sort of paroxysm of angry terror and, throwing open a door, flung him out into a small courtyard.

‘Immediately the dog was still, and we remained plunged in a silence, which was even more nerve-wracking. Suddenly we all gave a simultaneous bound. Something was gliding along the outer wall on the side nearest the forest. It brushed against the door and seemed to fumble there with hesitating touch. Then followed two minutes of a silence that maddened us. Then the thing returned, brushing against the wall as before, and scratch ing on it lightly, like a child scratching with its fingernail. Suddenly a head appeared at the peephole, a white face with gleaming eyes, like those of a wild beast. And from its mouth came a vague sound like a plaintive moan.

‘There was a noise of a tremendous explosion in the kitchen. The old forest-guard had fired his gun. At the same time the two sons rushed to block up the peep-hole with the big table, which they reinforced with the dresser.

‘And solemnly I assure you that at that unexpected report of the gun, such an agonizing pang shot through me, heart and soul and body, that I was ready to faint, ready to die of fear.

‘We stayed there till dawn, unable to stir or utter a word in the grip of a horror I cannot describe.

‘No one ventured to move the barricade till we saw, through a chink in the pent-roof, a slender ray of daylight.

‘At the foot of the wall, close against the door, lay the old dog with a bullet in his throat. He had got out of the court yard by digging a hole under the fence.’

The man with the bronzed face ceased speaking. Then he added:

‘That night I was in no danger whatever. But I would rather go through again all the worst perils I have encountered than that single moment when the gun was fired at that hairy face at the window.’

With affection,

Ruben

Story : The Little One

 

The Little  One

Guy de Maupassant

 

After having for a long time sworn that he would never marry, Jacques Bourdillère suddenly changed his mind. It had happened quickly, one summer on the seaside.

One morning, as he was lying stretched out on the sand, quite occupied in watching the women emerge from the sea, a little foot had struck him by its amiability and its cuteness. Raising his eyes higher, he found the whole person most seductive. Of the whole person, moreover, he only saw the ankles and the head emerging from a white-flannel dressing-gown that was quite closed up. He was said to be sensual and dedicated to a life of pleasure. So it was solely by the gracefulness of the form that he was initially captivated; after that he was retained by the charm, the gentleness of the young woman, simple and wholesome, as fresh as her cheeks and her lips.

 

Presented to the family he made a good impression, and he had soon fallen completely in love. When he looked at Berthe Lannis from a distance on the long beach of yellow sand, he shivered up to the roots of his hair. Near her he became mute, incapable of saying and even thinking anything, with his heart beating, a buzzing in his ears and fright in his mind. Is that what love is, finally?

He didn’t know, didn’t understand anything, but in any case remained quite decided to make this child his wife.

The parents hesitated a long time, held back by the young man’s bad reputation. He had a mistress, it was said, an old mistress, a long-standing and strong liaison, one of those chains that one believes to have been broken and that continue to hold fast.

Apart from that he loved, during longer or shorter periods, all the women that passed within reach of his lips.

Then he put his affairs in order, without consenting to see even one single time the woman with whom he had lived for so long. Jacques paid, but didn’t want to hear anything about her, declaring that henceforth he knew nothing whatsoever about her, even her name. Every week he recognized the clumsy handwriting of the woman he had abandoned; and, every week, he was taken by an ever greater anger against her and abruptly tore up both the envelope and the letter without reading a line, a single line, knowing in advance the reproaches and the complains it contained.

As his perseverance was hardly taken seriously, he was obliged to wait in vain all winter, and it was only in the springtime that his marriage demand was accepted.

The wedding took place in Paris in the first days of May.

 

It was decided that they wouldn’t go on the traditional honeymoon trip. After a small reception for some cousins that would be over by eleven in the evening, the young couple planned to pass their first night together in the family home so as not to stretch out the exhausting day of ceremonies, and then to leave together the following morning, alone, for the beach so dear to their hearts where they had first met and fallen in love.

The night had come, there was still dancing in the grand salon. The two of them had gone off to the little adjoining Japanese salon decorated with brilliant silks, only lit that night by the languid rays of a large coloured lantern hanging from the ceiling like an enormous egg. The half-opened window let in gusts of fresh air from time to time, light wafts of air that flowed caressingly over their faces, as the evening was mild and calm, full of the odours of springtime.

They didn’t say anything; they held hands, squeezing them sometimes with all their force. She was a little lost by this great change to her life and had a vague expression in her eyes but was smiling, moved, on the verge of tears and often also on the verge of collapsing with joy, believing the whole world to have changed because of what was happening to her, feeling uneasy without knowing the cause and feeling all her body, all her soul invaded by an undefinable but delicious lassitude.

He was obstinately looking at her, smiling fixedly. He wanted to speak but finding nothing he just stayed there, putting all his ardour into the pressure of his hands. From time to time he murmured: “Berthe!” and each time she lifted her eyes up to him with a soft and tender movement; they contemplated each other a second, then her gaze, penetrated and fascinated by his, fell down again.

They didn’t find a single thought to exchange. They had been left alone but from time to time a couple of dancers threw furtive glances at them passing by, as if they had been discrete and confidential witnesses of a mystery.

 

A side door opened and a servant appeared, holding a tray with a sealed letter that had just been delivered. Jacques took the letter up with a trembling hand, seized by a vague and sudden fear, the mysterious fear of sudden misfortune.

He looked at the writing on the envelope, that he did not recognize, for a long time, not daring to open it, desperately desiring not to open it, to know nothing of it, to put it into his pocket and to say to himself: “Tomorrow! tomorrow I’ll be far away, it means nothing to me!” But in a corner there were the underlined words VERY URGENT that retained and frightened him. He asked: “May I, my dear?”, tore open the sealed page and read it. Reading it he paled frightfully; he read it hastily over again and then seemed to be slowly spelling it out.

When he raised his head up, his whole face was overwhelmed with emotion. He stammered: “My dear little one, it’s… it’s my best friend to whom a great, a terribly great disaster has happened. He needs me right away… at once… for a question of life or death. Will you allow me to be absent for twenty minutes? — I‘ll come back right away!”

She stammered, trembling, terrified: “Go, my dear!”, not yet being his wife long enough to dare to interrogate him, to demand to know. And he disappeared. She remained there alone, listening to the dancing in the salon.

He had taken a hat, the first one he could lay his hands on, any overcoat whatever, and ran down the stairs. On reaching the street he stopped under the gaslight to read the letter again. This is what it said:

 

“Sir,

A certain woman Ravet, your former mistress it would appear, has just given birth to a child that she declares to be yours. The mother is going to die and implores you to visit her. I am taking the liberty of writing to you to ask you to grant this last visit to this woman, who seems very unhappy and worthy of pity.

Your servant,

Dr. Bonnard”

 

When he entered the room of the dying woman she was already on the verge of death. He didn’t recognize her at first. The doctor and two assistants were taking care of her and everywhere on the floor there were buckets full of ice and towels soaked in blood.

There was water all over the floor; two candles were burning on a console; behind the bed the infant was crying in a little wicker cradle, and at each of its wails the anguished mother tried to move, shivering under the frozen compresses.

She was bleeding; bleeding profusely, fatally wounded by this birth. Her whole life was draining away from her; and, in spite of the ice, in spite of the ministrations, the invincible haemorrhage continued, precipitating her final hour.

She recognized Jacques and wanted to raise her arms in greeting, but was unable to, they were so weak, and tears began to slide down her livid cheeks.

He went down on his knees beside the bed, took hold of her hand that was hanging down and kissed it frantically; then little by little he approached his face closer, right up to the thin face that quivered at the contact. One of the assistants, standing with a candle in his hand, cast light on them and the doctor, having stepped back, looked on from the far side of the room.

Then in a voice that was already distant she said to him in gasps: “I am going to die, my beloved; promise me that you will stay to the end. Oh, don’t leave me now, don’t leave me at my last moment!”

He tearfully kissed her on the forehead and in her hair, and murmured: “Be calm, I’ll stay.”

It was several minutes before she could speak again, she was so weak and oppressed. She continued: “He is yours, the little one. I swear to it before God, I swear to it on my soul, I swear to it on my deathbed. I have loved no one else but you… promise me that you will not abandon him!”

He tried to gather the slight, torn body emptied of its blood up in his arms again. He stammered, crazed with remorse and chagrin: “I swear it to you, I shall raise him up and love him. He will not leave me.” Then she tried to embrace Jacques. Unable to raise up her exhausted head, she proffered her white lips in an appeal for a kiss. He approached his lips to receive this lamentable, supplicating caress.

Somewhat calmed, she murmured in a low voice: “Bring him to me, so that I can see if you love him!”

And he fetched the infant.

He set it delicately down on the bed between them, and the little being stopped crying. She murmured: “Don’t move!” and he stayed there, holding in his hand that burning hand that was shaken by anguished tremors, as he had held a short while before another hand seized by tremors of love. From time to time he looked at the clock with a furtive glance, watching the needle hand that passed midnight, then one o’clock, then two o’clock.

The doctor had left and the two assistants, after having paced to and fro for some time in light steps were now dozing on the chairs. The baby was sleeping and the mother, with closed eyes, seemed to be resting too.

All at once, as the pale light of day filtered between the closed curtains, she held her arms out in an abrupt movement so violent that she almost ejected the child from the bed. There was a kind of raucous complaint in her throat, then she was immobile there on her back, dead.

The assistants ran over declaring: “It’s over.”

He looked one last time at this woman he had loved, then at the clock that showed four o’clock, and fled in his black suit, leaving his overcoat behind, with the child in his arms.

 

After he had left her alone, his young wife had waited in the little Japanese salon, quite calm at first. Then, as she didn’t see him coming back, she went back into the salon with an air of indifference and tranquility, but terribly worried. Her mother, on seeing her alone, had immediately asked: “Where’s your husband?” She had replied: “He’s gone to his room, he’ll be coming back.”

After an hour, as everyone was questioning her, she told them about the letter and the overwhelmed expression of Jacques, and about her fears of a disaster.

They waited longer. The guests left and only her closest relatives remained. At midnight they put the bride, shaking with sobs, to bed. Her mother and two aunts, sitting around the bed, listened to her crying, mute and desolated… The father had gone to see the police commissioner for information.

At five o’clock in the morning a light noise was heard in the corridor; a door was softly opened and closed; then suddenly a little cry, like a cat’s meowing, was heard in the silent house.

All of the women were on their feet in an instant, and Berthe ran forward in her nightgown in spite of the restraining gestures of her mother and aunts.

Jacques stood there in the middle of the room, livid, panting, holding an infant in his arms.

The four women looked at him, frightened; but Berthe, suddenly become audacious, her heart seized with anguish, ran up to him: “What’s happened? Tell me, what is it?”

He looked like a madman; he replied in a shaken voice: “It’s… it’s… that I have a child, whose mother has just died…” And he showed her the baby howling in his clumsy hands.

 

Berthe, without saying a word, took the baby in her arms, kissed it and held it against her body; then, lifting her eyes full of tears up to her husband: “The mother is dead, you say?” He replied: “Yes, just now… in my arms… I had broken with her in the summer… I knew nothing of it… it was the doctor who summoned me.”

Then Berthe murmured: “Well, we’ll bring him up, this little one!”

With affection,

Ruben

 

 

Famous phrases and quotes from Thoreau 2

 

Famous phrases and quotes from Thoreau 2

 

During his life, Thoreau opposed American slavery and promulgated ideas that were very advanced for that time of war, violence and scarcity. In fact, such central figures in United States History as Martin Luther King himself acknowledged being strongly influenced by the figure of the writer.

 

In today's article we are going to learn about the best phrases of Henry David Thoreau, to get closer to his thoughts and his exceptional prose.

 

1. You are more aware than before of what is important and what is trivial. It's worth waiting for the future!

A positive phrase from the great Henry David Thoreau.

 

2. There are moments when all the accumulated anxiety and effort are calmed in the infinite indolence and rest of nature.

There are different types of anxiety and, as Thoreau states, sometimes we are able to mitigate it in a true phase of catharsis.

 

3. I went to the forests because I wanted to live deliberately; face the facts of life alone and see if she could learn what she had to teach. I wanted to live deeply and discard everything that was not life... So as not to realize, at the moment of dying, that I had not lived.

One of those philosophical quotes that invite us to reflect.

 

4. The law never made men one iota more just; and, because of their respect for them, even the best disposed daily become agents of injustice.

In this quote he reveals to us the anarchist side of him.

 

5. What a man thinks of himself, this is what determines, or rather indicates his destiny.

Our self-concept is more powerful than we usually think.

 

6. Mathematics does not lie, there are many lying mathematicians.

Statistics can always lead to erroneous conclusions if we do not know how to interpret them properly.

8. Almost all people live life in quiet desperation.

A sad phrase that contains a truth that endures in our times.

 

9. How vain it is to sit down and write when you have not yet gotten up to live.

A reflection on the writing profession. If you have not experimented, your texts may be  complete  empty.

 

10. There is more religion in man's science than science in his religion.

What does science think about religious people?

 

11. Most men, even in this relatively free country, are so busy with unnecessary artifices and absurdly mediocre work that they have no time left to reap the best fruits of life.

Another quote from Henry David Thoreau about superficiality and ostentatious living.

 

12. Nine-tenths of wisdom comes from being judicious in time.

Famous phrase where he explains his notion of responsibility.

 

Recommended article: “89 phrases about intelligence and knowledge”

13. Heaven could be defined as the place that men avoid.

A thought that leads us to reflect on good and evil.

 

14. There is no worse smell than that given off by corrupted goodness.

When a good man becomes corrupt, the honour he earned through years of honesty fades away beyond repair.

 

15. Is democracy as we know it the ultimate achievement in government? Is it not possible to take one more step towards the recognition and organization of human rights? There can never be a truly free and enlightened State.

16. It is as difficult to see yourself, as it is to look back without turning around.

Our capacity for self-reflection is certainly limited.

 

17. No human being, past the irrational age of childhood, will consciously want to kill any creature that sustains its life from the same earth as itself.

An animalistic phrase that perhaps is not surprising today, but that in its time represented a radical look at the life of living beings.

 

18. Time is nothing but the current in which I am fishing.

One of these reflections on time that leave us thinking for hours.

 

19. The light that blinds our eyes is darkness for us. Only dawns the day for which we are awake. There are still many days until dawn. He alone is but a morning star.

Were you looking for philosophical phrases? This famous Thoreau quote is for framing.

 

20. If you cannot convince a person of the bad thing he is doing, he then tries to do the good thing. People believe only what they see.

Ethics are preached with day-to-day actions.

21. If you have built castles in the air, your work is not lost; now place the bases under them.

We can build on daily daydreams.

 

22. Things do not change; we change.

Without knowing it, throughout life we constantly change.

 

23. Instead of love, money or fame, give me the truth.

The truth will help us achieve anything in life.

24. I have never found a more sociable companion than solitude.

This great writer and poet cultivated a pessimistic idea of the world.

 

25. Love should not only be a flame, but a light.

Love illuminates our lives and provides us with the warmth necessary to live.

 

26. There is not a moment of truce between virtue and vice.

It is up to us to bet on one or the other.

 

27. as if you could kill time without insulting eternity!

A poetic vision of the passage of time.

 

28. What good is a house if you do not have a tolerable planet on which to place it.

A surprising and humorous contribution in equal parts.

 

29. A man is rich in proportion to the things he can throw away.

An interesting reflection that makes us think that many of us can be rich.

 

30. Any man who is more right than his neighbour is already constitutes a majority of one.

A nice way to conceive the daily life of families.

 

31. Read the good books first; most likely, you will not be able to read them all.

A tip for avid readers.

 

32. There are many who go around the branches, for one who goes directly to the root.

In general, people find it difficult to be specific and concise.

33. Stop scratching the bark; there is ripe fruit on your forehead.

We must look at our environment to find what is truly important.

 

34. Under a government that imprisons someone unjustly, the proper place for a just person is also prison.

We must stand in solidarity against injustice in times of tyranny.

 

36. Citizen life: millions of beings living together in solitude.

A pessimistic view of society.

 

37. Don't just be good; be good for a reason.

Whenever we have a goal in life, goodness will come out on its own and help us achieve it.

 

38. Disobedience is the true foundation of freedom. The obedient must be slaves.

His ideas laid the foundations for civil rights in the West.

 

39. This world is nothing more than a canvas for our imagination.

A phrase that tells us about the multiple possibilities of life.

 

40. There is only one remedy for love: to love more.

Love can do everything, and as long as it is genuine, it generates more love.

 

41. The rich man is always sold to the institution that makes him rich.

Something that has not changed after more than 200 years of history.

 

42. The borders are not east or west, north or south, but where man faces a fact.

An allegorical way of defining borders in the world, as places of passage where events happen.

 

43. Each new generation laughs at previous fashions, but religiously follows the current one.

Absurd fashions are a social phenomenon that is still valid after more than 200 years of history.

44. I learned that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams and undertakes the life he has imagined for himself, he will find unexpected success in his ordinary hours.

Confidence in ourselves and the conviction that we will succeed are key in our daily lives.

 

45. Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.

Only in this way will we be able to be rich.

 

46. Kindness is the only investment that never goes bankrupt.

Kindness costs nothing and is worth a lot.

 

47. The seeker of defects finds them even in paradise.

There are people who become obsessed with finding the negative in any aspect of life.

 

48. Love your life no matter how poor it is.

We must value what we have in life, above all else.

 

49. He who knows how to listen to the murmur of the rivers will never feel complete despair.

If we are able to obtain happiness in nature, we do not need anything else.

 

50. Never look back, unless you are planning to go in that direction.

Good advice that we can apply on all our trips.

 

HOW TO CITE THIS ARTICLE:

 

Xavier Molina. (2017, May 19). The 50 best quotes by Henry David Thoreau. Psychology and Mind Portal. https://psicologiaymente.com/reflexiones/frases-henry-david-thoreau

With affection,

Ruben