Seven Gothic Tales

Isak Dinesen [Karen Blixen]
Seven Gothic Tales (1934)

Editado originalmente em língua inglesa sob pseudónimo, este livro da dinamarquesa Karen Blixen é exactamente o que o seu título promete: sete contos na fronteira do sobrenatural. São ambientados no séc. XIX e a própria escrita contém um certo gosto novecentista. Além do elemento insólito, discretamente colocado em cada um dos contos, encontram-se também alusões a factos históricos e alguns ténues elementos das linhas narrativas reaparecem esparsamente aqui e ali.
O excerto abaixo pertence ao conto “The Supper at Elsinore”.

All in all, Morten's countenance was quiet, considerate, and dignified, as it had always been.
"Good evening, little sisters; well met, well met," he said, "it was very sweet and sisterly of you to come and see me here. You had a—" he stopped a moment, as if searching for his word, as if not in the habit of speaking much with other people—"a nice fresh drive to Elsinore, I should say," he concluded.
His sisters sat with their faces toward him, as pale as he. Morten had always been wont to speak very lowly, in contrast to themselves. Thus a discussion between the sisters might be carried on with the two speaking at the same time, on the chance of the one shrill voice drowning the other. But if you wanted to hear what Morten said, you had to listen. He spoke in just the same way now, and they had been prepared for his appearance, more or less, but not for his voice.
They listened then as they had done before. But they were longing to do more. As they had set eyes on him they had turned their slim torsos all around in their chairs. Could they not touch him? No, they knew that to be out of the question. They had not been reading ghost stories all their lives for nothing. And this very thing recalled to them the old days, when, for these private supper-parties of theirs, Morten had come in at times, his large cloak soaked with rain and sea water, shining, black and rough like a shark's skin, or glazed over with snow, or freshly tarred, so that they had, laughing, held him at arm's length off their frocks. Oh, how thoroughly had the tunes of thirty years ago been transposed from a major to a minor key! From what blizzards had he come in tonight? With what sort of tar was he tarred?
"How are you, my dears?" he asked. "Do you have as merry a time in Copenhagen as in the old days at Elsinore?"
"And how are you yourself, Morten?" asked Fanny, her voice a full octave higher than his. "You are looking a real, fine privateer captain. You are bringing all the full, spiced, trade winds into our nunnery of Elsinore."
"Yes, those are fine winds," said Morten.
"How far away you have been, Morten?" said Eliza, her voice trembling a little. "What a multitude of lovely places you have visited, that we have never seen! How I have wished, how I have wished that I were you."
Fanny gave her sister a quick strong glance. Had their thoughts gone up in a parallel motion from the snowy parks and streets of Copenhagen? Or did this quiet sister, younger than she, far less brilliant, speak the simple truth of her heart?
"Yes, Lizzie, my duck," said Morten. "I remember that. I have thought of that—how you used to cry and stamp your little feet and wring your hands shouting, 'Oh, I wish I were dead.'"
"Where do you come from, Morten?" Fanny asked him.
"I come from hell," said Morten. "I beg your pardon," he added, as he saw his sister wince. "I have come now, as you see, because the Sound is frozen over. I can come then. That is a rule."

Li anteriormente:
Out Of Africa (1937)

Out Of Africa

Isak Dinesen [Karen Blixen]
Out Of Africa (1937)

Karen Blixen, que utilizava os pseudónimos Isak Dinesen nas edições em língua inglesa, e Tania Blixen nas de língua alemã, fez de Out Of Africa, mais que um livro de memórias, um registo da mudança dos tempos. Há uma certa nostalgia por um passado que se esfuma um pouco a cada dia que passa, desde as alterações na paisagem natural, às perdas e mortes de pessoas próximas, até ao abandono final da propriedade onde tinha planeado ficar o resto da vida. Da sua herdade, a plantação de café junto ao monte Ngongo, próximo de Nairobi, no Quénia, assiste-se ao ocaso de uma Inglaterra colonial no limiar dos novos tempos, onde o rugido dos leões à noite ainda convive com a chegada dos tractores agrícolas, sinal de uma "civilização" onde deixa de haver lugar para os pioneiros e para os aventureiros. E onde, segundo conta, os nativos, pelo convívio forçado com os colonos de diferentes origens, são já mais cosmopolitas do que os próprios agrários, dedicados ao quotidiano da sua vida sedentária.

When we had all our kilns lighted we sat down and talked of life. I learned much about Knudsen’s past life, and the strange adventures that had fallen to him wherever he had wandered. You had, in these conversations, to talk of Old Knudsen himself, the one righteous man,—or you would sink into that black pessimism against which he was warning you. He had experienced many things: shipwrecks, plague, fishes of unknown colouring, drinking-spouts, water-spouts, three contemporaneous suns in the sky, false friends, black villainy, short successes, and showers of gold that instantly dried up again. One strong feeling ran through his Odyssey: the abomination of the law, and all its works, and all its doings. He was a born rebel, he saw a comrade in every outlaw. A heroic deed meant to him in itself an act of defiance against the law. He liked to talk of kings and royal families, jugglers, dwarfs and lunatics, for them he took to be outside the law,—and also of any crime, revolution, trick, and prank, that flew in the face of the law. But for the good citizen he had a deep contempt, and law-abidingness in any man was to him the sign of a slavish mind. He did not even respect, or believe in, the law of gravitation, which I learnt while we were felling trees together: he saw no reason why it should not be—by unprejudiced, enterprising people—changed into the exact reverse.
[...]
In the Reserve I have sometimes come upon the Iguana, the big lizards, as they were sunning themselves upon a flat stone in a riverbed. They are not pretty in shape, but nothing can be imagined more beautiful than their colouring. They shine like a heap of precious stones or like a pane cut out of an old church window. When, as you approach, they swish away, there is a flash of azure, green and purple over the stones, the colour seems to be standing behind them in the air, like a comet’s luminous tail.
Once I shot an Iguana. I thought that I should be able to make some pretty things from his skin. A strange thing happened then, that I have never afterwards forgotten. As I went up to him, where he was lying dead upon his stone, and actually while I was walking the few steps, he faded and grew pale, all colour died out of him as in one long sigh, and by the time that I touched him he was grey and dull like a lump of concrete. It was the live impetuous blood pulsating within the animal, which had radiated out all that glow and splendour. Now that the flame was put out, and the soul had flown, the Iguana was as dead as a sandbag.