La onda personal ha calado profundamente en mí en mi tránsito por los foros. Aquí les transcribo una traducción al inglés del cuento de Borges \"La casa de Asterión\". No será la traducción oficial, pero se lee. De más está decir que me identifico con ese pobre minotauro incomprendido.
\"The House of Asterion
And the Queen gave birth to a child called Asterion
APOLODORO: Library, III, 1
I know I am accused of arro... See more La onda personal ha calado profundamente en mí en mi tránsito por los foros. Aquí les transcribo una traducción al inglés del cuento de Borges \"La casa de Asterión\". No será la traducción oficial, pero se lee. De más está decir que me identifico con ese pobre minotauro incomprendido.
\"The House of Asterion
And the Queen gave birth to a child called Asterion
APOLODORO: Library, III, 1
I know I am accused of arrogance, and may be misanthropy, and maybe madness. Such accusations (which I shall punish in due time) are slapstick. True, I don’t go out of my house, but it is also true that its doors (an infinite number of them) are open day and night to people and animals alike. Everybody is allowed to enter. You won’t find womanish pomps here, nor the bizarre flamboyancy of castles, but stillness and loneliness. Likewise, you will discover a house matched by no other the world round. (Liars are those who talk about a similar one in Egypt) Even my detractors admit that there’s no single item of furniture in the house. Yet there’s the preposterous rumour that I, Asterion, am a prisoner. Shall I repeat that there’s no single closed door, or add that there are no locks? As for the rest, some nightfall I have trodden on the streets; had I decided to come back before night, I did it, it was due to the fear exerted upon me by the masses’ faces, colourless and flat, the same as the open hand. The sun had already set, but the helpless crying of a boy and the rough prayer of the flock pronounced that I had been recognized. People prayed, fled, prostrated themselves; some climbed onto the Las Hachas temple’s stylobate, others gathered stones. One I think, hid under the sea. Not in vain was my mother a Queen; I cannot mingle in the masses, not even when my modesty wishes to.
The fact is that I am one-of-a-kind. I don’t care about what people pass on to other people; as the philosopher, I think that nothing can be communicated through the art of writing. The tedious and trivial minor things find no place in my spirit, which is prepared for grandness; never had I been able to remember what the difference between two letters was. Certain generous impatience failed to consent me the ability to read. At times I deplore it for nights and days are long.
Of course I lack not amusement. The same as the charging ram, I run along the stone galleries until I get dizzy and tumble on the ground. I crouch in the shade of a water tank or in the turn of a corridor and I pretend that someone’s looking for me. There are roofs from which I let myself fall until I get stained with blood. I can fake sleep, with my eyes shut and the powerful breathing. (Sometimes I actually get asleep, sometimes when I open my eyes the colour of the day has changed). But among so many games the one I prefer is that of another Asterion, I pretend that he calls to pay me a visit and I show him around. Revering grandly I tell him: Now we go back to the previous crossroads or Now we end in another backyard o as I was saying that you may prefer the gutter or Now you’ll see a water cistern that got filled with sand or You’ll see how the basement forks. At times I happen to make a mistake and we have a good laugh together.
Not only had I imagined those games, but I have also thought of the house. Every part of the house is many times, any place is another place. There is no water tank, no backyard, no trough, no crib; they amount fourteen (they are infinite) the cribs, the troughs, the backyards, the water tanks, the house is the size of the world; better still, it is the world. However, it was by packing backyards with water tanks and dusty grey stone galleries that I have succeeded in reaching the street and I have seen the Las Hachas Temple and the see. That, I could not understand until the vision of the night revealed to me that they also are fourteen (they are infinite) the sees and the temples. Everything is many times, fourteen times, yet only two things in the world seem to be only once: above, the intricate sun; below, Asterion. Maybe I created the stars and the sun and the enormous house, but I cannot recall that now.
Every nine years nine men enter the house so that I liberate them from all evil. I hear their steps or their voices at the back of the stone galleries and gaily run in search of them. The ceremony takes a few minutes. One after the other they fall without staining my hands with blood. Where they fell, they stay, and the corpses help me distinguish one gallery from the others. I ignore who they are, but I do know that one of them predicted, when was about dying, that some day my redeemer would come. Ever since then I am not affected by loneliness, because I know that my redeemer lives and at last he will soar from the dust. If my ears could reach the rumours of the world, I would be able to perceive his steps. I wish he takes me to a place with less galleries and less doors. How will my redeemer look? I wonder. Will he be a bull or a man? Will he be, perhaps, a bull with a human face? Or, will he be just like me?
The morning sun glittered on the bronze sword. By then, there was not a single trace of blood left.
- Will you believe it, Ariadne? said Teseus- The minotaurus hardly defended himself.\"
Gracias por su tiempo gente. 
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[ This Message was edited by: on 2002-07-17 16:02 ] ▲ Collapse
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