Circe - The Orchard Pit

Aquí copio el poema en prosa de Rossetti titulado "The Orchard Pit" (La fosa de la huerta.) Un trozo de ese poema aparece al inicio de Circe (ver el texto en azul casi al final).  Quizás el desenlace del poema sirve de pista para saber lo que le ocurriría a Mario. Recomiendo hacer clic en el enlace y leer la biografía de Rossetti que aparece en un portal llamado "Poetas neuróticos."

Esta sería mi traducción de esas líneas azules que escogió Cortázar para el epígrafe de su cuento:

"Y con un beso de su boca, tomé la manzana de su mano. Pero mientras la mordía, mi cerebro giraba y mi pie tropezó y sentí mi caída estrepitosa a través de la maraña de ramas bajo sus pies y vi las blancas caras muertas que me recibían en la fosa."

The Orchard Pit 

by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

(prose draft)

Men tell me that sleep has many dreams; but all my life I have dreamt one dream alone.

I see a glen whose sides slope upward from the deep bed of a dried-up stream, and either slope is covered with wild apple-trees. In the largest tree, within the fork whence the limbs divide, a fair, golden-haired woman stands and sings, with one white arm stretched along a branch of the tree, and with the other holding forth a bright red apple, as if to someone coming down the slope. Below the feet the trees grow more and more tangled, and stretch from both sides across the deep pit below: and the pit is full of the bodies of men.

They lie in heaps beneath the screen of boughs, with her apples bitten in their hands; and some are no more than ancient bones now, and some seem dead but yesterday. She stands over them in the glen, and sings for ever, and offers her apple still.

This dream shows me no strange place. I know the glen, and have known it from childhood, and heard many tales of those who have died there by the Siren’s spell.

I pass there often now, and look at is as one might look at a place chosen for one’s grave. I see nothing, but I know that it means death for me. The apple-trees are like others, and have childish memories connected with them, though I was taught to shun the place.

No man sees the woman but once, and then no other is near; an no man sees that man again.

One day, in hunting, my dogs tracked the deer to that dell, and he fled and crouched under that tree, but the dogs would not go near him. And when I approached, he looked in my eyes as if to say, ‘Here you shall die, and will you here give death?’ And his eyes seemed the eyes of my soul, and I called off the dogs, who were glad to follow me, and we left the deer to fly.

I know that I must go there and hear the song and take the apple. I join with the young knights and their games; and have led our vassals and fought well. But all seems to me a dream, except what only I among them all shall see. Yet who knows? Is there one among them doomed like myself, and who is silent, like me? We shall not meet in the dell, for each man goes there alone: but in the pit we shall meet each other, and perhaps know.

Each man who is the Siren’s choice dreams the same dream, and always of some familiar spot wherever he lives in the world, and it is there that he finds her when his time comes. But when he sinks in the pit, it is the whole pomp of her dead gathered through the world that awaits him there; for all attend her to grace her triumph. Have they any souls out of those bodies? Or are the bodies still the house of the soul, the Siren’s prey till the day of judgment?

We were ten brothers. One is gone there already. One day we looked for his return from the border foray, and his men came home without him, saying that he had told them he went to seek his love who would come to meet him by another road. But anon his love met them, asking for him; and they sought him vainly all that day. But in the night his love rose from a dream; and she went to the edge of the Siren’s dell, and there lay his helmet and his sword. And her they sought in the morning, and there she lay dead. None has ever told this thing to my love, my sweet love who is affianced to me.

One day at the table my love offered me an apple. And as I took it she laughed, and said, ‘Do not eat, it is the fruit of the Siren’s dell’. And I laughed and ate: and at the heart of the apple was a red stain like a woman’s mouth; and as I bit it I could feel a kiss upon my lips.

The same evening I walked with my love by that place, and she would needs have me sit with her under the apple-tree in which the Siren is said to stand. Then she stood in the hollow fork of the tree, and plucked an apple, and stretched it to me and would have sung: but at that moment she cried out, and leaped from the tree into the arms, and said that the leaves were whispering other words to her, and my name among them. She threw the apple to the bottom of the dell, and followed it with her eyes, to see how far it would fall, till it was hidden by the tangled boughs. And as we still looked, a little snake crept up through them.

She would needs go with me afterwards to pray in the church, where my ancestor and hers are buried; and she looked round on the effigies, and said, ‘How long will it be before we lie here carved together?’And I thought I heard the wind in the apple trees that seemed to whisper, ‘How long?”

And late that night, when all were asleep, I went back to the dell, and said in my turn, ‘How long?’ And for a moment I seemed to see a hand and apple stretched from the middle of the tree where my love had stood. And then it was gone: and I plucked the apples and bit them and cast them in the pit, and said, “Come.”

I speak of my love, and she loves my well; but I love her only as the stone whirling down the rapids loves the dead leaf that travels with it and clings to it, and that the same eddy will swallow up.

Last night, at last, I dreamed how the end will come, and now I know it is near. I not only saw, in sleep, the lifelong pageant of the glen, but I took my part in it at last, and learned for certain why that dream was mine.

I seemed to be walking with my love among the hills that lead downward to the glen: and still she said, “It is late;” but the wind was glenwards, and said, “Hither.” And still she said, “Home grows far;” but the rooks flew glenwards, and said “Hither.” And still she said, “Come back;” but the sun had set, and the moon laboured towards the glen, and said, “Hither.” And my heart said in me, “Aye, thither at last.” Then we stood on the margin of the slope, with the apple-trees beneath us; and the moon bade the clouds fall from her and sat in her throne like the sun at noon-day: and none of the apple-trees were bare now, though autumn was far worn, but fruit and blossom covered them together. And they were too thick to see through clearly; but looking far down I saw a white hand holding forth an apple, and heard the first notes of the Siren’s song. Then my love clung to me and wept; but I began to struggle down the slope through the thick wall of bough and fruit and blossom, scattering them as the storm scatters the dead leaves; for that one apple only would my heart have. And my love snatched at me as I went; but the branches I thrust away sprang back on my path, and tore her hands and face: and the last I knew of her was the lifting of her hands to heaven as she cried aloud above me, while I still forced my way downwards. And now the Sirens’ song rose clearer as I went. At first she sang, “Come to Love;” and of the sweetness of Love she said many things. Ans next she sang, “Come to Life;” and Life was sweet in her song. But long before I reached her, she knew that all her will was mine : and then her voice rose softer than ever, and her words were, “Come to Death;” and Death’s name in her mouth was the very swoon of all sweetest thing that be. And then my path cleared; and she stood over against me in the fork of the tree I knew so well, blazing now like a lamp beneath the moon. And one kiss I have of her mouth, as I took the apple from her hand. But while I bit it, my brain whirled and my foot stumbled; and I felt my crashing fall through the tangled boughs beneath her feet, and saw the dead white faces that welcomed me in the pit. And so I woke cold in my bed: but it still seemed that I lay indeed at last among those who shall be my mates for ever, and could feel the apple still in my hand.