También pudiera ser que huyéramos hacia el azul
con rumbo a un atolón perdido en los Mares del Sur
y allí te construiría con corales y bambú
una cabaña bajo un silencioso alud
de blanca luz

Veríamos junto a las olas a Daniel Defoe
bebiendo con John Silver un barril de viejo ron

A Robert Louis Stevenson con una leve voz
jugándose a Maureen O’Hara al dominó
con Robinson

Y el tesoro de la isla
yace bajo algunas rimas
en la cumbre prohibida del Vaea en Vailima …

Vailima (Fuga)
Luis Eduardo Aute

Crédito: Summit Entertainment LLC

Ao contrário do que é referido nesta notícia, não considero que este estilo tenha sido propriamente inventado. De facto, para a apreciação desta tese, até é feliz a sua comparação com Drácula de Bram Stoker, porque na prática estamos a assistir a uma fórmula diametralmente inversa da clássica obra vitoriana.
Enquanto que Drácula usa a sexualidade e o erotismo velado no contexto de uma sociedade puritana, um método muito utilizado na literatura vitoriana dos finais do séc. XIX e que pode ser encontrado (noutras formas que não as descritas) em Frankenstein de Mary Shelly ou The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde, de Robert Louis Stevenson, esta saga Crepúsculo utiliza a abstinência e o amor profundo numa época em que as relações são cada vez mais superficiais.
E talvez seja daqui que nasce todo o encanto da história e o seu enorme sucesso, principalmente junto do público adolescente feminino, pois dentro do contexto actual que rodeia os jovens, nota-se que estes procuram cada vez mais adaptar, ainda que ás suas esperanças, um certo neo-romantismo lite, com algum encantamento e preferencialmente em linha com as tendências do momento.
Esta história encaixa na perfeição nesses novos hábitos, fazendo renascer uma atmosfera de sentimento místico, profundo, que nos surge muitas vezes como uma pequena e deliciosa fuga à realidade, por muito agradável que pareça ser.

from

Songs of Travel by         Robert Louis Stevenson

… and pressed at home; and she will remember her own islands, and the shadow of the mighty tree; and she will hear the peacocks screaming in the dusk and the wind blowing in the palms; and she will think of her father sitting there alone. – R. L. S.]

FORTH from her land to mine she goes, The island maid, the island rose, Light of heart and bright of face: The daughter of a double race.

Her islands here, in Southern sun, Shall mourn their Kaiulani gone, And I, in her dear banyan shade,

.

.

Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or

frightened but go on in fortune or

misfortune at their own private pace,  like

a clock during a thunderstorm.

.

~ Robert Louis Stevenson

.

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON (1850-1894), Scottish writer
Portrait: William Blake Richmond

De todos los los lunáticos escoceses que han contribuido a desnaturalizar y confundir mi espíritu [...] sospecho que Robert Louis Stevenson es el más demencial… Desde mi llegada a Tahiti no ha habido un sólo día que no haya despotricado contra él y deseado profanar su tumba. Nos dió de Tahiti una tal idea que a su lado el Paraíso no era nada. Ahora he visto de Tahiti  todo lo que él había visto…Y hemos ido de decepción en decepción, lo que se hubiera evitado totalmente si Stevenson no hubiera sido un idiota. Tahiti tiene una belleza de un alma perdida… La administración  francesa es siniestramente estúpida e imbécil… El número de los nativos es de unos cuatro o cinco mil, más o menos. No hacen otra cosa que embriagarse y morir. Ni siquiera parecen divertirse…

Cartas de los Mares del Sur
Henry Adams

By Rory Reynolds

A HANDWRITTEN Robert Burns poem worth £30,000 is to be displayed for the first time alongside some of Scotland’s most treasured artifacts.

The Battle of Sherramuir, a poem detailing the Jacobites’ fight against the king’s army at the height of the Jacobite rebellion, will be among the highlights of the Treasures exhibition in Edinburgh.

The Forlani Map – the first ever printed map of Scotland – and Sherlock Holmes tale The Adventure of the Illustrious Client, handwritten by Arthur Conan Doyle, are also expected to tempt the crowds out of the cold and into the renovated National Library of Scotland.

The map, which is the showpiece of the library’s collection of two million maps, dates back to 1546 and is derived from a document charting the British Isles.

Another highlight of the exhibition, which runs from this Thursday to the 8th January, is the signed order of the Massacre of Glencoe, a chilling document sanctioning the murder of senior members of the MacDonald clan by the Campbells.

The 300-year-old document ordered the Campbells to “putt all to the sword under seventy” those of the MacDonald clan.

Other famous documents include the Copperplate Map of Treasure Island, complete with X marking the spot of buried treasure.

The map was part of the 1895 memorial Edinburgh edition of Robert Louis Stevenson novels.

Martyn Wade of the National Library of Scotland, said: “We are very excited to be celebrating the year of Homecoming by offering members of the public the opportunity to see this collection of priceless Scottish treasures.

“The collection has a wide appeal, with pieces from iconic Scottish literary figures in Burns, Conan Doyle, Scott and Stevenson, and from key moments and movements in the history of Scotland, including the Covenanters, the Jacobites, the Union of the Parliaments and, of course, the massacre at Glencoe.

“I would encourage anyone interested in catching a glimpse of Scotland’s history to visit the library this winter.”

See more of our pictures at our Flickr site and videos at our dedicated channel,  Deadline TV.

Peter Ackroyd

As soon as you finish Paul Auster’s “Invisible” you want to read it again. And not because, as sometimes with his novels — as with the novels of Georges Perec, one of a handful of other real authors mentioned in the book — you suddenly suspect, at the very end, that you haven’t properly understood a word of what has gone before. You want to reread “Invisible” because it moves quickly, easily, somehow sinuously, and you worry that there were good parts that you read right past, insights that you missed. The prose is contemporary American writing at its best: crisp, elegant, brisk. It has the illusion of effortlessness that comes only with fierce discipline. As often happens when you are in the hands of a master, you read the next sentence almost before you are finished with the previous one. The novel could be read shallowly, because it is such a pleasure to read.

Zadie Smith

Interview on NPR with Zadie Smith:

Barbara Kingsolver’s The Lacuna:

In the end, Kingsolver gives the idea of disappearance a surprising moral dimension. When Shepherd and Violet Brown decry the constant talk in America, the gossip, the radio, the filling in of silences with lies – “God speaks for the silent man” – they risk self-righteousness. Yet a more subtle observation is at stake, and at last it emerges in a conversation they have about the Mayans, and whether they should consider themselves a “failed culture” because they are no longer a dominant one. “No use admiring a thing just because it lasted”, Brown tells Shepherd. Perhaps, she suggests, rather than glorifying the urge of writers and politicians and lovers to be remembered, to impress themselves on the world, “we should admire people the most for living in this jungle without leaving one mark on it”.

Maya Angelou sits down for an interview. David Vann writes an ode to Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian:

Representations of hell have always worked to reveal the shapes of our lives, abstract landscapes meant to describe the felt and suspected landscapes within us. The external world is a sign in fiction, all of it responsive: “Under the hooves of the horses the alabaster sand shaped itself in whorls strangely symmetric like iron filings in a field and these shapes flared and drew back again, resonating upon that harmonic ground and then turning to swirl away over the playa. As if the very sediment of things contained yet some residue of sentience. As if in the transit of those riders were a thing so profoundly terrible as to register even to the uttermost granulation of reality.” The landscape in Blood Meridian is a portrait of us, a secular inferno necessary because, although we may not believe, we still know we are doomed. We shall destroy all we know and then live on.

Vann talks about Legend of A Suicide:

Blake Morrison looks at a century of Poetry Review:

In gathering up the best of 100 years of poetry and debate for this anthology, Fiona Sampson, the current editor of the Poetry Review, doesn’t dwell on the duels and hissy fits. But neither does she pretend that schisms didn’t, or don’t, exist. The first few pieces map out the war zone. On one side, “The Old Vicarage, Grantchester” by Rupert Brooke (“And is there honey still for tea?”) and Henry Newbolt on why Robert Bridges is the greatest poet of the age (“The joy that abounds from these poems is from a bluer heaven than any other that has shone over England”). On the other side, Marinetti’s manifesto for futurism and Ezra Pound on his hopes for the poetry of the next decade (“It will be as much like granite as it can be . . . austere, direct, free from emotional slither”). It’s the old guard versus Modernists, with manifestos flying like grenades.

Jane Urquhart

We’d like to draw your attention to a fabulous new site celebrating the life and works of Robert Louis Stevenson, which has been put together by staff at Edinburgh Napier University.

Many of the pictures in the Gallery section of the site have been taken from the collections of Edinburgh City Libraries. To mark the launch of the web site, we’ve put together a couple of Robert Louis Stevenson exhibitions on Capital Collections.

WORD

garrulous [gar-uh-luhs, gar-yuh-] adj. 1. excessively talkative in a rambling, roundabout manner, esp. about trivial matters 2. wordy or diffuse: a garrulous and boring speech

BIRTHDAY

John Dickinson (1732), Robert Louis Stevenson (1850), Richard Mulligan (1932), Garry Marshall (1934), John Hammond (1942), Joe Mantegna (1947), Chris Noth (1954), Whoopi Goldberg (1955), Jimmy Kimmel (1967), Steve Zahn (1967), Gerard Butler (1969)

STANDPOINT

If you put a gun to my head (and I’m by no means suggesting you do that), and asked me, given a choice, what’s my favorite leisure time activity, I’m relatively sure the answer would be watching a Philadelphia Flyers game with either my brother Jer or my best friend Harv, and preferrably both because we are all of the same mind when it comes to the game of hockey. (If I could pick a third person to be there, it’d be my good friend Joe, but he resides in Connecticut and it’s not really practical for him to drive down for games. I’m sure you realize this without me explaining it.)

I am completely certain 99% of you, in a similar circumstance, would offer a different response. (Although, that’s your loss because, even if you don’t like hockey, Jer and Harv and Joe are three solid dudes to hang with.)

Knowing what an excellent judge of character I am, I’m positive it wouldn’t be my choice of company you’d find fault with – it’d be my choice of actually watching hockey. Which no one seems to do these days.

When it comes to watching professional sporting contests, the game of hockey is fighting an uphill battle. And here’s why.

This country loves two sports the most – football and baseball. Again, you may disagree, and that’s totally fine. But for the purposes here, I’m going to adhere to the idea football and baseball are the two sports most everyone couldn’t live without as if it’s a legitimate fact. Which, despite your opinion, is completely true.

Why are football and baseball so popular? Well, lots and lots of reasons. Most everyone of you grew up playing one or both of these sports, or wishing you could. Also, you know all the rules due to the fact the commentators endlessly disect each and every at-bat/play. In addition, of all the televised sports, football and baseball simply offer the opportunity for more bathroom breaks and the chance to talk to your buddies about the game without actually talking during it. There are more, but, in the interests of space and keeping your attention, I’ll stop at those three.

With hockey, hardly any of us have ever played it. (No, NHL ‘94 for the Sega Genesis doesn’t count. Although, I’d listen to any argument to the contrary.) Unless you make a deliberate effort to do so, some of the less-obvious rules are hard to figure out. Lastly, it’s a game you need to pay attention to – talking about the game is reserved for the few commercial breaks and the two 15-minute intermissions.

For those reasons, and probably 200 more, the game of hockey just doesn’t jive with most everyone out there. And, while I’d love to, I can’t say as I blame you. It’s easy to watch a baseball game with friends, even when not everyone in the room particularly cares about the outcome because everyone pretty much knows what’s going on. Same with football games but they have the added bonus of having become excuses to eat a lot of food and drink a bunch of beers which I’m a huge fan of.  They’re major social experiences in a culture becoming more and more devoid of them. I can’t find fault with wanting to spend your time away from work, time away from your kids, time away from whatever, in a relaxing atmosphere where you can yell at the television and rarely use your brain. (That last statement was sincere, not sarcastic.)

Me? I enjoy watching a sport that encourages me to think, requires my attention and leaves me, win or lose, with a weird sense of fulfillment. I love baseball and I kinda like football. But neither give me the same thrill.

And so, I’m a hockey fan.

QUOTATION

You can’t navigate me. I may do mean things, and I may hurt you, and I may run away without your permission, and you may hate me forever, and I know that scares the living shit outta you ’cause you know I’m the only real thing you got. → Ethan Hawke (as Troy Dyer in Reality Bites)

TUNE

Admittedly, this is bad timing after my whole music snobbery rant, but I drove around all over the place yesterday, and I’m trying to become less dependent on my iPod, and attempting to revisit my vaunted CD collection. In any case, I listened to Fountains of Wayne the whole time. Not widely considered an important cog in the machinery of essential music. But, fuck it. I like the band just the same. Especially “No Better Place.”

GALLIMAUFRY

→ I’ve no idea why I like these HTC television ads so much, but I do. Here’s my favorite.

→ Joselio Hanson, a backup CB for the Phiadelphia Eagles, has received a four-game suspension for violating the NFL’s substance abuse policy. Dude. Come on. You’re a backup CB. Really necessary?

→ I tweeted this last night, but for those of you not hip to the Twitter thing yet, I’m encouraging everyone I know to listen to the music of my buddy Emerson B. Go hear his tunes on MySpace. Follow him on Twitter. And get out to one of his shows. If, for no other reason, than you might be able to hang with me.

Robert Louis Stevenson 1944

Novelista, ensayista y poeta escocés, algunas de cuyas obras se han convertido en clásicos de la literatura infantil. Nació el 13 de noviembre de 1850 en Edimburgo. Hijo de un ingeniero, estudió también esta profesión y, más tarde leyes, en la universidad de su ciudad natal. Desde su niñez, sin embargo, siempre había sentido una especial inclinación hacia la literatura. Ello le influyó, más adelante, para dedicarse a las letras, y fue perfeccionando su estilo de tal modo que en pocos años se situó entre los escritores más destacados de su tiempo.
Enfermo de tuberculosis, se vio obligado a viajar continuamente en busca de climas apropiados a su delicado estado de salud. Sus primeros libros son descripciones de algunos de estos viajes. Así, Viaje tierra adentro (1878) cuenta un recorrido en canoa a través de Francia y Bélgica que había realizado en 1876, y Viajes en burro por las Cevannes (1879) los avatares de un viaje a pie por las montañas del sur de Francia, en 1878. Uno de sus viajes posteriores le llevó, en un barco de emigrantes, a California (1879-1880), donde, en 1880, se casó con la divorciada estadounidense Frances Osbourne. La popularidad de Stevenson se basó fundamentalmente en los emocionantes argumentos de sus novelas fantásticas y de aventuras. La isla del tesoro (1883), una trepidante historia acerca de la búsqueda de un tesoro enterrado, presenta el bien bajo la forma evidente de un chico, Jim, que debe descubrir por sí mismo la cara del bien y del mal entre sus bondadosos amigos, el mal aparentemente personificado en los piratas Pew y Long John Silver. En la alegoría moral en forma de historia de misterio El extraño caso del doctor Jeckyll y mister Hyde (1886), los dos extremos, el bien y el mal, se unen en una sola persona, el médico Henry Jeckyll, que descubre una sustancia química capaz de transformarlo, primero a voluntad y después incontroladamente, en el monstruo Hyde. La acción de Las aventuras de David Balfour y Weirde (1886), comienza con el robo de una herencia, la del joven David Balfour, el cual, tras ello, se une a la banda del orgulloso luchador escocés Alan Breck. Entre sus novelas de aventuras destacan La flecha negra (1888) y El señor de Ballantree (1889). La inconclusa Weir of Herminston (1896), está considerada como su obra maestra, pues los fragmentos que han llegado hasta nosotros contienen algunos de los más bellos pasajes de la prosa escocesa moderna.

Escritor versátil, Stevenson poseía talento suficiente como para abordar con maestría distintos géneros literarios. Demostró ser un gran ensayista enVirginibus puerisque (1881), Estudios familiares de hombres y libros (1882) y Memorias y retratos (1887). También fueron bien recibidos por la crítica sus libros de viajes autobiográficos, como La casa solitaria (1883), que contiene las impresiones del autor acerca de su estancia en un campamento minero en California, A través de las llanuras (1892) e Islas del sur (1896). El volumen Jardín de verso para niños (1885) contiene algunos de los mejores poemas de Stevenson. Entre los demás libros de poemas que publicó destaca De vuelta al mar (1887). Por otro lado,Narraciones maravillosas (1882) y El diablo de la botella y otros cuentos (1893) recogen sus relatos breves. También colaboró, con su hijo adoptivo, el escritor estadounidense Lloyd Osbourne, en la redacción de las novelas La caja equivocada (1889) y La resaca (1892).

Durante un crucero de placer por el sur del Pacífico (1889), le llevó a las islas Samoa, donde él y su esposa permanecieron hasta 1894, en un último esfuerzo por recuperar la salud del escritor. Los nativos le llamaron Tusitala (el que cuenta historias). Allí murió a finales de ese mismo año, el 3 de diciembre, y fue enterrado en la cima de una montaña, cerca de Valima, su hogar samoano.

Fuente: epdlp.com

On November 13:

1715  Dorothea Erxleben,  first German female medical doctor, was born.

1841 James Braid first saw a demonstration of animal magnetism, which leads to his study of the subject he eventually called hypnotism.

1850 Robert Louis Stevenson, Scottish writer, was born.

1906 Eva Zeisel, American industrial designer, was born.

1916 Australian Prime Minister  Billy Hughes was expelled from the Labor Party over his support for conscription.

1934 Peter Arnett, New Zealand-born American journalist, was born.

1955  Whoopi Goldberg, American actress, comedian, and singer, was born.

1971 The American space probe, Mariner 9, becomes the first spacecraft to orbit another planet successfully, swinging into its planned trajectory around Mars.

1985 The volcano Nevado del Ruiz erupted, melting a glacier, causing a lahar that buried Armero, Colombia, killing approximately 23,000 people.

1990 David Gray killed 13 people at Aramoana.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia.

“Se un uomo ama la fatica del proprio mestiere indipendentemente dal successo o dalla fama, gli Dei lo hanno chiamato.. “

Born in 1928 in Manchester, England, Johnson is an English Roman Catholic journalist, historian, speechwriter, and author. He was educated at the Jesuit independent school Stonyhurst College, and at Magdalen College, Oxford. He has more than more than 40 books in print that include:

Heroes(2007)
Creators (2006)
George Washington: The Founding Father (2005)
Intellectuals (2003)
Napoleon (2002)
The Renaissance: A Short History (2002)

I have just re-read Creators in which Johnson examines 17 exemplars of what he characterizes as “creative courage”: Chaucer, Dürer, Shakespeare, Bach, Turner and Hokusai, Austen, Pugin and Viollet-le-Duc, Hugo, Twain, Tiffany, Eliot, Balenciaga and Dior, and in then Picasso and Disney. The range of his interests correctly suggests the scope and depth of his erudition. Here are two brief excerpts:

Creative courage “is of many different kinds. What are we to think of the quiet, withdrawn, silent, uncomplaining courage of Emily Dickinson? She continued to write her poetry, and eventually amassed a significant oeuvre, with little or no encouragement, no guidance, and no public response, for only six short poems were published in her lifetime and these against her will. She worked essentially in isolation and solitude, a brave woman confronting the fears and agonies of creation without (or hindrance either, as perhaps she would have said).” Johnson also briefly discusses Mozart, Dickens, Caravaggio, Beethoven, Marie Cassatt, Toulouse-Lautrec, Robert Louis Stevenson, David Hume, Trollope, V.S. Pritchett, and J.B. Priestly…all of whom encountered and overcame “daunting challenges.”

“The popularity of the creative arts, and the influence they exert, will depend ultimately in their quality and allure, on the delight and excitement they generate, and on demotic choices. Picasso set his faith against nature, and burrowed within himself. Disney worked with nature, stylizing it, anthropomorphizing it, and surrealizing it, but ultimately reinforcing it. That is why his ideas form so many powerful palimpsests in the visual vocabulary of the world in the early twenty-first century, and will continue to shine through, while the ideas of Picasso, powerful thought they were for much of the twentieth century, will gradually fade and seem outmoded, as representational art returns in favor. In the end nature is the strongest force of all.”

I highly recommend Creators as well as Howard Gardner’s Creating Minds in which he examines the lives and achievements of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Graham, and Gandhi.

from

Songs of Travel by              Robert Louis Stevenson

Towered to contemporary sight – Still in fraternal faith and love, Remained below to reach above, Gave and obeyed the apt command, Pilot and vassal of the land.

IV

My Tembinok’ from men like these Inherited his palaces, His right to rule, his powers of mind, His cocoa-islands sea-enshrined. Stern bearer of the sword and whip …

Was hat Kartoffelbrei von Pfanni mit Hörbüchern gemein?

Hm, selbst nach langer langer langer Überlegung komme ich auf keinen gemeinsamen Nenner.

Unter dem Motto:

Pfanni macht die kalte Jahreszeit spannend

startet Pfanni ihre Hörbuchreihe und bittet drei Hörbuchklassiker kostenlos zum Download an.

Die Aktion geht von Oktober bis Dezember 2009 und startet mit dem spannenden Hörbuch:

Arthur Conan Doyle – Die verschwundene Braut Teil 1 (28.10.) + Teil 2 (29.10.)

Edgar Allan Poe – William Wilson & Das verräterische Herz Teil 1 (12.11) + Teil 2 (26.11.)

Robert Louis Stevenson – Der Flaschenteufel Teil 1 (10.12.) + Teil 2 (24.12.)

Die Hörbücher werden im MP3 Format angeboten, Downloadzeit – wenige Minuten.

Ein guter Anlass mal wieder Kartoffelbrei zu kochen……

“La función primaria de la comunicación escrita es facilitar el sometimiento”. Claude Lévi-Strauss.

Dicen los políticos, pobres, que cuando les trincan robando, y les sacan esposados de sus despachos o sus ayuntamientos, están sufriendo un “castigo de telediario”. Es decir, que antes de ser juzgados ya les han condenado a padecer una vergüenza pública irreparable. Que son víctimas de un linchamiento mediático, para que ustedes me entiendan. ¿No es enternecedor? Ya sé que a muchos de ustedes les gustaría, además de esposarles, untarles con brea, cubrirles de plumas y arrastrarlos colgados por los testículos (en caso de ser varones) por todas las calles de su municipio. Pero no deberían dejarse llevar por el entusiasmo que provocan estas capturas…

Seamos prácticos. Lo de las esposas es una minucia, que sólo puede atentar contra el político corrupto en caso de que el acero inoxidable del grillete llegue a rozar con el oro del Rolex o el Franck Muller. Sería una pena arañarles el peluco, ¿verdad? Pero lo importante es saber si existe un debate en la sociedad sobre lo adecuado o no del uso de esposas cuando se detiene a un supuesto narco, a un supuesto pedófilo o a un inmigrante sin papeles. ¿No existe? Pues tampoco lo iniciemos con los políticos: son unos ciudadanos con los mismos derechos y obligaciones que el resto ¿no es así?

El problema con políticos rapiñeros y otros delincuentes de guante blanco es sólo uno: que no devuelven el dinero robado ni aunque los maten. Como lo oyen. Roldán, Gil, Conde, Roca, Julián Muñoz… Y ahora los saqueadores del Palau o los miembros podridos de PSC y CiU. Todos disfrutan de una segunda juventud cuando salen de la trena y desentierran el botín.

Sigamos siendo prácticos. La Fiscalía de  Nápoles ha difundido el vídeo del asesinato de un hombre, que fue tiroteado en plena calle por un sicario. Un ajuste de cuentas entre mafiosos. Las violentas imágenes, grabadas por una cámara de seguridad, han contribuido a identificar al asesino, que aún no ha sido detenido. Concretamente las “imágenes estáticas”, no la parte más morbosa y truculenta, que sólo contribuyó a aumentar la audiencia de las cadenas.

¿Comienza el tiempo de los ciudadanos policías? ¿Recibiremos cada día en el móvil los rostros de terroristas y asesinos a los que tendremos que identificar en las calles? ¿Estarán incluidos los políticos corruptos en este catálogo de delincuentes a detener? ¿Nos proveerá el Estado de armas para realizar las detenciones, o sólo de esposas? ¿Podremos filmar nuestras propias detenciones para vendérselas a las televisiones y cubrir así los gastos?

Esta última ráfaga de preguntas es un homenaje, como la cita inicial, al gran Claude Lévi-Strauss: “El sabio no es el hombre que proporciona las respuestas verdaderas, es el que formula las preguntas verdaderas”.

Entrevista con Claude Lévi-Strauss en 1972. Parte 1 de 7.

El dato

Arranca una nueva sección basada en esas  informaciones previas (numéricas, alfabéticas) que, para que tengan sentido y nos ayuden a obtener  conclusiones acertadas, deben ser inteligentemente analizadas. Una excusa para reflexionar. Hoy nos la facilita Robert Menard, fundador de Reporteros sin Fronteras: en los últimos once años, el presidente venezolano Hugo Chávez ha realizado el equivalente a 49 días seguidos de directo en la televisión.

Un motivo para NO ver la televisión

Robert Louis Stevenson. Cuentos completos.

Editorial: Mondadori.

“La política es quizá la única profesión para la que no se considera necesaria ninguna preparación”. R.L. Stevenson.

Estamos de suerte. Se acaban de poner a la venta, por primera vez en castellano y en un solo volumen, los cuentos del gran Stevenson, en una nueva y magnífica traducción realizada por Miguel Temprano García. ¿Se puede pedir más? Pues una edición tan cuidada y recia como viene siendo  habitual en Mondadori, en este caso acompañada de las fantasmagóricas ilustraciones realizadas por  Alexander Jansson.

Autor de algunos de los mejores relatos fantásticos y de aventuras en lengua inglesa, Tusitala (“el que cuenta historias”) es de esos escritores que siempre están ahí. Por eso estos “cuentos” se convierten de inmediato en un clásico de cabecera, donde podemos reencontrarnos con nuevas y resplandecientes versiones de viejos conocidos: “El extraño caso del doctor Jekyll y el señor Hyde”, “El diablo de la botella”, “El ladrón de cadáveres”… Absolutamente imprescindible.

Autore: Robert Louis Stevenson

Titolo: Lo strano caso del Dr. Jekyll e Mr. Hyde (audiolibro)

Editore: Good Mood Edizioni

Anno: 2009

El diablo de la botella
Robert Louis Stevenson
Voz: Carlos Alberto Lara Carranza
Duración: 1 hora 20 minutos
Música: Krayne & Jcw (cc:by-sa)

Precio de la descarga: 2 Euros

Este relato cuenta la historia de una botella que tiene en su interior un diablo que hace realidad cualquier deseo.
Más audiolibros de R.L. Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on November 13, 1850, the only child of Thomas and Margaret Stevenson.  He was a sickly child who was bedridden during his younger years and would continue to have health problems for the rest of his life.  When he was three, he contracted croup, which may have damaged his lungs.  His mother’s diaries consisted of lists of his ailments, which included chickenpox, scarlatina, gastric fever, scarlet fever, bronchitis, whooping cough and numerous colds and chills.  Stevenson was in and out of school, his parents believing he was too delicate to attend on a regular basis.  His parents often took him on health tours around Europe.

Stevenson came from a family of engineers and his father expected him to continue the business.  In 1867, Stevenson began his engineering degree at the University of Edinburgh; however, he was deeply unhappy with his studies.  After four years, he admitted to his father he cared nothing for engineering and wanted to study literature.  His father refused and Stevenson returned to university to law.  He put little effort into his studies, rarely showing up for lectures.  His parents tried to bribe him to do well, promising him a thousand pounds if he passed the Bar exams, which he accomplished in July 1875.  He had no intention of being a lawyer, however, and only appeared in court once.

In 1876, Stevenson visited Barbizon, an artist colony in France.  There he met Fanny Osbourne, an American women who had left her husband in California to travel through Europe and study art.  She had two surviving children, Belle, age 17, and Sam, age 7.  After leaving Barbizon, Stevenson went back to Edinburgh and Fanny left for Paris.  The couple continued to correspond and visit each other for three years.

Fanny abruptly left for America in 1879.  Stevenson was deeply upset by her decision, and in August, he set sail to settle things with her.  He met her in California, where, after a few months, she officially divorced her husband and married Stevenson married on May 19, 1880.  Stevenson wrote to a friend,

“if I am where I am, it is thanks to the care of that lady, who married me when I was a mere complication of cough and bones, much fitter for an emblem or mortality than a bridegroom.”

By August, the couple, along with Fanny’s son Sam, was back in England and in October, the family headed for Switzerland, where Stevenson spent several months under the care of a lung specialist.  Stevenson decided to leave in April of 1881 and the family moved back to Scotland.  He continued to visit various health spas and resorts over the next few years.

In 1887, Stevenson and Fanny returned to America and spent time sailing the South Pacific.  In December 1889, the couple visited Samoa, where they decided to live and start their own plantation.  Stevenson felt the warmer climate improved his health.  

Stevenson was working on Weir of Hermiston on December 3, 1894.  Around midday, he stopped writing mid sentence to help Fanny around the house.  Fanny later recounted that while making mayonnaise, he suddenly ”set down the bottle, knelt by the table leaning his head against it.”  Stevenson then fell backwards onto the floor and was carried to a chair, where he lost consciousness.  He died later that evening of a cerebral hemorrhage.  He was buried on the plateau of Mount Vaea, which was visible from his house.

Stevenson’s Writing Career:

From an early age, Stevenson wanted to be a writer.  He wrote later in life,

“Whenever I read a book or passage that particularly pleased me…in which there was either some conspicuous force or some happy distinction in style, I must sit down at once to ape that quality.  I was unsuccessful, and I knew it…but at least in these vain bouts, I got some practice in rhythm, in harmony, in construction and the coordination of parts.”

He had a talent for telling tales.  Philip Gosse, the son a  friend, recalled in 1879, 

“we children eagerly leant up against him while he told us wonderful stories.  Such stories! All of the sea, wrecks, mutinies and pirates.  Tales of blood-curdling adventures.”

Throughout his life, Stevenson wrote numerous essays, articles, plays, short stories and poetry.  His most popular works are his novels, such as Treasure Island, Kidnapped and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  Treasure Island came about during a period of heavy rain that left Stevenson and his family trapped inside the house.  He entertained his stepson, Sam, by painting a map, which Stevenson stated, “took my fancy beyond expression.” He told a friend,

No women in the story, Sam’s orders; and who so blythe to obey?  It’s a awful fun boy’s story [...] No writing, just drive along as the words come and the pen will scratch!”

It was published in installments by a children’s paper called Young Folks, which later published Kidnapped.

The idea of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde came to Stevenson in a dream.  In 1887, he told the New York Herald,

“all I dreamed about Dr. Jekyll was that one man was being pressed into a cabinet, when he swallowed a drug and changed into another being.  I awoke and said at once that I had found the missing link for which I had been looking so long, and before I again went to sleep almost every detail of the story, as it stands, was clear to me.”

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was published as a small book in 1886 and sold 40,000 copies in six months.  It made Stevenson famous, both in Great Britain and America.  When he arrived in America in 1887, Stevenson was astonished to discover his notoriety. 

To find out more about Robert Louis Stevenson and to view pages from his manuscripts, drawings and notebooks, visit the National Library of Scotland website.

Source: Myself & the Other Fellow: A Life of Robert Louis Stevenson by Claire Harman