Oggi un post di The Serendipity Periodical mi ha messo sotto gli occhi una frase tratta da un racconto di J.D. Salinger:
“Lei non stava facendo nulla che io potessi vedere, eccetto stare li in piedi appoggiata alla ringhiera del balcone, tenendo insieme l’universo”
Da “A girl I knew”
Sono andata a cercarmi il racconto, e l’ho trovato in versione integrale qui.
Mi è piaciuto molto. Trovo che sia scritto molto bene, che abbia diversi spunti molto poetici e che abbia un ritmo studiato molto bene, anche se per tutta la lettura non riuscivo a superare un certo malessere per la tipologia di ragazza “angelica” appiattita sui suoi doveri. Di tanto in tanto però Salinger apre uno spiraglio su questo appiattimento:
“She then looked up at me, and though she seemed decorously startled, something told me she wasn’t too surprised that I had heard her doing the Boswell number. This didn’t matter, of course.”
“Leah seemed to think it would be perfectly all right if she came up to see me.”
“Then Leah would walk, self-consciously but beautifully, to my window seat, sit down, and wait for our conversation to begin.”
“She answered slowly, without looking at me, “I don’t know.””
E fa un po’ “effetto Jane Austen”, dopotutto, per cui all’improvviso il più “piatto” dei due personaggi diventa l’Io narrante. Ormai sento pesare la stanchezza di dover ogni volta giustificare le scelte di definizione del personaggio di autori del passato con il loro contesto culturale, ma sembra che questa stanchezza sia il prezzo da pagare per percepire una complessità presente anche dove sarebbe più semplice passare la carta vetrata della contemporaneità.
Tra i passi esteticamente più riusciti del racconto, credo ci siano:
“Probably for every man there is at least one city that sooner or later turns into a girl. How well or how badly the man actually knew the girl doesn’t necessarily affect the transformation. She was there, and she was the whole city, and that’s that.”
“My phonograph was not playing. But suddenly the words to Miss Boswell’s song floated, just slightly damaged, through my open window”
“I could fill several pages with Leah’s and my terrible conversation. But I don’t see much point to it. We just never said anything to each other. Over a period of four months, we must have talked for thirty or thirty-five evenings without saying a word. In the long shadow of this small, obscure record, I’ve acquired a dogma that if I should go to Hell, I’ll be given a little inside room – one that is neither hot nor cold, but extremely drafty – in which all my conversations with Leah will be played back to me, over an amplification system confiscated from Yankee Stadium.”
“When she sat down, she did the only sensible thing with her beautiful hands there was to be done: she placed them on her lap and left them there. ”
“We sat for a long moment without looking at each other. When I looked at Leah again, her beauty seemed too great for the size of the room. The only way to make room for it was to speak of it. “Sie sind sehr schön. Weissen Sie dass?” I almost shouted at her.”
Colpo finale: “This story first appeared in Good Housekeeping, February, 1948″