THE BABLE SOUL OF DON ARMANDO IV

 

The way things are going makes you want to throw in the towel as they say in boxing or throw the phylacteries into the fire as they say in the synagogue, but you have to continue. Shrapnel in the body and moving forward. 

I comfort myself by returning to the brañas of my youth, an uncertain longing, with the certain hand of Palacio Valdés. Under the calamus of his prose the soul of Asturias flickers. 

The thought, construction and sing-song tone is bable even if it is expressed in the purest and most elegant Spanish. 

When he wrote “The Idyll of a Sick Man” the political disagreements and differences that led to confrontations, rivalries and deaths had not reached the principality (The Lost Village, The Fourth Estate, Tristán or Pessimism) that he would write over time and would make him abandon the land

  In Riofrío, which is the name of the place where the Madrid student goes to recover his health, the only discussions are about the town's bull that sires the cows because he is so heavy that he sometimes knocks them down when riding them. 

We would have to go to the fair and buy another, less bulky stallion at the expense of the municipal treasury. Some said yes and others said no. 

The village vibrates with the patron saint festivities. 

Andrés, accompanied by Celesto, his espolique or guide, introducer of ambassadors, in every sense of the word, with whom he goes to girls and takes him to discover places and situations such as the pilgrimage of the Virgen de la Peña, remains enamored of the miller who looks askance at him when he attends church services. 

He asks the girl who is in a choir with her friends to dance during the party. 

At that moment the musicians were attacking the bars of a giraldilla, but Rosa beats them up. The gallant suitor is hurt by the snub. However, she laughs at the gyrating seminarian who is an expert in treating women. And he warns him:

−Oh, Andresín, the soul, he tells him, the mare kicked. But, don't worry about those who at first say no, then they turn out to be the best

 

Sunday, May 26, 2024