百年孤独为什么值得看 世纪文学经典:《百年孤独》第1章Part 1

世纪文学经典:《百年孤独》第1章Part 1  

MANY YEARS LATER as he faced the firing squad
Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. At that time Macondo was a village of enty adobe houses
built on the bank of a river of clear water that ran along a bed of polished stones
which were white and enormous
like prehistoric eggs.
The world was so recent that many things lacked names
and in order to indicate them it was necessary to point. Every year during the month of March a family of ragged gypsies would set up their tents near the village
and with a great uproar of pipes and kettledrums they would display new inventions. First they brought the mag. A heavy gypsy with an untamed beard and sparrow hands
who introduced himself as Melquíades
put on a bold public demonstration of what he himself called the eighth wonder of the learned alchemists of Macedonia. He went from house to house dragging o metal ingots and everybody was amazed to see pots
pans
tongs
and braziers tumble down from their places and beams creak from the desperation of nails and screws trying to emerge
and even objects that had been lost for a long time appeared from where they had been searched for most and went dragging along in turbulent confusion behind Melquíades' magical irons. "Things have a life of their own
" the gypsy proclaimed with a harshaccent. "It's simply a matter of waking up their souls." José Arcadio Buendía
whose unbridled imagination always went beyond the genius of nature and even beyond miracles and magic
thought that it would be possible to make use of that useless invention to extract gold from the bowels of the earth.
Melquíades
who was an honest man
warned him: "It won't work for that." But José Arcadio Buendía at that time did not believe in the honesty of gypsies
so he traded his mule and a pair of goats for the o magized ingots. rsula Iguarán
his wife
who relied on those animals to increase their poor domestic holdings
was unable to dissuade him. "Very soon well have gold enough and more to pave the floors of the house
" her husband replied. For several months he worked hard to demonstrate the truth of his idea. He explored every inch of the region
even the riverbed
dragging the o iron ingots along and reciting Melquíades' incantation aloud. The only thing he succeeded in doing was to unearth a suit of fifteenth-century armor which had all of its pieces soldered together with rust and inside of which there was the hollow resonance of an enormous stone-filled gourd.