百年孤独这本书怎么样 世纪文学经典:《百年孤独》第1章Part 2

世纪文学经典:《百年孤独》第1章Part 2  

In March the gypsies returned. This time they brought a telescope and a magnifying glass the size of a drum
which they exhibited as the latest discovery of the Jews of Amsterdam. They placed a gypsy woman at one end of the village and set up the telescope at the entrance to the tent. For the price of five reales
people could look into the telescope and see the gypsy woman an arm's length away. "Science has eliminated distance
" Melquíades proclaimed. "In a short time
man will be able to see what is happening in any place in the world without leaving his own house." A burning noonday sun brought out a startling demonstration with the gigantic magnifying glass: they put a pile of dry hay in the middle of the street and set it on fire by concentrating the sun's rays. José Arcadio Buendía
who had still not been consoled for the failure of big mags
conceived the idea of using that invention as a weapon of war. Again Melquíades tried to dissuade him
but he finally accepted the o magized ingots andthree colonial coins in exchange for the magnifying glass. rsula wept in consternation. That money was from a chest of gold coins that her father had put together ova an entire life of privation and that she had buried underneath her bed in hopes of a proper occasion to make use of it. José Arcadio Buendía made no at. tempt to console her
pletely absorbed in his tactical experiments with the abnegation of a scientist and even at the risk of his own life. In an attempt to show the effects of the glass on enemy troops
he exposed himself to the concentration of the sun's rays and suffered burns which turned into sores that took a long time to heal. Over the protests of his wife
who was alarmed at such a dangerous invention
at one point he was ready to set the house on fire. He would spend hours on end in his room
calculating the strategic possibilities of his novel weapon until he succeeded in putting together a manual of startling instructional clarity and an irresistible power of conviction. He sentit to the government
acpanied by numerous descriptions of his experiments and several pages of explanatory sketches;
by a messenger who crossed the mountains
got lost in measureless swamps
forded stormy rivers
and was on the point of perishing under the lash of despair
plague
and wild beasts until he found a route that joined the one used by the mules that carried the mail. In spite of the fact that a trip to the capital was little less than impossible at that time
José Arcadio Buendía promised to undertake it as soon as the government ordered him to so that he could put on some practical demonstrations of his invention for the military authorities and could train them himself in the plicated art of solar war. For several years he waited for an answer. Finally
tired of waiting
he bemoaned to Melquíades the failure of his project and the gypsy then gave him a convincing proof of his honesty: he gave him back the doubloons in exchange for the magnifying glass
and he left him in addition some Portuguese maps and several instruments of navigation. In his own handwriting he set down a concise synthesis of the studies by Monk Hermann. which he left José Arcadio so that he would be able to make use of the astrolabe
the pass
and the sextant. José Arcadio Buendía spent the long months of the rainy season shut up in a small room that he had built in the rear of the house so that no one would disturb his experiments. Having pletely abandoned his domestic obligations
he spent entire nights in the courtyard watching the course of the stars and he almost contracted sunstroke from trying to establish an exact method to ascertain noon. When he became an expert in the use and manipulation of his instruments
he conceived a notion of space that allowed him to navigate across unknown seas
to visit uninhabited territories
and to establish relations with splendid beings without having to leave his study. That was the period in which he acquired the habit of talking to himself
of walking through the house without paying attention to anyone
as rsula and the children broke their backs in the garden
growing banana and caladium
cassava and yams
ahuyama roots and eggplants. Suddenly
without warning
his feverish activity was interrupted and was replaced by a kind of fascination. He spent several days as if he were bewitched
softly repeating to himself a string of fearful conjectures without giving credit to his own understanding. Finally
one Tuesday in December
at lunchtime
all at once he released the whole weight of his torment. The children would remember for the rest of their lives the august solemnity with which their father
devastated by his prolonged vigil and by the wrath of his imagination
revealed his discovery to them:
"The earth is round
like an orange."
rsula lost her patience. "If you have to go crazy
please go crazy all by yourself!" she shouted. "But don't try to put your gypsy ideas into the heads of the children." José Arcadio Buendía
impassive
did not let himself be frightened by the desperation of his wife
who
in a seizure of rage
mashed the astrolabe against the floor. He built another one
he gathered the men of the village in his little room
and he demonstrated to them
with theories that none of them could understand
the possibility of returning to where one had set out by consistently sailing east. The whole village was convinced that José Arcadio Buendía had lost his reason
when Melquíades returned to set things straight. He gave public praise to the intelligence of a man who from pure astronomical speculation had evolved a theory that had already been proved in practice
although unknown in Macondo until then
and as a proof of his admiration he made him a gift that was to have a profound influence on the future of the village: the laboratory of an alchemist.
By then Melquíades had aged with surprising rapidity. On his first trips he seemed to be the same age as José Arcadio Buendía. But while the latter had preserved his extraordinary strength
which permitted him to pull down a horse by grabbing its ears
the gypsy seemed to have been worn dowse by some tenacious illness. It was
in reality
the result of multiple and rare diseases contracted on his innumerable trips around the world. According to what he himself said as he spoke to José Arcadio Buendía while helping him set up the laboratory
death followed him everywhere
sniffing at the cuffs of his pants
but never deciding to give him the final clutch of its claws. He was a fugitive from all the plagues and catastrophes that had ever lashed mankind. He had survived pellagra in Persia
scurvy in the Malayan archipelago
leprosy in Alexandria
beriberi in Japan
bubonic plague in Madagascar
an earthquake in Sicily
and a disastrous shipwreck in the Strait of Magellan. That prodigious creature
said to possess the keys of Nostradamus
was a gloomy man
enveloped in a sad aura
with an Asiatic look that seemed to know what there was on the other side of things. He wore a large black hat that looked like a raven with widespread wings
and a velvet vest across which the patina of the centuries had skated. But in spite of his immense wisdom and his mysterious breadth
he had a human burden
an earthly condition that kept him involved in the small problems of daily life. He would plain of the ailments of old age
he suffered from the most insignificant economic difficulties
and he had stopped laughing a long time back because scurvy had made his teeth drop out. On that suffocating noontime when the gypsy revealed his secrets
José Arcadio Buendía had the certainty that it was the beginning of a great friendship. The children were startled by his fantastic stories. Aureliano
who could not have been more than five at the time
would remember him for the rest of his life as he saw him that afternoon
sittingagainst the metallic and quivering light from the window
lighting up with his deep an voice the darkest reaches of the imagination
while down over his temples there flowed the grease that was being melted by the heat. José Arcadio
his older brother
would pass on that wonderful image as a hereditary memory to all of his descendants. ursula on the other hand
held a bad memory of that visit
for she had entered the room just as Melquíades had carelessly broken a flask of bichloride of mercury.