#262 The House Was Quiet and The World Was Calm (Wallace Stevens)

A mí Wallace Stevens me parece un poeta difícil, pero no es un poeta hermético, de esos que complican para parecer profundos o que usan palabras como juguetes para al final no decir nada. Muchos de sus poemas exigen del lector, pero dan mucho de sí. Y no todos son poemas difíciles; otros, más hospitalarios, invitan a entrar sin complicaciones. Como este de la casa callada, que es quizá uno de los mejores poemas escritos sobre la lectura. 

Yo he perdido el placer lector de mi adolescencia, cuando podía pasarme horas leyendo, totalmente perdida en el libro, the reader becoming the book. Serán las pantallas o la lectura del doctorado que se ha devorado el placer de otras lecturas o... quién sabe, pero qué ganas de volver a ese ambiente que tan bien describe Stevens en su poema.

(via)

THE HOUSE WAS QUIET AND THE WORLD WAS CALM

The house was quiet and the world was calm.

The reader became the book; and summer night

Was like the conscious being of the book.

The house was quiet and the world was calm.

The words were spoken as if there was no book,

Except that the reader leaned above the page,

Wanted to lean, wanted much most to be

The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom

The summer night is like a perfection of thought.

The house was quiet because it had to be.

The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:

The access of perfection to the page.

And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,

In which there is no other meaning, itself

Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself

Is the reader leaning late and reading there.