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Historia Del Guerrero y de La Cautiva English

This passage summarizes two stories from history that seem contrasting but may symbolize the same phenomenon. The first story describes Droctulft, a 6th-8th century Lombard warrior who abandoned his people's siege of Ravenna to defend the city, seeing something in its architecture that moved him. The second story recounts the author's grandmother telling of an English woman captured by indigenous people in Argentina who chose to remain with her captors. Both the warrior and woman embraced ways of life foreign to them in obedience to some inscrutable inner calling.

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566 views3 pages

Historia Del Guerrero y de La Cautiva English

This passage summarizes two stories from history that seem contrasting but may symbolize the same phenomenon. The first story describes Droctulft, a 6th-8th century Lombard warrior who abandoned his people's siege of Ravenna to defend the city, seeing something in its architecture that moved him. The second story recounts the author's grandmother telling of an English woman captured by indigenous people in Argentina who chose to remain with her captors. Both the warrior and woman embraced ways of life foreign to them in obedience to some inscrutable inner calling.

Uploaded by

singinsweetii3643
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) Story of the Warrior

and the Captive (The Aleph, 1949)


On page 278 of the book The Poetry (Bari, 1942), Croce, abbreviating a Latin text by the historian Paul the Deacon, tells luck and cites the epitaph Droctulft; these singularly touched me, then I realized why. Droctulft Lombard was a warrior in the siege of Ravenna abandoned theirs and died defending the city that had once attacked. The raveneses buried him in a temple and composed an epitaph in which expressed their gratitude ("contespsit expensive, we amat ille dum, kinship") and the peculiar contrast between figure warned that heinous barbaric simplicity and kindness : Facies saw benignus Terribilis mind, Inspectors rugged beard Longaque fuit! [1] Such is the story of the fate of Droctulft, barbarian who died defending Rome, or such is the fragment of his story that could rescue Paul the Deacon do not even know what time it happened: if by averaging the sixth century, when the Lombards desolated the plains of Italy, if the VIII, before the surrender of Ravenna. Imagine (this is not a historical work) first. Imagine, sub specie aeternitatis to Droctulft, not the individual Droctulft, it was certainly unique and unfathomable (all individuals are), but the generic type of him and many others like him has become tradition, a work the forgotten and memory. Through a geography dark swamps and jungles, war was brought to Italy from the banks of the Danube and the Elbe, and perhaps did not know it was going to stir and maybe did not know that warred against the Roman name. Perhaps professed Arianism, which holds that the glory of the Son reflects the glory of the Father, but is consistent devotee imagine Earth, Hertha, whose idol was covered hut to hut in a cart pulled by cows, or the gods of war and thunder, which were clumsy wooden figures wrapped in woven clothing and recharged coins and bangles. It came from the jungles inextricable boar and aurochs, was white, bouncy, innocent, cruel, loyal to his captain and his tribe, not the universe. Wars bring him to Ravenna and then see something that has never seen or have not seen fully. Go on and cypresses and marble. Watch a whole, which is multiple clutter; see a city, a body made of statues, temples, gardens, room

and stands, vases, capitals, regular and open spaces. None of these plants (I know) what impresses beautiful, it would behoove us now play as complex machinery whose purpose we ignored, but guessed whose design immortal intelligence. Maybe you just see a single arch, with an incomprehensible inscription in Roman letters eternal. Suddenly the blind and renews that revelation, the City. He knows it will be a dog, or a child, and does not even begin to understand it, but he also knows she is worth more than their gods and sworn faith and all the swamps of Germany. Droctulft abandons' his own and fights for Ravenna. Dies, and the burial recorded words he had not understood: Contempsit expensive, we amat ille dum, kinship, Reputans Patriam Hanc esse, Ravenna, sham. There was a traitor (not often inspire traitors pious epitaphs) was a visionary, a convert. After a few generations, the Lombards who blamed the defector came like him were Italians, Lombards and any man his bloodAldiger ICD-could engender Alighieri who spawned the ... Many conjectures can be applied to the act of Droctulft, mine is the cheapest, if not true as fact, it is a symbol. When I read in the book of history Warrior Croce, it moved me so unusual and it seemed to recover, different form, something that had been mine. I thought fleetingly Mughal riders who wanted to make China an infinite field of grazing and then aged in the cities they had longed to destroy this memory was not that I was looking for. Finally found it, it was a story that I heard my grandmother ever English, who has died. Borges In 1872 my grandfather was head of the northern and western borders of Buenos Aires and Santa Fe Southern Command was in Junin beyond four or five leagues from each other, the chain of forts, and beyond, what was then called the Pampa and Inland. Sometime, between wonder and mocking, my grandmother said her English destination banished to the end of the world, he said it was the only and said, months later, an Indian girl who slowly crossed the square. He wore two blankets colored and was barefoot, her tresses were blonde. A soldier told another British wanted to talk to her. The woman nodded, took the command without fear, but not without misgivings. In the copper face fierce daubed color, the blue eyes were listless that the English call gray. The body was light, like hinds; hands, strong and bony. It came from the desert, and everything seemed Inland quedarle guy: the doors, walls, furniture. Perhaps the two women for a moment felt sisters, were far from their beloved island and in an amazing country. My

grandmother enunciated any questions, the other replied with difficulty, searching for words and repeating them as amazed an ancient flavor. Would fifteen years did not speak the native language and it was not easy to recover. He said he was from Yorkshire, his parents emigrated to Buenos Aires, who had lost in a raid, that had brought the Indians and was now the wife of a chieftain, who already had two children and was very brave. That I was saying in a rustic English, interspersed with araucano or pampa, and the story behind a life loomed Feral: leather awnings horse manure bonfires, feasting charred meat or raw viscera Cie, the stealthy marches at dawn, the assault of the pens, the scream and looting, war, the mighty herding farms by riders, nudity, polygamy, the stench and magic. At that barbarism had lowered an Englishwoman. Moved by the shame and scandal, my grandmother urged her not to return. ampararla swore, swore to rescue their children. The other replied that he was happy and went that night to the desert. Francisco Borges died soon after, in the revolution of 74, perhaps my grandmother, then, could feel the other woman, also snatched and transformed by this continent implacable, monstrous mirror of your destiny ... Every year, the blonde Indian grocery stores used to reach Junin, or the Fort Lavalle, in pursuit of trinkets and "vices", did not appear, from the conversation with my grandmother. However, they were again. My grandmother had gone hunting, on a ranch near the marshes, a man slaughtered a sheep. As in a dream, India spent riding. He dropped to the ground and drank the warm blood. I do not know if it was because he could not act otherwise tic, or as a challenge and a sign. Thirteen hundred years and the sea mediate between the fate of the captive and Droctulft destination. The two, now, are equally unrecoverable. The figure of the barbarian who embraced the cause of Ravenna, the figure of the European woman who chooses the desert may seem antagonistic, however, both the secret wrested momentum, momentum deeper than reason, and the two complied with that momentum that they had not known justify. Perhaps the stories I mentioned are one story. The obverse and reverse of this coin is, for God equal.

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