I finished the Harry Potter series…

…Yesterday night, by sheer chance, just a  day after Harry’s 40^th birthday.

Do you know this awkward moment when you finish an epic novel or a book series and you don’t know what to do with your life from then on? Well, I am right there now, again. It has happened so often... When I finished One Hundred Years of Solitude; War and Peace; Silmarilion, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings; after whichever novel/series by Blaga Dimitrova or Dimitar Talev; after The Witcher series…

I have never been a real, devoted Harry Potter fan. I might have grown up with J. K. Rowling’s novels, but I actually didn’t. I was 6 when the first novel was published and I started reading the series when I was 9 or 10, just about Harry’s age when he met Hagrid. :D. I read the first two books in no time. It took me around a week or even less to finish each one. My little brother was actually angry with me, because, instead of playing with him, I was reading – ALL-THE-TIME. However, I have to honestly admit that I got bored at the beginning of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. I believe I even gave the books (or just the last one) away to a friend and I was quite puzzled how happy she was…

At the beginning of this year, though, things changed.

With my boyfriend we decided to organize ourselves a Harry Potter movie marathon at home. During the final credits of the last movie I decided that I really need to have the books in an original English edition and, of course, that I will read them from the first to the last cover of the saga. And I did – today at around 01:15 o’clock after midnight I closed …The Deathly Hallows.

The experience was quite a personal one. Unlike in any other reading of mine, I did not feel the urge to leave here any quote, not a single time for all the seven parts. However, if I am asked what is my favorite part, I definitely have the answer – the gran finale, beginning with Chapter 33: “The Prince’s Tale”.

You may ask “But didn’t you have it all spoiled because you read the novels after seeing the movies?!”. No, I did not. Somehow, I had even forgotten some key discoveries and facts and I was absolutely stunned when they were revealed. I had moments like those till the very end. Don’t ask me how I do it, because I don’t know. But with War and Peace it was exactly the same – I read the saga after and thanks to seeing the BBC mini-series, but nothing was spoiled for me, not in the slightest.

I truly can’t find the proper words to explain what it was like. I can only say that I was happy, sad, nervous… I laughed out loud and I cried. In J. K. Rowling’s writing I found some of the magical tension of García Márquez and some of the epic battle scenes of J. R. R. Tolkien.

In the end, I would like to share with you my favorite (funniest and saddest) moments. Needless to say, I cried a lot during the very last one I leave here.

v From …The Half-Blood Prince. In Chapter 21 when Harry, under the Invisibility Cloak, is trying to discover what Malfoy is up to in the Room of Requirement, while Goyle stands guard outside, disguised as a little girl with Polyjuice potion:

 

[…] He waited until he was right behind her before bending very low and whispering, ‘Hello... you're very pretty, aren't you?’

Goyle gave a high-pitched scream of terror, threw the scales up into the air and sprinted away, vanishing from sight long before the sound of the scales smashing had stopped echoing around the corridor.

 

v Again in …The Half-Blood Prince. In Chapter 25 everyone knows that Harry Potter is going out with Ginny Weasley:

 

‘You'd think people had better things to gossip about,’ said Ginny as she sat on the common room floor, leaning against Harry’s legs and reading the Daily Prophet. ‘Three Dementor attacks in a week, and all Romilda Vane does is ask me if it’s true you’ve got a Hippogriff tattooed across your chest.’

Ron and Hermione both roared with laughter. Harry ignored them.

‘What did you tell her?’

‘I told her it's a Hungarian Horntail,’ said Ginny, turning a page of the newspaper idly. ‘Much more macho.’

‘Thanks,’ said Harry, grinning. ‘And what did you tell her Ron’s got?’

‘A Pygmy Puff, but I didn’t say where.’

Ron scowled as Hermione rolled around laughing.

 

v The saddest ones, of course, were when Sirius, Dumbledore, Mad Eye, Hedwig, Dobby, Fred, Lupin and Tonks died. It was astonishing how the denial; the grief and the numbness were described. Feelings such as those are not easy to put into words but J. K. Rowling is a master. From …The Deathly Hallows, Chapter 23-24, Dobby’s death:

 

‘DOBBY!’

The elf swayed slightly, stars reflected in his wide, shining eyes. Together, he and Harry looked down at the silver hilt of the knife protruding from the elf’s heaving chest.

‘Dobby – no – HELP!’ Harry bellowed towards the cottage, towards the people moving there. ‘HELP!’

He did not know or care whether they were wizards or Muggles, friends or foes; all he cared about was that a dark stain was spreading across Dobby’s front, and that he had stretched out his thin arms to Harry with a look of supplication. Harry caught him and laid him sideways on the cool grass.

‘Dobby, no, don’t die, don’t die –’

The elf’s eyes found him, and his lips trembled with the effort to form words.

‘Harry … Potter …’

And then with a little shudder the elf became quite still, and his eyes were nothing more than great, glassy orbs sprinkled with light from the stars they could not see. (End of chapter 23).

 

It was like sinking into an old nightmare; for an instant he knelt again beside Dumbledore’s body at the foot of the tallest tower at Hogwarts, but in reality he was staring at a tiny body curled upon the grass, pierced by Bellatrix’s silver knife. Harry’s voice was still saying ‘Dobby … Dobby …’ even though he knew that the elf had gone where he could not call him back.

[…]

‘I want to do it properly,’ were the first words which Harry was fully conscious of speaking. ‘Not by magic. Have you got a spade?’

And shortly afterwards he had set to work, alone, digging the grave in the place that Bill had shown him at the end of the garden, between bushes. He dug with a kind of fury, relishing the manual work, glorying in the non-magic of it, for every drop of his sweat and every blister felt like a gift to the elf who had saved their lives.

His scar burned, but he was master of the pain; he felt it, yet was apart from it. He had learned control at last, learned to shut his mind to Voldemort, the very thing Dumbledore had wanted him to learn from Snape. Just as Voldemort had not been able to possess Harry while Harry was consumed with grief for Sirius, so his thoughts could not penetrate Harry now, while he mourned Dobby. Grief, it seemed, drove Voldemort out … though Dumbledore, of course, would have said that it was love …

On Harry dug, deeper and deeper into the hard, cold earth, subsuming his grief in sweat, denying the pain in his scar. In the darkness, with nothing but the sound of his own breath and the rushing sea to keep him company, the things that had happened at the Malfoys’ returned to him, the things he had heard came back to him, and understanding blossomed in the darkness…

The steady rhythm of his arms beat time with his thoughts. Hallows … Horcruxes … Hallows … Horcruxes … yet he no longer burned with that weird, obsessive longing. Loss and fear had snuffed it out: he felt as though he had been slapped awake again.

[…]

Slowly, under his murmured instruction, deep cuts appeared upon the rock’s surface. He knew that Hermione could have done it more neatly, and probably more quickly, but he wanted to mark the spot as he had wanted to dig the grave. When Harry stood up again, the stone read:

HERE LIES DOBBY, A FREE ELF.

 

v From …The Deathly Hallows, Chapter 34, when Harry meets all his dear ones thanks to the Resurrection Stone:

 

‘I didn’t want you to die,’ Harry said. These words came without his volition. ‘Any of you. I’m sorry –’

He addressed Lupin more than any of them, beseeching him.

‘– right after you’d had your son … Remus, I’m sorry –’

‘I am sorry too,’ said Lupin. ‘Sorry I will never know him … but he will know why I died and I hope he will understand. I was trying to make a world in which he could live a happier life.’

A chilly breeze that seemed to emanate from the heart of the Forest lifted the hair at Harry’s brow. He knew that they would not tell him to go, that it would have to be his decision.

‘You’ll stay with me?’

‘Until the very end,’ said James.

‘They won’t be able to see you?’ asked Harry.

‘We are part of you,’ said Sirius. ‘Invisible to anyone else.’

Harry looked at his mother.

‘Stay close to me,’ he said quietly.

©Hristiana Bobeva, 2020

 

 

 

 

The everlasting duality...

The story in the books for Geralt is like that: infinite beauty is followed by sheer horror and vice versa.

***

A west wind brought a storm that night.

The purple-black sky burst along the line of lightning, exploding in a long drawn-out clatter of thunder. The sudden rain struck the dust of the road with drops as vicious as oil, roared on the roofs, smeared the dirt on the skins covering the windows. But the powerful wind quickly chased off the downpour, drove the storm somewhere far, far away, beyond the horizon, which was blazing with lightning.

And then dogs began to bark. Hooves thudded and weapons clanged. A wild howling and whistling made the hair stand up on the heads of the peasants who had woken and now sprang up in panic, barring their doors and shutters. Hands, wet with sweat, tightened on the hafts of axes and the handles of pitchforks. Clenched them tightly. But helplessly.

Terror sped through the village. Were they the hunted or the hunters? Insane and cruel from ferocity or fear? Will they gallop through, without stopping? Or will the night soon be lit up by the glare of blazing thatch?

Quiet, quiet, children…

Mamma, are they demons? Is it the Wild Hunt? Phantoms from hell? Mamma, mamma!

Quiet, quiet, children. They are not demons, not devils…

Worse than that.

They are people.

The dogs barked. The dale blew. Horses neighed, horseshoes thudded. The gang raced through the village and the night.

Chapter Two

Andrzej Sapkowski, THE TOWER OF THE SWALLOW

https://kittiara.deviantart.com/art/RCSI-The-Wild-Hunt-257469796

Una vida...

La búsqueda de una lectura extraordinaria continúa porque aquella selección de cuentos tampoco me gustó mucho. Ahora vuelvo a empezar Gabriel García Márquez: Una Vida de Gerald Martin. A ver si es verdad que a la tercera va la vencida. Por ahora el sutil sentido del humor del inglés expresado en español me encanta…

* * *

He estado diecisiete años trabajando en la biografía. Contrariamente a lo que me decía todo aquel con quien hablaba en los primeros estadios del proyecto («No conseguirás acceder a él, y si lo haces, no “cooperará”»), conocía a mi hombre a los pocos meses de acometer el proyecto, y aunque no puede decirse que desbordaba de entusiasmo («¿Por qué quieres escribir una biografía? Las biografías significan la muerte»), se mostró cordial, hospitalario y tolerante. De hecho, siempre que me han preguntado si esta es una biografía autorizada, mi respuesta ha sido invariablemente la misma: «No, no es una biografía autorizada, es una biografía tolerada». No obstante, para sorpresa y gratitud mías, en 2006 el propio García Márquez dijo ante los medios de todo el mundo que yo era su biógrafo «oficial». ¡Así que probablemente yo sea su único biógrafo oficialmente tolerado! Ha sido un privilegio extraordinario.

Gerald Martin, Gabriel García Márquez: Una Vida

Copyright de la traducción © por Eugenia Vázquez Nacarino

Edición de Vintage Español
Una división de Random House, Inc.
Nueva York

За Алиса и как през Огледалния свят стигнах до испаноамерикански разкази от '70те...

Много рядко ми се случва да се откажа от някоя книга преди дори да съм стигнала средата. С „Алиса в Огледалния свят“ обаче се случи точно това, не знам защо. „Алиса в Страната на чудесата“ я прочетох доста бързо – не бях особено впечатлена, но поне я довърших... Даже се развълнувах леко при появата на мъдрата Чеширска котка и на Гъсеницата. В Огледалния свят се препънах още в самото начало на трета глава –  някак си пчелите-слонове добиващи неописуеми количества мед от огромни цветя-имения без покрив не успяха да ме докоснат. Сега, за разнообразие и необходимо възстановяване след разочароващо четиво, се връщам към испаноезичните корени, че после и за българските имам планове. Отидох до чуждестранната секция на библиотеката (личната имам предвид) и тази книжка ми намигна.

Важно!!! Това е само личното ми мнение. В никой случай не искам и не се опитвам да оценявам или критикувам британската класика на Луис Карол.

© Христиана Бобева, 2017

"Cheshire Puss"

‘Cheshire Puss,' she began, rather timidly, as she did not at all know whether it would like the name: however, it only grinned a little wider. `Come, it's pleased so far,' thought Alice, and she went on. `Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'

‘That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat.

‘I don't much care where--' said Alice.

‘Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat.

‘--so long as I get somewhere,' Alice added as an explanation.

‘Oh, you're sure to do that,' said the Cat, `if you only walk long enough.'

Alice felt that this could not be denied, so she tried another question. `What sort of people live about here?'

‘In that direction,' the Cat said, waving its right paw round, `lives a Hatter: and in that direction,' waving the other paw, `lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: they're both mad.'

‘But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.

‘Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: `we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.'

‘How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice.

‘You must be,' said the Cat, `or you wouldn't have come here.'

Alice didn't think that proved it at all; however, she went on `And how do you know that you're mad?'

‘To begin with,' said the Cat, `a dog's not mad. You grant that?'

‘I suppose so,' said Alice.

‘Well, then,' the Cat went on, `you see, a dog growls when it's angry, and wags its tail when it's pleased. Now I growl when I'm pleased, and wag my tail when I'm angry. Therefore I'm mad.'

/From CHAPTER VI – Pig and Pepper/

Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

© John Tenniel

Your life will be brighter than noonday; its darkness will be like the morning. *

*Job 11:17

[…] And they said no more; and it seemed to them as they stood upon the wall that the wind died, and the light failed, and the Sun was bleared, and all sounds in the City or in the lands about were hushed: neither wind, nor voice, nor bird-call, nor rustle of leaf, nor their own breath could be heard; the very beating of their hearts was stilled. Time halted.

And as they stood so, their hands met and clasped, though they did not know it. And still they waited for they knew not what. Then presently it seemed to them that above the ridges of the distant mountains another vast mountain of darkness rose, towering up like a wave that should engulf the world, and about it lightnings flickered; and then a tremor ran through the earth, and they felt the walls of the City quiver. A sound like a sigh went up from all the lands about them; and their hearts beat suddenly again.

[…]

And so they stood on the walls of the City of Gondor, and a great wind rose and blew, and their hair, raven and golden, streamed out mingling in the air. And the Shadow departed, and the Sun was unveiled, and light leaped forth; and the waters of Anduin shone like silver, and in all the houses of the City men sang for the joy that welled up in their hearts from what source they could not tell.

And before the Sun had fallen far from the noon out of the East there came a great Eagle flying, and he bore tidings beyond hope from the Lords of the West, crying:

Sing now, ye people of the Tower of Anor,

for the Realm of Sauron is ended for ever,

and the Dark Tower is thrown down.

Sing and rejoice, ye people of the Tower of Guard,

for your watch hath not been in vain,

and the Black Gate is broken,

and your King hath passed through,

and he is victorious.

Sing and be glad, all ye children of the West,

for your King shall come again,

and he shall dwell among you

all the days of your life.

And the Tree that was withered shall be renewed,

and he shall plant it in the high places,

and the City shall be blessed.

Sing all ye people!

And the people sang in all the ways of the City.

THE RETURN OF THE KING

(BOOK SIX, Chapter 5: The Steward and the King)

J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

Because it was impossible to stay in The Darkness of Sholob's lair...

"Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death..."*

*Psalm 23:4, Psalm of David.

Drawing a deep breath they passed inside. In a few steps they were in utter and impenetrable dark. Not since the lightless passages of Moria had Frodo or Sam known such darkness, and if possible here it was deeper and denser. There, there were airs moving, and echoes, and a sense of space. Here the air was still, stagnant, heavy, and sound fell dead. They walked as it were in a black vapour wrought of veritable darkness itself that, as it was breathed, brought blindness not only to the eyes but to the mind, so that even the memory of colours and of forms and of any light faded out of thought. Night always had been, and always would be, and night was all.

THE TWO TOWERS

(BOOK FOUR, Chapter 9: Shelob’s Lair)

J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings