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axolotta's review against another edition
5.0
"The overpowering aroma of the robust semi-marshy vegetation and the suffocating heat of a midsummer day filled the grotto. Outside, the rain kept falling heavily, and it stretched a curtain of blurred glass in front of the eyes of the couple seeking shelter there, and it helped convert the ravine where the girl and the boy were waiting into a secluded parlor, as they waited for the rain to stop with palpitating hearts."
"It seemed that Nature was revealing herself there more potently and lasciviously than ever, showing off her genesiacal powers fully and shamelessly. Musky odors revealed the presence of thousands of ants; behind the exuberance of foliage, one could make out the mysterious and threatening form of a spider and the black caterpillar with its hairy back creeping along. The young girl was trembling as she looked at them, when she parted the leaves and discovered some secret rite of organic life, the sacrifice of a bluebottle fly trapped and dying in a web, the amorous play of two insects hanging from a stalk, the procession of large ants carrying off a dead body."
"For us to insist that nature has voices, and voices that tell us something mysterious and grand! Oh …, that you can really call crazy! Voices! … Voices! Voices that have been speaking for thousands and thousands of years, and they tell every one of us something different! I’ve figured out that they don’t tell us a damned thing …, and that we interpret them each in our own way … Like what happens with bells: whatever one takes a fancy to hearing …, that’s what they ring out right away. The voices are inside of you. To my brother-in-law, Nature sounds like this: ‘A good day for threshing!’ And to a true believer it murmurs that there is a God …”
"He sat down on the stone bench with the grapevines overhead, lit a cigarette, leaned up against the wall, still warm from the sunlight of an entire day, and began to look into the darkness. It was total, very intense, without even a star to dissipate it; one of those nights that was truly as black as a crow, in which space seems even more infinite, the sky loftier and more inaccessible, and the ground less real, because one might say that it melts and vanishes when it loses its sensory outward appearances, its varied forms and colors, and nothing really exists within it other than our dreamy imagination."
"In the winter, while Perucho was withering away in Orense, Manuela learned to move about all by herself instantaneously and as if by magic, and she unexpectedly found herself to be a professor of topography, knowledgeable about all the roads, nooks, and out-of-the-way places in the valley; but this only lasted till Perucho returned: no sooner had he come back than the mountain girl forgot all her skills and went back to depending on her companion passively and delightedly."
"So it is that behind every somewhat dense thicket, in every favorable corner, you would discover round, compact nests, some with eggs, four or six small greenish pearls; others with a half-blind chick, covered with yellowish down. And when Manuela partly opened the branches in order to surprise the nuptial secret, not only did the bird fly away trembling with terror, but one could also hear the small lizard race off terrified, and see the worm stop, paralyzed with fear, winding itself around the edge of a leaf with its innumerable, rudimentary little feet."
"The sense of solitude was absolute in that elevated, almost inaccessible place; the sky seemed very high and quite near at the same time, and since nothing limited the extent of one’s view, it was surrounded on all sides by an immense horizon, making the firmament seem like a veritable canopy of infinite, deep blue, which enclosed the immense amphitheater as if it were a bell glass. The far distances, much lower than El Castro, were gradually lost in such pink and ashen tints, that it gave one the illusion of a lake or a sea, that extended far out, very far out before your eyes. It seemed as if El Castro were an island suspended over an ocean of vapors. The calm and silence there bordered on the fantastic"
"It seemed that Nature was revealing herself there more potently and lasciviously than ever, showing off her genesiacal powers fully and shamelessly. Musky odors revealed the presence of thousands of ants; behind the exuberance of foliage, one could make out the mysterious and threatening form of a spider and the black caterpillar with its hairy back creeping along. The young girl was trembling as she looked at them, when she parted the leaves and discovered some secret rite of organic life, the sacrifice of a bluebottle fly trapped and dying in a web, the amorous play of two insects hanging from a stalk, the procession of large ants carrying off a dead body."
"For us to insist that nature has voices, and voices that tell us something mysterious and grand! Oh …, that you can really call crazy! Voices! … Voices! Voices that have been speaking for thousands and thousands of years, and they tell every one of us something different! I’ve figured out that they don’t tell us a damned thing …, and that we interpret them each in our own way … Like what happens with bells: whatever one takes a fancy to hearing …, that’s what they ring out right away. The voices are inside of you. To my brother-in-law, Nature sounds like this: ‘A good day for threshing!’ And to a true believer it murmurs that there is a God …”
"He sat down on the stone bench with the grapevines overhead, lit a cigarette, leaned up against the wall, still warm from the sunlight of an entire day, and began to look into the darkness. It was total, very intense, without even a star to dissipate it; one of those nights that was truly as black as a crow, in which space seems even more infinite, the sky loftier and more inaccessible, and the ground less real, because one might say that it melts and vanishes when it loses its sensory outward appearances, its varied forms and colors, and nothing really exists within it other than our dreamy imagination."
"In the winter, while Perucho was withering away in Orense, Manuela learned to move about all by herself instantaneously and as if by magic, and she unexpectedly found herself to be a professor of topography, knowledgeable about all the roads, nooks, and out-of-the-way places in the valley; but this only lasted till Perucho returned: no sooner had he come back than the mountain girl forgot all her skills and went back to depending on her companion passively and delightedly."
"So it is that behind every somewhat dense thicket, in every favorable corner, you would discover round, compact nests, some with eggs, four or six small greenish pearls; others with a half-blind chick, covered with yellowish down. And when Manuela partly opened the branches in order to surprise the nuptial secret, not only did the bird fly away trembling with terror, but one could also hear the small lizard race off terrified, and see the worm stop, paralyzed with fear, winding itself around the edge of a leaf with its innumerable, rudimentary little feet."
"The sense of solitude was absolute in that elevated, almost inaccessible place; the sky seemed very high and quite near at the same time, and since nothing limited the extent of one’s view, it was surrounded on all sides by an immense horizon, making the firmament seem like a veritable canopy of infinite, deep blue, which enclosed the immense amphitheater as if it were a bell glass. The far distances, much lower than El Castro, were gradually lost in such pink and ashen tints, that it gave one the illusion of a lake or a sea, that extended far out, very far out before your eyes. It seemed as if El Castro were an island suspended over an ocean of vapors. The calm and silence there bordered on the fantastic"
paula_s's review against another edition
4.0
La Bazán abraza el realismo y el naturalismo de una forma más completa y absoluta en este libro. Si se observa con más profundidad, dejando a un lado el tema del incesto, se podrá ver que la elección no es tan solo entre un hermano y un tío, sino que también es elegir entre dos formas completamente opuestas de ver la vida: Perucho representa el libre albedrío, el desorden, la rebeldía; mientras que Gabriel representa el orden, la educación, la cultura, el vivir en sociedad acatando las normas sociales y el decoro. Es la inmoralidad contra la moralidad, porque los matrimonios entre tío y sobrina (nunca viceversa) aun eran aceptables si contaban con la venia eclesiástica.
En mi opinion, este libro no desmerece al primero. Tiene menos historia, menos acción, es más reposado y contemplativo. Pero a veces tiene arranques pasionales que son como si, de repente, me quitaran la silla en la que estoy sentada. No sabría definirlo de otra manera. Es como si el ritmo de mi respiración aumentara cuando Perucho o Gabriel agarran a Manolita del brazo para llevársela consigo. Y, curiosamente, nunca tomé partido por ninguno de los dos, pero sí por Manuela. Por último, señalar que en todas y cada una de las páginas, casi en cada línea se puede adivina otra historia de amor aún más potente que la que pretende contar en el libro: el amor de la Bazán por Galicia.
En mi opinion, este libro no desmerece al primero. Tiene menos historia, menos acción, es más reposado y contemplativo. Pero a veces tiene arranques pasionales que son como si, de repente, me quitaran la silla en la que estoy sentada. No sabría definirlo de otra manera. Es como si el ritmo de mi respiración aumentara cuando Perucho o Gabriel agarran a Manolita del brazo para llevársela consigo. Y, curiosamente, nunca tomé partido por ninguno de los dos, pero sí por Manuela. Por último, señalar que en todas y cada una de las páginas, casi en cada línea se puede adivina otra historia de amor aún más potente que la que pretende contar en el libro: el amor de la Bazán por Galicia.
forever_rain's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
repixpix's review against another edition
4.0
Maravillosa continuación de Los pazos de Ulloa. Más poética y sosegada, pero igual de brillante.
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