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Considerado una de las cumbres de la literatura inglesa de todos los tiempos, el Diario del año de la peste es un escalofriante relato novelado en el que se describen con crudeza los horribles acontecimientos que coincidieron con la epidemia de peste que asoló Londres y sus alrededores entre 1664 y 1666.… (más)
Considerado una de las cumbres de la literatura inglesa de todos los tiempos, el Diario del año de la peste es un escalofriante relato novelado en el que se describen con crudeza los horribles acontecimientos que coincidieron con la epidemia de peste que asoló Londres y sus alrededores entre 1664 y 1666.
En 1720 la peste, que prácticamente había desaparecido de Europa después del gran brote de 1665, volvía inopinadamente a declararse en Marsella. En Inglaterra muchos recordaban esa tragedia de su niñez. Las noticias que llegaban de Marsella traían ahora de nuevo el pánico y la inseguridad. Daniel Defoe, que se ganaba la vida como periodista, aunque había publicado ya dos novelas en torno -precisamente- a un personaje sometido a la angustia de una situación límite (Robinson Crusoe y Moll Flanders), había sido uno de esos niños que en 1665 sobrevivieron a la epidemia. Su preocupación por la actualidad y lo que podría ocurrir en caso de que sobreviniera otro “azote” le llevó en 1722 a escribir el Diario del año de la peste, bajo la forma de las memorias de un superviviente de la catástrofe.
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
It was about the beginning of September 1664, that I, among the rest of my neighbours, heard in ordinary discourse, that the plague was returned again in Holland; for it had been very violent there, and particularly at Amsterdam and Rotterdam, in the year 1663, whither, they say, it was brought, some said from Italy, others from the Levant, among some goods, which were brought home by their Turkey fleet; others said it was brought from Candia; others from Cyprus.
Citas
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
But even those wholesome reflections -- which, rightly managed, would have most happily led the people to fall upon their knees, make confession of their sins, and look up to their merciful Savior for pardon, imploring His compassion on them in such a time of their distress, by which we might have been as a second Ninevah -- had quite a contrary extreme in the common people, who, ignorant and stupid in their reflections as they were brutishly wicked and thoughtless before, were now led by their fright to extremes of folly; and, as I have said before that they ran to conjurers and witches, and all sort of deceivers to know what should become of them (who fed their fears, and kept them always alarmed and awake on purpose to delude them and pick their pockets), so they were as mad upon their running after quacks and mountebanks, and every practising old woman for medicines and remedies; storing themselves with such multitudes of pills, potions, and presevatives, as they were called, that they not only spent their money but even poisoned themselves beforehand for fear of the poison of the infection; and prepared their bodies for the plague, instead of preserving them against it.
When the physicians assured us that the danger was as well from the sound, that is, the seemingly sound, as the sick ... then they began to be jealous of everybody, and a vast number of people locked themselves up, so as not to come abroad into any company at all, nor suffer any that had been abroad in promiscuous company to come into their houses, or near them, at least not so near them as to be within the reach of their breath or of any smell from them.
Últimas palabras
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
A dreadful plague in London was In the year sixty-five, Which swept an hundred thousand souls Away; yet I alive! H.F.
Considerado una de las cumbres de la literatura inglesa de todos los tiempos, el Diario del año de la peste es un escalofriante relato novelado en el que se describen con crudeza los horribles acontecimientos que coincidieron con la epidemia de peste que asoló Londres y sus alrededores entre 1664 y 1666.