Stephen Crane, página 3 de 11

Regarded as the first work of unalloyed naturalism in American fiction.The story of Maggie Johnson a young woman who, seduced by her brothers friend and then disowned by her family, turns to prostitu

The Red Badge of Courage is an 1895 war novel by American author Stephen Crane. It is considered one of the most influential works in American literature. The novel, a depiction on the cruelty of the American Civil War, features a young recruit who overcomes initial fears to become a hero on the battlefield. The book made Crane an international success. Although he was born after the war and had not at the time experienced battle firsthand, the novel is considered an example of Realism.

A very little boy stood upon a heap of gravel for the honor of Rum Alley. He was throwing stones at howling urchins from Devils Row who were circling madly about the heap and pelting at him.His infantile countenance was livid with fury. His small body was writhing in the delivery of great, crimson oaths."Run, Jimmie, run! Deyll get yehs," screamed a retreating Rum Alley child."Naw," responded Jimmie with a valiant roar, "dese micks cant make me run."Howls of renewed wrath went up from Devils Row throats. Tattered gamins on the right made a furious assault on the gravel heap. On their small, convulsed faces there shone the grins of true assassins. As they charged, they threw stones and cursed in shrill chorus.The little champion of Rum Alley stumbled precipitately down the other side. His coat had been torn to shreds in a scuffle, and his hat was gone. He had bruises on twenty parts of his body, and blood was dripping from a cut in his head. His wan features wore a look of a tiny, insane demon.On the ground, children from Devils Row closed in on their antagonist. He crooked his left arm defensively about his head and fought with cursing fury. The little boys ran to and fro, dodging, hurling stones and swearing in barbaric trebles.

The fog made the clothes of the men of the column in the roadway seem of a luminous quality. It imparted to the heavy infantry overcoats a new colour, a kind of blue which was so pale that a regiment might have been merely a long, low shadow in the mist. However, a muttering, one part grumble, three parts joke, hovered in the air above the thick ranks, and blended in an undertoned roar, which was the voice of the column.The town on the southern shore of the little river loomed spectrally, a faint etching upon the grey cloud-masses which were shifting with oily languor. A long row of guns upon the northern bank had been pitiless in their hatred, but a little battered belfry could be dimly seen still pointing with invincible resolution toward the heavens.

Dos años antes de su muerte, Stephen Crane viajó como corresponsal de prensa norteamericano a la Guerra de Cuba que enfrentó a España contra Estados Unidos. Fruto de esa experiencia escribió Heridas bajo la lluvia, que hasta ahora jamas habia sido traducida ni publicada en español. Famoso mundialmente por la novela El rojo emblema del valor, donde por primera vez relato con lenguaje preciso y directo los horrores de la violencia belica, Crane retoma en Heridas bajo la lluvia el mismo asunto e indaga en la condicion humana, sometida en las trincheras a la presion de la miseria, el hambre y el miedo. La agilidad de sus dialogos, su capacidad para crear personajes creibles y cercanos al lector, la potencia de sus imagenes literarias y su ironia ofrecen una vision sorprendente de la Guerra de Cuba por su crudeza y modernidad. Este relato, ambientado en paisajes como la bahia de La Habana, Guantanamo o la colina de San Juan, describe la vida cotidiana de soldados y periodistas, incapaces de comprender realmente los motivos por los que se enfrentan a la muerte.

Con tan solo 24 años, Stephen Crane cambió el curso de la literatura bélica con su obra maestra La roja insignia del valor. Por primera vez, la guerra deja de ser un escenario romántico para convertirse en un infierno de fango, desesperacion y miedo. La novela no tardo en convertirse en un best-seller que atrajo la atencion de todo tipo de lectores, incluidos los mas jovenes. Crane conjuga con talento inigualable la descripcion expresionista del campo de batalla con las dudas que siente el individuo hacia su valor en una situacion extrema. Ambientada durante la Guerra Civil Americana, un joven se alista voluntario ingenuamente para defender unos ideales que iran siendo destruidos con el fragor de los cañonazos. Su capacidad narrativa y la agilidad de los dialogos sorprendieron a autores como Joseph Conrad, Henry James o H. G. Wells, aunque serian los narradores norteamericanos de la Generacion Perdida (Hemigway, Dos Passos y Faulkner) quienes mas se verian influidos por la prosa de Crane. Fallecido prematuramente a los 28 años, poco antes de morir acudio como corresponsal de prensa a la Guerra de Cuba, lo que le llevo a escribir Heridas bajo la lluvia, tambien publicada por Rey Lear en el numero 1 de esta coleccion.

Illustrator: C. D. Williams

One of the greatest books about war ever written. Young Henry Fleming had always dreamt of performing heroic deeds in battle. But the reality, as a raw recruit in the American Civil War, is a mental and physical torment. And as Henry fights his inner battles with fear, self-doubt, trauma and vainglory throughout his first harrowing action, he has no idea whether war will make him a coward, a hero - or a man.

Stephen Crane was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. Prolific throughout his short life, he wrote notable works in the Realist tradition as well as early examples of American Naturalism and Impressionism. He is recognized by modern critics as one of the most innovative writers of his generation.

The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting. As the landscape changed from brown to green, the army awakened, and began to tremble with eagerness at the noise of rumors. It cast its eyes upon the roads, which were growing from long troughs of liquid mud to proper thoroughfares. A river, amber-tinted in the shadow of its banks, purled at the armys feet; and at night, when the stream had become of a sorrowful blackness, one could see across it the red, eyelike gleam of hostile camp-fires set in the low brows of distant hills.Once a certain tall soldier developed virtues and went resolutely to wash a shirt. He came flying back from a brook waving his garment bannerlike. He was swelled with a tale he had heard from a reliable friend, who had heard it from a truthful cavalryman, who had heard it from his trustworthy brother, one of the orderlies at division headquarters. He adopted the important air of a herald in red and gold."Were goin t move tmorrah--sure," he said pompously to a group in the company street. "Were goinway up the river, cut across, an come around in behint em."

In the swirling rain that came at dusk the broad avenue glistened with that deep bluish tint which is so widely condemned when it is put into pictures. There were long rows of shops, whose fronts shone with full, golden light. Here and there, from druggists windows, or from the red street-lamps that indicated the positions of fire-alarm boxes, a flare of uncertain, wavering crimson was thrown upon the wet pavements.The lights made shadows, in which the buildings loomed with a new and tremendous massiveness, like castles and fortresses. There were endless processions of people, mighty hosts, with umbrellas waving, banner-like, over them. Horse-cars, aglitter with new paint, rumbled in steady array between the pillars that supported the elevated railroad. The whole street resounded with the tinkle of bells, the roar of iron-shod wheels on the cobbles, the ceaseless trample of the hundreds of feet. Above all, too, could be heard the loud screams of the tiny newsboys, who scurried in all directions. Upon the corners, standing in from the dripping eaves, were many loungers, descended from the world that used to prostrate itself before pageantry.

Twenty-five men were making a road out of a path up the hillside. The light batteries in the rear were impatient to advance, but first must be done all that digging and smoothing which gains no encrusted medals from war. The men worked like gardeners, and a road was growing from the old pack-animal trail.Trees arched from a field of guinea-grass which resembled young wild corn. The day was still and dry. The men working were dressed in the consistent blue of United States regulars. They looked indifferent, almost stolid, despite the heat and the labour. There was little talking. From time to time a Government pack-train, led by a sleek-sided tender bell-mare, came from one way or the other way, and the men stood aside as the strong, hard, black-and-tan animals crowded eagerly after their curious little feminine leader.

LITTLE JIM was, for the time, engine Number 36, and he was making the run between Syracuse and Rochester. He was fourteen minutes behind time, and the throttle was wide open. In consequence, when he swung around the curve at the flower-bed, a wheel of his cart destroyed a peony. Number 36 slowed down at once and looked guiltily at his father, who was mowing the lawn. The doctor had his back to this accident, and he continued to pace slowly to and fro, pushing the mower.Jim dropped the tongue of the cart. He looked at his father and at the broken flower. Finally he went to the peony and tried to stand it on its pins, resuscitated, but the spine of it was hurt, and it would only hang limply from his hand. Jim could do no reparation. He looked again toward his father.

El libro toma el título de uno de los relatos que componen en esta selección. En Crane lo visionario y lo práctico se combinan en un perfecto dominio de la técnica, como veremos en estos relatos que van desde sus primeros experimentos naturalistas sobre el lujo y la miseria de la ciudad de Nueva York hasta la fábula sobre el repudio de un monstruo en una pequeña ciudad provinciana. Como dijo Joseph Conrad: «Stephen Crane posee los ojos de un ser que no sólo ve visiones, sino que es capaz de cavilar sobre ellas con algún fin». Esta feliz combinación de conciencia útil y talante define perfectamente el espíritu de los relatos unidos en esta colección. Encuadernación: Rústica.

"If there were in existence any books of a similar character, one could start confidently by saying that it was the best of its kind. But it has no fellows. It is a book outside of all classification. So unlike anything else is it that the temptation rises to deny that it is a book at all." Harold Frederic"A masterpiece." George Wyndham"[The Red Badge of Courage] is one of the finest books of our literature, and I include it entire because it is all as much of a piece as a great poem is." Ernest HemingwayFirst published in 1895, this small masterpiece set the pattern for the treatment of war in modern fiction. The novel is told through the eyes of Henry Fleming, a young soldier caught up in an unnamed Civil War battle who is motivated not by the unselfish heroism of conventional war stories, but by fear, cowardice, and finally, egotism. However, in his struggle to find reality amid the nightmarish chaos of war, the young soldier also discovers courage, humility, and perhaps, wisdom. Although Crane had never been in battle before writing The Red Badge of Courage, the book was widely praised by experienced soldiers for its uncanny re-creation of the sights, sounds, and sense of actual combat. Its publication brought Crane immediate international fame and established him as a major American writer. Today, nearly a century later, the book ranks as an enduring landmark of American fiction.