domingo, 8 de junio de 2014

The Man who was Thursday, G. K. Chesterton


Tr. Spa-Eng. from a Shvoong Review
 It's an example of Chesterton's peculiar humorous intellectualism, which starts with a nice series of hilarious situations and comic surprises, as well as dialogues and puns, and drifts in the end toward almost metaphysical-religious reflection, almost auto sacramental. The anarchist Gregory, after a philosophical discussion, takes Syme, a devotee of order, whom he has recently found in the park, to his meeting of anarchists, doing promise that he would not say anything to the police. Syme delivers on his promise and at the same time reveals that he is actually a policeman, making the other one promise that he would not tell it to the anarchists. In the meeting it is elected Thursday, i.e., the representative who must be part of the Direction Board of the organization, formed by seven individuals carrying each the name of a day of the week, managed by the one called Sunday. Syme offers himself as a candidate and cleverly gets the position, Gregory being unable to do anything to avoid it. At the meeting of the seven anarchist leaders, Sunday discovers that there is a police officer among them, though it is not Syme but some other member, that is expelled. Leaving there, another of the seven follows Syme and finds out he is a policeman too.




















 On and on, in increasingly bizarre circumstances, those who bear the name of the first six days of the week are discovered as infiltrated policemen, all of them with the common denominator of having recently been hired by Scotland Yard in a very dark room. In another meeting, in which the six reveal their condition to Sunday, the latter tells them that it was he who hired them for Scotland Yard, and runs off. In a chase across London that includes races in elephant and escapes in hot air balloon, the six follow Sunday and end up in a mansion of which he seems to be the owner. The six are invited to dress up in costumes showing planets, animals or, in each case, what the Bible says that God created on the day that they represent. Sunday takes the role of God himself, creator of good and evil, and the true anarchist, Gregory, appears in a parallel role to that of the Devil. Of course, everything was Syme's dream.

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