paralelismos

Caigo, como casi siempre, por casualidad en el breve artículo publicado en El País sobre "La Edad de Oro" (http://www.elpais.com/articulo/portada/25/anos/edad/oro/elppgl/20080411elptenpor_4/Tes).

Lo que deja entender acerca de la historia del programa como expresión de la personalidad de su directora capta mi atención de inmediato. Al llegar casi al final y leer que...

La edad de oro fue un transgresor pacífico de los códigos de comportamiento en Prado del Rey. Un bulto incómodo, por tanto, para los altos cargos. Cuando Paloma declaró públicamente su cansancio, les puso en bandeja el pretexto para cerrar el programa.

...me sorprende lo identificado que me siento con Paloma.

No entro en detalles pero estoy harto de sentir cansancio por hacer un gran esfuerzo en mi trabajo para, además, ser percibido como un "bulto incómodo", una china en el zapato, un grano en el culo...

Cuanto más reflexiono sobre ello más me convenzo de que somos nosotros quienes ponemos límites a nuestra existencia. Esta es la idea de Of the human bondage, de Somerset Maugham. Su protagonista, Philip Carey, acabará descubriendo que no importa lo que un hombre haga siempre que esté dispuesto a asumir las consecuencias.

Philip pasa una infancia al cuidado de su tío, vicario en una pequeña localidad inglesa, tras quedar huérfano. Desde que sale de casa de su tío intenta diversos caminos sin demasiado éxito, como si quisiera demostrarse a sí y al mundo que puede hacer aquéllo que su tío percibe como un despilfarro de la propia vida. Para ello, sin darse cuenta, aplica a sí mismo la más estricta disciplina y se comporta como lo hubiera hecho su tío.



Su obsesión por establecer un método sobre el que guiar su vida le lleva a ligarse de modo absurdo a una mujer que le desmerece y utiliza. Philip, tras bastantes tribulaciones, acaba descubriendo que:

Philip's rule of life, to follow one's instincts with due regard to the policeman round the corner, had not acted very well there: it was because Cronshaw had done this that he had made such a lamentable failure of existence. It seemed that the instincts could not be trusted. Philip was puzzled, and he asked himself what rule of life was there, if that one was useless, and why people acted in one way rather than in another. They acted according to their emotions, but their emotions might be good or bad; it seemed just a chance whether they led to triumph or disaster. Life seemed an inextricable confusion. Men hurried hither and thither, urged by forces they knew not; and the purpose of it all escaped them; they seemed to hurry just for hurrying's sake.

[...]

Life had no meaning. On the earth, satellite of a star speeding through space, living things had arisen under the influence of conditions which were part of the plantet's history; and as there had been a beginning of life upon it, so, under the influence of other conditions, there would be an end: man, no more significant than other forms of life, had come not as the climax of creation but as a physical reaction to the environment. [...] There was no meaning in life, and man y living served no end. It was immaterial whether he was born or not born, whether he lived or ceased to live. Life was insignificant and death without consequence. [...] ... the last burden of responsibility was taken from him; and for the first time he was utterly free. [...] What he did or left undone did not matter. Failure was unimportant and success amounted to nothing. [...] ... that was why Cronshaw, he imagined, had given him the Persian rug. As the weaver elaborated his pattern for no end but the pleasure of his aesthetic sense, so might a man live his life, or if one was forced to believe that his actions were outside his choosing, so might a man look at his life, that it made a pattern. There was as little need to do this as there was use. It was merely something he did for his own pleasure.

[...]

He accepted the deformity which had made life so hard for him; he knew that it had warped his character, but now he saw also that by reason of it he had acquired that power of introspection which had given him so much delight. [...] Then he saw that the normal was the rarest thing in the world. Everyone had some defect, of body or of mind [...] The only reasonable thing was to accept the good of men and be patient with their faults. The words of the dying God crossed his memory:

Forgive them, for they know not what they do.