Lord Arthur Savile’s crime

Original Language: English

Títutulus original: Lord Arthur Savile´s Crime

Translation: Wilde BDL collective

Year of publication: 1887

Valoración: Highly recommended

While there are exceptions, it is usually rewarding to return to the classics. Although none know what they are, I say that Oscar Wilde deserves the qualifier without a doubt. With a work not very extensive, and the most celebrated already reviewed in ULAD, we make a incursion into a small story with which it can be assessed if, as in some cases, the brightness is lost as soon as we move away from the most outstanding titles.

No, it is not lost. Lord Arthur Savile He is a good position that has the wedding in sight with Sibyl Mertonwho is a perfect kind of girlfriend. The thing twists when, in one of those cheesy parties of the Victorian era, a scholars (chiromatistin a slightly doubtful translation) read the hand to Lord Arthur and finds something horrible that does not even dare to reveal until it is pressed to it. The scene is all power and mystery. The fright seen in his future makes the young man fear for the relationship with his girlfriend, and gets to work to correct the folly.

What was presented as a mystery story or a psychological thriller acquires, however, a different coloration, because if something has Wilde, it is a very hard capacity to melt the tragic with the comic and ingenious, something that looks a bit like black without being. At no time is the unbearable tension of the young nobleman who sees his life cracks, but he presents the reader with the necessary skill to get a smile and make him enjoy very British strokes. A kind of mixture of sweet and salty in the exact proportion to appreciate the two flavors at the same time, also enjoying the mixture.

At the same time, the few eighty pages of the book lead us by crazy adventures that suggest some police literature also very British, and ingenious situations that force not to lose sight of the starting point so that the narration does not remain in a simple fun.

That feeling of lightness can subtract some packaging from the story but is perhaps also one of the most interesting points. Because what really is most admirable is precisely the ability to gather such disparate elements: the mystery of the unknown, humor and subtlety, the tension for the unexpected, the naivety of youth loves, and perhaps deeper reflections on the inexorable of destiny, that it would perhaps be the interpretation we would say serious of the whole. How to make all this amalgam work in such a short text while delighting with language and entertains the reader? Of course, for that you have to be a great of literature, and that is why those who were last over time, and sometimes we tag them as classics.

PD I think I already commented on other occasions: I like this Nordic series that I do not remember if it has a name, but I do not just understand the illustrations. It must be admitted that in this case the book has undoubted humorous bias, but I don’t think it deserves to give sliding impression towards frivolity.