Murió Ray Bradbury, y me viene una de esas penas extrañas cuando alguien con talento y creador de mundos se va, alguien que no conoces, pero que de alguna forma te ha hablado como si te conociese.
Y empiezo a hacer memoria y recuerdo uno de los grandes lectores de Ray Bradbury: Superman. Hay historias en que se cuenta cómo Superman leía sus libros desde niño. Y como dije en twitter, el amor y respeto era mutuo.
En una de esas bellas conexiones del mundo del comic, Ray Bradbury escribió sobre S, sobre como él se pudo ver en Clark Kent, como todos lo hemos necesitado alguna vez y como los comics tomaron el lugar que merecían.
Le dejo este texto maravilloso:
A Salute to Superman
Ray Bradbury
Presentado originalmente en Superman #400, 1984
I rather imagine there is a close relationship between Superman and his survival and the survival of all the maniac kids of the thirties who believed in comics and comic strips at a time when no one else did. In other words, Clark Kent had to put up with people who said he couldn’t do it, whatever it was, so he jumped in a phone booth to re-outfit himself with a new ego, and leaped out to punch a locomotive or deflate a hostile dirigible, whichever came first. Our sympathy and need for him was rooted in the fact that any and all of us felt we could never run across a football field without tripping over a peanut, never dive in a pool without sinking out of sight forever, and never touch a girl’s hand without having a heart attack. It was nice to know that the young reporter who turned into Superman at peculiar hours, harbored the same doubts and tripped over similar shoelaces. No one in our various homes, strewn across country in the thirties and forties, realized that at three o’clock in the morning, when Mom and Dad slept, Junior was making like King Kong around the kitchen, emulating John Carter atop the roof on his way to Mars, or masquerading as Superman fighting the Bullies across town. We always got back before dawn, so our folks never knew, and we sat at breakfast with small dinosaur smiles, hiding our tyrannosaurus dentures behind the cornflakes, sitting on our copies ofSuperman and reading it through the seats of our pants.Anyway, that was yesterday, and comic strips and books have long since come into their own. The people who once made fun of me for collecting Tarzan and Buck Rogers comics have since grown up and now read the French intellectual gazettes that tell us that our stupid passions for this minor art form in 1932 or ’39 have now been accepted as the stuff of myths and legends and we are now part of an important period of social history. The answer to which, of course, then and now, is “Malarky!” We always knew what we needed, what we loved, what we thrived on. We always knew we were right while everyone else was wrong. If you don’t know what you love, in this world, you don’t know anything. As for me, I once loved and still love Kong, John Carter, Flash Gordon, and all the rest. Superman came a trifle late in my teens. He was never a passion, as were the others. But I recognized myself when I saw him in his reporter’s outfit, bloodying his nose as he blundered into that phone booth. Why, that’s me! I thought. Except when I come out of phone booths I don’t come out as Superman. Leaping forth, I slip on the nearest banana peel. No wonder I need, you needed, we all needed Clark Kent a lifetime ago. And as we slip, slide, and catapult ourselves, yelling, into the Future, Clark Kent will go with us to make sure that Superman will catch us. |
Gracias, y tienes razón es como si hubieras hablado con ellos, un montón de veces, en mi caso Bradbury marcó mi infancia con esos cuentos maravillosos de las Crónicas Marcianas, cando chico que ria tener ojos dorados, y me leía todo cuanto escribía, sorprende que exista gente que no lo conocía, bueno a mi por lo menos, y la pena es grande, pero nos queda su obra esa maravillosa obra y este saludo a uno de los superheroes, que si bien no es mi favorito cuenta con todo mi respeto por encarnar lo mejor de la raza humana sin ser uno de nosotros, creo que Bradbury nos proponía eso sacar siempre lo mejor de nosotros. Me quedo con esa frae dicha “Peor que quemar libros es no leerlos” Gracias por el saludo entre dos gigantes.