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E’ la notte di Capodanno. Mentre scoppiano i festeggiamenti, una donna, nella solitudine della sua casa, inveisce contro tutti. E’ una voce disperata rotta da un angoscioso dolore che l’ha resa cinica e rabbiosa...
Suffused with de Beauvoir’s remarkable insights into women, The Woman Destroyed gives us a legendary writer at her best. Includes “The Age of Discretion,”“The Monologue,” and “The Woman Destroyed.” In the middle tale, the tone is strident, the pitch continuously noisy, rising over and over again to a hysterical note. “The silly bastards!” the woman cries at the first gasp. Her accusing, despairing monologue goes on and on about the ghastly mess in which she is drowning: a woman separated from her child and “ditched” by his “swine of a father.” A couple who go on living together merely because that was how they began, without any other reason: was that what we were turning into?” Simone de Beauvoir was a French author and philosopher. She wrote novels, monographs on philosophy, political and social issues, essays, biographies, and an autobiography. She is now best known for her metaphysical novels, including "She Came to Stay" and "The Mandarins", and for her 1949 treatise "The Second Sex", a detailed analysis of women's oppression and a foundational tract of contemporary feminism. Simone de Beauvoir draws us into the lives of three women, all past their first youth, all facing unexpected crises. Three long stories that draw the reader into the lives of three women, all past their first youth, all facing unexpected crises.Simone rondaba los 60 años cuando escribió este relato, y yo, que no ando muy lejos, puedo sentir en carne propia cada una de las palabras de esta corta pero sincera, amarga y, al final, resignada historia. “¿Qué hacer cuando el mundo se ha descolorido? No queda más que matar el tiempo.” El relato plantea dos actitudes ante la llegada de la vejez y la pérdida de capacidades, de ilusiones, de metas por las que luchar (no creo que fuera intención de la autora identificar cada una de ellas con el género de los protagonistas y, desde luego, yo tampoco creo que este sea el caso): la indiferencia, el dejarse llevar, aceptar que todo pierde importancia, por un lado, y el rebelarse ante tal situación, el no poder comprender que la merma de capacidades, el deterioro del cuerpo, es imparable, que el deseo acaba por desgastarse, por el otro. “No más proyectos, no más deseos. No escribiré más. ¿Entonces qué haré? Qué vacío en mí, alrededor de mí. Inútil.” En el relato, Simone se centra en esta última forma de encarar la vejez, la de la mujer, un problema que va mucho más allá del miedo a enfrentarse a una muerte cada vez más cercana. “Si hubiera tenido que morir durante la noche, habría estimado que mi vida era un logro. Pero estaba aterrada por ese desierto a través del cual iba a arrastrarme hasta desembocar en la muerte.” El relato es el proceso por el cual esta mujer va aceptando que existe un problema, que experimenta un deterioro físico y mental, que los años han cambiado a su pareja, que su hijo ha elegido un camino bien distinto del que para él había deseado. “En todo caso, durante un tiempo. No miremos demasiado lejos… ¿Eso nos la hará tolerable? No sé. Esperemos. No tenemos elección.” Al final todos sabemos que no hay otro camino que la resignación y saber y poder aprovechar lo que la vida te siga dando o, como Simone pone en la mente de su protagonista, todo aquello que la vida aun no te ha quitado. Each of these novellas is concerned with a desperately unhappy, no-longer-young woman whose life is going down the drain. Three such monologues, in succession, are an overdose. At the same time, none of the husbands or other characters in any of the stories take on a convincing life of their own. The French author, existential philosopher, political activist, and feminist has remained best known for The Second Sex (1949). But de Beauvoir also put her social theories, especially those pertaining to affairs of the heart, into several works of fiction. She screams how she is rotting all alone, how she is being trampled underfoot. She moans that she is “bored through the ground,” alone on New Year’s Eve.
Though The Woman Destroyed was generally praised, not all reviewers were as enthusiastic as the one above. Following is a review of the American edition that, though critical of the book’s tone, nonetheless offers a succinct synopsis of each story: Tragedies are all right for a while: you are concerned, you are curious, you feel good. And then it gets repetitive, it doesn’t advance, it grows dreadfully boring: it is so very boring, even for me.”
Despite the brevity of the book, many readers, both female and male, leave long, thoughtful musings on how the book has resonated with them. It could be that Simone de Beauvoir was tapping into a fictional form of confessional angst that was a bit before its time, and that has aged well. In three “immensely intelligent stories about the decay of passion” ( The Sunday Herald Times [London]), Simone de Beauvoir draws us into the lives of three women, all past their first youth, all facing unexpected crises. The Woman Destroyedby Simone de Beauvoir (1908 – 1986) published first in French in 1967 as La Femme Rompue , presents a trio of novellas (or, one could argue, long short stories). Bisogna sempre aspettare che lo zucchero fonda, che il ricordo svanisca, che la ferita rimargini, che il sole tramonti, che la noia si dissipi. Strana cesura tra questi due ritmi. Le mie giornate fuggono al galoppo, e in ciascuna d’esse languisco.”