Ralph Herne

Product Description Ralph Herne es uno de los primeros cuentos de Hudson, publicado en ingles por la revista Youth en forma de folletin, desde el 4 de enero al 14 de marzo de 1888. No hay traduccion al espanol y solo existe en el idioma original, en los 24 tomos de sus obras completas que edito Dent en 1923. Esta obra, de gran interes para nosotros, describe la epidemia de fiebre amarilla que hubo en Buenos Aires en 1871, donde, Ralph Herne, joven medico ingles, trabaja arduamente y desafia a este flagelo. Estan los cajones que se vendian de puerta en puerta, los que navegaban por las calles convertidas en rios en la noche de tormenta; la desesperacion de la gente que moria en numero impresionante y en muy breve plazo; hasta la tristeza de la ciudad vacia donde crecia el pasto en las calles. Este cuento fue traducido por Alicia Jurado, autora de la biografia mas documentada de Hudson y se podria conocer asi una de sus ficciones menos difundidas, sobre la fiebre amarilla en Buenos Aires en el siglo XIX. Review 1. I take up pen for this foreword with the fear of one who knows that he cannot do justice to his subject, and the trembling of one who would not, for a good deal, set down words unpleasing to the eye of him who wrote Green Mansions, The Purple Land, and all those other books which have meant so much to me. For of all living authors--now that Tolstoi has gone--I could least dispense with W. H. Hudson. Why do I love his writing so? I think because he is, of living writers that I read, the rarest spirit, and has the clearest gift of conveying to me the nature of that spirit. Writers are to their readers little new worlds to be explored; and each traveller in the realms of literature must needs have a favourite hunting-ground, which, in his good will--or perhaps merely in his egoism--he would wish others to share with him. The great and abiding misfortunes of most of us writers are twofold: We are, as worlds, rather common tramping-ground for our readers, rather tame territory; and as guides and dragomans thereto we are too superficial, lacking clear intimacy of expression; in fact--like guide or dragoman--we cannot let folk into the real secrets, or show them the spirit, of the land. Now, Hudson, whether in a pure romance like this Green Mansions, or in that romantic piece of realism The Purple Land, or in books like Idle Days in Patagonia, Afoot in England, The Land's End, Adventures among Birds, A Shepherd's Life, and all his other nomadic records of communings with men, birds, beasts, and Nature, has a supreme gift of disclosing not only the thing he sees but the spirit of his vision. Without apparent effort he takes you with him into a rare, free, natural world, and always you are refreshed, stimulated, enlarged, by going there. He is of course a distinguished naturalist, probably the most acute, broad-minded, and understanding observer of Nature living. And this, in an age of specialism, which loves to put men into pigeonholes and label them, has been a misfortune to the reading public, who seeing the label Naturalist, pass on, and take down the nearest novel. Hudson has indeed the gifts and knowledge of a Naturalist, but that is a mere fraction of his value and interest. A really great writer such as this is no more to be circumscribed by a single word than America by the part of it called New York. The expert knowledge which Hudson has of Nature gives to all his work backbone and surety of fibre, and to his sense of beauty an intimate actuality. But his real eminence and extraordinary attraction lie in his spirit and philosophy. We feel from his writings that he is nearer to Nature than other men, and yet more truly civilized. The competitive, towny culture, the queer up-to-date commercial knowingness with which we are so busy coating ourselves simply will not stick to him. A passage in his Hampshire Days describes him better than I can: ''The blue sky, the brown soil beneath, the grass, the trees, th