o home que era xoves

“I will tell you,” said the policeman slowly. “This is the situation: The head of one of our departments, one of the most celebrated detectives in Europe, has long been of opinion that a purely intellectual conspiracy would soon threaten the very existence of civilisation. He is certain that the scientific and artistic worlds are silently bound in a crusade against the Family and the State. He has, therefore, formed a special corps of policemen, policemen who are also philosophers. It is their business to watch the beginnings of this conspiracy, not merely in a criminal but in a controversial sense. I am a democrat myself, and I am fully aware of the value of the ordinary man in matters of ordinary valour or virtue. But it would obviously be undesirable to employ the common policeman in an investigation which is also a heresy hunt.” Syme’s eyes were bright with a sympathetic curiosity. “What do you do, then?” he said. “The work of the philosophical policeman,” replied the man in blue, “is at once bolder and more subtle than that of the ordinary detective. The ordinary detective goes to pot-houses to arrest thieves; we go to artistic tea-parties to detect pessimists. The ordinary detective discovers from a ledger or a diary that a crime has been committed. We discover from a book of sonnets that a crime will be committed. We have to trace the origin of those dreadful thoughts that drive men on at last to intellectual fanaticism and intellectual crime. We were only just in time to prevent the assassination at Hartle pool, and that was entirely due to the fact that our Mr. Wilks (a smart young fellow) thoroughly understood a triolet.” “Do you mean,” asked Syme, “that there is really as muchconnection between crime and the modern intellect as all that?” “You are not sufficiently democratic,” answered the policeman, “but you were right when you said just now thatour ordinary treatment of the poor criminal was a pretty brutal business. I tell you I am sometimes sick of my trade when I see how perpetually it means merely a war upon the ignorant and the desperate. But this new movement of ours is a very different affair. We deny the snobbish English assumption that the uneducated are the dangerous criminals. We remember the Roman Emperors. We remember the great poisoning princes of the Renaissance. We say that the dangerous criminal is the educated criminal. We say that the most dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. Compared to him, burglars and bigamists are essentially moral men; my heart goes out to them. They accept the essential ideal of man; they merely seek it wrongly. Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it. But philosophers dislike property as property; they wish to destroy the very idea of personal possession. Bigamists respect marriage, or they would not go through the highly ceremonial and even ritualistic formality of bigamy. But philosophers despise marriage as marriage. Murderers respect human life; they merely wish to attain a greater fulness of human life in themselves by the sacrifice of what seems to them to be lesser lives. But philosophers hate life itself, their own as much as other people’s.” Syme struck his hands together. “How true that is,” he cried. “I have felt it from my boyhood, but never could state the verbal antithesis. The common criminal is a bad man, but at least he is, as it were, a conditional good man. He says that if only a certain obstacle be removed—say a wealthy uncle—he is then prepared to accept the universe and to praise God. He is a reformer, but not an anarchist. He wishes to cleanse the edifice, but not to destroy it. But the evil philosopher is not trying to alter things, but to annihilate them. Yes, the modern world has retained all those parts of police work which are really oppressive and ignominious, the harrying of the poor, the spying upon the unfortunate.

The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

J. W. Arrowsmith, Inglaterra, 1908

O home que era xoves

traducido por Marta Verán Pais coa colaboración de Juan Carlos Lago Caamaño

Colección: MUNDOS . 3 Editorial: 2.0 EDITORA Ano: 2010

- Explícolle -dixo o policía con calma-. A situación é a seguinte: o xefe dun dos nosos departamentos, un dos máis recoñecidos detectives de Europa, sempre pensou que unha conspiración puramente intelectual ameazará á civilización de maneira inminente. Ten a certeza de que o mundo científico e o artístico manteñen unha unión arcana para lanzar unha cruzada contra a familia e o estado. Por iso creou un corpo especial de policías que son, ao mesmo tempo, filósofos. A súa misión é vixiar os xermolos desta conspiración, non só no que atinxe aos delitos senón tamén ás controversias. Eu son demócrata e creo no valor do home común en cuestións de intrepidez e virtudes comúns. Pero, obviamente, non é aconsellable contratar a calquera policía para unha investigación que tamén é unha caza da herexía.

Os ollos de Syme brillaban de curiosidade e compresión.

- A que se dedica vostede, entón? -preguntou.

- O traballo de policía filósofo é máis atrevido e sutil ca o de detective ordinario -informou o home do uniforme azul -. Este vai ás tabernas a arrestar ladróns; nós imos aos salóns de té artísticos a descubrir pesimistas. O detective ordirnario descubre nun libro de contas ou nun diario que se cometeu un crime. Nós descubrimos nun libro de sonetos que se vai cometer un crime. Temos que rastrexar a orixe deses horribles pensamentos que incitan aos homes, finalmente, ao fanatismo e ao crime intelectual. Chegamos xusto a tempo de previr o asasinato en Hartlepool, e foi grazas ao señor Wilks, un tipo pequeno e intelixente, que soubo interpretar minuiciosamente un rondó.

- Quere dicir -interrogou Syme -, que existe tal conexión entre o crime e o intelecto moderno?

- Vostede non é demócrata abondo -respondeu o policía -, pero tiña razón cando dixo que adoitabamos tratar os criminais pobres de xeito pouco bruto. Cando vexo que o meu oficio implica, permanentemente, unha guerra contra os ignorantes e desesperados, cánsome del. Pero este movemento novo é un asunto moi diferente. Negamos a suposición inglesa tan snob de que os incultos son os criminais perigosos. Lembrámonos dos emperadores romanos e dos grandes príncipes envelenadores do Renacemento. Sostemos que o criminal perigoso é o criminal culto e que, hoxe en día, a quen máis hai que temer é ao filósofo moderno que non respecta as leis. Comparados con el, os rateiros e os bígamos son, en esencia, homes de moral; compadézome deles. Aceptan o ideal esencial do home, só que o buscan de xeito equivocado. Os ladróns respectan a propiedade en si mesma; desexan destruír mesmo a idea de posesión persoal. Os bígamos respectan o matrimonio, de non ser así non pasarían pola formalidade tan cerimonial, e incluso ritualista, da bigamia. Os filósofos desprezan a idea do matrimonio en si mesma. Os asasinos respectan a vida humana, só desexan acadar unha vida máis plena consigo mesmos sacrificando o que consideran vidas de menor valor. Pero os filósofos odian a vida mesma, tanto a súa coma a dos outros.

Syme aplaudiu e berrou:

- Élle ben certo! Sinto todo iso dende neno pero nunca souben expresar o paradoxo en palabras. O criminal común é malo pero, polo menos, é un home bo en potencia. Con só eliminar un obstáculo (por exemplo, un tío rico) estaría preparado para aceptar o universo e loar a Deus. É un reformista, pero non un anarquista. Ansía limpar o edificio, non destruílo. O filósofo malvado non trata de alterar as cousas, senón de aniquilalas. É certo, o mundo moderno conservou todas esas facetas do traballo policial que son realmente opresivas e infames: o acoso aos pobres, a espionaxe aos desafortunados.