Lo que Maisie sabía

Ya estoy yo un poco mayor para el bueno de Henry James; hubo un momento cuando era mucho más joven que leí una buena parte de su asombrosa producción, despaciosa y placenteramente, regodeándome en sus quiebros y requiebros lingüísticos, en esos diálogos y descripciones tan densos y retorcidamente sutiles que con tanta frecuencia te obligan a releer uno y otro párrafo para asegurarte de que no te estás perdiendo algo oculto, que sabes que está ahí, y sabes que no se desvela y se escapa en cuanto aflojas la guardia.

Un divorcio con un niña pequeña cuyos padres son impresionantemente frívolos e inmorales. Los padres se tornan cuatro y comienzan un juego de pelota con la pobre Maisie, usándola como arma arrojadiza, como moneda de cambio, como justificación. ¿Qué sabe, qué cree saber, qué conclusiones qué ventajas piensa extraer Maisie de todas estas intrigas familiares?

Lo que decididamente No sabe Maisie es cómo es una vida satisfactoria, lo que no sabe ni puede saber, porque nadie, mientras la abandonan, la tientan, la repudian, la envilecen, le enseña, es cómo debemos moralmente vivir. al final por fin ella Sabe lo que quiere, Sabe quién quiere a quién, sabe que no puede confiar plenamente en nadie y, más importante aún, sabe tomar sus propias decisiones mientras nosotros, extenuados y decididamente confusos, suspiramos y cerramos despaciosamente el libro.

"To give something, to give here on the spot, was all her own desire. Among the old things that came back was her little instinct of keeping the peace; it made her wonder more sharply what particular thing she could do or not do, what particular word she could speak or not speak, what particular line she could take or not take, that might for every one, even for the Countess, give a better turn to the crisis. She was ready, in this interest, for an immense surrender, a surrender of everything but Sir Claude, of everything but Mrs. Beale. The immensity didn't include them; but if he had an idea at the back of his head she had also one in a recess as deep, and for a time, while they sat together, there was an extraordinary mute passage between her vision of this vision of his, his vision of her vision, and her vision of his vision of her vision."

"She judged that if her whole history, for Mrs. Wix, had been the successive stages of her knowledge, so the very climax of the concatenation would, in the same view, be the stage at which the knowledge should overflow. As she was condemned to know more and more, how could it logically stop before she should know Most? It came to her in fact as they sat there on the sands that she was distinctly on the road to know Everything. She had not had governesses for nothing: what in the world had she ever done but learn and learn and learn? She looked at the pink sky with a placid foreboding that she soon should have learnt All. They lingered in the flushed air till at last it turned to grey and she seemed fairly to receive new information from every brush of the breeze."