Transcript of Balada de la cárcel de Reading
Prologue of Ballada de la Cárcel de Reading. This is a recording of LibriVox. All of LibriVox's recordings are in public domain. For more information or to be voluntary, please visit LibriVox .org. Read by Víctor Villarraza. Corrected by Hasna. C -33 C -33 wrote the Ballada de la Cárcel while he was sentenced to two years in prison in Reading, Berkshire, England. C -33, before covering his bald head with the drill cap and dressing his body in the stormy clothes of the Presidiarians, had filled his days cultivating the superior things of life. Now, in 1880, he rejected almost unanimously. Comedies like The Fisherman and His Soul, which after reading it, we will never forget. Comedies like Lady Windermere's Havanico, finely plot. Dramas like Salomé, a sensual and perverse act. And a novel, Dorian Gray, a morbid product of decadent literature, which contains all the elements of moral decomposition, which are latent in the author's feelings and which led him shortly after to the miserable situation of the Presidiar. Let us silence this terrible thing. Now, it is nothing more than this. A letter and a number. C -33 Have you noticed the coincidence? C equals C, initial of Christ. 33 equals 33, the age of Christ in the dark hour of his crucifixion. C -33, the man who published with that letter and that infamous number, the obsessive ballad, where the vision of the hangman makes us pale with horror and repugnance, was called Oscar Wilde, before the dark hour of his civil death. Then, after being repaid for the life of the world and thought, he wandered through some lands, living magnificently alone. And, finally, he died in Paris on November 30, 1900, leaving behind the posterity of Profundis, bitter pages containing his painful confession and his aesthetic will. End of prologue. The Ballad of the Prison of Reading by Oscar Wilde This recording of LibriVox is in public domain. Read by Victor Villarraza. Corrected by Hasna. The Ballad of the Prison of Reading by C -33 In Memoriam, CTW Old soldier of the Royal Cavalry Guard, executed in the prison of Reading, Berkshire, July 7, 1896. Song I He no longer had his scarlet tunic, because the blood and wine were red. And there was blood and wine on his hands when they found the dead, the poor dead woman he loved and who had killed in her bed. He walked among the detainees with a grey suit and a drill cap on his head. He seemed happy and light, but he had never seen a man look at the light so intensely. I have never seen a man look at such an intensely That little blue shop that the prisoners call the sky and every cloud that flowed and passed with a silver veil. I walked with other souls in pain through another courtyard and I wondered if the crime of this man would be big or small when a voice behind me murmured