Buon lunedì, prodi seguaci!🦚

Stiamo per entrare nella fase due senza accenni ai criteri che l’OMS ritiene necessari per una graduale riapertura: cosa mai potrebbe andare storto? Speriamo bene, ma la veggo buia, come si dice dalle mie parti.

Comunque, questo fine settimana ho iniziato The Green Bridge e me ne sono andata a zonzo nel verde Galles: vi lascio le parole conclusive dell’introduzione di John Davies.

The journey goes on, its story will need telling. Expressing as a historian what might serve equally as a comment on literature, in ‘When Was Wales?’ Gwyn Williams has written: «The Welsh as a people have lived by making and remaking themselves generation after generation, usually against the odds… Wales is an artefact which the Welsh produce. If they want to.» As always it is a matter, difficult as it is necessary, of fusing the two known places, the actual and the dreamscape – both blurred by having been built over physically, psychically – to rediscover rooted things not easily blown away. Whatever else Anglo-Welsh writers may lack in these spinning times, they need not lack a function.

This anthology of Welsh short stories offers a chronological overview of the form in Wales during the last century. Twenty-five English-language writers provide one story each to produce an entertaining and varied anthology. Tales of horror, satire, humor, war, the aristocracy, love, madness, industry, the countryside, politics, and sport are all covered. The styles are varied, from the lyrical to the grittily realistic, as are the settings, from Wales in the early 20th century to contemporary South Africa. Contributors include Dannie Abse, Glenda Beagan, Ron Berry, Duncan Bush, Brenda Chamberlain, Rhys Davies, Dorothy Edwards, Caradoc Evans, George Ewart Evans, Margiad Evans, Sian Evans, Geraint Goodwin, Nigel Heseltine, Richard Hughes, Emyr Humphreys, Glyn Jones, Gwyn Jones, Alun Lewis, Clare Morgan, Leslie Norris, Ifan Pughe, Alun Richards, Jaci Stephen, Dylan Thomas, and Gwyn Thomas.