Filippo Venturi Photography | Blog

(Una mia foto recente, che mi ha ricordato l’incipit del libro)

Ieri notte ho sognato di tornare a Manderley… Ferma là davanti, muta e immobile, avrei giurato che la casa non era un guscio vuoto ma viveva e respirava come un tempo.

Devo confessare che l’incipit del romanzo “Rebecca, la prima moglie” mi piace molto. L’avevo notato diversi anni fa per poi conservarlo nel “cassetto dell’oblio”; una mia foto recente (vedi sopra) ha riacceso il ricordo.
Ecco l’incipit intero, in lingua originale:

Last night, I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter for the way was barred to me. Then, like all dreamers, I was possessed of a sudden with supernatural powers and passed like a spirit through the barrier before me. The drive wound away in front of me, twisting and turning as it had always done. But as I advanced, I was aware that a change had come upon it. Nature had come into her own again, and little by little had encroached upon the drive with long tenacious fingers, on and on while the poor thread that had once been our drive. And finally, there was Manderley – Manderley – secretive and silent. Time could not mar the perfect symmetry of those walls. Moonlight can play odd tricks upon the fancy, and suddenly it seemed to me that light came from the windows. And then a cloud came upon the moon and hovered an instant like a dark hand before a face. The illusion went with it. I looked upon a desolate shell, with no whisper of a past about its staring walls. We can never go back to Manderley again. That much is certain. But sometimes, in my dreams, I do go back to the strange days of my life which began for me in the south of France…

Nel 1940 dal romanzo è stato tratto un film intitolato “Rebecca”, diretto dal grande Alfred Hitchcock, che vinse l’oscar come miglior film dell’anno!