Impresiones sonoras sobre el relato breve "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" de Ambrose Bierce (1890).


1. A new disturbance

“And now he became conscious of a new disturbance. Striking through the thought of his dear ones was a sound which he could neither ignore nor understand, a sharp, distinct, metallic percussion like the stroke of a blacksmith's hammer upon the anvil; it had the same ringing quality. He wondered what it was, and whether immeasurably distant or near by, it seemed both. Its recurrence was regular, but as slow as the tolling of a death knell. He awaited each stroke with impatience and -he knew not why- apprehension. The intervals of silence grew progressively longer, the delays became maddening. With their greater infrequency the sounds increased in strength and sharpness. They hurt his ear like the thrust of a knife; he feared he would shriek. What he heard was the ticking of his watch.”


2. The stroke of the water-spiders' legs

“He was now in full possession of his physical senses. They were, indeed, preternaturally keen and alert. Something in the awful disturbance of his organic system had so exalted and refined them that they made record of things never before perceived. He felt the ripples upon his face and heard their separate sounds as they struck. He looked at the forest on the bank of the stream, saw the individual trees, the leaves and the veining of each leaf, saw the very insects upon them: the locusts, the brilliant-bodied flies, the grey spiders stretching their webs from twig to twig. He noted the prismatic colors in all the dewdrops upon a million blades of grass. The humming of the gnats that danced above the eddies of the stream, the beating of the dragon flies' wings, the strokes of the water-spiders' legs, like oars which had lifted their boat, all these made audible music. A fish slid along beneath his eyes and he heard the rush of its body parting the water.”


3. Like the voice of Niagara

“The sound of a clear, high voice in a monotonous singsong now rang out behind him and came across the water with a distinctness that pierced and subdued all other sounds, even the beating of the ripples in his ears.(...) The water roared in his ears like the voice of Niagara, yet he heard the dulled thunder of the volley. (...) An appalling plash within two yards of him was followed by a loud, rushing sound, diminuendo, which seemed to travel back through the air to the fort and died in an explosion which stirred the very river to its deeps.”


4. Whispers in an unknown tongue

“A strange, roseate light shone through the spaces among their trunks and the wind made in their branches the music of Æolian harps. (...) The wood on either side was full of singular noises, among which -once, twice, and again- he distinctly heard whispers in an unknown tongue.”