James BALDWIN, Go Tell it on the Mountain
Publié le 07/02/2012
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In Central Park the snow bad not yet melted on his favourite hill. Before him, the slope stretched upward, and above it the brilliant sky, and beyond it, cloudy, and far away, he saw the skyline of New York. He did not know why, but there arose in him an exultation and a sense of power, and he ran up the hill like an engine, or a madman, willing to (1) throw himself headlong into the city that glowed before him....
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Tben he remembered his father and his mother, abd ali the arms
stretched out
to hold him back, to save him from this city where,
they said, his soul would
find perdition.
And certainly perdition sucked at the feet of the people who
walked there; and cried in the lights, in the gjgantic towers; the
marks
of Satan coulcfbe found in the faces of the people who waited
at the doors of movie bouses; his words were printed on the great
mo vie posters that invited people to sin.
Broadway: the way that
led
to death was broad, and many could be found thereon; but
narrow was the
way that led to life eternal, and few there were who
found it.
But he did not long for the narrow way, where aU his
people walked; where the bouses did not rise, piercing,
as it
seemed, the
unchangjng clouds, but huddled, Oat, ignoble, close
to the filthy ground, where the streets and the hallways and the
rooms were dark,
and where the unconquerable odour was of
dust, and sweat, and urine, and home-made gin.
But bere, wbere the building contested God's power and where
the men and women did not fear God, here he
lllight eat and
drink to his heart's content
and clothe his body with wondrous
fabrics, rich
to the eye and pleasing to the touch.
He stood for a moment on the melting snow, distracted, and then
began to run down the hiU, feeling himself fly as the descent
became more rapid, and thinking:
"1 can climb back up.
H it's
wrong,
1 can always climb back up." At the bottom of the hill,
where the ground abruptly levelled
off on to a gravel path, he
nearly knocked down an old white man with a white
beard, who
was walking very slowly and leaning on his cane.
They both
stopped, astonished, and looked
at one another.
John struggled.
to catch his breath and apologjze, but the old man smiled.
John
sllliled back.
lt was as though he and the old man bad between
them a great secret;
and the old man moved on.
James BALDWIN,
Go Tell it on the Mountain (1954).
1.
Commentaire dirigé
1) How are we made to realize that John is a young black boy?
What do we guess about his character, his upbringing?.
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