The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner

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"The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" est poema in quinque versibus consistens a Randall Jarrell compositum et anno 1945 prolatum. Textus mortem sclopetistae aërii in turricula globosa Sperry in aeroplano pyrobolario Copiae Aeriae Civitatum Foederatarum per secundum bellum mundanum tractat:

Verba Anglica Verba Latine reddita

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

Ex somno materno in civitatem cecidi,
cuius in ventre latui donec pellis madida congelaret.
Sex milia a tellure, ex eius somnio vitali liberatus,
expergefactus atro flak et insomniorum insectatoribus.
Me mortuum ex turricula tubo abluerunt.

Jarrell, qui ipse in Copiis Aereis Exercitus meruerat, hanc explanationem obtulit:

Turricula globosa fuit sphaera Plexiglas in ventre B-17 vel B-24 posita, duobus sclopetis polybolicis calibra .50 instructa, cum homine singulo, homine exiguo et parvo. Cum hic sclopetista cum suis sclopetis polybolicis insectatores suum aeroplanum infra petentes indagaret, cum turricula volvit, inversus in sua sphaera parva pendens. Insectatores eum petentes missilia explosiva per cannones mittebant. Tubus fuit tubus vaporis.[1]

Leven M. Dawson, iudex criticus, ait: "Propositum 'The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner' Randall Jarrell est quod violentia rite instituta, vel bellum, paradoxum morum gignit, condicionem in qua actiones naturae humanae repugnantes fiunt congruentes."[2][3] Plurimi commentatores concinunt, poema appellantes damnationem indignarum civitatis potestatum, rem tamquam sub oculos per violentiam belli subiectam.[4]

Poema, partim ob brevitatem, late in anthologiis litterarum prolatum est. Jarrell autem timere coepit suam famam eo solo inniti.[5]

Poema commemoratur in The World According to Garp, mythistoria Ioannis Irving (1978), in qua pater protagonistae moritur ob "lobotomiam aliquantulum neglegentem" missilium hostis cum sclopetista turriculae globosae per secundum bellum mundanum mereret. Poema ludum "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" Annae Moench informavit, qui Novi Eboraci in New York International Fringe Festival Augusto 2008 et deinde in theatro The Space in urbe Long Island City actum est.

Notae[recensere | fontem recensere]

  1. Anglice: "A ball turret was a Plexiglas sphere set into the belly of a B-17 or B-24, and inhabited by two .50 caliber machine guns and one man, a short small man. When this gunner tracked with his machine guns a fighter attacking his bomber from below, he revolved with the turret; hunched upsidedown in his little sphere. The fighters which attacked him were armed with cannon firing explosive shells. The hose was a steam hose."
  2. Anglice: "The theme of Randall Jarrell's 'The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner' is that institutionalized violence, or war, creates moral paradox, a condition in which acts repugnant to human nature become appropriate."
  3. Leven M. Dawson, Commentarius, The Explicator 31(4)(1972):29.
  4. Patrick J. Horner, Commentarius, The Explicator 36(4)(1978):9–10.
  5. Charlotte H. Beck, Worlds and Lives: The Poetry of Randall Jarrell (Associated Faculty Press, 1983).

Nexus externi[recensere | fontem recensere]

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