Orlando (Spanish Edition)

by Virginia Woolf

Overview

La novela más popular y escandalosa de Virginia Woolf.

«Virginia Woolf es dios, nadie ha escrito mejor.» - Milena Busquets

80 ANIVERSARIO DE VIRGINIA WOOLF

Desde que se publicó en 1928, Orlando ha sido una de las novelas más populares de Virginia Woolf por su originalidad y espíritu transgresor. Cuenta las peripecias de un joven aristócrata inglés, apuesto, rico, seductor y amante de la literatura -figura inspirada en la vida y la personalidad de la escritora Vita Sackville-West, gran amiga de la autora- que cabalga la Historia con mayúsculas desde el siglo XVI hasta el siglo XX y que, durante el reinado de Carlos II, se convierte en mujer. Esta peculiar mudanza de épocas y sexo supone un viaje por el tiempo, los espacios y las emociones, además de una meditación estimulante sobre la creación artística.

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

Virginia Woolf's most unusual and fantastic creation, a funny, exuberant tale that examines the very nature of sexuality.

As his tale begins, Orlando is a passionate young nobleman whose days are spent in rowdy revelry, filled with the colorful delights of Queen Elizabeth's court. By the close, he will have transformed into a modern, thirty-six-year-old woman and three centuries will have passed. Orlando will not only witness the making of history from its edge but will find that his unique position as a woman who knows what it is to be a man will give him insight into matters of the heart.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9788490623831
Publisher:	PRH Grupo Editorial
Publication date:	10/14/2025
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.40(h) x (d)
Language:	Spanish

About the Author

Virginia Woolf nació en Londres el 25 de enero de 1882 y murió el 28 de marzo de 1941, ahogada en el río Ouse. Al morir su padre, el conocido hombre de letras sir Leslie Stephen, Virginia y su hermana Vanessa abandonaron el elegante barrio de Kensington y se trasladaron al bohemio Bloomsbury, que dio nombre al brillante grupo literario formado alrededor de las hermanas Stephen. En él participaron, entre otros, T. S. Eliot, Bertrand Russell, Vita Sackville-West y el escritor Leonard Woolf, con quien se casó Virginia y junto al que dirigió la prestigiosa editorial Hogarth Press. Desde sus primeras obras, Virginia Woolf resaltó su intención de llevar las novelas a algo más que a una mera narración. En La señora Dalloway (1925) y Al faro (1927), la autora expresaba los sentimientos interiores de los personajes con técnicas propias, consiguiendo grandes efectos psicológicos por medio de imágenes, metáforas y símbolos. Su técnica se consolidó con Orlando (1931) y Las olas (1931), que le dieron un puesto indiscutible dentro de la mejor literatura universal. Además, Woolf escribió ensayos tan famosos como Un cuarto propio (1929), que aún hoy es inspiración para las nuevas generaciones de mujeres, artículos de crítica literaria como los recopilados en El lector común (1925, 1932) y en Genio y tinta (2021), o la biografía del perro de la poeta inglesa Elizabeth Barrett, Flush (1933). Todas estas obras están publicadas en Lumen.

Date of Birth:

January 25, 1882

Date of Death:

March 28, 1941

Place of Birth:

London

Place of Death:

Sussex, England

Education:

Home schooling

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER ONE
HE—FOR THERE could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it—was in the act of slicing at the head of a Moor which swung from the rafters. It was the colour of an old football, and more or less the shape of one, save for the sunken cheeks and a strand or two of coarse, dry hair, like the hair on a cocoanut. Orlando’s father, or perhaps his grandfather, had struck it from the shoulders of a vast Pagan who had started up under the moon in the barbarian fields of Africa; and now it swung, gently, perpetually, in the breeze which never ceased blowing through the attic rooms of the gigantic house of the lord who had slain him.

 Orlando’s fathers had ridden in fields of asphodel, and stony fields, and fields watered by strange rivers, and they had struck many heads of many colours off many shoulders, and brought them back to hang from the rafters. So too would Orlando, he vowed. But since he was sixteen only, and too young to ride with them in Africa or France, he would steal away from his mother and the peacocks in the garden and go to his attic room and there lunge and plunge and slice the air with his blade. Sometimes he cut the cord so that the skull bumped on the floor and he had to string it up again, fastening it with some chivalry almost out of reach so that his enemy grinned at him through shrunk, black lips triumphantly. The skull swung to and fro, for the house, at the top of which he lived, was so vast that there seemed trapped in it the wind itself, blowing this way, blowing that way, winter or summer. The green arras with the hunters on it moved perpetually. His fathers had been noblesince they had been at all. They came out of the northern mists wearing coronets on their heads. Were not the bars of darkness in the room, and the yellow pools which chequered the floor, made by the sun falling through the stained glass of a vast coat of arms in the window? Orlando stood now in the midst of the yellow body of an heraldic leopard. When he put his hand on the window-sill to push the window open, it was instantly coloured red, blue, and yellow like a butterfly’s wing. Thus, those who like symbols, and have a turn for the deciphering of them, might observe that though the shapely legs, the handsome body, and the well-set shoulders were all of them decorated with various tints of heraldic light, Orlando’s face, as he threw the window open, was lit solely by the sun itself. A more candid, sullen face it would be impossible to find. Happy the mother who bears, happier still the biographer who records the life of such a one! Never need she vex herself, nor he invoke the help of novelist or poet. From deed to deed, from glory to glory, from office to office he must go, his scribe following after, till they reach what ever seat it may be that is the height of their desire. Orlando, to look at, was cut out precisely for some such career. The red of the cheeks was covered with peach down; the down on the lips was only a little thicker than the down on the cheeks. The lips themselves were short and slightly drawn back over teeth of an exquisite and almond whiteness. Nothing disturbed the arrowy nose in its short, tense flight; the hair was dark, the ears small, and fitted closely to the head. But, alas, that these catalogues of youthful beauty cannot end without mentioning forehead and eyes. Alas, that people are seldom born devoid of all three; for directly we glance at Orlando standing by the window, we must admit that he had eyes like drenched violets, so large that the water seemed to have brimmed in them and widened them; and a brow like the swelling of a marble dome pressed between the two blank medallions which were his temples. Directly we glance at eyes and forehead, thus do we rhapsodise. Directly we glance at eyes and forehead, we have to admit a thousand disagreeables which it is the aim of every good biographer to ignore. Sights disturbed him, like that of his mother, a very beautiful lady in green walking out to feed the peacocks with Twitchett, her maid, behind her; sights exalted him—the birds and the trees; and made him in love with death—the evening sky, the homing rooks; and so, mounting up the spiral stairway into his brain—which was a roomy one—all these sights, and the garden sounds too, the hammer beating, the wood chopping, began that riot and confusion of the passions and emotions which every good biographer detests. But to continue—Orlando slowly drew in his head, sat down at the table, and, with the half-conscious air of one doing what they do every day of their lives at this hour, took out a writing book labelled “Æthelbert: A Tragedy in Five Acts,” and dipped an old stained goose quill in the ink.
 
 Soon he had covered ten pages and more with poetry. He was fluent, evidently, but he was abstract. Vice, Crime, Misery were the personages of his drama; there were Kings and Queens of impossible territories; horrid plots confounded them; noble sentiments suffused them; there was never a word said as he himself would have said it, but all was turned with a fluency and sweetness which, considering his age—he was not yet seventeen—and that the sixteenth century had still some years of its course to run, were remarkable enough. At last, however, he came to a halt. He was describing, as all young poets are for ever describing, nature, and in order to match the shade of green precisely he looked (and here he showed more audacity than most) at the thing itself, which happened to be a laurel bush growing beneath the window. After that, of course, he could write no more. Green in nature is one thing, green in literature another. Nature and letters seem to have a natural antipathy; bring them together and they tear each other to pieces. The shade of green Orlando now saw spoilt his rhyme and split his metre. Moreover, nature has tricks of her own. Once look out of a window at bees among flowers, at a yawning dog, at the sun setting, once think “how many more suns shall I see set,” etc., etc. (the thought is too well known to be worth writing out) and one drops the pen, takes one’s cloak, strides out of the room, and catches one’s foot on a painted chest as one does so. For Orlando was a trifle clumsy. 
 
Copyright 1928 by Virginia Woolf
Copyright renewed 1956 by Leonard Woolf
Annotated Edition copyright © 2006 by Harcourt, Inc.
Preface copyright © 2005 by Mark Hussey
Introduction copyright © 2006 by Maria DiBattista

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be submitted online at harcourt.com/contact or mailed to the following address: Permissions Department, Harcourt, Inc., 6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, Florida 32887-6777.

Table of Contents

Chapter 113
Chapter 265
Chapter 3119
Chapter 4153
Chapter 5227
Chapter 6263
	Index	331

Editorial Reviews

Reseñas:
«Un clásico que recomiendo siempre, una obra adictiva, inspiradora, elegante e irónica, con una devoción especial por la naturaleza porque Orlando ama los árboles, el campo y a los perros. Además, ayuda a relativizarlo todo ya que ofrece una perspectiva temporal (cinco siglos) que pone cada cosa en su sitio. [...] Un enorme bálsamo.»
Pilar Adón, El Cultural de El Mundo ("¿Qué lee un escritor en cuarentena"?)

«Igual que James Joyce y Marcel Proust dominó el manejo del flujo de conciencia de los personajes, pero ella añade un valor extra, la sensibilidad femenina.»
Maria Vargas Llosa

«La verdadera obra de arte va siempre más allá de los límites establecidos: se desparrama, se emborracha, se queda despierta contigo hasta la madrugada... te ofrece una oportunidad de ser otro.»
Jeanette Winterson, en A propósito de Orlando

«He aquí una novela especial y espectral.»
Antón Castro, Heraldo de Aragón

«Woolf fue una de las grandes innovadoras de la década de 1920.»
The Guardian

«Virginia Woolf hace con el lenguaje lo que Jimi Hendrix con la guitarra.»
Michael Cunningham

«En la obra de Virginia Woolf se dieron unas cualidades heredadas y una voluntad inédita e irrepetible en la historia de la cultura inglesa.»
T. S. Eliot

«Virginia Woolf sostuvo la luz de la lengua inglesa contra la oscuridad.»
E. M. Forster

«Acabé queriendo leer y releer todo lo que Virginia Woolf había leído y sobre lo que había escrito.»
Ali Smith

«[Una escritora] extraordinaria, más novelesca que sus novelas.»
Victoria Ocampo

«Qué escritora más inmensa, más severa y rotunda en su enfado de mujer harta de limitaciones.»
Antonio Muñoz Molina

From the Publisher

Orlando is the book to put under your pillow and rest upon

Tilda Swinton

Orlando is the book to put under your pillow and rest upon

TILDA SWINTON

Sexy, provocative and tantalising

JEANETTE WINTERSON

Sexy, provocative and tantalising

Jeanette Winterson

Wonderfully bold and inventive

Observer

Juliet Stevenson brings her usual alacrity to this challenging audiobook. Woolf's unconventional novel is in expert hands with Stevenson, whose rich voice and lilting accent keep the listener on track through the many shifts and changes in the plot. Called a "biography" by Woolf herself, the story follows protagonist Orlando through centuries of change, including Orlando's transformation from a man to a woman. Stevenson is an elegant narrator who navigates the details gracefully. Her pace is consistent, and her emotional investment helps the plot along. The novel itself relies heavily on description, and the sheer mass of detail can become fatiguing to the ear. Devoted listeners might find the audio format perfect, but even Stevenson's fine performance may not be able to capture the casual listener. L.B.F. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine

APRIL 2024 - AudioFile