Newsgroup: it.cultura.linguistica.inglese
Titolo: per edificarlci spiritualmente

Forse questo racconto riesce a intressare alcuna gente.
Ciao,
Ron
USA
On Nov. 18, 1995, Itzhak Perlman, the violinist, came on stage to give a concert
at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center in New York City. If you  have ever been
to a Perlman concert, you know that getting on stage is no  small achievement
for him. He was stricken with polio as a child, and so he  has braces on both
legs and walks with the aid of two crutches.
To see him walk across the stage one step at a time painfully and slowly is a
sight. He walks painfully yet majestically until he reaches his chair. Then he
sits down slowly puts his crutches on the floor undoes the clasps on his legs
tucks one foot back and extends the other foot forward. Then he bends down and
picks up the violin puts it under his chin nods to the conductor and proceeds to
play.
By now the audience is used to this ritual. They sit quietly while he makes his
way across the stage to his chair. They remain reverently silent while he undoes
the clasps on his legs. They wait until he is ready to play. But this time
something went wrong. Just as he finished the first few bars one of the strings
on his violin broke. You could hear it snap -- it went off like gunfire across
the room. There was no mistaking what that sound meant. There was no mistaking
what he had to do.
People who were there that night thought to themselves: "We figured that he
would have to get up put on the clasps again pick up the crutches and limp his
way off stage -- to either find another violin or else find
another string for this one."
But he didn't. Instead he waited a moment closed his eyes and then signaled the
conductor to begin again. The orchestra began and he played from where he had
left off. And he played with such passion and such power and such purity as they
had never heard before. Of course anyone knows that it is impossible to play a
symphonic work with just three strings. I know that and you know that but that
night Itzhak Perlman refused to know that. You could see him modulating changing
recomposing the piece in his head. At one point it sounded like he was de-tuning
the strings to get new sounds from them that they had never made before.
When he finished there was an awesome silence in the room. And then people rose
and cheered. There was an extraordinary outburst of applause from every corner
of the auditorium. We were all on our feet screaming and cheering doing
everything we could to show how much we appreciated what he had done.
He smiled wiped the sweat from this brow raised his bow to quiet us and then he
said not boastfully but in a quiet pensive reverent tone "You know sometimes it
is the artist's task to find out how much music you can still make with what you
have left."
What a powerful line that is. It has stayed in my mind ever since I heard it.
And who knows? Perhaps that is the way of life -- not just for artists but for
all of us. Here is a man who has prepared all his life to make music on a violin
of four strings who all of a sudden in the middle of a concert finds himself
with only three strings. So he makes music with three strings and the music he
made that night with just three strings was more beautiful more sacred more
memorable than any that he had ever made before when he had four strings.
So perhaps our task in this shaky fast-changing bewildering world in which we
live is to make music at first with all that we have and then when that is no
longer possible to make music with what we have left.
 -- Jack Riemer
 Houston Chronicle

 Forse questo racconto riesce a intressare alcuna gente.
Ci ha interessati, divertiti, edificati, migliorati, convertiti. Grazie
davvero, don Ron. La nostra vita non sarà mai più quella di prima.