The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain
1849
Dickens' final and darkest Christmas novella asks a question no one wants to answer: would you trade your painful memories for peace? Mr. Redlaw is a chemist plagued by the ghosts of past wrongs, a man so consumed by sorrow that he's forgotten what warmth feels like. When a spectral double appears with an unsettling offer the gift of forgetting, of wiping clean every sorrow and spreading that blessed ignorance to others Redlaw accepts. But as he moves through a world of living people, he discovers that the cold comfort of forgetting destroys the very thing that makes us human: the capacity to feel, to mourn, to grow. The sick student he should protect, the woman who shows him kindness all become casualties of his reckless gift. This is Dickens at his most haunting, stripped of A Christmas Carol's cheer but wrestling with something far more profound. What are we without our pain? And can there be redemption without remembrance?
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“Foul weather didn't know where to have him.””
— Charles Dickens
“Say that his power lies in words and looks; in things so slight and insignificant that it is impossible to add and count 'em up: What then? The happiness he gives is quite as great as if it cost a fortune.””
— Charles Dickens
“It seems as if we can't go right, or do right, or be righted””
— Charles Dickens
“Понякога така се озадачавам, че дори не мога да реша дали изобщо у нас има нещо добро, или сме родени лоши.””
— Charles Dickens
“They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. A stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacingly. 'Spirit! are they yours?' Scrooge could say no more. 'They are man's,' said the Spirit looking down upon them, 'And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both.””
— Charles Dickens
“E com'è duro, papà, invecchiare, morire, e pensare che ci si poteva sostenere e aiutare a vicenda. Com'è duro amarsi per tutta la vita e soffrire nel restare separati e vedersi logorare dal lavoro, dalle fatiche e dagli anni. Com'è doloroso avere un cuore pieno d'amore e vederlo prosciugare lentamente, goccia a goccia, senza il ricordo di uno di quei momenti che rendono felice la vita di una donna, senza che un ricorso che mi conforti e mi renda migliore!””
— Charles Dickens
“Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it.””
— Charles Dickens
