El escritor Robert Louis Stevenson también jugaba.
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) fue el autor de La isla del tesoro (1883), El extraño caso del doctor Jekyll y el señor Hyde (1886), o La flecha negra (1888), entre otras novelas, poemas y cuentos.
Y también escribió sobre un juego de miniaturas bélico al que le gustaba jugar.
Stevenson at play (Stevenson jugando) se publicó póstumamente en la revista Scribner's Magazine en diciembre de 1898.
Cuenta con una introducción de Samuel Lloyd Osbourne, hijastro del escritor, tras la cual expone diversa correspondencia con su padrastro donde explica las reglas de un juego de miniaturas que el escritor jugaba con Samuel Lloyd cuando éste contaba unos 12-15 años a principios de la década de los 1880s.
Recordemos que el tal vez más famoso juego Litle Wars del también escritor H. G. Wells se publicó en 1913.
El ensayo Stevenson at play ha tenido múltiples rediciones posteriores, aunque ninguna en castellano.
De hecho Stevenson también tiene en su poemario varias poesías dedicadas a juegos de miniaturas o soldaditos de juguete.
Por ejemplo:
Block city (Child’s Garden of Verses, 1885)
What are you able to build with your blocks?
Castles and palaces, temples and docks.
Rain may keep raining, and others go roam,
But I can be happy and building at home.Let the sofa be mountains, the carpet be sea,
There I’ll establish a city for me:
A kirk and a mill and a palace beside,
And a harbour as well where my vessels may ride.Great is the palace with pillar and wall,
A sort of a tower on the top of it all,
And steps coming down in an orderly way
To where my toy vessels lie safe in the bay.This one is sailing and that one is moored:
Hark to the song of the sailors aboard!
And see, on the steps of my palace, the kings
Coming and going with presents and things!Yet as I saw it, I see it again,
The kirk and the palace, the ships and the men,
And as long as I live and where’er I may be,
I’ll always remember my town by the sea.
The Dumb Soldier (Child’s Garden of Verses, 1885)
When the grass was closely mown,
Walking on the lawn alone,
In the turf a hole I found
And hid a soldier underground.Spring and daisies came apace;
Grasses hide my hiding place;
Grasses run like a green sea
O’er the lawn up to my knee.Under grass alone he lies,
Looking up with leaden eyes,
Scarlet coat and pointed gun,
To the stars and to the sun.When the grass is ripe like grain,
When the scythe is stoned again,
When the lawn is shaven clear,
Then my hole shall reappear.I shall find him, never fear,
I shall find my grenadier;
But for all that’s gone and come,
I shall find my soldier dumb.He has lived, a little thing,
In the grassy woods of spring;
Done, if he could tell me true,
Just as I should like to do.He has seen the starry hours
And the springing of the flowers;
And the fairy things that pass
In the forests of the grass.In the silence he has heard
Talking bee and ladybird,
And the butterfly has flown
O’er him as he lay alone.Not a word will he disclose,
Not a word of all he knows.
I must lay him on the shelf,
And make up the tale myself.
En el Robert Louis Stevenson Museum de St. Helena (California, USA) hay objetos personales del escritor, incluyendo algunos soldados en miniatura.
Los juegos seguirán con la humanidad por muchos años.
¡Nos jugamos!
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