Antiphone
I would visit the acoustic jungle, asylum of innocence, and I would have fun with the fugitive glimpse, with the delirium of the light.
A candid maiden, unbound from memories of a withered life, subdued the turbulent birds by her own free will. The snail served as a guide for the mole.
I was barely approaching adolescence and would willingly depart from the limits of the real world. The clement maiden presented herself in my path to refer me to the ventures of a lordly life, the mirth and detours of princesses in an ideal kingdom. I have read them in a drama by Shakespeare.
The memory of my errors in the diaphanous jungle captivated my fervent youth. Larvae and chimeras of my sad numen, an aerial round would seduce my eyes under the amber sky and a crown of thorns, Cordelia’s, was mortifying the faithful maiden’s forehead.
El cielo de esmalte (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
1.24.2010
La aristocracia de los humanistas / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
The Aristocracy of the Humanists
Lack of objectivity, which multiplies personal criteria, as though the treasure of austere human disciplines were in need of opinions. Loose link, problematic consequence between events, lack of regularity that fools precaution. Herein the argument of those who reduce history to a simple literary entertainment, where every respected author leaves his stamp, enriching the world’s diversity.
History can deserve the majestic name of science, since the latter, divested of the absolute and settled into a more humble task, renounces explanation and foresight and is reduced to description.
History as an aesthetic pastime is expected of humanists. The men of the Renaissance, when writing it, repeated the grandiose unity of the epic poem, and they worked on one or another literary enterprise under the dictation of the same muse. At other times they followed the course of events, in order to expose them through examples, for the purpose of practical morality for princes to use. In council they gave speeches made of subtleties and figures to characters, as in school contests. They attributed to the caudillos of the battle thoughtful or spirited slogans that borrowed from Titus Livius or Homer. They closed commentary on events stamping with a hard iron burin the grave sentence escaped from the glowering concision of Tacitus.
There have not been such fine institutions for history since then, as though for a public of artists. The characters are all heroes, and they speak an extraordinary language on a tragic stage. From here they warn knights and monarchs. The Middle Ages contribute with the most central portion at the start of the Renaissance. It provides the knightly tone, the almost fierce disdain for the villain, feelings more beneficial for the cult of art than all the care of Graeco-Latin erudition. Rough and inhumane the lettered distance themselves from the masses. They write history as though it were a colossus, or with a moral that doesn’t work for the crowd of mortals. Likewise, the literature from that era with those modes of expression, rare and full of artifice, that seduced Góngora among many, is a plague. They were, in sum, courtesan and heroic styles and temperaments, in which Feudalism reiterated itself.
La torre de Timón (1925)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
Lack of objectivity, which multiplies personal criteria, as though the treasure of austere human disciplines were in need of opinions. Loose link, problematic consequence between events, lack of regularity that fools precaution. Herein the argument of those who reduce history to a simple literary entertainment, where every respected author leaves his stamp, enriching the world’s diversity.
History can deserve the majestic name of science, since the latter, divested of the absolute and settled into a more humble task, renounces explanation and foresight and is reduced to description.
History as an aesthetic pastime is expected of humanists. The men of the Renaissance, when writing it, repeated the grandiose unity of the epic poem, and they worked on one or another literary enterprise under the dictation of the same muse. At other times they followed the course of events, in order to expose them through examples, for the purpose of practical morality for princes to use. In council they gave speeches made of subtleties and figures to characters, as in school contests. They attributed to the caudillos of the battle thoughtful or spirited slogans that borrowed from Titus Livius or Homer. They closed commentary on events stamping with a hard iron burin the grave sentence escaped from the glowering concision of Tacitus.
There have not been such fine institutions for history since then, as though for a public of artists. The characters are all heroes, and they speak an extraordinary language on a tragic stage. From here they warn knights and monarchs. The Middle Ages contribute with the most central portion at the start of the Renaissance. It provides the knightly tone, the almost fierce disdain for the villain, feelings more beneficial for the cult of art than all the care of Graeco-Latin erudition. Rough and inhumane the lettered distance themselves from the masses. They write history as though it were a colossus, or with a moral that doesn’t work for the crowd of mortals. Likewise, the literature from that era with those modes of expression, rare and full of artifice, that seduced Góngora among many, is a plague. They were, in sum, courtesan and heroic styles and temperaments, in which Feudalism reiterated itself.
La torre de Timón (1925)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
1.18.2010
La merced de la bruma / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
The Mercy of the Mist
I live at the feet of the courteous lady, making out her benign numinous smile.
The northern wind invades the chilly hall and captivates the chimeras and the ghosts of weariness in its whirlwind. She repeats the monologue of the hapless pine and dampens oh invisible tears! the face of the mirrors and consoles of a sad gold.
I glimpse through the window the outrage of a bear and the startling of some slow birds, of precocious sleep. The afternoon adorns the forest of taciturn lights.
The discourse of the insinuating woman is not able to mitigate the grief of exile. I suffer the sorcery of its sudden will and declare in indirect phrases the thought of a return to the jovial midday. My words fly away horrified, sick with the anguish of the sky.
The courteous lady guesses a benevolent message in the distance. She receives in the hands of a slight and suspicious rider the secret of immortal beauty, the iris of the poles, an ignored flower.
El cielo de esmalte (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
I live at the feet of the courteous lady, making out her benign numinous smile.
The northern wind invades the chilly hall and captivates the chimeras and the ghosts of weariness in its whirlwind. She repeats the monologue of the hapless pine and dampens oh invisible tears! the face of the mirrors and consoles of a sad gold.
I glimpse through the window the outrage of a bear and the startling of some slow birds, of precocious sleep. The afternoon adorns the forest of taciturn lights.
The discourse of the insinuating woman is not able to mitigate the grief of exile. I suffer the sorcery of its sudden will and declare in indirect phrases the thought of a return to the jovial midday. My words fly away horrified, sick with the anguish of the sky.
The courteous lady guesses a benevolent message in the distance. She receives in the hands of a slight and suspicious rider the secret of immortal beauty, the iris of the poles, an ignored flower.
El cielo de esmalte (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
1.12.2010
Del país lívido / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
From the Livid Country
I didn’t dare interrupt the peace of the uniform olive trees with my voice. I was venerating their foliage of a citrine color. They had grown, according to a law, in the circuit of a group of impassive willows.
The remains of a Roman aqueduct augmented the majesty of the somber valley. A scale adorned the entrance of a temple profaned by unfaithful generations and meant the irremissible threats of justice in a higher world.
I would purposely lose myself in the avenues, invoking the deceased of my predilection. A red sun, omen of the temporal, was disappearing in the fog of the humid afternoon.
The affection and presence of an assiduous shadow had pulled me from the earth. I was retiring to rest when the moon, star of the dead, occupied the middle of the sky.
An identical ghost, a relic of the myth of Psyche, was visiting me in the middle of a dream. I would awaken with the memory of having exhausted myself in an implausible chase and I discovered the soot of a nocturnal butterfly on my fingers.
El cielo de esmalte (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
I didn’t dare interrupt the peace of the uniform olive trees with my voice. I was venerating their foliage of a citrine color. They had grown, according to a law, in the circuit of a group of impassive willows.
The remains of a Roman aqueduct augmented the majesty of the somber valley. A scale adorned the entrance of a temple profaned by unfaithful generations and meant the irremissible threats of justice in a higher world.
I would purposely lose myself in the avenues, invoking the deceased of my predilection. A red sun, omen of the temporal, was disappearing in the fog of the humid afternoon.
The affection and presence of an assiduous shadow had pulled me from the earth. I was retiring to rest when the moon, star of the dead, occupied the middle of the sky.
An identical ghost, a relic of the myth of Psyche, was visiting me in the middle of a dream. I would awaken with the memory of having exhausted myself in an implausible chase and I discovered the soot of a nocturnal butterfly on my fingers.
El cielo de esmalte (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
1.10.2010
Evangelio / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
Gospel
The mystical commotion had startled me. I was in the presence of an aerial vision. The symbols of faith gained a spiritual form and emitted voice.
I fell on my knees under the radiant sky.
A message of health, music from chaste silence, the earth surprised everyone, the inveterate aridity consoled.
The escape of the devoted dream caused a unanimous lament in the far ends of the dark valley. The humble ones told themselves they had been hallucinated by a meteor of vain light and they complained about their shame and abandonment.
El cielo de esmalte (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
The mystical commotion had startled me. I was in the presence of an aerial vision. The symbols of faith gained a spiritual form and emitted voice.
I fell on my knees under the radiant sky.
A message of health, music from chaste silence, the earth surprised everyone, the inveterate aridity consoled.
The escape of the devoted dream caused a unanimous lament in the far ends of the dark valley. The humble ones told themselves they had been hallucinated by a meteor of vain light and they complained about their shame and abandonment.
El cielo de esmalte (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
1.08.2010
Trance / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
Trance
I have dreamed of the golden beauty. I watch her grace and feel her voice.
With elegant reasons she begins a promising conversation.
I am kneeling. I want to oppress in my hands her thin and lazy right side.
She expounds in a select language an event from illustrious centuries. She refers to the troubles of a disillusioned troubadour.
I spy traces of her illuminated face.
She adds comments of sharp and suspicious criticism, and I agree with an inscrutable muteness.
La torre de Timón (1925)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
I have dreamed of the golden beauty. I watch her grace and feel her voice.
With elegant reasons she begins a promising conversation.
I am kneeling. I want to oppress in my hands her thin and lazy right side.
She expounds in a select language an event from illustrious centuries. She refers to the troubles of a disillusioned troubadour.
I spy traces of her illuminated face.
She adds comments of sharp and suspicious criticism, and I agree with an inscrutable muteness.
La torre de Timón (1925)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
1.03.2010
Juan Sánchez Peláez / Vicente Gerbasi
Juan Sánchez Peláez
The eyes of the owl
closed on the plain
of death
in the solitude
of horses
that die
looking at a star’s path.
The eyes of the owl
closed watching the window
with one eye
on a squirrel
and another on the lightning.
The eyes of the owl
saw a horse
come into my house
forced to abandon
the plains,
the horse of an alley
in Paris
with its cart
full of cabbage.
The owl hid
in a chamber
of sadness,
in the poverty of the world
he saw his final shirt.
He put it on his father
who still loves him.
The owl
Juan Sánchez Peláez
deteriorated by skeletons.
Iniciación en la intemperie (1990)
{ Vicente Gerbasi, Antología poética, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 2004 }
The eyes of the owl
closed on the plain
of death
in the solitude
of horses
that die
looking at a star’s path.
The eyes of the owl
closed watching the window
with one eye
on a squirrel
and another on the lightning.
The eyes of the owl
saw a horse
come into my house
forced to abandon
the plains,
the horse of an alley
in Paris
with its cart
full of cabbage.
The owl hid
in a chamber
of sadness,
in the poverty of the world
he saw his final shirt.
He put it on his father
who still loves him.
The owl
Juan Sánchez Peláez
deteriorated by skeletons.
Iniciación en la intemperie (1990)
{ Vicente Gerbasi, Antología poética, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 2004 }
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