El retórico / José Antonio Ramos Sucre

The Rhetorician

A clay lamp, used by the Romans, outlines a shaded figure on the wall. The disciple of the Alexandrians combats the victory of Christianity, making the nonsense and ignorance of its founders look uncouth and eclipsing the austerity of the parishioners by means of an elegant and demure sobriety. He writes dissertations to contrast the stupid fable of the sons of the desert with the juvenile myth of the ancient Greeks. He observes an inferior humanity about him, stubbornly following a coarse and absurd doctrine and he becomes aware of the extinction of the privileged class of the senator and officiant. He looks at the universal conspiracy, directed towards the extermination of jubilation and the ruin of beauty, the return and definitive establishment of the ancient ghosts of chaos and nothingness and he throws himself into the arms of desperation. He has just heard about the sacrifice of Hypatia in a disorder of the masses, animated against the fame and existence of the select woman by the envy of a few uncouth monks, and he decides to take shelter and perish from hunger in the sanctuary of the Muses.




Las formas del fuego (1929)




{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }