El alumno de Violante / José Antonio Ramos Sucre

Violante’s Student

An enigmatic cypress dominates the horizon of my childhood.
     I preferred the vespertine ecstasy, I would retire from the village and willingly lose myself in the reserve of the hills. An invisible power would move me toward the presence of some sepulchers, to discover serenity and hope in the countenance of marble images.
     A clement shade, different from the figures of fear, would shroud me with its kindness and situate me on the path home. Its face was announcing a celestial pain and the cypress of its refuge was emanating a cithara’s lament.
     I was submerging myself in a dream free of visions and reaching an exact oblivion.
     An attentive virgin guided my first years with the example of her faculties. Her fugitive canto would awake jubilation in the sylphs of the air. Her easy fingers would injure a mandolin from France.
     Her candid voice was alienating my senses when it covered the episodes from a collection of ballads. She was conjuring the clement shadow from the limbo of my dreams and surrounding it with the garb of a legendary ballad.




El cielo de esmalte (1929)




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