3.31.2012

El casuista / José Antonio Ramos Sucre

The Casuist

     The delirious king presides over the court and judges the controversies at the foot of a silver poplar, in the territory of funereal vistas.

     A loquacious bird, a present from a rustic man, imitates the human voice and imprints an obliqueness to the king’s fortuitous thought.

     The Jewish doctor, student of an Italian school and inspired by its leonine verses wants to regain his health. In that manner he fulfills the merits of Charlemagne, author of the culture, forebear of the royal houses. He appreciates the effects of the hellebore of the ancients, the discovery of a simple man, and wonders at its flowers native to the mantle of patriarchal winter or from his flowing beard.

     The king feels, after sunset, the murmuring flight of souls soliciting infinity and imagines himself in an allegorical jungle, where an impossible beauty is distinguished in the tenuous landscape.

     A fairy, according to the troubadours, comes furtively from Britain, the country of the seven forests, to occupy the invalid mind. A bishop recognizes in the spiritual form a likeness of the Virgin Mary and abstains from correcting the extravagance of the king in resplendent garments, a lover’s custom. Saint Eligius, fond of chivalrous piety, would wear the richest quilting of Asia, during his life in the castle of king Dagobert.




El cielo de esmalte (1929)




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

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