El hidalgo / José Antonio Ramos Sucre

The Nobleman

     I have gone to ride outside the city, at the start of a placid afternoon. The fields display the ambiguous and fragile colors of a mirage.

     I reconstitute the passage from a sad war, where my youth was exhausted. I left without an escort, far from a threatened fortress, to the open country, amidst the astonishment of my comrades in arms. The proud memory now compensates the feeling of the preterite years.

     I executed the feat a day after the memorable occasion. The most fraternal of the comrades had led me to the presence of his fiancé. I corresponded the fresh woman’s urbanity by remaining mute and with my eyes lowered. I retired by faking a sudden absence of attention and memory.

     I decide to end the vespertine stroll and return to the refuge of my house, to compose, according to my custom, the living and hallucinating representation of that interview, where the agony of my unequal soul begins. The glimmers of lightning mark the edge of the August night that has just begun. I think of the signs of fire, premonitions of misfortune, deciphered by a visionary in the hall of a cursed king.

     I return through the modest and unlit street, where I have chosen my dwelling. I lead the mount to the place of rest and lock myself in the hall defended by old and resounding doors.

     I suffer, submerged in shadow, the blindness of a marble statue and its immortal sadness.




Las formas del fuego (1929)




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