Renacentista / José Antonio Ramos Sucre

Renaissance Woman

     The haughty Venetian with a complexion white as snow, listens to the barcaroles from the terrace of her Byzantine mansion. She watches the fantastic afternoon, of scattered clouds, resembling treasures emptied onto the floor of a palace broken by force. A breath from the sea unleashes her hair made of light over the blue garb and kisses her mortified face.
     She defends at times her dazzled eyes with her right hand, adorning herself with the attribute of an early and prescient blindness, and the hand’s brief shadow augments the dignity of the mute visage.
     The woman notes the arrival of the cheerful galleys, ostentatious with dominant coats of arms, animated with the adornment of triangular and voluble banderols. They come from visiting Indian nations, of sinuous soul, of corrupted prosperity, subject to the will of dissipated kings.
     She recognizes the victors of the fluctuant sea, destroyed in mountains, sailors captivated by enchanting constellations, rescued and saved by some flight of birds of continental life; and she disregards the feat of the hardened youths, whose force was tested in the patent ocean.
     The refractory virgin condemns the mercies of fame, following the voice of terminating pride. She knows the ideas of her time, recreation of a proud ideal, enemy of traditional faith. She summarizes the misfortune of her caste, of senatorial bearing, extinguished under the malice of a victorious faction, and she conceals her life and her name in the Byzantine dwelling, secretly ruined by the sea, expected caretaker of her gravestone.




La torre de Timón (1925)




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