6.10.2013

Siglo de oro / José Antonio Ramos Sucre

Golden Age

     The gentleman emerges from the church with long strides. He greets the ladies with gentle measure, abbreviating ceremonies and commitments. He approves of their elegant dress and declares them in accordance with languishing beauty.

     From the river, watcher of the morning and mirror of its lights, blows a chill and rigorous wind. It shakes the willows, and penetrates the solitary streets, throwing up whirlwinds of dust.

     The gentleman retires to his deserted house. He puts the hat down and walks through all of it slowly, absorbed in the meditation. He notes and considers the beginnings of old age.

     His own were extinguished in contemplation or were lost in adventure. He himself has recently arrived from executing bravery in Levantine waters. He decants his boastful youth in the Italian cities and courts.

     Along with his devotion he has a happy wisdom, a walker’s sagacity, gathered from so many occasions and predicaments.

     The gentleman sits at a table. He listens, through contemporary letters, to the jocund voice of the Sicilian muses. He puts into writing a festive history, where people of quality, followed by their servants, adopt, for entertainment and in voluntary retirement, the customs of the peasants.

     The gentleman feigns discourses and controversy, accents and memories of the classroom, in reference to amorous anxiety.

     He administers fortune and troubles, aid from coincidence, and leads two equal fables to their denouement, in simultaneous weddings of masters and servants.




La torre de Timón (1925)




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

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