Lección bíblica / José Antonio Ramos Sucre

Biblical Lesson

     One could feign the appearance of Moses by just recalling the days of history when his authority prevails and subjugates his eloquence. He must have been a man of dignified bearing and solid energy amid his ungrateful people. The majesty of his mission did not wane with the poverty of his simple clothing, what is ordinarily worn by the pilgrim children of the desert, thick clothes tightly wrapped with a belt at the waist. Nor did the saintliness of his enterprise suffer beneath the darkness of his hazardous life. Actually the ups and downs of his career led to his testing of the divine favor that kept him safe and legitimated his language of imperative and audacious intonation.
     At all hours he deduces strength from the sovereign voice that dominates the hallucinatory apparatus of the burning blackberry bushes and mountains. This is where he hears the healthy legal precept that is suitable to any time and place, and surprised he gathers the primitive history of the universe. From the same origin comes the inspiration that possesses and lifts him with an unexpected flight. This is how his language was able to elevate itself to the dignity of extraordinary interlocutors and topics. Nor is it conceivable that there might be any other way for him to serenade his numerous and turbulent people like the burnt sand of his path. Not even when he was reduced to his own ingenuity was he able to invent the disconcerting series of wonders, overwhelming the kingdom of the arrogant one with the replete cornucopia of evils.
     He is the legislator with a radiant face on whose forehead Michelangelo erects the august horns of strength. He is able to arrange around the single divinity a system of premonitory truths, he consoles the clamor of diffuse aspirations, and he doesn’t forget the duty of alert activity. The pessimistic suggestion that petrifies the oldest peoples of that same continent does not arise from his altar, and what has been for the unlearned slave the most atrocious ferment of his absurd humor. He reveals the clumsiness of reprobate civilizations and the dishonor of withered slaves, and he expands the igneous civil spirit that forges free societies. From eternal floods he supplies the morals of men, and he lulls his caravans to sleep with the harps of an angelical hallelujah.




La torre de Timón (1925)




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