The Afflicted One
The timorous and mendacious Jew is frightened by the insults of the Ukrainian horseman. He exhausts, in his apology, the resources of an innate diplomacy.
The Jew contemplates a monument of terror. A man from his nation can be distinguished near the livid horizon, amidst a commotion of furious birds. The torture pole bends with the weight of the corpse.
The crime of the executed man had been considerable. He intended to defend the honor of his family.
The Jew refuses to declare himself rich and to confess the hiding place of his fortune. He resigns himself to the whip, to the burning of his straw hut and the dispersion of his children. He turns his memory to the examples of the patience of Israel.
The horseman ties a strap beneath the beard of the wretch and binds him to his horse’s tail. He captures the most graceful of his daughters and takes off running, conquering precipices and sending an orgiastic song into the air.
The horse, accustomed to the country, crosses the plain full of grass and flowering rushes frightening the foxes and aquatic birds.
The horse heads toward a brush fire. A few shadows are agitated amid the distant splendor. The horsemen from the horde entertain themselves by tossing jewels from a palace into the fire and mocking an enervated civilization.
They stand and lift their stone cups in a sign of delight and congratulation for their comrade. They celebrate the graces of the maiden with shepherding terms, used with calves and fillies.
They untie the strangled man from the horse’s tail and kick him along far away from the camp, cursing his inveterate avarice. The most violent of them ends up cripple after having wielded a brusque blow.
According to what they’ve noticed since the beginning of the campaign, the corpse of a Jew blackens the flames and infects the smoke of bonfires.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
Showing posts with label Las formas del fuego. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Las formas del fuego. Show all posts
6.27.2013
Semíramis / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
Semiramis
The lady, of gentle disposition, was demanding from me at the start of that morning the accustomed tribute of a gallantry.
I was registering the pages of a breviary, soliciting the devotions indicated for that holiday and disdainfully censuring the inelegant diction of the pious authors, imitating the discontent of my councilor cardinal Bembo, scrupulous Venetian humanist.
I spoke a daring flattery to her, taking advantage of the reminiscences of a rhetorical and libertine century. An abbé, of sharp wit, had taught me to sculpt in a captious Latin the excesses of depravation. I had written, in my own hand, the eulogy of his inverecund epigrams.
The lady reclined on her bed, image of the classic berth. Her forehead revealed the accent of an anxious night and she was directing a fixed glance on the plain of her dominion.
More than once she had envied, in front of me, a cruel queen’s authority over a country with an abundance of thirsty and flavid lions. Those lions would have been the supporters of her shield.
The lady, of variable humor, needed to conceive and follow, at that moment, the figures of her fabulous ambition.
I would see her dictating orders to the most faithful of her ministers, an Ethiopian tyrant, raised in the deserts of Nubia, according to the exaggerations of a chivalric romance.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
The lady, of gentle disposition, was demanding from me at the start of that morning the accustomed tribute of a gallantry.
I was registering the pages of a breviary, soliciting the devotions indicated for that holiday and disdainfully censuring the inelegant diction of the pious authors, imitating the discontent of my councilor cardinal Bembo, scrupulous Venetian humanist.
I spoke a daring flattery to her, taking advantage of the reminiscences of a rhetorical and libertine century. An abbé, of sharp wit, had taught me to sculpt in a captious Latin the excesses of depravation. I had written, in my own hand, the eulogy of his inverecund epigrams.
The lady reclined on her bed, image of the classic berth. Her forehead revealed the accent of an anxious night and she was directing a fixed glance on the plain of her dominion.
More than once she had envied, in front of me, a cruel queen’s authority over a country with an abundance of thirsty and flavid lions. Those lions would have been the supporters of her shield.
The lady, of variable humor, needed to conceive and follow, at that moment, the figures of her fabulous ambition.
I would see her dictating orders to the most faithful of her ministers, an Ethiopian tyrant, raised in the deserts of Nubia, according to the exaggerations of a chivalric romance.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
5.22.2013
El festín de los buitres / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
The Feast of the Vultures
He had lost the sense of safety and daring after sacrificing his wife. He had surprised her in an interview with the enemy and inflicted death upon her without hearing the first explanation.
He had been left alone and nearly inert. The migratory tribe had succumbed in the dispute with the regular armies. The survivor had no other goods besides his horse and a cart entrusted to the strength of his dogs where he would take shelter from the rain. He would have died of hunger had he not dared to eat the uncultivated roots and the food gypsies made the most of in their indigent diet.
At each instant he received a warning from fate. He eventually ceased recognizing the noise of his own steps and he spun on his feet to defend himself. An apparition would tend to interrupt his sleep, violently destroying the door of his home amid the dismayed pack of hounds.
The outlaw decided to abandon himself to the mercy of events. He fortuitously came across a pitiful beggar on the day he fell prisoner and was victimized. Old age had turned her into a crane with crutches.
The beggar wanted the end of the continuous war, where she had lost her sons, and she lent herself to the task of spy.
The victors arrived through different routes and dispersed the final gesture of defense. They injured it to satisfaction.
The beggar limited herself to sealing the hero’s face with a fistful of dirt.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
He had lost the sense of safety and daring after sacrificing his wife. He had surprised her in an interview with the enemy and inflicted death upon her without hearing the first explanation.
He had been left alone and nearly inert. The migratory tribe had succumbed in the dispute with the regular armies. The survivor had no other goods besides his horse and a cart entrusted to the strength of his dogs where he would take shelter from the rain. He would have died of hunger had he not dared to eat the uncultivated roots and the food gypsies made the most of in their indigent diet.
At each instant he received a warning from fate. He eventually ceased recognizing the noise of his own steps and he spun on his feet to defend himself. An apparition would tend to interrupt his sleep, violently destroying the door of his home amid the dismayed pack of hounds.
The outlaw decided to abandon himself to the mercy of events. He fortuitously came across a pitiful beggar on the day he fell prisoner and was victimized. Old age had turned her into a crane with crutches.
The beggar wanted the end of the continuous war, where she had lost her sons, and she lent herself to the task of spy.
The victors arrived through different routes and dispersed the final gesture of defense. They injured it to satisfaction.
The beggar limited herself to sealing the hero’s face with a fistful of dirt.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
5.18.2013
El clima del nopal / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
The Climate of the Nopal
The hermit narrates the events and incorporates himself to the army of lacerated and hopeless characters. He confesses himself the author of at least one rapture and suggests, by means of a living elocution, the fright of running away at full speed, within reach of the stones and bullets.
He pretends to be dedicated to the memory of Mercedes, who would constantly censure his youth and the author, once she died, of his retreat from the century and of his repentance and humility.
He describes the farm where she passed from this life and was left on her back, without help or company. A gust from the north would break the big windows at each step, dispersed the perfume of the incense and extinguished, in front of the ivory crucifix, a candle with faded light.
He goes on to celebrate his irrevocable purpose of living as a penitent, from that moment forth, in the hole of the mountain, amidst a scanty and ashen weeds.
The hermit concludes his discourse and surprises me by mentioning his companions and the reproach of his lateness. He convenes them by means of a copper whistle.
I saw myself threatened, in a limited space, by a wheel of aimed rifles. I couldn’t raise my voice amid the uproar of the knaves.
The captain persuaded them to respect my life and he took me out safely along cliffside roads, without abandoning the monk’s habit, and appropriating all my money and the promise to sail the return to my homeland.
He was shooting his gun against some birds of prey gathered, above me, in a furious scramble.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
The hermit narrates the events and incorporates himself to the army of lacerated and hopeless characters. He confesses himself the author of at least one rapture and suggests, by means of a living elocution, the fright of running away at full speed, within reach of the stones and bullets.
He pretends to be dedicated to the memory of Mercedes, who would constantly censure his youth and the author, once she died, of his retreat from the century and of his repentance and humility.
He describes the farm where she passed from this life and was left on her back, without help or company. A gust from the north would break the big windows at each step, dispersed the perfume of the incense and extinguished, in front of the ivory crucifix, a candle with faded light.
He goes on to celebrate his irrevocable purpose of living as a penitent, from that moment forth, in the hole of the mountain, amidst a scanty and ashen weeds.
The hermit concludes his discourse and surprises me by mentioning his companions and the reproach of his lateness. He convenes them by means of a copper whistle.
I saw myself threatened, in a limited space, by a wheel of aimed rifles. I couldn’t raise my voice amid the uproar of the knaves.
The captain persuaded them to respect my life and he took me out safely along cliffside roads, without abandoning the monk’s habit, and appropriating all my money and the promise to sail the return to my homeland.
He was shooting his gun against some birds of prey gathered, above me, in a furious scramble.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
5.16.2013
El viaje en trineo / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
Journey by Sled
The copper and silver lay buried in a sterile zone, where vegetables reached a scant arborescence. The tiny birch tree and the lichen could not manage to liven the vista.
A continental river remained paralyzed by the ice for more than half the year. A few unformed boats, of rudimentary art, were falling apart amidst the strict climate. The authors of their fabrication gathered the pieces by means of hemp ropes, without the aid of iron. Those ships traveled heavily balancing their three masts in the livid air.
Apathetic men, dressed in reindeer skins, they were waiting at the mouth of the river. Some birds of sordid beaks were tearing apart in their presence the corpse of a polar whale.
Those unkempt men were dying from filth and scurvy. They were not accustomed to using salt and they would eat fish without gutting them.
I had arrived to that place while carrying out an order from the British government. I had to spy the activities of the Muscovite agents, who were insistent in our destruction. I had laboriously adopted the customs and languages of those uncultured nations and nobody would have distinguished me from among the Mongolians with saffron-colored faces.
I immediately noticed the ineptitude of our enemies. They had not yet discovered the method for applying to the industry of armor the metals treasured in the ground.
A few riders from the Caucus had penetrated the territory of an innocent tribe caught off-guard, subject to the uncertain authority of the emperor of China and careless in paying him the tribute of forty jackets made of white fox fur. He was said to be a devotee of the infernal spirits that take refuge in a mountain made of sand.
I persuaded the tribe to resist the invaders by lavishing money and firewater. I gathered a crowd together armed with pikes and walking sticks and I led it towards an assault against a small redoubt of wood where the enemy was hiding. The czar neglected the inferred amends to his servers and he incorporated them to his guard of honor.
I procured to increase my knowledge in the natural sciences when I convinced myself of the incapacity of our rivals in the dominion of Asia. I headed towards a place made famous by the discovery of Antediluvian animals. On that occasion I started a friendship with a Russian naturalist, born on the Baltic coast and educated at Riga.
Along with his university preparation he displayed the credulity and superstition of a pope. He would become copiously drunk to celebrate Sunday and he’d roll on the ground letting out an exhausting hiccup. He would habitually ingest a black bread, sour, aromatized with anise and cumin and sprinkled with a caustic sauce.
He realized, notwithstanding, the reason for my visit through that desert and he could frustrate my forced labor.
He had awakened my jealousies by telling me about the discovery of a new breed of cedars from Siberia.
I managed to poison him during the course of his drunkenness, giving him as a meal the meat of a mammoth fossil.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
The copper and silver lay buried in a sterile zone, where vegetables reached a scant arborescence. The tiny birch tree and the lichen could not manage to liven the vista.
A continental river remained paralyzed by the ice for more than half the year. A few unformed boats, of rudimentary art, were falling apart amidst the strict climate. The authors of their fabrication gathered the pieces by means of hemp ropes, without the aid of iron. Those ships traveled heavily balancing their three masts in the livid air.
Apathetic men, dressed in reindeer skins, they were waiting at the mouth of the river. Some birds of sordid beaks were tearing apart in their presence the corpse of a polar whale.
Those unkempt men were dying from filth and scurvy. They were not accustomed to using salt and they would eat fish without gutting them.
I had arrived to that place while carrying out an order from the British government. I had to spy the activities of the Muscovite agents, who were insistent in our destruction. I had laboriously adopted the customs and languages of those uncultured nations and nobody would have distinguished me from among the Mongolians with saffron-colored faces.
I immediately noticed the ineptitude of our enemies. They had not yet discovered the method for applying to the industry of armor the metals treasured in the ground.
A few riders from the Caucus had penetrated the territory of an innocent tribe caught off-guard, subject to the uncertain authority of the emperor of China and careless in paying him the tribute of forty jackets made of white fox fur. He was said to be a devotee of the infernal spirits that take refuge in a mountain made of sand.
I persuaded the tribe to resist the invaders by lavishing money and firewater. I gathered a crowd together armed with pikes and walking sticks and I led it towards an assault against a small redoubt of wood where the enemy was hiding. The czar neglected the inferred amends to his servers and he incorporated them to his guard of honor.
I procured to increase my knowledge in the natural sciences when I convinced myself of the incapacity of our rivals in the dominion of Asia. I headed towards a place made famous by the discovery of Antediluvian animals. On that occasion I started a friendship with a Russian naturalist, born on the Baltic coast and educated at Riga.
Along with his university preparation he displayed the credulity and superstition of a pope. He would become copiously drunk to celebrate Sunday and he’d roll on the ground letting out an exhausting hiccup. He would habitually ingest a black bread, sour, aromatized with anise and cumin and sprinkled with a caustic sauce.
He realized, notwithstanding, the reason for my visit through that desert and he could frustrate my forced labor.
He had awakened my jealousies by telling me about the discovery of a new breed of cedars from Siberia.
I managed to poison him during the course of his drunkenness, giving him as a meal the meat of a mammoth fossil.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
5.07.2013
El justiciero / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
The Righteous Man
I was a rigorous prelate. My authority weighed without contemplation over a fortified district. My palace governed the frontier river, of irregular course, altered by the precipice and the cavern. My standard, in the figure of a triangle, emitted with vigorous accent the concert of escarpments, redoubts and watchtowers.
I wanted to impose, in their precise signification, the goat’s thorns of my coat of arms.
I would be especially harsh with crimes of condescension and of frailty. I lived immersed in the ventilation of the problem of grace and free will, and was subtracted to the spell of sensible nature.
I ordered the inhumane punishment of stoning when I became aware of the case of nun who had fallen in love and I remained impassive to the pleas of her kneeling relatives.
The unfortunate woman walked to the place of punishment to the compass of a deaf music and carrying in her right hand the candle of penitence.
I grew ill from an incurable disease when I received, on the next day, the visit of the victim’s progenitor. The old man had learned, in the company of birds, an affectionate art. He lived, until that moment, on the edge of a grove within the vicinity of nightingales, and he had defended them from the innate malice of the sparrow hawk.
The birds had referred to him, in trills and chirps, the story of that ancient enmity, noted, from the dawn of history, in more than one venerable theogony.
The old man was strumming the bass-viol of a philharmonic angel, seen by me in a miniature allegory of paradise.
His reprimands, at the moment he walked away, demolished my severity.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
I was a rigorous prelate. My authority weighed without contemplation over a fortified district. My palace governed the frontier river, of irregular course, altered by the precipice and the cavern. My standard, in the figure of a triangle, emitted with vigorous accent the concert of escarpments, redoubts and watchtowers.
I wanted to impose, in their precise signification, the goat’s thorns of my coat of arms.
I would be especially harsh with crimes of condescension and of frailty. I lived immersed in the ventilation of the problem of grace and free will, and was subtracted to the spell of sensible nature.
I ordered the inhumane punishment of stoning when I became aware of the case of nun who had fallen in love and I remained impassive to the pleas of her kneeling relatives.
The unfortunate woman walked to the place of punishment to the compass of a deaf music and carrying in her right hand the candle of penitence.
I grew ill from an incurable disease when I received, on the next day, the visit of the victim’s progenitor. The old man had learned, in the company of birds, an affectionate art. He lived, until that moment, on the edge of a grove within the vicinity of nightingales, and he had defended them from the innate malice of the sparrow hawk.
The birds had referred to him, in trills and chirps, the story of that ancient enmity, noted, from the dawn of history, in more than one venerable theogony.
The old man was strumming the bass-viol of a philharmonic angel, seen by me in a miniature allegory of paradise.
His reprimands, at the moment he walked away, demolished my severity.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
5.06.2013
La guerra / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
War
The man of rudimentary intelligence went out to hunt far from his inundated plain, at the start of the day in a primitive age.
He guided his steps to a canyon of volcanic origin, inhabited by tense dragons and deformed and lazy birds.
He chose, during the trajectory, the most solid stones, to arm his sling.
He emitted screams with the greatest strength, using his hands as a loudspeaker.
Another man appeared, dressed in a sheepskin coat and ready for the fight. He was vociferating from the top of a hill. His face was lost in the forest of hair and beard.
The combat lasted, without being decided, for an indefinite amount of time. Trickles of blood were painting the face and chest of the rivals.
A woman cautiously falsified the defender’s foot and precipitated him from the heights. She was avenging herself for an abject submission.
The victor takes her under his authority and imposes upon her shoulders the sum of the plunder. He guides her towards the plain through a brief slope.
He is unconcerned for the overwhelmed back and the bloody feet of the captive.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
The man of rudimentary intelligence went out to hunt far from his inundated plain, at the start of the day in a primitive age.
He guided his steps to a canyon of volcanic origin, inhabited by tense dragons and deformed and lazy birds.
He chose, during the trajectory, the most solid stones, to arm his sling.
He emitted screams with the greatest strength, using his hands as a loudspeaker.
Another man appeared, dressed in a sheepskin coat and ready for the fight. He was vociferating from the top of a hill. His face was lost in the forest of hair and beard.
The combat lasted, without being decided, for an indefinite amount of time. Trickles of blood were painting the face and chest of the rivals.
A woman cautiously falsified the defender’s foot and precipitated him from the heights. She was avenging herself for an abject submission.
The victor takes her under his authority and imposes upon her shoulders the sum of the plunder. He guides her towards the plain through a brief slope.
He is unconcerned for the overwhelmed back and the bloody feet of the captive.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
5.05.2013
El knut / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
The Knout
Secular servitude inhibited, for generations, the thought of the peasants.
They would allow themselves to be thrashed without objection or protest. Their masters would cut their hair unevenly and multiply them by joining them together in pairs without consulting their will.
I attended one of those weddings. The peasants and their women had become intoxicated with a virulent alcohol and they danced holding hands to the sound of an elemental music. Many of them would fall face first onto the naked ground, stammering a song. The lord could not suppress his loud laughter.
They ate from wooden vessels a glutinous flour, of acidic flavor, and would remain choked up for the rest of the day.
They worked faithfully and with plenty of carelessness and clumsiness in exchange for a scant salary and they would rest on the lawn of the parks. The police would interrupt their nocturnal sleep with blows from swords.
The winter’s first snow was enough to exterminate the multitude of the dispossessed. They left piled together in carts to the outskirts of the city where they were incinerated without waiting, at any time, for them to die. The official at the civil registry didn’t bother to keep an account of the deaths. The peasants ignored if they had a name and answered to any nickname whatsoever.
The chance of a rainfall afforded me the knowledge of a maiden from that throng. I was captivated by her defenseless gesture and her lymphatic blandness. She would part her uncombed blonde hair in the middle of her forehead. She had taken refuge under a colonnade of my house.
Her brother, a character with an exhausted complexion and a wild and precocious beard, came to defend her from my treachery.
I decided to avenge myself for their resistance by increasing their misfortune. I went to the chief of the garrison, my companion in Bacchanalian life, and persuaded him to the conscription of the young man.
That officer, of aristocratic origin and select education, had gained renown for being severe in discipline and insensible to the suffering of others. He would entertain himself imposing dilacerating beatings. The soldiers would return ethical to their homes.
The young recruit came to be counted among the enemies of a tyrannical superior. The oficial had died after ingesting, with his soup, fragments of glass.
I forced the suspicions directed against the destitute man and improved the defense of his companions.
He was declared the author of the homicide and sentenced to fustigation. He passed to a suburb, where the soldiers cleared a path and discharged against him quite a few energetic lashes. The recruit was dragged, this way and that, tied to a rifle armed with its bayonet, by which he could wound himself with any evasive movement.
The screams of the victim chilled the executioners with fear. The lashing uncovered in no time the skeleton.
The task lasted close to an hour, when the regiment’s doctor interposed himself to discern the pulse and certify death.
The recruit’s sister, forced to appear, fainted during the course of the punishment.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
Secular servitude inhibited, for generations, the thought of the peasants.
They would allow themselves to be thrashed without objection or protest. Their masters would cut their hair unevenly and multiply them by joining them together in pairs without consulting their will.
I attended one of those weddings. The peasants and their women had become intoxicated with a virulent alcohol and they danced holding hands to the sound of an elemental music. Many of them would fall face first onto the naked ground, stammering a song. The lord could not suppress his loud laughter.
They ate from wooden vessels a glutinous flour, of acidic flavor, and would remain choked up for the rest of the day.
They worked faithfully and with plenty of carelessness and clumsiness in exchange for a scant salary and they would rest on the lawn of the parks. The police would interrupt their nocturnal sleep with blows from swords.
The winter’s first snow was enough to exterminate the multitude of the dispossessed. They left piled together in carts to the outskirts of the city where they were incinerated without waiting, at any time, for them to die. The official at the civil registry didn’t bother to keep an account of the deaths. The peasants ignored if they had a name and answered to any nickname whatsoever.
The chance of a rainfall afforded me the knowledge of a maiden from that throng. I was captivated by her defenseless gesture and her lymphatic blandness. She would part her uncombed blonde hair in the middle of her forehead. She had taken refuge under a colonnade of my house.
Her brother, a character with an exhausted complexion and a wild and precocious beard, came to defend her from my treachery.
I decided to avenge myself for their resistance by increasing their misfortune. I went to the chief of the garrison, my companion in Bacchanalian life, and persuaded him to the conscription of the young man.
That officer, of aristocratic origin and select education, had gained renown for being severe in discipline and insensible to the suffering of others. He would entertain himself imposing dilacerating beatings. The soldiers would return ethical to their homes.
The young recruit came to be counted among the enemies of a tyrannical superior. The oficial had died after ingesting, with his soup, fragments of glass.
I forced the suspicions directed against the destitute man and improved the defense of his companions.
He was declared the author of the homicide and sentenced to fustigation. He passed to a suburb, where the soldiers cleared a path and discharged against him quite a few energetic lashes. The recruit was dragged, this way and that, tied to a rifle armed with its bayonet, by which he could wound himself with any evasive movement.
The screams of the victim chilled the executioners with fear. The lashing uncovered in no time the skeleton.
The task lasted close to an hour, when the regiment’s doctor interposed himself to discern the pulse and certify death.
The recruit’s sister, forced to appear, fainted during the course of the punishment.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
5.03.2013
La conseja de los alabarderos / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
The Council of Claqueurs
The king’s minister had accused the selfish purposes of the cardinal who was muddied by pleasures. At every moment they would confront each other, animated by a venomous hatred. They had been born in the heart of the same dynastic family. Their servants had squabbled at the foot of a prison tower.
The cardinal, accustomed to seduction, had insinuated an unworthy discourse in the mind of the minister’s daughter, under the secret of confession. He did not prosper in his evil, but instead emerged disillusioned and offended.
He chose a second route for the disgrace of his antagonist and directed the passions of the frivolous king in prejudice of the inflexible woman.
The minister is disposed to the defense of honor and suffers in his person and property. He does not survive, in the cell’s darkness, the amputation of the ears and the tonsure, legal affronts of the falsifiers.
The minister’s daughter faints in the hands of a few innoble religious ladies. She hears the reference to her misfortune in the risible serenade of those partial to the cleric. She is lost in conjectures and hallucinations and discovers a gathering of capering rats around the butterfly of light. They dance back to back and prance about, in the manner of witches.
The religious ladies persuade her to immobility and to the abandonment of her resistance. They announce to her the decease of her progenitor and show her the needle used to sew her shroud and destined to join together the curtains of her prisoner’s bed.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
The king’s minister had accused the selfish purposes of the cardinal who was muddied by pleasures. At every moment they would confront each other, animated by a venomous hatred. They had been born in the heart of the same dynastic family. Their servants had squabbled at the foot of a prison tower.
The cardinal, accustomed to seduction, had insinuated an unworthy discourse in the mind of the minister’s daughter, under the secret of confession. He did not prosper in his evil, but instead emerged disillusioned and offended.
He chose a second route for the disgrace of his antagonist and directed the passions of the frivolous king in prejudice of the inflexible woman.
The minister is disposed to the defense of honor and suffers in his person and property. He does not survive, in the cell’s darkness, the amputation of the ears and the tonsure, legal affronts of the falsifiers.
The minister’s daughter faints in the hands of a few innoble religious ladies. She hears the reference to her misfortune in the risible serenade of those partial to the cleric. She is lost in conjectures and hallucinations and discovers a gathering of capering rats around the butterfly of light. They dance back to back and prance about, in the manner of witches.
The religious ladies persuade her to immobility and to the abandonment of her resistance. They announce to her the decease of her progenitor and show her the needle used to sew her shroud and destined to join together the curtains of her prisoner’s bed.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
5.01.2013
El musulmán / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
The Muslim
The mosque had tumbled to the ground during the extermination of the faithful.
The blond pirates had mutilated its towers and covered over the decorative letters where the name of the prophet could be read with stucco. They mocked the filigree conceived and realized by our ancestors in a series of enthusiastic centuries.
The muezzins, humiliating their foreheads in the dust, announced the cloud of bloodthirsty falcons.
They arrived after a voyage of six months, lucid and with their skin peeling from the scorching heat of the torrid seas. The wind was dividing into whistles as it ran between the tense sails. The cabin boys were blowing the sirens, hanging from the masts with agility.
We didn’t dare fight them on the coast, choosing rather a clearing with easy access for our cavalry. We were utterly slaughtered. Our heroes had mad faith in a spectacular battle, of steel crossed in singular combat. The flame of the iron wits vanquished the frank resolve and matted the floor with the victims and plunder of a
simoom.
My older brother was left among the prisoners and suffered a sad fate.
The victors chose him as a target for their pistols. His corpse, hung from its feet, rotted for several days amidst a swarm of crepuscular jackals. He had dared, despite his manacles, to challenge a principal chief.
I discreetly visited the mosque of our devotion, before departing from my captive soil, and I rescued my brother’s relics, paying the victor for them with the present of a few antique arms and a sumptuous quilt. The muslin, elastic and transparent, would pass through a needle without crumpling.
I chose for my exile the home of a neighboring town. A voluble plant, captive of our jungles, weaves itself around a dry tree and adorns it with its scarlet flowers. I brought it with me to keep in memory of my house.
I requested service in a flotilla of pearl fishermen and I traverse a crystalline gulf.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
The mosque had tumbled to the ground during the extermination of the faithful.
The blond pirates had mutilated its towers and covered over the decorative letters where the name of the prophet could be read with stucco. They mocked the filigree conceived and realized by our ancestors in a series of enthusiastic centuries.
The muezzins, humiliating their foreheads in the dust, announced the cloud of bloodthirsty falcons.
They arrived after a voyage of six months, lucid and with their skin peeling from the scorching heat of the torrid seas. The wind was dividing into whistles as it ran between the tense sails. The cabin boys were blowing the sirens, hanging from the masts with agility.
We didn’t dare fight them on the coast, choosing rather a clearing with easy access for our cavalry. We were utterly slaughtered. Our heroes had mad faith in a spectacular battle, of steel crossed in singular combat. The flame of the iron wits vanquished the frank resolve and matted the floor with the victims and plunder of a
simoom.
My older brother was left among the prisoners and suffered a sad fate.
The victors chose him as a target for their pistols. His corpse, hung from its feet, rotted for several days amidst a swarm of crepuscular jackals. He had dared, despite his manacles, to challenge a principal chief.
I discreetly visited the mosque of our devotion, before departing from my captive soil, and I rescued my brother’s relics, paying the victor for them with the present of a few antique arms and a sumptuous quilt. The muslin, elastic and transparent, would pass through a needle without crumpling.
I chose for my exile the home of a neighboring town. A voluble plant, captive of our jungles, weaves itself around a dry tree and adorns it with its scarlet flowers. I brought it with me to keep in memory of my house.
I requested service in a flotilla of pearl fishermen and I traverse a crystalline gulf.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
4.30.2013
El entierro / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
The Burial
There was once a keen and conceited young man. He had come from a civil war, exceeding himself in a bloody day’s journey, shedding light upon the martial lineage in the presence of an ambitious caudillo.
He held in his hands the government of a village.
He went out one night beyond the village to enjoy a reserved and silent landscape. The moon was peeking over an edge of the sierra.
The young man distinguished, in the ambiguous hour, the passing of a cortège. A few jokers were leading the way, carrying a bed on their shoulders and announcing the news of a death. They were locals of mischievous lives and alcoholic faces.
The young man heard his own name upon asking about the deceased. He easily persuaded them to abandon the lugubrious farse and to disperse in demand of their homes.
They gathered, the next night, for the same diversion within view of the fading moon, and reiterated the warning of the young man’s death. He dispersed them sword in hand, with cuts and insults, and arrested the guiltiest of them.
A party was given, within a few days, at the home of a rural nobleman.
The hero was submissively lavishing attention on the beautiful girls and braiding garlands of fleeting flowers for them.
A massive and disheveled man penetrated the hall and went up to the young man. He came from the wilderness and cliffs and he was venting an indiscreet aggressiveness.
The unknown man seemed invulnerable to fire arms.
The struggle was decided with the dagger and concluded, after a few troublesome moments, with the death of both adversaries.
The locals, of mischievous lives and alcoholic faces, were absolved of their arrest and ordered to take away the young man’s corpse.
No one was able to identify the importunate one.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
There was once a keen and conceited young man. He had come from a civil war, exceeding himself in a bloody day’s journey, shedding light upon the martial lineage in the presence of an ambitious caudillo.
He held in his hands the government of a village.
He went out one night beyond the village to enjoy a reserved and silent landscape. The moon was peeking over an edge of the sierra.
The young man distinguished, in the ambiguous hour, the passing of a cortège. A few jokers were leading the way, carrying a bed on their shoulders and announcing the news of a death. They were locals of mischievous lives and alcoholic faces.
The young man heard his own name upon asking about the deceased. He easily persuaded them to abandon the lugubrious farse and to disperse in demand of their homes.
They gathered, the next night, for the same diversion within view of the fading moon, and reiterated the warning of the young man’s death. He dispersed them sword in hand, with cuts and insults, and arrested the guiltiest of them.
A party was given, within a few days, at the home of a rural nobleman.
The hero was submissively lavishing attention on the beautiful girls and braiding garlands of fleeting flowers for them.
A massive and disheveled man penetrated the hall and went up to the young man. He came from the wilderness and cliffs and he was venting an indiscreet aggressiveness.
The unknown man seemed invulnerable to fire arms.
The struggle was decided with the dagger and concluded, after a few troublesome moments, with the death of both adversaries.
The locals, of mischievous lives and alcoholic faces, were absolved of their arrest and ordered to take away the young man’s corpse.
No one was able to identify the importunate one.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
4.20.2013
La campaña / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
The Campaign
I was invited to the exequies of a hunting dog. The nomadic family broke out in agonized laments and described themselves as threatened by penury after the death of that provident server. The women imposed on the men the mission of putting together a brigade and going out in demand of the accused wolves.
We went into the campaign at the break of the next day. We lacked gunpowder and carried measured canes. The sun appeared very quickly over the ground of snow and turned it into a glassy surface. The snow was thin and the horses would break through it easily to devour the hidden grass. Hunger was devastating the country.
We ran into the squadron of wild beasts when we rounded the curve of a steep mountain. Some of our riders were dangerously bitten in the tough fight and said they had been infected with rabies. Eight or ten wolves were knocked down and with their spines broken. I was satisfied by capturing a baby cub with red hair.
We returned to the village after attaining victory and proceeded to curing the wounded by means of cautery. All of them showed signs of melancholia, which is the beginning of the crisis of rabies.
The women didn’t expect to save the infected ones any other way than by sacrificing my captive as a symbol of their faith, maintained for innumerable generations, since the days of Attila. They adored a sword nailed into the ground, image of strength. They discreetly envied my fortune and once again demonstrated toward me the uncertainty of their dealings. They were capable of advising my loss in the case of ending up better off in a second excursion.
The wounded recuperated thanks to the sacrifice of my baby cub. They grew content when they saw the signs of my sadness and they let me see the necessity and opportunity to continue my journey. They had pretended, according to my conjecture, to have the symptoms of rabies.
I abandoned the company of those disloyal hunters and I stepped out with my horse into the uniform country, with the help of a compass.
A woman wounded me with a stone when I was separating my horse from looking at itself in the mirror of a puddle.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
I was invited to the exequies of a hunting dog. The nomadic family broke out in agonized laments and described themselves as threatened by penury after the death of that provident server. The women imposed on the men the mission of putting together a brigade and going out in demand of the accused wolves.
We went into the campaign at the break of the next day. We lacked gunpowder and carried measured canes. The sun appeared very quickly over the ground of snow and turned it into a glassy surface. The snow was thin and the horses would break through it easily to devour the hidden grass. Hunger was devastating the country.
We ran into the squadron of wild beasts when we rounded the curve of a steep mountain. Some of our riders were dangerously bitten in the tough fight and said they had been infected with rabies. Eight or ten wolves were knocked down and with their spines broken. I was satisfied by capturing a baby cub with red hair.
We returned to the village after attaining victory and proceeded to curing the wounded by means of cautery. All of them showed signs of melancholia, which is the beginning of the crisis of rabies.
The women didn’t expect to save the infected ones any other way than by sacrificing my captive as a symbol of their faith, maintained for innumerable generations, since the days of Attila. They adored a sword nailed into the ground, image of strength. They discreetly envied my fortune and once again demonstrated toward me the uncertainty of their dealings. They were capable of advising my loss in the case of ending up better off in a second excursion.
The wounded recuperated thanks to the sacrifice of my baby cub. They grew content when they saw the signs of my sadness and they let me see the necessity and opportunity to continue my journey. They had pretended, according to my conjecture, to have the symptoms of rabies.
I abandoned the company of those disloyal hunters and I stepped out with my horse into the uniform country, with the help of a compass.
A woman wounded me with a stone when I was separating my horse from looking at itself in the mirror of a puddle.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
3.30.2013
Parodia / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
Parody
The knight has suddenly been enchanted by a maid, getting lost at the start of his career. He has startled his own mother’s thought, friend and lady to the favored young girl.
The knight goes on the road to the court, where a venerable king invites him.
The ladies appear to critique the young man’s naiveté and confess the gentleness of his figure, gathered in happy and evil groups. They flee frightened after witnessing the misfortune of a palace worker repressed with blows from a belt by the novice.
The maid proposes the legend of her man. She obtains her friend and lady’s permission, and pretends to be dead within view of the service people, criers of the event.
He secretly adopts the clothes and manner of a young man who hopes to run around the world and travel to the kingdom’s capital, dealing hand to hand with lost ones and killers and pretending to love maidens.
She insinuates herself with her lover and fascinates him with the signs and resources of a fertile imagination, dissuading him from his obstinate character and ascending him to consort of a principal woman.
The knight solicits in vain the minister of his happiness at the wedding party.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
The knight has suddenly been enchanted by a maid, getting lost at the start of his career. He has startled his own mother’s thought, friend and lady to the favored young girl.
The knight goes on the road to the court, where a venerable king invites him.
The ladies appear to critique the young man’s naiveté and confess the gentleness of his figure, gathered in happy and evil groups. They flee frightened after witnessing the misfortune of a palace worker repressed with blows from a belt by the novice.
The maid proposes the legend of her man. She obtains her friend and lady’s permission, and pretends to be dead within view of the service people, criers of the event.
He secretly adopts the clothes and manner of a young man who hopes to run around the world and travel to the kingdom’s capital, dealing hand to hand with lost ones and killers and pretending to love maidens.
She insinuates herself with her lover and fascinates him with the signs and resources of a fertile imagination, dissuading him from his obstinate character and ascending him to consort of a principal woman.
The knight solicits in vain the minister of his happiness at the wedding party.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
3.28.2013
La caza / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
The Hunt
The Duchess keeps, while riding a horse, a modest and gentle behavior. She reproaches the goshawk on the fist and sends it off in search of an indistinct bird.
The goshawk draws an uncertain flight and is correct about the path.
The beauty of the lady distracts me from following the course of the hunt. She is fully resplendent in the uniform field.
I pick up from the floor and discreetly put away a cordovan sole, fallen from her foot.
The Duchess notices the loss during a break from the active diversion.
I abstain from answering her anxious questions, painted with anger. A page brings to light the shame of my theft.
The Duchess laughs gracefully when she guesses the sign of a passion in the most unshorn of her villains.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
The Duchess keeps, while riding a horse, a modest and gentle behavior. She reproaches the goshawk on the fist and sends it off in search of an indistinct bird.
The goshawk draws an uncertain flight and is correct about the path.
The beauty of the lady distracts me from following the course of the hunt. She is fully resplendent in the uniform field.
I pick up from the floor and discreetly put away a cordovan sole, fallen from her foot.
The Duchess notices the loss during a break from the active diversion.
I abstain from answering her anxious questions, painted with anger. A page brings to light the shame of my theft.
The Duchess laughs gracefully when she guesses the sign of a passion in the most unshorn of her villains.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
1.05.2013
Crónica / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
Chronicle
The king listens unhappily from his rank to the reprimands of a relative exempt from duplicity and privileged by old age and by the sign of death.
The censures uttered amidst agony attain the value of a threat. The old man laments the subjection of the kingdom under foreign rule and its confiscation of the Lombard speculator. The pirates, subjects of a child king, exterminate the ships and step on the flag similar, in the song of the bards, to a meteor from the storm.
The old man addresses the discontent of the nobles, their malignant withdrawal and their projects arranged in whispers. The villagers and citizens, ignorant of idleness and other advantages brought about by commerce, wait in their vile wooden houses for the sign of sedition. Wealth persuades one to meekness.
The king suffers from the will and endures the warning. He returns to the palace and gathers in his chamber to breed valiant thoughts under the suggestion of a bronze eagle.
Faithful messengers successively appear with news of gathering the seditious ones. They mistrust the king’s composure and look at him as vanquished and subject to dishonor.
The authors of the disturbance enter the chamber tearing apart the doors and windows with the effort of their shoulders and hands dressed in iron gloves. They print on the wooden floor the arrogant foot, wearing a fierce spur, to second the excess of a hirsute face and sing-song voice. In moments of anger they pull their thorny beards. They order the king’s captivity in a subterranean passage, a type of dungeon or quagmire, and they execute in that instant and in a unanimous manner the brave gesture of adjusting the hand to the waist.
The king is a widower and has only one child. The disloyal tutor entertains himself by carefully cutting the prince’s eyelids with surgical scissors.
The name of the king can be read on a lead engraving adhered to a coffin.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
The king listens unhappily from his rank to the reprimands of a relative exempt from duplicity and privileged by old age and by the sign of death.
The censures uttered amidst agony attain the value of a threat. The old man laments the subjection of the kingdom under foreign rule and its confiscation of the Lombard speculator. The pirates, subjects of a child king, exterminate the ships and step on the flag similar, in the song of the bards, to a meteor from the storm.
The old man addresses the discontent of the nobles, their malignant withdrawal and their projects arranged in whispers. The villagers and citizens, ignorant of idleness and other advantages brought about by commerce, wait in their vile wooden houses for the sign of sedition. Wealth persuades one to meekness.
The king suffers from the will and endures the warning. He returns to the palace and gathers in his chamber to breed valiant thoughts under the suggestion of a bronze eagle.
Faithful messengers successively appear with news of gathering the seditious ones. They mistrust the king’s composure and look at him as vanquished and subject to dishonor.
The authors of the disturbance enter the chamber tearing apart the doors and windows with the effort of their shoulders and hands dressed in iron gloves. They print on the wooden floor the arrogant foot, wearing a fierce spur, to second the excess of a hirsute face and sing-song voice. In moments of anger they pull their thorny beards. They order the king’s captivity in a subterranean passage, a type of dungeon or quagmire, and they execute in that instant and in a unanimous manner the brave gesture of adjusting the hand to the waist.
The king is a widower and has only one child. The disloyal tutor entertains himself by carefully cutting the prince’s eyelids with surgical scissors.
The name of the king can be read on a lead engraving adhered to a coffin.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
12.28.2012
La huérfana / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
The Orphan Girl
The orchard leads to the obstructed river, of fertile shores, where the drainage and thickets loom.
The vegetation is delirious as a consequence of the nebulous air. I remember the growth of a cosmic force, free from measure, usurper of limits.
The girl directs a stone to the bird of strident throat, frequenter of the flatulent swamp.
I set aside mischief to contemplate, once more, the red fauces of a basalt crocodile. They make up the gutter where the granite pool pours out, residue of a luxuriant mansion, attacked by the virulent vapors.
Voluble fears astonish and paralyze the childish romp.
A sleepy saurian emerges from the estuary and insinuates itself amid the trees that have been knocked over or carried by the swell. It delivers the sure attack, of atavistic calculation. It reestablishes the calm of the forest, suppressing pusillanimous moans.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
The orchard leads to the obstructed river, of fertile shores, where the drainage and thickets loom.
The vegetation is delirious as a consequence of the nebulous air. I remember the growth of a cosmic force, free from measure, usurper of limits.
The girl directs a stone to the bird of strident throat, frequenter of the flatulent swamp.
I set aside mischief to contemplate, once more, the red fauces of a basalt crocodile. They make up the gutter where the granite pool pours out, residue of a luxuriant mansion, attacked by the virulent vapors.
Voluble fears astonish and paralyze the childish romp.
A sleepy saurian emerges from the estuary and insinuates itself amid the trees that have been knocked over or carried by the swell. It delivers the sure attack, of atavistic calculation. It reestablishes the calm of the forest, suppressing pusillanimous moans.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
12.14.2012
El sino / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
Fate
Marie Antoinette has just called me by means of her confessor, a cleric of honest virtue. She wants to entrust me with a message for the representative of a provincial city, an enthusiast of the Queen’s defense, obstinate in gaining for her the nation’s consent.
Marie Antoinette has allowed herself to be persuaded by the gentlemanly representative and becomes cautious. She occupies her time in raising her children and withdraws from the malice of the courtesans.
I traverse, in fulfillment of the order, a twisted sidestreet, where a single lantern burns. That’s where the malignant people of other ages would gather to arrange the adventures of homicide and rapaciousness.
I found the representative in his modest study. He was organizing the books piled on the table. I discovered the origin of his ideas reading the title of a few volumes about man and his destiny, gathered in essays and dissertations of a prudent philosophy, of British aspect.
I placed in his hands a rich present and the sovereign’s effigy, drawn by an infallible paintbrush, careful in reproducing the glossy face.
The representative refuses the magnificent gift. Due to his gesture of surprise, the crowd of sonorous coins, manufactured of regal metal, spills onto the floor.
He puts away the portrait painted with jealous skill, and beautifies it with a violaceous flower, where the ancients read the interjection of lament.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
Marie Antoinette has just called me by means of her confessor, a cleric of honest virtue. She wants to entrust me with a message for the representative of a provincial city, an enthusiast of the Queen’s defense, obstinate in gaining for her the nation’s consent.
Marie Antoinette has allowed herself to be persuaded by the gentlemanly representative and becomes cautious. She occupies her time in raising her children and withdraws from the malice of the courtesans.
I traverse, in fulfillment of the order, a twisted sidestreet, where a single lantern burns. That’s where the malignant people of other ages would gather to arrange the adventures of homicide and rapaciousness.
I found the representative in his modest study. He was organizing the books piled on the table. I discovered the origin of his ideas reading the title of a few volumes about man and his destiny, gathered in essays and dissertations of a prudent philosophy, of British aspect.
I placed in his hands a rich present and the sovereign’s effigy, drawn by an infallible paintbrush, careful in reproducing the glossy face.
The representative refuses the magnificent gift. Due to his gesture of surprise, the crowd of sonorous coins, manufactured of regal metal, spills onto the floor.
He puts away the portrait painted with jealous skill, and beautifies it with a violaceous flower, where the ancients read the interjection of lament.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
12.12.2012
Bajo la advocación de Saturno / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
Under the Protection of Saturn
I remember the village of my birth. In its arid hills the broom of Leopardi would agonize. The breeze from the plateau would irritate the hunger of the wolf with a bloody mouth, stuffen the hands and infiltrate a perfidious dream, image and prelude of death.
The wolf would pursue a few clamorous birds, with round eye and an ivory beak. It felt the crisis of the atmosphere and the change of season and was blinded with rage in the presence of an unearthed moon. Watching it, I contracted the habit of the vicious bite.
I would read without order or concert, in my earthen cabin, immersed in the penury of the native place. The clouds hung from the fierce sky, obscuring the race of time, equalizing day and night, and drowning the voice of the hour of sleep.
A gentleman inserted himself in my barren floor and could not figure out the path to return. I dressed him in a fur jacket, a gift from a bear hunter, and saved him from perishing in the cold. His gratitude changed me, two years later, into a student at a school for surgeons.
My classmates would mock me in a festive manner, and provoke my opinions and sentences so they could applaud them with ironic astonishment. They diverted me from consummating my studies and attaining my license, accusing me, twisted with envy, of carrying out vivisections on patients. The university dignitaries published, when they expelled me, the motives of their displeasure, conferring upon me an ominous fame.
I found refuge in a miserable district, close to my tenement, where some severe people were reared. The mountain ridge of exhausted torrents was carrying the weight of the horizontal sky. An ocre vestige would illuminate the lean shepherds in their task of looking after a flock of goats.
I lived grievously from the illegal practice of my profession. I occupied an isolated and solid building, of a rusted color, flooded by the earth’s. The geometrician spider would suspend its tapestry with impunity.
I fell in love with a sincere virgin, preoccupied with the defenseless creatures, similar to her temperament. The candid garb and the adornment of flowers on her forehead insinuated the figure of a victim. I took her away from her parents’ house. She regretted having followed me and succumbed after giving me the third child.
I was thinking of reforming my trade, without scruples in the extermination of clients, and came to founder in misery and vilification. I was trying to save, by means of a surgical treatment, the breathing of those affected by angina. I tested it, without sickness as a motive, on my two oldest sons and left them without a voice. They would moan disconsolately, putting me in the position of having to fustigate them.
I recall the last of my sterile efforts, when I inflicted a cut on the throat of my other son. He was breastfeeding and couldn’t stand on his own feet. He maintained his happy smile until the moment of sacrifice.
The neighbors attended my mourning, surrounding me with compassion. They forgot about themselves and their reasons for accusing me. I had mutilated or mortally wounded them. They marveled at my perplexity and indifference.
At that moment I was conceiving the decisive project of my ruin. I was compaginating the notes of my experience and the lucubrations of my ingenuity in order to address a body of doctors in the neighboring city. I besieged them with appeals and threats and persuaded them to hear me in a solemn session.
I appeared elegantly dressed and disheveled and barefoot. I climbed onto a dais and frightened off the ladies with my indecent and haughty language. I would alternately force and lower my voice, reducing it to a murmur.
The gendarmes were invited to the suppression of the disorder. I bruised their face with blows. They brought me here, amidst a crowd, with my hands tied behind my back.
Locked in a cage and sitting on the chest with my old surgery books, I refer visitors to the malignancy of my colleagues.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
I remember the village of my birth. In its arid hills the broom of Leopardi would agonize. The breeze from the plateau would irritate the hunger of the wolf with a bloody mouth, stuffen the hands and infiltrate a perfidious dream, image and prelude of death.
The wolf would pursue a few clamorous birds, with round eye and an ivory beak. It felt the crisis of the atmosphere and the change of season and was blinded with rage in the presence of an unearthed moon. Watching it, I contracted the habit of the vicious bite.
I would read without order or concert, in my earthen cabin, immersed in the penury of the native place. The clouds hung from the fierce sky, obscuring the race of time, equalizing day and night, and drowning the voice of the hour of sleep.
A gentleman inserted himself in my barren floor and could not figure out the path to return. I dressed him in a fur jacket, a gift from a bear hunter, and saved him from perishing in the cold. His gratitude changed me, two years later, into a student at a school for surgeons.
My classmates would mock me in a festive manner, and provoke my opinions and sentences so they could applaud them with ironic astonishment. They diverted me from consummating my studies and attaining my license, accusing me, twisted with envy, of carrying out vivisections on patients. The university dignitaries published, when they expelled me, the motives of their displeasure, conferring upon me an ominous fame.
I found refuge in a miserable district, close to my tenement, where some severe people were reared. The mountain ridge of exhausted torrents was carrying the weight of the horizontal sky. An ocre vestige would illuminate the lean shepherds in their task of looking after a flock of goats.
I lived grievously from the illegal practice of my profession. I occupied an isolated and solid building, of a rusted color, flooded by the earth’s. The geometrician spider would suspend its tapestry with impunity.
I fell in love with a sincere virgin, preoccupied with the defenseless creatures, similar to her temperament. The candid garb and the adornment of flowers on her forehead insinuated the figure of a victim. I took her away from her parents’ house. She regretted having followed me and succumbed after giving me the third child.
I was thinking of reforming my trade, without scruples in the extermination of clients, and came to founder in misery and vilification. I was trying to save, by means of a surgical treatment, the breathing of those affected by angina. I tested it, without sickness as a motive, on my two oldest sons and left them without a voice. They would moan disconsolately, putting me in the position of having to fustigate them.
I recall the last of my sterile efforts, when I inflicted a cut on the throat of my other son. He was breastfeeding and couldn’t stand on his own feet. He maintained his happy smile until the moment of sacrifice.
The neighbors attended my mourning, surrounding me with compassion. They forgot about themselves and their reasons for accusing me. I had mutilated or mortally wounded them. They marveled at my perplexity and indifference.
At that moment I was conceiving the decisive project of my ruin. I was compaginating the notes of my experience and the lucubrations of my ingenuity in order to address a body of doctors in the neighboring city. I besieged them with appeals and threats and persuaded them to hear me in a solemn session.
I appeared elegantly dressed and disheveled and barefoot. I climbed onto a dais and frightened off the ladies with my indecent and haughty language. I would alternately force and lower my voice, reducing it to a murmur.
The gendarmes were invited to the suppression of the disorder. I bruised their face with blows. They brought me here, amidst a crowd, with my hands tied behind my back.
Locked in a cage and sitting on the chest with my old surgery books, I refer visitors to the malignancy of my colleagues.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
12.11.2012
El lince / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
The Lynx
He had paid in false coins the price of my house, leaving me barefoot and out on the street.
I started earning my living again with a pathetic job. I had to remain in the rice paddies for ten hours a day, sunken in the tenacious mud. The hat with the figure of a parasol barely protected me from the summer sky. Around that area is where the typhoon wind ran, strong enough to twist the trees and pull the Europeans’ ships onto land, animated and blackened by a carbon fire.
I denounced my case with the magistrates of the province. They were desperate from repressing the cheaters and thieves. They had exhausted their imagination inventing terrible punishments. They would gradually amputate the offender’s person until reducing him to a torso or they would stretch his neck in a wooden clamp. Any movement could separate the victim’s head.
I resolved to abandon my job as a farmworker and follow the trail of the author of my misfortune. The magistrates encouraged me by paying me a modest salary.
I passed on a raft to the island of Hong Kong, seat of the English pirate and refuge for the continent’s highwaymen. The police agents, ignorant of the country’s character and language, would suffer mockery and thefts.
I occupied myself with guiding them amidst the crowds and confusion of the gambling dens. I visited the opium dens and applied blows to each one of the depraved men with deranged and emaciated faces.
A courtesan put me on the path of discovery. She approached me cheerful and spirited, running about and laughing. The porcelain face would light up with laughter and her hair imitated the form of a bird with its wings outstretched. A few scamps were burning petards in front of her house.
She gave me the details of a subterranean gambling den. Moral precepts, stamped in pennants and banderoles, denied the character of the place. The island’s wealthiest businessmen would venture their fortune by the timorous light of a paper lantern. The author of my disgrace served as a banker and money changer. Long flowing robes, of yellow color, accentuated his peaceful obese man’s gestures.
I handed him over to the British gendarmes and obtained his restitution to the magistrates of my province.
I was invited, as a reward for my services, to choose the manner of his execution.
He ended up on his knees and with his forehead on a piece of crockery.
An elephant, on which I rode, pressed down and cracked his head open with one of its front feet.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
He had paid in false coins the price of my house, leaving me barefoot and out on the street.
I started earning my living again with a pathetic job. I had to remain in the rice paddies for ten hours a day, sunken in the tenacious mud. The hat with the figure of a parasol barely protected me from the summer sky. Around that area is where the typhoon wind ran, strong enough to twist the trees and pull the Europeans’ ships onto land, animated and blackened by a carbon fire.
I denounced my case with the magistrates of the province. They were desperate from repressing the cheaters and thieves. They had exhausted their imagination inventing terrible punishments. They would gradually amputate the offender’s person until reducing him to a torso or they would stretch his neck in a wooden clamp. Any movement could separate the victim’s head.
I resolved to abandon my job as a farmworker and follow the trail of the author of my misfortune. The magistrates encouraged me by paying me a modest salary.
I passed on a raft to the island of Hong Kong, seat of the English pirate and refuge for the continent’s highwaymen. The police agents, ignorant of the country’s character and language, would suffer mockery and thefts.
I occupied myself with guiding them amidst the crowds and confusion of the gambling dens. I visited the opium dens and applied blows to each one of the depraved men with deranged and emaciated faces.
A courtesan put me on the path of discovery. She approached me cheerful and spirited, running about and laughing. The porcelain face would light up with laughter and her hair imitated the form of a bird with its wings outstretched. A few scamps were burning petards in front of her house.
She gave me the details of a subterranean gambling den. Moral precepts, stamped in pennants and banderoles, denied the character of the place. The island’s wealthiest businessmen would venture their fortune by the timorous light of a paper lantern. The author of my disgrace served as a banker and money changer. Long flowing robes, of yellow color, accentuated his peaceful obese man’s gestures.
I handed him over to the British gendarmes and obtained his restitution to the magistrates of my province.
I was invited, as a reward for my services, to choose the manner of his execution.
He ended up on his knees and with his forehead on a piece of crockery.
An elephant, on which I rode, pressed down and cracked his head open with one of its front feet.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
12.08.2012
El presidiario / José Antonio Ramos Sucre
The Convict
The village where I spent my childhood was never going to grow and become a city. The stone houses barely defended against the glacial temperature. They had been built according to a single outdated model.
During the brief summer I would leave my father in his habitual retreat and leave the settlement to run after some idle ducks on the prairie. I hoped to reach them in their escape along the ground. My indolent neighbors never bothered to chase them.
I could try no other means of hunting the birds aside from catching them with my hands. I lacked a bow and a sling and rocks could not be found in that district.
My father ended up dying from an exiguous and tenacious fever. He had found himself in the case of drinking water from the swamps. His organism was reduced to the cavernous voice and brilliant eyes. He provided for my child’s disability until his final breath.
I would have perished from inanition had I not been succored by a military officer destined to be garrisoned in a more pleasant town, established in a spacious roadstead. He held my hand on the day of the burial and took me with him. The detractors called me the deported man’s son.
I grew up in the shadow of the charitable military officer. He would become violent when he saw me being slovenly and pusillanimous. I resisted following him when they took away his appointment and transferred him to a port on the Black Sea. Sorrow impeded him from speaking when he hugged me for the last time.
From that moment on I fell into mendacity. The advice I received from a dissolute man encouraged me in crime and brought me to prison. I dedicate the usual hours of the day to transporting heavy lifting stones to my shoulder.
The counselor of my misfortune visits me over the course of the immobile night, when I lie on the floor of my cell. He fascinates me in a peremptory manner with the sounds of his flute originating from a hanged man’s tibia.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
The village where I spent my childhood was never going to grow and become a city. The stone houses barely defended against the glacial temperature. They had been built according to a single outdated model.
During the brief summer I would leave my father in his habitual retreat and leave the settlement to run after some idle ducks on the prairie. I hoped to reach them in their escape along the ground. My indolent neighbors never bothered to chase them.
I could try no other means of hunting the birds aside from catching them with my hands. I lacked a bow and a sling and rocks could not be found in that district.
My father ended up dying from an exiguous and tenacious fever. He had found himself in the case of drinking water from the swamps. His organism was reduced to the cavernous voice and brilliant eyes. He provided for my child’s disability until his final breath.
I would have perished from inanition had I not been succored by a military officer destined to be garrisoned in a more pleasant town, established in a spacious roadstead. He held my hand on the day of the burial and took me with him. The detractors called me the deported man’s son.
I grew up in the shadow of the charitable military officer. He would become violent when he saw me being slovenly and pusillanimous. I resisted following him when they took away his appointment and transferred him to a port on the Black Sea. Sorrow impeded him from speaking when he hugged me for the last time.
From that moment on I fell into mendacity. The advice I received from a dissolute man encouraged me in crime and brought me to prison. I dedicate the usual hours of the day to transporting heavy lifting stones to my shoulder.
The counselor of my misfortune visits me over the course of the immobile night, when I lie on the floor of my cell. He fascinates me in a peremptory manner with the sounds of his flute originating from a hanged man’s tibia.
Las formas del fuego (1929)
{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }
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