José Antonio Ramos Sucre (Venezuela)
1890-1930
José
Antonio Ramos Sucre was born to an aristocratic family in the port city of
Cumaná, in the state of Sucre. He was a direct descendant of the revolutionary
Antonio José de Sucre, one of the founding fathers of Venezuelan independence.
From a young age he stood out as an exceptionally gifted student. In 1910 he
moved to Caracas to study Law at the Universidad Central de Venezuela.
In 1917 he received his Law degree
although he never practiced that profession. From his university days onwards,
he worked as a high school teacher of History, Geography, Latin and Greek. He
also worked as a translator and interpreter for the Venezuelan State
Department. It was during his time as a university student that Ramos Sucre
began to publish essays and poems in various Caracas newspapers and magazines.
He gained a reputation as a brilliant scholar among his friends, acquaintances
and students. Throughout these years in Caracas he taught himself several languages
and was an omnivorous reader, often ordering books of literature, philosophy,
history and mythology directly from European booksellers.
It was in Caracas that the legend now
surrounding Ramos Sucre began to take shape. His texts appeared frequently in
newspapers and magazines and were unlike anything else being published at the
time. Various critics and fellow poets referred to them as prose poems,
although that category has never been able to encompass the flexibility and
uniqueness of his writing. He suffered from anxiety, depression and an insomnia
that would torment him mercilessly throughout most his short life. The poet
Fernando Paz Castillo (1893-1981) recalled how he would sometimes accompany his
former teacher during his nightly walks throughout Caracas, one of the means he
used to combat his insomnia. Paz Castillo remembered that Ramos Sucre once
confided to him: “This insomnia will end up killing me.”
Ramos Sucre self-published all four of his
books, beginning with the compilation of articles, aphorisms and prose poems
called Trizas de papel [Paper Shreds] in 1921. Although that
book received no reviews, his subsequent publications were noticed by a small
but influential group of readers. Yet Ramos Sucre always seemed to live in a
dimension all his own, even though he could be seen walking throughout Caracas
or gathering with other intellectuals in Plaza Bolívar, the city’s central
square. The poet Juan Sánchez Peláez (1922-2003), for instance, recalled seeing
Ramos Sucre sitting in Plaza Bolívar once, as he walked through there with his
parents.
At the end of 1929, Ramos Sucre published
his two final books and moved to Europe, where he had been offered a job at the
Venezuelan consulate in Geneva. His last months in Europe were torturous,
however, as the insomnia and anxiety that had plagued him for so many years
began to tax his mind and body. He spent time at sanatoriums in Hamburg and
Northern Italy in an attempt to cure his insomnia, but these therapies were
unsuccessful. On March 18th he attempted suicide but eventually awakened from
an overdose of barbiturates. On June 9th he turned 40 and upon returning home
from work ingested another overdose of drugs. He died on June 13th. His remains
arrived in Venezuela on July 17th and he was buried in Cumaná a few days later.
-Guillermo
Parra
BOOKS OF POETRY
Trizas
de papel (1921); La Torre de Timón (1925); El
cielo de esmalte (1929); Las formas del fuego (1929).
A
definitive edition of Ramos Sucre is Obra completa, prólogo de José
Ramón Medina y cronología de Sonia García (Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989),
which is available for free in PDF format at the publisher’s web site:
http://bibliotecayacucho.gob.ve/fba/index.php?id=97&backPID=87&begin_at=64&tt_products=73
For those who read Spanish, the Venezuelan scholar Víctor Azuaje writes an
excellent blog on Ramos Sucre called Ramossucreana:
The
following text is a brief analysis of Ramos Sucre by the Venezuelan poet and
critic Juan Calzadilla (1931), from his book Libro de las poéticas (Caracas:
Fundación Editorial el Perro y la Rana, 2006).
Ramos Sucre, A Character from His Own Work?
Ramos Sucre is a creator of myths, who has become finally, in person, a myth. A
creator to whom people have wanted to attribute the lives of his characters, as
though poetry could become reality outside of fiction and get mixed up with the
author’s life merely because people make the latter material for literary
speculation. When what is really of concern is the text.
I am of the opinion that dramatizes the
“heartrending tones” of his poetics, although I don’t deny that the gloom we
find in his poems is autobiographical by nature, which somehow explains how the
poet’s suffering, registered in his texts, would have led him to suicide when
he was forty. But I think, as Michaux did, that one writes for the sake of
health. The game and the pleasure that writing satisfies compensate in the
poet’s case for the pain and bitterness of life, although they don’t substitute
them; that’s why I don’t think Ramos Sucre required a confessional need to
reach a heartrending tone, since that tone actually corresponds to an aesthetic
feeling paired alongside the way, formally speaking, the poet knew how to
attribute greater poetic efficiency.
The suffering of Ramos Sucre is that of
someone who experiences evil as much as he is a victim of it. But it is also
someone who experiences pain as an awareness of the world.
The poet is in the world because of evil.
He is excluded from it by suffering. He is provisionally captured by love
(while alive).
– Translated
from the Spanish by Guillermo Parra
The City
I used to
live in an unhappy city, divided by a slow river, pointed towards infinity.
Still trees on the banks robbed the sun of a difficult sky.
I would
await the end of a wasted day, interrupted by the sounds of the squall. I would
leave my house turned aside in search of the afternoon & its sights.
The
declining sun painted the city of offended ruins.
Birds flew
above to rest further on.
I felt
strangled by life. The ghost of a woman, the height of bitterness, followed me
with unmistakable steps, a sleepwalker.
The sea
frightened my withdrawal, undermining the earth in the secret of night. A
breeze confused the trees, blinded the bushes, finished in a tired flower.
The city,
worn by time & greeted by a bend in the continent, kept common custom. It
told of water vendors & beggars versed in proverbs & advice.
The wisest
of them insisted upon my attention by referring to the likeness of a Hindu
fable. He succeeded in speeding the course of my thoughts, returning me to my
memory.
The hour
before dawn my fever vanished, cutting loose the madness of a scattered dream.
–Translated from the Spanish by Cedar Sigo & Sara Bilandzija
(from La
Torre de Timón, 1925)
Life of
the Damned
I suffer
from illustrious decline; I love pain, beauty & cruelty, above all the last
which destroys a world abandoned to evil. I always imagine further pain, live
wounds.
I saved
the hard parts of childhood, the withered faces of my grandparents who died in
this spacious house after a long illness. I recreate the scene of their burials
which I witnessed pure & shocked.
Since
then, mine is a critical unholy soul living on the battleground of human &
godly powers, driven by a mania of questions. This insatiable curiosity brought
academic triumph then a fleeting & corrupt life upon leaving the classroom.
I hate especially my fellow men who inspire a fascist word within me. I confess
that in the bored days of my youth my discordant & private nature resulted
in drag out fights & drew forth a wit from the loosest women who frequent
buildings of danger & deviation.
Unseduced
by worldly pleasures, I returned by chance to solitude, much before the end of
my youth. I withdrew to my native city, removed from progress, among the dead.
Since then I have not left this mansion’s shadow. Behind the house flows a thin
river of ink, saved from the light by a spot of trees, torn by a furious wind,
born of the driest mountain. An oxen cart passes slowly across the deserted
road in front of the house, in imitation of an Etruscan country scene.
Curiosity
misled me into an unfortunate marriage. I married a young woman whose body
mirrored mine, save for one unique improvement. I treated her with scorn, loved
her as I would a collapsible doll. I soon became bored with the childish, often
bothersome creature & decided to just kill her in order to learn more.
I directed
her towards an empty ditch in the yard of our home. I carried an iron block in
my hand & used it to club her once above the ear. The girl fell upon her
knees in the hole, shrieking weakly, such an idiot. I covered her with dirt
& that night sat alone at the table toasting her absence.
That night
and many others that followed a sudden brilliance illuminated my bedroom,
banishing any thought of sleep. I began to lose my strength, became thin &
pale. To distract myself I rode away on horseback towards the outskirts of the
city through blank countryside. I would rest beneath the same ancient tree, the
right sort of place to meet with your mistress. During these rests I could hear
scattered & confused murmurs, incapable of true articulation. For days I
stayed beneath the tree, my reason became blinded – a nervous breakdown. I
awoke nailed to this round chair in the care of my loyal servant who defended
me when I was young.
I pass the
time in anxious silence, the bottom half of my body covered in a wide blanket.
I wish to die & seek dark suggestions, next to me a candelabra (from the
attic) is burning.
It is
there that the spectre of my woman returns to visit. She walks toward me,
vengeful hands in the air, my servant is cornered in fear. But I will not
abandon this mansion until I succumb to the bitter ghost. I want to escape
mankind even after death & have ordered this mansion destroyed the day after
I die, in a tornado of fire together with my body.
– Translated from the Spanish by Cedar Sigo & Sara Bilandzija
(from La
Torre de Timón, 1925)
The Beloved
The
beautiful girl holds a vigil and defends my life from within an orbital temple,
circular with its seven columns.
Her
imperious voice descends, because of me, to the modulations of song.
I emerged
comforted by her presence, carrying a branch of cedar by her decree.
I
descended a mountainous trail to the ocean shore, where my barque balanced
itself.
The
canticle kept sounding, ascendant and magnificent. It paralyzed nature in its
course. It inspired me to save the zone from the squall.
The sun
stood still, for hours on end, peeking over the line of the horizon.
–Translated
from the Spanish by Guillermo Parra
(from Las
formas del fuego, 1929)
Misplacement
I have
followed the steps of a pensive woman. I was seduced by the black eyes and the
strange whiteness of the face.
An illness
had made me lose interest in life.
I wandered
through a series of streets shorn of stones and immersed in darkness. I
indolently gave myself over to danger.
I have
reached the suburb of her home. The moon fascinates me imperiously.
I have
witnessed the parade and gathering of ambiguous figures. They all displayed the
pensive woman’s profile and surrounded me, forming a chorus of threats and
lamentations.
I went
back to the city’s central square, leaning on a night watchman’s arm. Despite
the late hour, I visited the room where I was accepted in good standing. The
windows leaked a profuse light onto the street.
Wordlessly,
I incorporated myself to the discourse of the incredulous priests.
–Translated
from the Spanish by Guillermo Parra
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