Poets of Sucre
As many of you know, I live in Venezuela, specifically in a state called Sucre and in the capital of that state, Cumaná. Cumaná is a fishing town, bordered by an immense blue sea. It is crossed by a river called Manzanares and although it is now in total abandonment, it was once a pioneer city in culture and history. Considered the first city of the American continent, it has been the cradle of heroes who fought for the independence of America, such as the Grand Marshal Antonio José de Sucre. It is also the mother of many important poets of the country, as they are: Andrés Eloy Blanco, Cruz Salmerón Acosta and José Antonio Ramos Sucre. I will talk about them today.
I have known the poet Andrés Eloy Blanco since I was born. I remember my grandmother, an Indian with long braids, singing songs to me that were poems by Andrés Eloy Blanco, so it's not strange that she memorized some of his poems. Andrés Eloy Blanco is considered the poet of the people. He was a lawyer, writer and politician, born in Cumaná on August 6, 1897. Along with his career as a writer, he was also a great social fighter who always sought democracy in Venezuela. For this reason, from a very young age he dedicated himself to political activity, opposing the regime that wielded power at the time, which led him to remain in exile for a long time. The themes of his poems can range from love, politics, social issues, to talking about the culture and traditions of our country.
Once, as a very young girl, I won a contest proclaiming one of her most famous poems: Paint Me Little Black Angels, considered an anthem against racial discrimination. One of her verses reads like this:
Painter born in my land,
with the foreign brush,
painter that you follow the course
of so many old painters,
even though the Virgin is white,
paint me little black angels.
I am not exaggerating when I say that Andrés Eloy Blanco is one of the best known poets in our country. I have heard children recite their long poems from memory to earn a little money on tourist tours around Venezuela, and I have seen on some walls of some cities, stanzas of their most famous poems.
The poet who continues is Cruz Salmerón Acosta. I met this writer late. I remember that I was a young woman when I went for the first time to his house, which is located half an hour from my city and to get there I must make a boat trip. It is a very humble house that the people of the town of Manicuare have kept almost intact. This is perhaps one of those characters that we should review the life of because it is interesting. Of him we can say that he is considered the poet of martyrdom, that because he was diagnosed with leprosy, the personal doctor asked him to leave his studies and return to his village. After the government of that moment decided to close the university where he was studying, Cruz Salmerón Acosta returns to his village and takes refuge in a little house that was built away from the village and where he lived the last fifteen years of his life. I remember going to that small and remote house, but at the same time so close to nature.
It is said that Salmerón Acosta was in love with Conchita Bruzual, to whom he dedicated the most beautiful and passionate poems. When we read his texts we find that there is much of the landscape that he could see from the isolation of the house, but also from the impossible love that Cruz Salmerón Acosta felt for his beloved. In one of his most famous poems, Azul, we can perceive this dichotomy:
Blue of the landscapes of Abrileños,
sad blue of my lyrical daydreams,
that calms my intimate jitters.
You only anguish me when I suffer cravings
to kiss the blue of those eyes
that mine will never behold again.
During the month of July 1929, Manicuare lived a great drought, while the poet was dying. On the one hand, the whole town renounced God, but on the other they asked for a miracle. The poet, who was already considered a saint, told him that the moment he died, it would rain. And so it was. On July 29, 1929, the poet closed his eyes and it rained in Manicuare, on the land there was a biblical flood that still remains in the memory of the elders. I remember that the first time I went to Manicuare was at an event commemorating the poet's death, and that day it rained torrentially.
The last poet I will tell you about is one of the most important poets in Venezuela and one of the best known internationally: José Antonio Ramos Sucre. Undoubtedly, to speak of Ramos Sucre is to speak of a visionary man, misunderstood, ahead of his time, with an impressive genius, but with a life that marked him to death. To speak of his work is to speak of his fears, his monsters, his life.
I began to read this poet when I entered university. His poems written in prose became for me an enigma and a fascination. I was so interested that I visited his birthplace, which preserves a colonial style. There I found furniture belonging to the family, a museum where photos, books and some of the poet's manuscripts are exhibited. It is a beautiful and spacious house, with interior gardens and large windows. To see that house is to imagine a life full of joys and mischief, a life different from the one the poet lived.
He was oppressed by an uncle and a perfectionist mother, of whom he remembers only punishments and orders, as they believed that punishment was the best way to impose respect and conduct. But in spite of all this, he was a studious child, ahead in his studies, healthy, strong. We know about the negative feelings he experienced and everything he suffered through his poems and letters. One of them says:
I spent days and days without going out into the street and then I was assaulted by desperate accesses and spent hours crying and laughing at the same time. I hate the people in charge of raising me.
Sick, suffering from an insomnia of a thousand moons, and reluctant to continue suffering, on June 9, the day of his birthday, José Antonio Ramos Sucre closed the door of his room in Geneva and accompanied by his books by Dante, Virgilio, Goethe, he took a full bottle of veronal. Although the doctors did the impossible, and after several suicide attempts, Ramos Sucre had succeeded: he had ended his life and his suffering.
When I remember my childhood and my education, when I see my environment full of books, poets and great writers, I think that it is not fortuitous that I love poetry and the arts so much. My heart thaws with every verse, every book I read, as if I were setting in the sun of this land where I was born. To live in the state of Sucre is to love the sea, the sun and poetry. I am a proud and rebellious daughter of this people of poets.
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BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCE
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9s_Eloy_Blanco
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruz_Salmer%C3%B3n_Acosta
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Antonio_Ramos_Sucre
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