Poetics of the Ruins
Until then, solitude had been considered something frightening, but Christians found a thousand charms in it. The anchorites wrote about the sweetness of the rock and the delights of contemplation.
The Spanish philosopher María Zambrano has a very beautiful essay entitled "The ruins" (belonging to her book Man and the Divine), and there she reflects poetically:
The ruins are the most living thing in history, because only that which has survived its destruction, that which has remained in ruins, lives historically.
Because ruin is only the trace of something human defeated and then victor of the passage of time.
Something divine emanates from every ruin, something different that springs from the very entrails of human life.
Therefore, I have wanted to give you this modest photographic work of my own, with photos taken by me in the Castle of Araya (Sucre State, Venezuela), in which I recreate this image of the ruins, and I accompany them with poetic texts.
The photos were taken with a Kodak EasyShare CD82 camera.
What destiny in the matter of things
left in them the form of my life
until I look at your well of absences?
Eugenio Montejo
The stones have been heated in the sun,
in the vapours condense
ghosts I imagine.
Elisabetta Balasso
Dream of the inhabitant
Memory Transfer Stone
worn down by the dull rumor of time
and the perfume of dead consciences
Saltpetre dwelling everlasting
You'll end up as a seed of yourself.
echo and shadow of your own exile
Or you'll go back to the night of your dreams
flooded with waves
and filled with rain
of the old shooting stars
(a Marc de Civrieux and Gisela Barrios)
José Malavé
Bibliographic references
Balasso, Elisabetta (2000). The ruins. Venezuela: Edit. Art.
Jauss, Hans Robert (1976). The history of literature as provocation. Spain: Edit. Península.
Malavé, José (1991). Shadow Breviary. Venezuela. Caljars-Conac.
Montejo, Eugenio (1982). Absolute tropic. Venezuela: Edit. Fundarte.
Zambrano, María (1973). Man and the Divine (2nd ed.). México: Fondo de Cultura Económica.
