Merano. [Febrero, 1930] / José Antonio Ramos Sucre

Merano. [February, 1930]*

Mister Luis Yépez, General Consul of Venezuela.
Geneva. Rue du Rhône, 39.

Dear Luis:

     I’m here in Merano at your command. I arrived the day before yesterday via Munich and I’m living in the Stephanie sanatorium. I hope to see what path this horrible disease takes. The doctors in Hamburg, among them a specialist in nervous illnesses, examined me from head to toe and can only find a deep debility. The director of the sanatorium here says the same thing.
     I feel as though I’m gravely wounded. I can spend hours at a time in bed without any movement and without trying to get up. I warn you there’s nothing pleasant about the feeling of debility. I expect this whole process will lead me to consumption.
     I’ve discovered a vestige of Goethe here, the street with his name, and I’ve added this find to the memory of Manuel Díaz Rodríguez, who once talked to me about the ethnic composition of the Tyrol. Many Slavs. The German poet must have lived here on his way to Italy. I don’t have the means of verifying this conjecture. I precisely remember his stay in Trento, where he discovered only a single distinguished building: a palace attributed to the devil, that he’d built in a single night.
     I’m sorry that my absence is prolonged and tell Blanco that I’m not in Hamburg. I’d like to spend at least a month here. I count on your generosity. I have a few cents left from the monthly pay you sent me.
     My apologies to Zumeta and Hurtado Machado. The treatment doesn’t let me write them. I don’t have time.
     I uncover myself to your wife and I hug and kiss your children.
     Send me.

J.A.R.S.




*Luis Yépez gave seven letters from Ramos Sucre to Rafael Ángel Insausti for their transcription and publication in the anthology Los aires del presagio (1960). This one wasn’t dated, but Ramos Sucre left for Merano during the first week in February, after the 5th; which means it must have been written during the second week of the month. All the letters to Luis Yépez were handwritten and signed, the first one “José Antonio Ramos Sucre,” but the following ones just “José Antonio” or “J.A.R.S.”




{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra poética, Edición crítica de Alba Rosa Hernández Bossio, Madrid: Colección Archivos, 2001 }