A new short by Omar Ramirez using a poem by Gustavo Thomas

Photograph by Omar Ramírez (Omar Ramirez © 2012)

 I knew about a loss and its pain, when I saw that image (posted above) depicting those moments in the life of someone very dear to me I could only write a poem about what this image evoked in me.

As the original poem is written in Spanish I'm publishing here both versions: the original one and an almost literal translation in English: 

Sigo tus pasos

Miro aquello que de tí me queda

y en tus olores me desvanezco;

no siento ya mi sombra,

que es tuya,

porque estoy solo,

porque tu color yo pierdo,

porque aquí sin forma 

tú,

descarnado me dejas.

(Gustavo Thomas © 2012)



Following your steps

I'm looking at that which I've left from you

and I lose myself in your smells.


I don't feel my shadow which is yours,

because I'm alone,

because I lose your color,

because here, shapeless,

you … leave me ...

fleshless.


(Gustavo Thomas © 2012)


Then Omar created his own poem in video, using my voice and the poem itself, which I greatly appreciate, because the product is absolutely beautiful and strong, very strong, and yet full of great tenderness.

Here you have the video:

Video: Volcano (Omar Ramírez © 2013)

 

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

A video with the poem "Hace Tanto" (It's been so long) (Read By Gustavo Thomas)

I've been recording in video some of my poems reading by me (in Spanish); first the reading and after the text. We'll see how it goes.

I'm a writer in Spanish so, my writings are in that language; sometimes I publish the translation to English, but sometimes not, it will be always an approximation to the original one.

Video of the poem "Hace tanto"

Hace tanto (Poema de y por Gustavo Thomas) from Gustavo Thomas on Vimeo.
Hace tanto

Possible translation:


It's been so long


It's been so long since I saw your breasts
uncovered when it dawns,
nor your smile when you see me
and those eyes closing again

I have lost your smell, or I mistake it,
 but not your sound that moans,
nor your hands that touch,
and those warm lips that welcome me./

I have them here.../

You're not who walks at my side anymore,
nor who sweats when I ejaculate tired

Woman, you're not anymore
she who receives my embrace!/

I don't have you here!/

I also know of something that I miss from you:
your buttocks, your feet so cold
and your hair so long./


Gustavo Thomas © September 2011
(Translated by Tadeo Berjon © 2012)

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

The Diva and The Poet (A Poem)

María Callas and Pier Paolo Pasolini walking near Nápoles, during the filming of Medea . 1970.*

THE DIVA AND THE POET*

Look at them both walking the dusty streets of the mythical Italy!

Smiling, with happy steps,  
living dreams others would soon shatter 
till they saw them both down, dead. 

She sings poems, shows her whole self off while in pain.  
He sings poetry, and dreams of handsome proletarians.

Oh, their feet are big,
as big as their amazed mouths!  

(Gustavo Thomas © 2012)
 

* This photogrpah has been published in several sites on the Net and none gives the author's name; if you know the name of the photographer, please, give it to me to put it as a credit.

 *Original in Spanish. Translation by Tadeo Berjon.

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

How do you defend yourself? (A poem by Gustavo Thomas)

*Translation from Spanish with Tadeo Berjon help.

 

How do you defend yourself?

I

How do you defend yourself from those creatures who are your fears,
from the waves of death and devastation feeding from your past?

Lashings and thrashings,
Body-torturing guilts,
those who deafen you with their screams.

How do you face the sorrow that surges
when the arm of the departed caresses
and you weep without knowing what it was?

 
II

How do you defend yourself from the permanence we experienced in the past?

The hands of your father, or your mother or any of your other dead,
anxiously scratching their head,
the sound from their nails reverberating in your dreams
unsettling you, awaking you surrounded by fear.

How do you look at you without seeing those who were before
in the reflection of the memories of your self, in your own desert?


III

How do you defend yourself from the wound you inflict upon your soul
every time you replay what you thought you'd long ago parted with?

You frown, you beat,
you shut your eyes, clench your eyelids tight,
you yelp as if scaring birds away from you,
with no sound
you live the memory of the other in the morass of your impotent praying.

Why do you hear what others have said only when you are calm? 


IV

Spirits inhabit my chambers too,
their warmth lingering on the objects,
I feel them tepid, like their forgotten portraits.

They're images in the window of my brain,
they harass,
feed from me,
chew my face off,
and feel under attack if I look at them.

From the void they enter my life in hordes,
and set camp for hours, and days...
some have lived during long years buried in my eyes,  
I suffer with their eternity pouring from me
while I frantically try to scratch them away.


Tell me, how do you defend yourself...?

Because I'm like a sepulcher for my own dead.

(Gustavo Thomas. June, 2012)

*

* The original in Spanish:

¿Como te defiendes?

I


¿Cómo te defiendes de esos seres que son tus miedos, de las olas de muerte y destrucción que comen de tu pasado?

Látigos y golpes,
culpas que torturan el cuerpo,
aquellas que te gritan y destrozan tus tímpanos.

¿Cómo enfrentas la tristeza que te invade
cuando el brazo del ya ido te acaricia
y lloras sin saber qué fue eso que te ha tocado?



II


¿Cómo te defiendes de la permanencia de aquello que ya vivimos?

Las manos de tu padre (o de tu madre o de cualquiera de tus muertos)
ávidas se rascan el cuero cabelludo,
el sonido de sus uñas reverbera en tus sueños
al grado que te altera hasta despertarte en miedo envuelto.

¿Cómo te miras sin ver frente a ti a los que te antecedieron
en ese reflejo que es tu recuerdo de ti mismo y en lo desierto?



III


¿Cómo te defiendes de la herida que te infringes a ti mismo
cada vez que vives esa imagen de la que ya te creías partido?

Frunces el ceño, das manotazos,
cierras los ojos, te aprietas los párpados,
truenas los labios como espantando pájaros,
sin sonido
vives la memoria de lo otro en la ciénaga de tu impotente rezo.

¿Por qué cuando te calmas escuchas lo que otros ya dijeron?



IV


En mí también los espíritus pueblan mis cuartos,
su temperatura queda en los objetos,
los siento tibios como sus olvidados retratos.

Son imágenes en la ventana de mi cerebro,
aparecen acosando,
se alimentan de mí,
mastican la carne de mi cara,
piensan que al verlos yo los ataco.

Entran por hordas y de la nada a mi vida,
se quedan por horas y por días;
algunos han vivido años enteros en mis ojos, enterrados,
sufro con su eternidad cayendo de mí
mientras me rasco enfebrecido para tirarlos.

Dime, ¿cómo te defiendes…?


Es que soy como un sepulcro de mis propios antepasados.



(Gustavo Thomas. Junio. 2011)

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

De sueño en sueño. A poem in voice and letters.

(Sorry, there is no translation of this poem yet)

De sueño en sueño

Image of De sueño en sueño

Y uno va así, de sueño en sueño, andando, saltando, volando,

viendo pasar la muerte de los otros en un rito incomprensible de cada noche,

de cada sueño, de cada sensación de letargo…

Uno va por ahí matando todo y a todos,

mira su tumba, la del amado, la del perdido, la del odiado.

Uno va de sueño en sueño rodando, con lágrimas que despiertan al otro,

con gritos que no dejan dormir,

y ese se sobresalta, y ese suda, y ese se levanta:

-está dormido- nos dicen, -déjalo soñar en paz, que está descansando-

Sí, uno va, de uno a otro, en una vida completa, entera, donde no más razonamos;

mitad de nuestra existencia o más, mucho más, que se siente plena;

una vida siempre más intensa, más amplia, más extensa,

y de ella sólo un vago intento de recuerdo,

un recuento que se difumina al hablarlo y en poco ya no lo recordamos…

Y sí, uno va así, de sueño en sueño, sin demora,

de sueño en sueño, con los brazos apretados, las rodillas doliendo y los dientes rechinando,

uno va, de sueño en sueño, palpitando hacia la muerte o hacia el sentirse despertando.




Gustavo Thomas
(Toronto, Canada. Septiembre, 2011)









Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

My blood has turned into ink...

Cocteau was right: 

"My blood has turned into ink". 

I'm ready to write anything, 

I have enough in my arms and legs.

Pain / Dolor (Photo Manipulation by Gustavo Thomas. 2011)

Cocteau avait raison

 "Mon sang est devenu de l'encre". 

Je suis prêt à écrire n'importe quelle chose, 

j'ai plein dans mes bras et jambes.

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

My body is a space (from my Butoh Vlog)

My body is a space/

ghosts are moving in it/

beings I invoke and convoke/

They travel from feet to head/

euphoric cry in my hands

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

Eleonora Duse watching Ibsen's window...

"La Duse watching Ibsen's window" (By Gustavo Thomas. 2011)

She was there when he was dying

but couldn't see him,

couldn't kiss him,

nor thanking him.

She was there, just waiting for him to appear

but he never did

She was there, just looking and waiting,

they say...

"Duse was visiting Norway for the first time, largely in the hope of meeting the dramatist who had provided her with her greatest triumphs. On her arrival she sent a letter and flowers to Ibsen asking if she might call merely to say "¨Thank you". Suzannah, however, telephoned that Ibsen was too ill to receive anyone. Lugné-Poe, who was with Duse at the time, tell what followed

I remember very well that morning when she had just received this sad message. I went in to her and found her swathed in the long white paladrane which she loved to wear. She sat fearful, annihilated, hollow-cheeked, her face tired and lined as though life was abandoning her. She asked me: "What shall I do? Please, what shall I do?"... What could I do for her? I had hoped so much, for her sake... Next morning, around noon Duse and i found ourselves outside Henrik Ibsen's house. She had bought Norwegian boots, for she wished to go there on foot. We walked round the left of the palace, and at the stroke of twelve we stood beneath the corner window, where, every day at this time, people could see Dr. Ibsen in person, sometimes with a secretary or someone at his side. Duse stood there waiting, in the cold and snow. Who, even thirty years later, would not be shaken by the memory of having been present at that sad and silent meeting? Eleonora Duse on the pavement, looking for the old poet's silhouette behind the big window."

Ibsen's Biography. By Michael Meyer.

My painting is based in a original photograph of Eleonora Duse taken for the production of Ibsen's play The Lady from the Sea.

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

"La danza del padre" Eleventh Movement: Le père meurt pour dernière fois.

I had delayed your death but today I am willing to assume it and write about it.

There was no last time for me:

Your trail is lost and the pain of a phone call does not change my hatred for you.

They say you died in your bed, of that which you had asked for so much,

of what you had rehearsed so much: "Le père au coeur" comes to my mind.

You left when you were already gone,

already lost from my heart

There was no pain for me.

Dying, I pictured you in your bed

looking at the sky, breathing hard,

and thinking, "am I playing again?"

Your dry lips, cold sweat on your forehead, your hand "au coeur" in a sign of pain.

Maybe an extra beat or an excessive rhythm alerted your truth;

you then surely felt fear, and no longer knew how to stop it,

you got lost in your barbaric game of rehearsals

and it alone, alone stopped, without you to help it.

Distant calls finally announced that you were finally gone.

Some brothers wept, while others prefered to remain silent.

I never knew whether God spoke with you again.

I, ... I think not.

Those had always been lies, nonsense of yours,

remains of a total lack of adventure in your life.

Two Ghosts of my Theatre ( A Dream)

For years I've had to deal with my ghosts, who are my dead ones.

Yesterday, in my dreams, I was visited by two of them:  teachers of art and of the spirit, beloved beings.

One of them was finally using his time to fulfill the desires he forgot for living just for theatre,

while the other one continued his work, searching.

Both had contact yesterday night; they met, they smiled as their heads touched in a strange, friendly greeting.

I was visiting the one that was still making theatre, now in a faraway country, with people of different tongues and different places.

While I was telling him the reason for my visit, he talked to me while his head turned, getting next to mine, following the movement, then we both talked and turned.

I told him of my experience during the years of life we exchanged, of how everything was a result of his steps.

I had forgotten all my recording instruments with which I work nowadays, and I could only assimilate things, with them, participating, living and acting.

My two ghosts left, they got lost in that world that is my dream, fading in my brain.

Awake, they now remain just as a memory.









(Translation by Tadeo Berjon)

In Anton’s Garden. The letters from Anton Chekhov and Olga Knipper.

(Translated from Spanish by Tadeo Berjón)


Anton Chekhov

"Who envelops you, beautiful Anton?"


More than 15 years ago I wondered about the mystery of his person and his writing, and at the same time I wrote:

¿Quién te envuelve, bello Antón?
Tu misterio se escribe en la cara.
Tus lentes, reflejo ríspido de soledad;
de ambición desmedida por la nada.

(Who envelops you, beautiful Anton?
Your mystery is written on your face.
Your glasses, rough reflection of loneliness;
of unbridled ambition for nothingness.)


I continuously looked at the only photo available in those times of no internet, I observed it trying to discover its hidden secrets behind the colourless image; his life came to my in small bits, all I knew about him were his theatre plays translated into Spanish.

Then I found some letters, very few short sentences about his life as a writer, advices for his brother, comments of his disgust towards certain freedoms the Moscow Art Theatre was taking with his plays.

And I kept coming back to that photo, and writing about it...

Sonrisa que no existe.
Monalisa rusa de color sepia.
Hombre-mujer. Impresión de pasividad.

(Smile that exists not.
Sepia coloured Russian Monalisa.
Woman-man. Impression of passivity. )


Yes, I didn’t see a sexual Chekhov, I didn’t seem him as open, or loving, or loved. He was just one image and chosen words for saying something; a strange combination of ideas superimposed on each other in my mind. And I still saw him as beautiful, him, the man.

¡Ay, bello Antón!

(Oh, beautiful Anton!)


And his plays...


Cada palabra desluce mis ironías;
tus diálogos desnudan mi alma,
su alma,
y la de los demás...

(Every word dulls my ironies;
your dialogues disrobe my soul,
his soul,
and that of the others...)

Cada palabra tuya espera,
se alarga en hermosos silencios;
cada palabra tuya también grita
si deseamos hacerla gritar.

(Each of your words waits,
elongates into beautiful silences;
each of your words also screams
if we want to make it scream.)


I was fascinated by the mystery, of course, of his work, of his secrets, of his immense fame. I ask myself, why, then, did I also see him as part of a failure?

¡Ay, Antón, que lloras y glorificas tu fracaso!

(Oh, Anton, you cry and glorify your failure!)


I knew of his repulse, of his continuous illness, of his remote life in a southern port of the then Russian empire.

I wrote poems dedicated to him and based on small stories and impressions from his work; little by little my reading repeated itself, his plays again and again, his stories again and again, his few letters once more; and when languages (English and French) made their appearance in my life, the different visions that translations into other languages bring to us, and with that the doors they open.

On December 2004 I decided to take a week to submerge myself completely in the French theatre of the moment; I had six apotheotical nights of theatrical performances, Le Cirque Antoine, three Peter Brook’s productions, Théâtre du Soleil and Arianne Mnouchkine, among others. I went to the theatre on the second floor of the Théâtre de Champs Élysées to watch, not without emotion, in a production directed by Peter Brook, Natasha Parry and Michel Piccoli, “Ta main dans la mienne”, a play based on the letters that Anton Chekhov and Olga Knipper wrote to each other for 6 years.

Video of Theatre des Champs Elysees: Ta main dans la mienne (December 2004)

“Lui : - Je prends votre main dans la mienne -
Elle : - C’est ainsi qu’il les a signées - ses lettres - ses lettres à Olga -
Lui : - 400 lettres. -
Elle : - 412 pour être exact - d’abord en amis -
Lui : - ensuite en amants -
Elle : - ensuite en mari et femme -
Lui : - une vie de passion en six courtes années -
Elle : - Il était écrivain -
Lui : - elle était actrice -
Elle : - et ils se sont rencontrés - comment se sont-ils rencontrés ? -
Lui : - J’ai oublié ! -
Elle : - C’était à une lecture - une lecture de La Mouette. Avril 1898 - tu t’en souviens?” (1)

The play presented to me, for the first time, a Chekhov in love, almost passionate about a woman (that was a surprise for me, of course), it presented, too, a Chekhov as an ordinary man, talking with less “Chekhovian sense”, well, not completely. For some (apparently obvious) reason, it was decided that the play be spoken mostly in the past tense; that made it Chekhovian, that made me lose he recently found man, it was as if it were a Chekhov written by Chekhov. But that didn’t keep me from enjoying it tremendously.

Something else from this mise-en-scene by Brook remained in my memory, Chekhov was old, very old; Michel Piccoli could barely stand, he was a man of wasted voice, an old man, and when he played a young man he seemed like an old man trying to feel youthful; Natasha Parry was also an older woman but, once you forgot her beautiful wrinkles, when she expressed her love, her adoring of the great author, with great subtleness, you forgot everything, she was Olga Knipper, who reminisced about those letters in her memories.

Anton Chekhov was then split into two in my memory’s image: a photo of a young man, maybe mature, with an air of loneliness and simplicity; and an acting of an old, live, loving man, who I’d seen die on stage.

An old Chekhov...?

In 2007, when retaking the text of the acting method of Antonio González Caballero, with all that part devoted to the naturalist current of modern acting proposed by Chekhov, I had to go back to the artist and the man, and to delve more deeply I ordered two books, “The Moscow Art Theatre Letters” and “Dear writer Dear Actress” (2), both compilations by Jean Benedetti. It was (as it remains) also the era of the flood of information and images that internet provides.

The book about the letter from the Moscow Art Theatre didn’t but corroborate my opinions and information about the opinion Chekhov had of his plays and of Stanislavsky himself, but it was “Dear Writer Dear Actress” which, along with the letters exchanged between Chekhov and Olga Knipper, that created a revolution in my perception of the man that wrote one the the most important groups of plays belonging to the universal theatre.

Love Letters of Anton Chekhov & Olga Knipper

Having turned forty, I would wake up almost before dawn with a strange feeling of apparently endless youth; confused, I’d look at myself in the mirror and was surprised by what nature, genetics and exercise maintained in my body and face; that was the time I read that Chekhov felt old at the same age... at forty, at my forty... Ill with tuberculosis he saw life leave while love arrived with all its power; locked in a boring, uneducated and lonely Yalta, his writings enjoyed a success he himself simply could not enjoy.

Only irony saved his mind.

“My little doggie” (“¡Mi perrita!”, how rude that sounds in Spanish!) was how he called, amongst dozens of other ridicule pet names, Olga Knipper, his beloved wife. In a 6 year-long love they met just a few times, and I strongly believe that that’s what kept their love alive while it lasted. Little sex, yes, but intense when it happened, sex that left them expecting a son, miscarried, who was supposed to be called Pamphil.


Letters upon letters show us how strange it was to depend on mail in those times; between Yalta, Moscow and Saint Petersburg, between Nice, Naples and Rome. Letters that arrive weeks late, some that arrive earlier than others, answers to others from weeks before...

-Why haven’t you written?-
-But I’ve sent you letters twice a day!-,
-Don’t be sad.-,
-I’m not sad, I wrote that in a different letter; now I’m happy-,
-I hear you’re ill-,
-I don’t have any health problems now-,
-Don’t send letters to Rome, send them to Naples; I haven’t been able to receive any from you.-


... A wonderful world of sentimental misunderstandings that never become a vaudevil, as it doesn’t happen either in his “comedies”.

Letters that presented a delicious Chekhov that washes little, that washes his hair even less, but who changes clothes somewhat more often; who enjoys a friendly dog until the dog prefers to sleep in his mother’s room. Chekhov, the man, lives the strange and tragic love of a young man that lives like an old one, who can’t go up the stairs, who suffers from colds, indigestion, continuous diarrhea, and an actress wife who parties and miscarries his son. A man who loves flowers, who devotes himself to a garden that sometimes goes crazy with tropical flair and other times remains as boring and dry as his neighbours in Yalta.

Those letters showed me also a Chekhov friend, worried for the health of Tolstoy and for the folkloric shirts of Gorky, for the lack of talent of his dear Nemirovich Danchenko and his wife’s worries; he is a man that dreams with a dacha near Moscow and with enjoying the silly and intellectual nights of a big city. Chekhov is a man of national fame but completely ignored internationally, who can travel through Europe and go to the theatre and not be recognised by anybody; he jokes with his wife for her being an actress that, thanks to a soon-to-be contract, would become as famous as Sarah Bernhardt.

Chekhov in his letters is a forgotten man in a small and remote world, old, sick, a smiling and ironical man that takes pleasure in seeing how people live while his wife reads or sings at his side. A man who constantly loses faith in his writing and suddenly becomes big with confidence once he finishes a play.


Chekhov, from what I read and I can read, was a man who, when he died, said a sentence in German and had a bit of champagne...

*

And today, watching his photograph again, I can write:

En el jardín de Antón

¿Quién te envuelve, bello Antón?

Tu misterio se escribe en tu cara.
Tus lentes, reflejo ríspido de soledad;
de ambición desmedida por la nada.

Sonrisa que no existe,
como una Monalisa rusa de color sepia.
Eres un hombre-mujer,
impresión de eterna pasividad.

¡Ay, bello Antón!

Cada una de tus palabras desluce mis ironías.
Tus diálogos desnudan mi alma,
su alma,
y el alma de los demás.

Cada una de tus palabras espera,
se alarga en hermosos silencios.
Si queremos las hacemos gritar.

Grita diciendo uno o dos...

¡Ay, Antón que lloras y glorificas al fracaso!
¡Revolucionario de 40 años que a nadie mató!

In Anton’s Garden

Who envelops you, beautiful Anton?

Your mystery is written on your face.
Your glasses, rough reflection of loneliness;
of unbridled ambition for nothingness.

Smile that exists not.
Sepia coloured as Russian Monalisa.
You’re a woman-man,
Impression of eternal passivity.

Oh, beautiful Anton!

Every word dulls my ironies;
your dialogues disrobe my soul,
his soul,
and that of the others...

Each of your words waits,
elongates into beautiful silences;
if we want we make it scream.

Scream saying one or two...

Oh, Anton, you cry to and glorify failure!
40 year revolutionary who nobody killed!





(1) Original text of "Ta main dans la mienne"
(2) “Dear Writer Dear Actress” The Love letters of Anton Chekhov & Olga Knipper. Selected, edited and translated by Jean Benedetti. Methuen. U.K. 2007.

"The Roses of Heliogabalus" and inspiration through painting.

"The Roses of Heliogabalus" (1888) by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema

“The Roses of Heliogabalus” (1)

Let me paint flowers and men, some death and joy.
No! Let me listen to soft music and write about it.

I also want to see my naked eyes, without colours,
without eyelashes that float and envelop me;
I want to see men running to save themselves, and then... to sleep.

Let me feel a smile for what they say about you,
and see those flowers that they say you let drop from heaven.

I want to see your painters and poets,
I want to listen to those narrators that don’t know how to sing.

I want to see kerchiefs and roses!

...millions of roses falling.

Let me see your flowers, your men and your stories,
and so I can inspire myself on death and the past.

Let me see your painting coloured in shades of red,
and of pink and violet,
then lick your dirty hands,
then lick your mind too,

... is that possible?

I have eyes no more, don’t be afraid,
I will only be able to hear your sketching,
I will only feel your breath while painting.

I want to write some more, but my hands become tense!

Without you,
... I walk like a handicap on the passage to the mythical world.

So let me stay here, since I don’t harm,
I only want to see what I cannot see without you

*

About half a year ago the modern art museum of Beijing hosted an exhibition of the collection of Pérez Simón: “Masterpieces of the 19th Century European Paintings at the Pérez Simón Collection”. It was the first time I was going to look at, with some awareness, some of the originals of the most famous paintings by the so called pre-raphaelites and classical victorian artists. Tales, novels, simple stories and myths, cinema itself, legends from old Europe, all of them gathering before me as images. The experience of the exhibition became a feast of figures, colours and textures, and I was overwhelmed by the beauty and finesse of the paintings and the stories flowing from them.

Walking along the exhibition I remembered some words my teacher, a writer as well as a painter, once said to me about those victorian painters: that they were immensely famous in their time and Oscar Wilde (who was an art critic as well) dedicated whole pages to them, but once the impressionists made their appearance, they all disappeared from the map. I didn’t know what to think, I love impressionists and I simply could not compare; what I saw now, in those forgotten artists of the 19th century, was completely different; I was discovering a new world, a world that inspired me to action, theatrical action.

Lovers of history and detail, the victorian painters of the 19th century were closer to photography and the soon-to-come cinema than to the theatre of their time (in fact, what they were close to was to literature and the myth that derived from it); their epic was atmospheric, their action was dream-like. In their paintings what is shown is the before or the after, not the decisive moment; the massacre doesn’t take place, it’s the road leading to it that is important, it’s the preparatory action to the brutal action, as if Chekhov had wanted (and he did it) to write a poem about a scene taking place before his most dramatic scene...

That’s why I enjoyed it so much, because, being a stage-oriented person, I could still perceive the dramatic action in unbearably beautiful surroundings, in this case in a delayed dramatic action, submerged in silence, a most beautiful subtle action.

“The Roses of Heliogabalus” was etched unto my mind, I’ve dreamt about it and I’ve woken up many mornings looking at it and trying to write a play thanks to the inspiration it’s left me; flowers that kill the guests, tragedy in an empire, passions and indulgence. Petals, soft gestures, music and incredibly beautiful textures (2)... Some scenes have surfaced, still few, but it doesn’t matter, something more complete will arrive when the time comes.

For the time being, a poem is what came from it, and is now my best memory and my best way of sharing.

(1) Translation by Tadeo Berjón. The original is in Spanish:

Déjame pintar flores y hombres, un poco de muerte y de gozo.
¡No!, déjame escuchar música suave y escribir sobre ella.

Quiero también ver mis ojos desnudos, sin colores,
sin pestañas que floten y me envuelvan;
quiero ver hombres corriendo para salvarse, y después... dormir.

Déjame sentir una sonrisa por lo que cuentan de ti,
y ver esas flores que dicen dejas caer del cielo.

Quiero ver a tus pintores y poetas,
quiero escuchar a esos narradores que no saben cantar.

¡Quiero ver pañuelos y rosas!

... millones de rosas que caen.

Déjame ver tus flores, tus hombres y tus historias,
y así inspirarme en la muerte y en el pasado.

Déjame ver tu cuadro pintado en rojos,
y en rosas y en violetas,
entonces lamer tus manos sucias,
entonces lamer tu mente también,

... ¿es posible?

Ya no tengo ojos, no temas,
sólo podré escuchar tus trazos,
sólo sentiré tu aliento al pintar.

Quiero escribir un poco más pero, ¡mis manos se tensan!

Sin ti,
... camino como un lisiado en el pasaje al mundo mítico.

Por eso déjame estar aquí, que no hago daño,
que sólo quiero ver lo que no puedo ver sin ti.


(2) Contrary to many other paintings where photography improves on the colours or dimensions of the original painting, in this case, the original of “The Roses of Heliogabalus” is truely impressive. Take the photograph I’m publishing as a simple visual reference point.