Hamburgo, 5 de enero de 1930 / José Antonio Ramos Sucre

Hamburg, January 5th, 1930

Mr. César Zumeta, Minister of Venezuela.
Paris.

Don César:

I will begin by telling you the don is well donated and that my last name doesn’t lend itself to spiritual word play. It’s worth repeating I’ve professed an invariable sympathy towards you since my childhood and no cause will keep me from cultivating it. I feel honored to have a superior of your qualities.
     The General Consulate of Venezuela here gave me a letter from you and I’m now responding with these inarticulate lines. I beg your understanding for a person afflicted by agonizing insomnias, direct enemies of my mental faculties. It seems a tropical parasite has precipitated this ruin —and I inherit the insomnia and have suffered it for the past eight years.
     I protest that my illness won’t stop me from satisfying my superiors.
     During the insomnia last night I examined a short novel by Goethe, an episode inserted in Wilhelm Meister, and whose name is Bekenntnisse einer Schönen Seele. If you were here, we could admire together that poet’s ability to describe the scruples of a nostalgic soul, agitated by theological restlessness. No critic of Goethe has ever mentioned that brief moment in Wilhelm Meister. At least, I don’t know of any reference from any commentator. Here Goethe differs from the pantheist and the naturalist.
     In conclusion, I promise to go to Paris and give you a hug.
                                                                                     JOSÉ ANTONIO RAMOS SUCRE




Los Aires del Presagio, ed. Rafael Ángel Insausti, 2nda ed. (Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1976)




{ José Antonio Ramos Sucre, Obra completa, edición de José Ramón Medina, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1989 }