Vicente
Gerbasi
Selections from a major poet reflect the vitality of
Venezuelan letters.
Vicente Gerbasi is considered by many to be one of the, foremost Venezuelan poets of the twenties century. When he began to write, his poetry, as well as that of other members of the Grupo Viernes (Friday Group) to which he belonged, reflected the influence of surrealism. Characteristics of the German romantics, and perhaps most especially of Rainer Maria Rilke for whom Gerbasi has a special admiration, also entered his work. Such tendencies can be seen in his early poems: Vigilia del Náufrago ( 1937), Bosque Doliente (1940), and Liras (1943). However, it was only after publication of his Poemas de la Noche y de la Tierra (1943) that his own voice began to come to the fore, although even this work is somewhat permeated by the fuller rhetoric and slightly artificial touch of his first poems.
With the appearance in 1945 of Mi padre, el inmigrante, a landmark of undeniable importance both for Gerbasi's poetry and for the entire poetic movement in Venezuela is established. In this long poem, the author effects a transformation of his father, an Italian immigrant settled in Venezuela, elevating his spirit to mythical levels. The opening and closing verse: "We came in the night and toward the night we are going," skillfully synthesizes the pervasive, principal motif of the art of Gerbasi, the cycle of birth and death, the endless change of nature in which human life is but one manifestation more. Death, which at times becomes converted into the individual death of Rilke, ceaselessly roams throughout all of Gerbasi's poetry. With this poem, the poet seems to have relieved himself of certain memories that tormented him and enters into a new stage of expression.
In Espacios Cálidos (1952), he pours himself into nostalgic reminiscences tenderly evoking the innocence of his childhood; or perhaps. it should be said of his two childhoods. It is characteristic of Gerbasi to superimpose two settings. that of the Venezuelan town of Canoabo where he was born. and that of the town of Vibonati in southern Italy. the birthplace of his father. As a child, his father sent him to Italy to complete his education and while there, he lived for a while in
Vibonati. The sun, the tropical magic. and the cultural echoes of the Mediterranean formed this poetry about his childhood.
Gerbasi has served in the diplomatic corps and the trips occasioned by this career have enriched his poetic motifs. From these came Poesía de Viajes ( 1968) and Olivos de Eternidad ( 1961) .The latter, an emotional evocation of biblical themes, draws upon a pilgrimage he made, a climb to the top of a hill in Jerusalem. with the aim of infusing his poetry with the spirit of the ancient world. In another work. Gerbasi explored the period of conquest in Venezuela's history to write Tirano de Sangre y Fuego (1955). about the Spanish conquistador. Lope de Aguirre.
Young poets in Venezuela admire and respect Gerbasi greatly. looking
to and receiving from him and his poetry the best of Venezuela's artistic traditions.
Ignacio Iribarren Borges
A well known literary critic, author of
The Poetry of Vicente Gerbasi (1972).
Former Venezuelan Ambassador to the Unites Sates,
Poetry translated by John Lyons
Lausanne: Winter 1966
I speak of sadness
as of the fruit that in winter
has remained alone in a damp and mossy
tree of the mountains.
I speak of sadness
as of the girl
who passes crestfallen
through the city of the bright lit river
beneath the wind that carries off the whistle
of the trains.
My sadness is beneath the lamp
when, looking at my shoes,
I remember my torn shoes,
while I hear the wind of the snow
among the trees.
Sweethearts
The faces of the sweethearts, on the grass,
glance, dispassionately, towards the thunder,
until they glisten in the rain
which makes the flowers tremble.
Between peach and almond trees
which in the gyre of the seasons
are robed in bees,
the sweethearts
are an endless instant,
the slumber of time
shaken in its own storm.
The lightning makes its getaway
between the rocks and the roosters.
Time sinks with branches and clouds
in the puddles which the rain abandons
close to the sweethearts
who timelessly forget
their own history,
discarded in the lightning
and to a taste of wild honeys.
Mist
The trees awaken enveloped
in a blanched nostalgia,
with a weariness of ragged paupers
beneath the snow.
Equally blanched, the gulls
gliding in a vast silence,
and if the breeze stirs the trees
or stirs a single flower,
it spurs them towards the sadness
with which the day is born.
There is mist in our senses
and on the sea,
and out of the sea mist
shady ships surge
as from the depths of a dream
and scarcely are seen the crosses
of the Nordic flags
which in times remote
went down in the waves
with the stern cargo of the heroes.
Thus the soul heroically
goes down in the Universe,
mid a vast mist of galaxies,
until gradually it hearkens to
the presence of God
who radiates in the boundlessness of his suns.
Return to the Village
The lightning reveals to me a display of palms,
an illumination of peasant festivity,
a milky light amid the scattered maize.
What day is this of fleeting deer in the gleaming
vegetation?
I am in the thirty seventh year of my skull,
read in the lines of my hand,
heard int he gloomy acoustic of my heart.
I see old wooden doors eaten away,
faces of maidens buried in handkerchiefs,
glossy dogs in the shade of the square.
I am in the middle of my age,
beyond the trees of the day,
where the birds gather to take shade.
where the rocks and ravines flare up,
in the warm lair of the snakes,
in an area of old faces,
huddled beneath the loneliness of the thunder.
Do I know even the course of my steps?
I know that I come from an avenue of tamarinds,
in whose shade the bones sleep.
Around my being the distances raise up cities,
temples of ancient stone,
bridges of silent architecture,
museums where the profiles are in tears.
deep bakeries where man kneads the paste of the night.
I am in the thirty seventh year of my skull,
in a solitary light of domestic animals,
by the door of my abandoned house.
Within the furniture shines like coffins.
In the yard, the orange trees gather their human shadows.
My skull. It's true. My skull.
Lit up by the lightning.
In the Forest Depths of the Day
The simple act of the spider who spins a star in the Shade,
the elastic step of the cat towards the butterfly,
the hand that slips along the warm back of the horse,
the sideral smell of the coffee flower,
the blue taste of the vanilla,
hold me back in the depths of the day.
There is a concave brilliance of ferns,
a resonance of insects,
a fluctuating presence of water in the stony nooks.
Here I recognize my age built from rustic sounds,
from orchid light,
from hot forest space,
where the woodpecker sounds the hour.
Here the dusk invents a crimson jewellery,
a constellation of glow worms,
a tumbling of bright leaves upon the senses,
upon the depths of the day,
where my wild bones are spellbound.
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