By Eduardo Garcia Aguilar
Thursday night, right in November, the House of Poetry Silva was left without light and went back to the old days when the very English Santa Fe de Bogota was a remote village in the Andes, cold and almost inbred, who stood outside world events, but from there ruled the country with slow elephant.
piedracielista The famous poet Arturo Ramírez Camacho ancianísimas brought together people from high society call Bogota, even survivors of those old days when Bogotá, in the twentieth century, it remained a village " cops "watching from above the inhabitants of the distant provinces and "Patojos" of sandals and ponchos that clung to the skirts of what we now call the Old Candelaria.
Fortunately the old Santa Fe de Bogotá of the times of the poet José Asunción Silva, Miguel Antonio Caro and Cuervo brothers is still alive and is preserved in time, so one place that is still standing Silva House Poetry those pictures on the walls yellow give a family resemblance to the history of Colombian poetry, poetry always shy, self-sufficient, rhetoric, beyond the tides of the world, to the air of modernity and the overall release of the floor, away from the stuffy, starch and moths.
When you walk down those corridors cold and see the tiles that made the unfortunate poet, imitator of the French Symbolists and see the pictures of the piedracielistas than half a century after it reigned in Colombia, led by its leader, Jorge Rojas, or pictures of the shy Aurelio Arturo, a pastuso miraculously slipped into the Parnassus Bogota, or Gonzalo Arango, the rebel Nadaísta Antioquia's crazy or Raul Gomez Jattin Cartagena, one is prepared to be tolerant of in this world that only survive in Colombia: the pompous poetry love, patience to hear long speeches or poetry readings, and Medellin, where thousands of people in the rain may go hungry to applaud the bards of the world.
Now that all of Colombia is under water and never stops raining in the territory covered by successive layers of cold dark clouds, even in traditionally hot places such as coastal or river basins, suddenly feel that life has changed little and that indifference is hidden in the national poverty thrive everywhere. And finally, Colombia is a village.
From Santa Fe Grammar aristocratic few white families, allied with priests and soldiers sent home, indifferent to the distant provinces, but excited about poetry and Latin.
Seeing so many gentlemen Bogota headed by former President Ernesto Samper and Álvaro Castaño patriarch, founder of the HJCK miraculous and suddenly in the public, together, the incredible Otto Morales Benitez former presidential candidate Carlos Gaviria of the Democratic Pole, one identifies with the whole world that we felt gone or only refuge in the bookstores.
Are such horrors that the country has experienced recently at the hands of emerging and such is the intolerance of the cave in Colombia Laureano times and Urdaneta, the Liberals present at the tribute to Arturo Ramírez Camacho seemed to us something tender in a world where poetry has been banished definitely fast money, careerism, the implacable law of death, or the fierce competition between the national best-sellers of our time.
And curiously was light in the house, so that all arrangements of Don Álvaro Castaño went to fret and Pedro Alejo Gomez, the son of writer Pedro Gómez Valderrama, cats were seen to illuminate the leaves while they read the celebrants hanging lamps flickered , rocked by a wind of ice.
The corridors were full of candles in pots and all walked like ghosts carrying her candle each, matched spectra Silva, Rafael Pombo and Miguel Antonio Caro. Quintana Tachia suddenly appeared, and enthroned the English girlfriend youth of our Gabriel García Márquez a woman her age has boundless energy and do not want to miss a single minute of tribute.
And while people laughed at the endless jokes and witticisms of former President Samper, saw a beautiful elegant lady in a wheelchair taking photos of the panel with his Blackberry, and next to their children , grandchildren, great grandchildren and other descendants of Ramírez Camacho.
And all in the family: Don Álvaro Castaño tells us that the poet was his brother and he joined his father's culture because the general Castano was commissioned to care for the couple when he was 16 and was able to witness the visits of Pablo Neruda to Bogota in the 40's and bohemian piedracielismo Bogota in times when everything just in Chapinero Bogota, young Alvaro Mutis playing pool and many lived in the old houses in the center or the new art-deco buildings of progress, before they killed Jorge Eliecer Gaitan.
And at the end of literary evening in the gloom, just sticking the laughter of Otto Morales Benitez to go out the door to a Bogota in the past, and "the act was nice, Wing , Ernesto Samper, who met Camacho Camacho and a child. All because in the end we became, hang in Bogota. "Ala, poetry still lives in Bogota," said an aide. We just missed the super roller Crótatas Owl and the famous "canelazo" no longer exist in the Casa Silva, because there is no money at the end of the modern 2010.
