Death Constant Beyond Love

"Love Constant Beyond Death" by Francisco Gomez de quevedo (1580-1645)

The final shadow that will close my eyes

will in its darkness take me from white day

and instantly untie the soul from lies

and flattery of death, and find its way

and yet my soul won’t leave its memory

of love there on the shore where it has burned:

my flame can swim cold water and has learned

to lose respect for laws’ severity.

My soul, whom a God made his prison of,

my veins, which a liquid humour fed to fire,

my marrows, which have gloriously flamed,

will leave their body, never their desire;

they will be ash but ash in feeling framed;

they will be dust but will be dust in love

"Love Constant beyond Death"

Objectives

Senator Onesimo Sanchez had six months and eleven days to go before his death when he found the woman of his life. He met her in Rosal del Virrey, an illusory village which by night was the furtive wharf for smugglers’ ships, and yet it seemed in broad daylight the most useless inlet on the desert, looking out on an arid and directionless sea, so far removed from everything that no one would have suspected that someone capable of changing the destiny of anyone lived there. Even its name was a kind of joke, because the only rose in that village was being worn by Senator Onesimo Sanchez himself on the same afternoon that he met Laura Farina. (1291)

Cynicism

• There's clear cynicism in the description of the village, most explicitly by calling it an "illusory town"
• There is implied cynicism toward the Senator as well though: how significant is the woman of your life when you only have about half a year until your death?
• sets the stage for the story on how something that might be fantastic is presented as plainly as something mundane or worse

Magic

“We are here for the purpose of defeating nature,” he began, against all of his convictions. “We will no longer be foundlings in our own country, orphans of God in a realm of thirst and bad climate, exiles in our own land. We will be different people, ladies and gentlemen, we will be a great and happy people.”

There was a pattern to his circus. As he spoke, his aides threw clusters of paper birds into the air and the artificial creatures took on life, flew about the platform of planks, and went out to sea. At the same time, other men took some prop trees with felt leaves out of the wagons and planted them in the saltpeter soil behind the crowd. They finished by setting up a cardboard facade with make-believe houses of red brick

Magic & Murder

Murder

that had glass windows, and with it they covered the miserable shacks of real life.

The senator prolonged his speech with two quotations in Latin in order to give the farce more time. He promised rainmaking machines, portable breeders for livestock, the oils of happiness which would make vegetables grow in the saltpeter and clumps of pansies in the window boxes. When he saw that his world of fiction was all set up, he pointed to it. “That’s the way it will be for us, ladies and gentlemen,” he shouted. “Look! That’s the way it will be for us.”

The audience turned around. An ocean liner made of painted paper was passing behind the houses, and it was taller than the tallest houses in the artificial city. Only the senator himself noticed that since it had been set up and taken down and carried from one place to another, the superimposed cardboard town had also been eaten away by the terrible climate and that it was almost as poor and dusty as Rosal del Virrey. (1292)

For the first time in twelve years, Nelson Farina didn’t go to greet the senator. He listened to the speech from his hammock amidst the remains of his siesta, under the cool bower of a house of unplaned boards which he had built with the same pharmacist’s hands with which he had drawn and quartered his first wife. He had escaped from Devil’s Island and appeared in Rosal del Virrey on a ship loaded with innocent macaws, with a beautiful and blasphemous black woman he had found in Paramaribo and by whom he had a daughter. The woman died of natural causes a short while later, and she didn’t suffer the fate of the other, whose pieces had fertilized her own cauliflower patch, but was buried whole and with her Dutch name in the local cemetery. The daughter had inherited her color and her figure along with her father’s yellow and astonished eyes, and he had good reason to imagine that he was rearing the most beautiful woman in the world.

Meditations

Conclusion

Then he closed his eyes in order to relax, and he met himself in the darkness. Remember, he remembered, that whether it’s you or someone else, it won’t be long before you ’ll be dead and it won’t be long before your name won’t even be left….

“Forget about the key,” he said, “and sleep a while with me. It’s good to be with someone when you’re so alone.”

Then she laid his head on her shoulder, her eyes fixed on the rose. The senator held her about the waist, sank his face into woods-animal armpit, and gave in to terror. Six months and eleven days later he would die in that same position, degraded and repudiated because of the public scandal with Laura Farina, and weeping with rage at dying without her. (1296)

• Do these final images of the Senator help perceive him in a sympathetic light?
• Does he continue his cynical perception in light of his death?
• Do his verses from Meditations help or harm his outlook on his remaining life?
• Does the Senator deserve the fate he received due to this meeting with Laura?
• Did he really commit a public scandal with her? Or is this just a

cynical perception from

the public?