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The poet
W. Somerset Maugham
I am not much interested in the celebrated and I have never had patience with
the passion that afflicts so many to shake hands with the great ones of the earth.
When it is proposed to me to meet some person distinguished above his fellows by his
rank or his attainments (LOGROS, CONOCIMIENTOS), I seek for a civil excuse that may enable me to avoid the honour; and when my friend Diego Torre suggested giving me an introduction to
Santa Aña I declined. But for once the excuse I made was sincere; Santa Aña was not
only a great poet but also a romantic figure and it would have amused me to see in
his decrepitude a man whose adventures (in Spain at least) were legendary; but I
knew that he was old and ill and I could not believe that it would be anything but a
nuisance (MOLESTIA) to him to meet a stranger and a foreigner. Calisto de Santa Aña was the last
descendant of the Grand School; in a world unsympathetic (POCO COMPRENSIVO) to Byronism he had led a Byronic existence and he had narrated his hazardous life in a series of poems that had
brought him a fame unknown to his contemporaries. I am no judge of their value, for I
read them first when I was three-and-twenty and then was enraptured (EMBELESADO) by them; they
had a passion, a heroic arrogance and a multi-coloured vitality that swept me off my
feet, (ME ENAMORÉ PERDIDAMENTE DE ELLOS ) and to this day, so intermingled (INTERMEZCLADOS) are those ringing fines ( GRANDILOCUENTES, ENÉRGICAS) and haunting cadences (CADENCIAS INOLVIDABLES)
with the charming memories of my youth, I cannot read them without a beating heart.
I am inclined to think that Calisto de Santa Aña deserves the reputation he enjoys
among the Spanish-speaking peoples. (CLICK THE LINK ABOVE, PLEASE)
!Mira que luna! Look at that moon! Resources for learning English
Fernando Olivera: El rapto.- TEXT FROM THE NOVEL The goldfinch by Donna Tartt (...) One night we were in San Antonio, and I was having a bit of a melt-down, wanting my own room, you know, my dog, my own bed, and Daddy lifted me up on the fairgrounds and told me to look at the moon. When "you feel homesick", he said, just look up. Because the moon is the same wherever you go". So after he died, and I had to go to Aunt Bess -I mean, even now, in the city, when I see a full moon, it's like he's telling me not to look back or feel sad about things, that home is wherever I am. She kissed me on the nose. Or where you are, puppy. The center of my earth is you". The goldfinch Donna Tartt 4441 English edition
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