El Obituario

So, here’s the first thing I translated. It’s the obituary of my great-grandfather José Joaquín Ribera Chevremont. Going over it again, I realized that there was tremendous room for improvement from my initial efforts. It certainly didn’t help that the gentleman that eulogized José couldn’t proclaim a simple, six-worded statement if you put a loaded gun in his face.
 
Also, if you or anybody you know has any idea what "enmusguecido" means in the line "el marco enmusguecido de los puertos desiertos," please don’t be shy in telling me. Google claims it’s not a word. I’m willing to believe that it’s just a typo, but I still don’t know enough about the language to recognize a close equivalent… 
 

EL MUNDO – SUNDAY, JANUARY 22, 1984.

 
José Joaquín Ribera Chevremont:
Old San Juan’s Bohemian
 
EL MUNDO Special
 
The poet and writer José Joaquín Ribera Chevremont, recently deceased, had distinguished himself throughout the century for his recognized poems, displayed in several poetry books, and for articles published in EL MUNDO and other periodicals during the 1920’s, 1930’s and 1940’s, regarding supernatural themes formulated inside of objective and scientific concepts.
 
These articles garnered attention from people and foreign organizations that appreciated the writer’s objectivity and analytical concern. 

Also distinguished among the themes of Ribera Chevremont was the provincial life within Puerto Rico’s capital from it’s first decades to the present, in which literary circles featured the characters and experiences that were chronicled in “Bohemian Retreat,” published in EL MUNDO.
 
Jose’s body was laid to rest at the Ateneo Puertorriqueño.  And there Arturo Ramos Llompart–writer, journalist, and co-editor of EL MUNDO–exalted the deceased, pointing out Jose’s virtuosity in writing and journalism. In the eulogy, Romos Llompart quoted the dead poet’s own poem, “Funeral Ritual” between other statements:
 
“Today, this learned house opens it’s hospitable doors for a final visit to a poet that, in his years as a precocious youth, at the dawn of a century that now passes, when the address of this institution was in front of the Plaza de Armas, realized the value of Puerto Rican poetry written in the rich Castilian language. It was in this Athenian setting where, in those long past days, the great Spanish poet Francisco Villaespesa, during his first visit to the Island, proclaimed José Joaquín Ribera Chevremont to be one of Puerto Rico’s authentic poets, together with his brother Evaristo and a host of other young people who had shined ethereal light in Minerva’s sanctuary. 
 
“And the praise from the Madridian poet, that would have puffed any young writer with pride, was received by José Joaquín with a humility that bordered on indifference–but with gratitude, which was one of the virtues that was at the essence of his tremendous heart. 
 
“And so followed the young poet’s travels, with his own light, on a path outlined by the French Romantics, Verlaine, Baudelaire, Rimbaud and that master of style Julio Herrera Reissig.
 
“And he also followed Quinito. Simple, humble, noble, the path of lucid bohemia–from the corners of Bohemian life inside the historical and heroic San Juan, to which he would occasionally dedicate beautiful pages of romantic evocation, in a prose that was equally as majestic as his poetry.
 
“In addition to the artistic work that made him great, he also did community work, when he served this government, his country, to which he devoted his consummate literary and journalistic talents. 
 
“With peace of mind and poetic excellence, he harbored the concept and idea of death and so wrote to her, amongst others, a poem I was urged to read for his farewell to the physical, which I read now, fulfilling that posthumous will:
 
 
When I die I will live on, always revolving
the earth in the sun-drenched seas of the Universe.
And live on impregnated with the silent music
of night inside the intangible chamber of mystery.

And live on painting with the moon’s luster
the moldering quarter of barren ports.
As roses live on studding your dreams
on the messianic faces of dead poets.
 
Within the unfolding of my psychic senses
flutter the voices of my family and friends.
The phantom coffin gnaws at my remains,
and I will be in an invisible courtship with myself.
 
Maybe my broken eyes leap from their sockets.
and my frightened house screams from their windows.
The trees that one day had given me embrace,
in the cross of my bones will become a shroud.
 
<div style="margin-left: 80px; “>Upright and anguished, in front of my inert corpse,
I will see the hypocritical procession of my good neighbors.
While crossing, terrified, the Horeb of the dead,
Perhaps I confusedly think myself asleep.
 
The banners speak of false praise
From the tomb an August of all virtues:
‘Jose Joaquín died, full of heart; authentic
poet, grey beacon of restlessness.’
 
The early morning comes cracked with cold
to drip its weeping upon my tomb.
I will not be in my tomb, I will be in the drizzle
of light from the stars shouting my poetry.”