To the Editor:
For the writer, the name of Cesar Tiempo is a revelation, and a very remarkable revelation [ “Cesar Tiempo: Argentine Poet,” by Donald D. Walsh, in the July COMMENTARY].
I do not doubt that the cultivated people of my country are aware of the existence of this inspired poet. Had I not been myself absent from the River Plate region during the last eight years, it is most probable that I would have already read his works and become well before now one of his admirers.
I suppose that this Ukrainian talent, at present incorporated to the intellectual élite of Argentina, is a lyric product of the hard social conditions of our time; and I venture to imagine that the sensitive directness of his dramatic subjects and the elevation of his proselytarian devotion are the consequence of tremendous sufferings.
Happily for him, he is at the same time a clever bard and a man of firm faith. The first gift allows him to enter into the depths of the poetic art; the latter gives to his soul the capacity to resist the duress of past and present, and to perceive in the future the smile of the sun upon fields of ripe fruit and the men singing in happy brotherhood.
I am a Roman Catholic who hates intolerance, and in my free time I profess the “gay saber.” I cannot be concerned with religious principles and racial rivalries when I read poetry.
When an Arabian, a Persian, a Chinese, or an Egyptian poet speaks the language of his faith, of his blood, I fall under the seduction of his art. And at those emotional moments I am only able to think in terms of a unique and consubstantial God and a unique and indivisible humanity.
I thank COMMENTARY and Mr. Donald D. Walsh for the opportunity given to me of becoming acquainted with the beautiful poems of Israel Zeitlin.
Cesar Montero de Bustamante
Embassy of Uruguay
Washington, D.C.