Photographers Unknown, The Blind Hope

Pintad un Hombre joven, con palabras leales
y puras, con palabras de ensueño y emoción;
que haya en la estrofa el ritmo de los golpes cordiales
y en la rima el encanto móvil de la ilusión.

Destacad su figura, neta, contra el azul
del cielo, en la mañana florida, sonreída;
que el sol la bañe al sesgo y la deje bruñida;
que destelle en sus ojos una luz encendida;
que haga temblar las carnes un ansia contenida;
y el cándido mirar, y la ciega esperanza,
compendien el radiante misterio de la vida!

Paint a young man, with loyal and pure
words, with words of reveries and emotion;
and give to the strophe the rhythm of a cordial tone,
to the rhyme, the variable charm of illusion.

Outline his figure out against the blue
of the sky, in the flowery, smiling prime;
let the sun bathe it leaving it burnished
and his eyes sparkling with a burning flame.
Let a restrained yearning make his flesh tremble,
and the torso, the brow, the sinewy arms,
and the candid look and the blind hope,
compound the splendorous mystery of life!

—Porfirio Barba-Jacob, Retrato de un Jovencito (Portrait of a Young Man), 2006

Translation by Nicolás Suescún

Born in July of 1883, Miguel Ángel Osorio Benítez, best known by his pseudonym Porfirio Barba-Jacob, was a Columbian poet and writer of the Post-Modernist period. He was born in Santa Rosa de Osos, a city located in northwest Columbia; however, given to his grandparents soon after birth, Osorio spent his younger years in the countryside in Angostura. He did not receive a typical formal education but was self-taught, learning from his readings and experiences.

As a young man, Miguel Osorio was recruited by the Columbia government to fight in the Thousand Day’s War, its last civil war which ended in 1902. After working briefly as a teacher, he relocated to the capital Bogotá where he founded and managed, under the pseudonym Marin Jiménez, the literary magazine El Cancionero Antioqueño. Relocating in 1906 to Barranquilla, Osorio adopted a new pseudonym Ricardo Arenales in homage to Ricardo Hernández, a companion in his youth. Under this new name, he published the 1906 “La Tristeza del Camino (The Sadness of the Road)”, and the 1907 “Campiña Florida (The Countryside of Florida)”.

In 1908, Miguel Osorio traveled to Mexico which became his adoptive homeland and the major source of his lyrical work. A period of writing and relocations began after his move to Mexico, with journeys through Central America, Mexico and the United States. During this time Osorio contributed writings for many journals and magazines, and in 1917 published a work of fiction entitled “El Terremoto del Salvador (The Salvador Earthquake)”.

As a result of supporting the politician Porfirio Díaz during Mexico’s political crisis, Osorio was forced to flee to Guatemala; but after disagreeing with Guatemala’s authoritative Manuel Estrada Cabrera, he had to relocate to Cuba. In 1918, Osorio returned to Mexico and resumed his writings until 1922 when he was expelled by Mexico’s new president Ivaro Obregón. His flight this time took him to Guatemala. It was there in 1922, Osorio took a new pseudonym, Porfirio Barba-Jacob, which he would use on all further work.

Miguel Osorio, after being expelled in 1924 by Jorge Ubico, one of the more oppressive Guatemalan dictators, traveled to El Salvador where he was deported for his work by its dynastic president Alfonso Quiñónes Molina. This resulted in a three year journey through Honduras, a period residing in New Orleans, and a trip to Cuba. In 1927 Osorio journeyed back to his Columbian homeland for the last time.

During this Columbian stay, Miguel Osorio published writings in the journal “El Espectador” and two collections of poems: the 1933 “Canciones y Elegías (Songs and Elergies)” and the 1937 “La Cancio de la Vida Profunda y Otros Poemas (The Song of Deep Life and Other Poems)”. Osorio returned to his adopted homeland of Mexico, where in January of 1942, he died of tuberculosis in Mexico City at the age of fifty-eight.

Due to his anti-authoritarian writings. Miguel Osorio who identified himself with Ahasverus, the mythical immortal wanderer, lived a restless and bohemian life chased from cities and countries. Remaining open about his gay sexuality in that era’s puritanical society, Miguel Osorio was a perfectionist, who kept revising his work to achieve the lyrical quality and symmetry he desired. Essentially autobiographical but covering universal issues, his poetry tells of his love for his birthplace and nature, the issues of social justice, his relations with others, the darker aspects of human pain, and his own anguishes and vices.

A small collection of eight poems by Porfirio Barba-Jacob can be found at the Poetry International Archives located at: https://www.poetryinternational.org/pi/poet/7100/Porfirio-Barba-Jacob/en/tile