Mauricio Vicent, in the ardent strength of sun
Diligent, active and fearless, when we were looking for a poem by John Dos Passos lost somewhere in Denia, Mauricio Vicent did not hesitate to climb a steep wall overlooking the Marieta Cassiana promenade and, at the end, to show us the way. He was an adventurer, which led him to other distant beaches, which he would make his own, those of the Cuban Caribbean. He was stubborn, and that allowed him to get to know places and situations that were not open to everyone. As a good journalist, he discovered better than anyone else the intricacies of the complex society of Castro's Cuba, where nothing was ever what it seemed. Mauricio discovered and deciphered it, savoured it and wrote it in delicious chronicles, until he clashed with the power that always hid the true information. Mauricio ended up being declared as disliked as the renowned Edwards, and was even deprived of press accreditation to operate on the island. A correspondent who earned the stripes of years lived dangerously.
From the edge of the beach, his father, Manuel, watched Mauricio's climb, who clung to the roots of the pines and the overhanging rocks to complete the ascent and crown the hill that separated us from that mystery. What secret was hidden in that sanctified field? Where was the lost poem? We followed in its footsteps and entered a space separated by walls and bordered by Mediterranean pines. We finally reached the cemetery of the English, a place in the area of Les Rotes created to bury those who died in a shipwreck, when the English arrived at the Mediterranean port in search of the prized sultanas. A space was found outside the Catholic cemetery to bury them facing the sea.
There were hardly any remains of those funeral constructions erected in their memory, but an inscription remained, attached to a monolith. They were verses written by John Dos Passos, taken from his only book of poems "A puschcart at the curb" ("Un carro en el curb", unpublished in Spain until the recent translation by Eulalia Piñero, with the title "Invierno en Castilla". Editorial Renacimiento).
Dos Passos visited Denia in 1916, during his fruitful stay in Spain promoted by his father to prevent the young idealist from volunteering for the First Great War. Captivated by that Mediterranean that dawns blue and falls asleep in red, that envelops the kiss of the sun in a breeze, Dos Passos wrote the verses that Mauricio was reading to us now, written on that tombstone.
“How fine to die in Denia
young in the ardent strength of sun,
calm in the burning blue of the sea…”
Sería hermoso morir en Denia
joven, bajo el abrazo del sol
tumbado junto al azul ardiente del mar
y el reclamo permanente de los cerros de hierro.
Denia, donde la tierra es roja como la herrumbre
y las colinas son del color de la ceniza.
Oh, podrirse en el suelo áspero
y fundirse en el fuego omnipotente
de ese dios blanco y joven y ardiente, el incandescente dios solar
para encontrar una súbita resurrección
en la cálida uva nacida de la tierra y la luz
que las mujeres jóvenes y los niños pisan
convirtiéndola en un mosto que hará fluir para generaciones futuras
un vino lleno de la tierra
del sol”
I look for and recover the photograph taken at that moment, with Maurice leaning on the monolith, with his lively gaze, his cheerful attire, his stocky body, and I regret the premonitory air of the scene. The one that Dos Passos wished for, the one that Vincent did not even imagine. I see him standing at the entrance door to the venue, looking out to sea, always searching for something beyond.
A high-voltage journalist, with a biography forged among the seas, today it is time to bid him farewell, contemplating how he melts in the "omnipotent fire of that white god". There will be no consolation for the father who every summer watched over the steps of the grown-up child, the young dreamer, the man with a family of his own. But he knows that he is handing him over to his revered Mediterranean gods who believe, with Dos Passos, that "how fine to die (in Denia) young in the ardent strength of sun". Young he left us, but with his homework done. The willing man who took us up to the English cemetery has left his indelible mark there.