The poet Clemente Althaus, best known for his derivative romantic odes and his patriotism, spent a few years in Europe in the 1850s and 1860s. Absence obviously makes the heart grow fond, because as he was coming home he wrote the following passage about Lima weather, which I found in his
Obras poéticas de Clemente Althaus, Lima: Imprenta del Universo de Carlos Prince, 1872. I include a loose translation of my own, and some commentary.
¡Cuánto, oh mi Lima, anhelo
Ver de nuevo tu puro alegre cielo!
¡Cuánto echa el alma ménos tus iguales
Serenos días, y tus noches bellas,
De tus días rivales,
Donde todo su ejército de estrellas
En campo azul el firmamento aduna,
Y la luz de la luna,
No en lo claro, en lo suave solamente,
Es de la luz dïurna diferente!
¡Cuánto extraño tu blanda primavera,
Que alegre persevera
Y el año cambia en sempiterno Mayo;
Tu ambiente puro, sin cesar ageno,
Á la lluva y al trueno,
Y al siniestro relámpago y al rayo…
Now for my hasty translation:
Oh Lima, how I yearn once again to see
Your glad heavens, your pure skies!
How my soul longs for your serene days,
Equal one to the next; your fine nights
Rivaling the days in everything,
Where the blue field of the firmament
Congregates armies of stars;
Where the moon’s light,
Equaling daytime’s brightness,
Is yet immeasurably more velvet.
How I miss your tender springtime
Joyfully extended
Through a year of sempiternal May.
Your pure airs, always far remote
From thunder or rain
Or sinister lightning’s mighty blaze …
First thing to say is, what "pure" skies and "pure" airs? Did he somehow not remember the omnipresent mist and low clouds, blocking out most of the light, which have the added effect of making everything damp and thus nullifying whatever bodily warmth you might be conserving at any particular instant? What armies of stars in the blue field of the firmament might he be referring to? And does the absolute unchanging monotony of the climate translate, for him into "sempiternal May"? Only in a world--perhaps the southern winter--in which May is dark and cold and has no flowers. It should be fairly clear by now that not only was Althaus running on nostalgia when he wrote this, but also that he had blocked all conscious memory of sixty-degree days followed by sadder sixty-degree twilights and somewhat less sad (because you can't see the clouds) sixty-degree nights, all of which chase one another in endless succession.
