Amethyst Sunset in Costa Rica

Ricardo Fernández Guardia · Mystic Verse and Insights Series · 6 pages

Six pages presenting a short descriptive passage in *parallel Spanish and English columns, the two texts running side by side down the page. The source is given in full: Ricardo Fernández Guardia's Cuentos Ticos (Short Stories of Costa Rica)*, first published in San José in 1901 and translated by Gray Casement in 1904; the excerpt is the author's introduction to "Los Gatos Demoniacos" (The Bedevilled Cats). The last three pages carry the author's biography and bibliography.

The scene is a veranda after dinner, cigarettes lit, the company falling silent as the sun sinks into the Pacific behind the blue line of the mountains. The description is of colour rather than of landscape: a conflagration of the whole heavens, an indescribable orgy of colours and shades varying from flaming scarlet to the most delicate yellows and greens. The image that gives the file its title comes as the light fails — the atmosphere, reddish at first, takes on a violet shade which makes things appear as though seen through a mist of pulverized amethysts. As the vision fades the watchers are left imbued with the melancholy of the fields at the hour of evening twilight. The piece is included in this series as an example of the ordinary world briefly seen under another aspect, and the parallel-text layout lets a reader follow the original Spanish and the English rendering line for line.

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