La decadencia de la imaginación. El arco triunfal de don Antonio Deza y Ulloa

Abstract

This article consists of a preliminary study, the paleographic transcription and a version in prose of a “triumphal arch” dedicated to don Fernando Deza y Ulloa, a high official of the Viceroyalty of New Spain. As the verses on the arch themselves make clear, this was not an example of ephemeral architecture; its existence was confined to paper, it was merely literary. It was written by the Mercedarian fray Antonio de Segura and was included in a little book of poems entitled “Poemas varios que a diversos asuntos compuso el padre maestro…”; although the poem is undated, the final compilation can be assigned to the year 1716. The interest of the triumphal arch is dual: as an example of the verses of fray Antonio de Segura, an important personality in the literary world of New Spain, who was highly active in the first decades of the eighteenth century but until now unknown to us as a poet; and as an example of the repetition into which by that time this sort of Baroque game had fallen.