The tension between East and West defines the origin and background behind this new poetic work by José Antonio Santano. They are, thus, all made of echoes between East and West, which confirms the fifth poem, in which a lovely parallelism is found between the Euphrates and the Guadalquivir, propitiated by Al-Andalus’ remembrance of the great Ziryab, who, in the midst of the Caliphate, brought Baghdad’s excellence and refinement to Cordoba. One river flows into the other, as if their waters were all the same, bathing the two cities under the light of knowledge from two unmatchable cultures with one same universal halo. In Lunas de Oriente (Moons from the East), we ultimately witness the glory of the Mediterranean, whose three shores allow this festival of the senses to occur, because it is the sea where everything echoes and all is consummated. When sailing through its torrid waters, under the lapis lazuli of its mythological heavens, one never knows whether the song to be heard next will come from North or South, East or West: it all flows indistinctly, with no beginning and no end.

Event information sheet

José Antonio Santano culminates, with his work Lunas de Oriente, a solo career with very few resonances owed. A mature poet who is notably fecund, he delves into the senses but does not allow the human presence, with its anguish and suffering, to conceal the reason for its uncertain fate: the “place of trilling,” or in other words hope, and hope alone, of those who, “fleeing from the cold, found only more cold”: There are “rivers of embraces” and “mountains chains of kisses,” because nothing exists if it is not shared.” (Antonio Enrique, 2018).