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In the gallery you can see the detail of the lyre. © Alexis Ramos B.
A lyre over the entrance door, from the gallery to the interior of house 63 on Arzobispo Portes street, suggests music for those who pass by this residence while wandering through the Colonial City. However, ‘it is the poet’s lyre’.
The comment is from Teresa Miches Vicioso after Kin Sánchez put me in contact with her by phone. The granddaughter of the poet Ángel Felino Vicioso Virón, ‘one of the founders of the neighborhood’, says that her grandfather, who was a goldsmith, poet and writer and who liked dances, lived across the street with the whole family and ‘fought with the master builder’ when he was putting up his new residence across the street. At that time the family included up to five grandchildren…
In turn, his great-granddaughter Lily Tío points out that ‘my great-grandfather Felino Vicioso lived for a lifetime. in it since it was built. in 1941 until she died. in the year 1974. She has always been occupied by the family & rsquo ;. (Vicioso was born in the city of Azua on May 31, 1881 and died in the city of Santo Domingo on September 20, 1974).
Bringing the wishes of the poet to reality was the task of the engineer and architect Alexis Licairac Perallón. About the origin of the architectural design, Lily indicates that ‘ inspired by Greek mythology’. And that is why you can see ellipses, Greco-Roman columns both inside and outside, in addition to the lyre on a wall that separates the gallery from the rest of the house.
< br />In the entrance portal, as cited by the Santo Domingo Architecture Guide, the attention is caught by “an oval arch whose shape simulates two inverted bass clefs, a determining element of its identity.” In relation to the lyre, Lily says “in Greek mythology it is the instrument of Orpheus and Apollo, god of the Sun, clarity, music and poetry, a pure example of balance”.< /p>
In the gallery of this house in the Colonial City, Teresa recalls, ‘intellectuals from the neighborhood met’. To which Lily adds: ‘Important characters from literature met, combatants of the April 1965 War. Other prominent personalities of the Colonial City were also regulars,among them the designer Oscar de la Renta, Freddy Beras Goico and even on one occasion Porfirio Rubirosa’.
Among the works published by Vicioso, who signed A. Felino Vicioso V. , it is ‘Olympiad’ (poetry). ‘It is a hymn to sports and other amusements’. Printed in Editora Montalvo in 1959, it is dedicated ‘In Memoriam of my ancestors from this and from Azua, my homeland’.
Iris
In 1949 Vicioso published Iris (poetry), book printed at Editora Montalvo. Lily Tió points out the following: ‘Iris is the personification of the rainbow, connecting the world of the gods with humanity and announcing the end of the storm. She is also one of the goddesses of the sea and the sky. (There are copies of this book at the Catholic University of Cibao, Rubén Álvarez Library).