Illustrious | Television | THE COUNTRY | The USA Print

It is very problematic for me to cross more than two polite words with people who abuse with impunity in their language the convenient sign of the times, who repeat cumbersome terms ad nauseam, but who have been blessed by the new powers, just as repellent as the previous ones. They cause me a grudge similar to the one I have felt since I was little towards the treatments that certain people received. What the hell did they mean, what supernatural traits did those beings they defined as Your Illustriousness, Your Eminence, Your Holiness, Your Highness, Your Excellency, Your Majesty and other titles as ostentatious as involuntarily Dadaist embody?

I do not conceive of any true artist, although I do conceive of a multitude of politicians, whose goal is to receive this type of recognition, to be beatified by academies and institutions. I imagine that his highest aspiration is for his work to give wonderful sensations to his people, to the people they love. And, of course, also to the public, so grateful in their gestures for what amuses them, excites them, identifies with them, heals them. The joy and mission accomplished by musicians, writers, filmmakers and other artists is understandable when realizing that what they intended to express has touched people’s souls, has given them pleasure.

These trifles occur to me when I observe the fuss that has been made with the title of illustrious that his old University has donated to President Ayuso, that you accept the recognition of illustrious, a decoration that is as grandiloquent as it is vain, is his problem. But the most painful and grotesque has been the speech of the most awarded student of that faculty, a volcanic and Jacobin lady with pathetic difficulties to express herself with a minimum of coherence, intelligence or grace. And I ask myself, listening to the most illustrious student, what the worst students of that University will be like. I would be among them.

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