Autumn, winter, spring and now summer. Ali Smith dedicated four novels to them, like Stephen King. Vivaldi, four concerts, while Piazzola opted for four tangos. Arcimboldo portrayed them full of fruits, flowers, plants and vegetables; while Mucha opted for four sensual allegories. The seasons have always inspired artists and writers of all time. And they keep doing it.
“The summer morning is, even so, a little cool / a slight drowsiness at night is still in the agitated air”, wrote that Ricardo Reis who was also Fernando Pessoa in his Maritime Ode. Unite summer with the fresh concept, something that might sound like an oxymoron. But actually here is the crux of the matter. Because there are summers and summers. To the point that there are two summers every year. We just forgot.
Our Roman ancestors divided the year into two generic seasons: the hibernum, our winter, and the much longer ver, which included the primo vere (that is, the first warm weather that we turned into our spring), followed by the veranum tempus ( warm weather, here we intuit our summer), then came aestas (the ardent heat that the Catalans transformed into their estiu) and ended with autumnus (indeed, autumn). If we add, we get five seasons.
Cervantes still spoke of them in Don Quixote: "Spring follows summer, summer follows summer, summer follows autumn, and autumn follows winter, and winter follows spring, and thus time returns to walk with this continuous wheel." ”. In fact, the word estío survives in the Cervantes language although the RAE considers it only synonymous with summer. Camilo José Cela was one of the supporters of maintaining the difference.
Although it is a habit to complain about the heat, these first days of summer are undoubtedly more pleasant than the torrid days of the first August. For the Romans, the aestas came when the star Sirius, the brightest of Canis Majoris, appeared, which is why those unbearably hot days were called heatwave, as Catalan and Castilian continue to do.
In short, that the wealthy Romans fled from that sickly heat that could cause malarial fever to second homes in cooler summer resorts. Nihil novum sub sole, either with summer or summer. Or better with both, one after the other.
