Mexico [antikvár]

Introduction "Unbroken, eternally resistant, it was a people that lived without hope, and without care. Gay even, and laughing with indifferent carelessness. These handsome natives! Was it because they were death-worshippers, Moloch-worshippers, that they were so uncowed and handsome? Their pure acluiowledgement of death, and their undaunted admission of nothingness kept so erect and careless." Thus wrote D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930) in 1926 in his novel "The Plumed Serpent". Set in a fascinating and cruel Mexico this is one of the English writer's finest books; it reveals how much ancient symbolism has survived unchanged over the centuries and the lasting magic that binds these peoples to their past. But "The Plumed Serpent", the terrible god Quetzalcoad, is also a symbol of huge importance in pre-Colombian civilizations, representing the union between heaven and earth. Life and death, pleasure and pain, wealth and poverty, happiness and sorrow, laughter and tears, gaiety and gloom, prosperity and starvation, joy and grief, success and misfortune - in Mexico these are the opposite sides of the same coin. The heads and tails of a mysterious destiny willed by inscrutable ancient deities and more recent ones alike; the gods, cruel and bloodthirsty, of the Olympus of the Mesoamerican religions and the Trinity and Saints, solemn and compassionate, of the Catholic Heaven imposed with Cross and Sword. This timeless tale, steeped in mystery and riddled with pain, that started many thousands of years ago, continues to the present day. It all commenced 65 million years ago with a crescent of fire, mixed with lava and lapilli, flames and incandescent metals. The Mexican territory was formed during the Cainozoic era. That was the time of the huge eruptions that resulted in the emergence of the continental mass and the folding which, later, formed the lateral and southern mountain chains. Countless volcanic cones (more than 100) still tower above tiie highest pealcs of the Sierra Madre Occidental, to the west, and the Sierra Madre Oriental, to the east, which close the Mexican Altiplano. The two longitudinal mountain chains, the natural extension of the 15