Autumn, winter, spring and now summer. Ali Smith dedicated four novels to them, like Stephen King. Vivaldi, four concertos, 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 slumber of the night still remains in the agitated air”, wrote that Ricardo Reis who was also Fernando Pessoa in his Maritime Ode. It combines summer with the cool concept, a fact that could sound like an oxymoron. But actually here lies the crux of the matter. Because there are summers and summers. To the point that there are two summers every year. It’s just that we 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 we turned into our spring), followed by veranum tempus (warm weather, here we sense the Spanish verano), then came aestas (the burning heat that Catalan transformed into summer) and ended with autumnus (actually, autumn). If we add up, we get five seasons.
Cervantes still spoke of them in El Quixote: “Spring follows summer, summer follows summer, summer follows autumn, and autumn follows winter, and winter follows spring, and this is how time goes again with this wheel keep on”. In fact, the word estío survives in the Cervantine language even though the RAE considers it only synonymous with its verano. Camilo José Cela was one of the supporters in maintaining the difference.
Even if it is a habit to complain about the heat, these first days of summer are undoubtedly more pleasant than the torrid ones of the first of August. For the Romans, aestas arrived when the star Sirius appeared, the brightest of Canis Majoris, which is why those days of unbearable heat were called canicula, as Catalan and Spanish continue to do. Finally, wealthy Romans fled from the sickening heat that could cause malaria to second residences in cooler summer areas. Nihil novum sub sole , either with verano or summer. Or better with both, one after the other.
