Erasmo Castellanos Quinto

Erasmo Castellanos Quinto (March 27, 1879 – December 11, 1955) was a Mexican professor, poet and lawyer. He was considered the most important specialist in the Miguel de Cervantes' work study of his time in Mexico, a scholar on Classics and universal literature masterworks. He dedicated his whole life to senior high school and college education about this knowledge. He won the 1947 Mexican Cervantist Society Prize, continentally convened competition, for which he has since been called "The first Cervantist in America"; and olso won the first Belisario Domínguez Medal. He had a unique personality for which, unwittingly, he was also known.

Erasmo Castellanos Quinto was the firstborn of Erasmo Castellanos González and Juana María Quinto Mendoza. He was born on the Cruztitán ranch, owned by his maternal grandfather, in Santiago Tuxtla, Veracruz, Mexico. He began his primary education at the Escuela Real in his hometown.^[1] At eight, due to family economic troubles, he was taken to be educated under his uncle Leando Castellanos González protection,^[2] to the then called “The city of bridges and joyful waters”, or too “The rainy city”, the mystical and cultured city of Orizaba, Veracruz, Mexico,^[3] where he finished the elementary education at the Escuela Cantonal Modelo, school where he also completed his preparatory level.

In 1900, while still a student, he replaced the poet, short story writer and narrator Rafael Delgado as Greek and Latin professor^[4] at the Colegio Preparatorio de Orizaba,^[5] thus beginning his teaching vocation. Previously, Delgado, driven by the admiration that the knowledge and learning attitude that the young Castellanos inspired in him, had dedicated his story Justicia popular to him, and a sonnet in which he urged to him to know the classics as a foundation to delve into great literature.^[6]

He completed his professional studies at Escuela de Jurisprudencia de Orizaba (Orizaba School of Jurisprudence), making them possible by working in his uncle's business, getting up at six in the morning to sweep it, spending hours behind the counter until it was time to attend school, where he was a lawyer and teacher Silvestre Moreno Cora outstanding student, from who he took example of love for teaching and literature.^[7] Upon returning, he continued working until closing time. At all sleeping time, Erasmo invariably made income and expenses business balance,^[8] until he took his professional exam before State of Veracruz Justice Superior Court to whom he presented his thesis entitled “Cheques” (Checks),^[9] in Xalapa City, obtaining his law Xalapa University degree on November 30, 1903,^[10] studies that he would later endorse in Mexico City.^[11][12]

He later migrated to Mexico City where he practiced his profession in the attorney Luis Gutiérrez Otero's law office^[13] where he entered recommended by Porfirio Díaz, then President of Mexico.^[14] During this period he held Sunday meetings in his home where literary and musical topics were enjoyed and discussed attended by, among other personalities, Amado Nervo, Luis G. Urbina, Ricardo Castro, Rafael Ángel de la Peña and Ezequiel A. Chávez.^[15] After a period of professional practice, he abandoned the law when he realized the harshness that his work implied in various cases, an aspect with which he, as a humanist and because he valued compassion for belonging to the Third Order of Saint Francis,^[16] did not agree, so he chose to continue teaching and cultivating literature.^[17]

In 1904 in Mexico City he married Miss Gabriela de la Torre, Daughter of a distinguished Tuxtla native, local deputy of Veracruz and political leader of the Canton of Orizaba. All his life he would affectionately call her "Bella Gabriela" (Beautiful Gabriela).^[18]

On July 31, 1906, in Mexico City, he joined the teaching staff at the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria (National Preparatory School, senior high school) - then in the New Spain building Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso- as an assistant professor to the poet Amado Nervo, whom he would replace by teaching National Language while Nervo traveled through various countries fulfilling diplomatic and literary commitments. This was done through a competition in which the then already prestigious intellectuals Ángel del Campo (Micrós), Luis G. Urbina and Victoriano Salado Álvarez also participated, among others, whom he surpassed.^[19] By letter dated August 7, 1906, Justo Sierra Méndez, Minister of Education, congratulated him for having succeeded in the Spanish exam.^[20] On July 1, 1907, he obtained the tenure of that chair and in time he would become a full professor of Castilian Literature, General Literature, Selected Literary Productions Annotated Readings, and Masterpieces Analysis.

On April 6, 1909 - also by Justo Sierra agreement - Ezequiel A. Chávez appointed him the School deputy director until March 1, 1912. In 1910 he was also interim director, temporarily replacing the famous positivist Porfirio Parra,^[21] and in 1912 temporarily replacing Antonio Caso.

During the Mexican Revolution, the Villista and Zapatista armies occupied the Mexican capital as Aguascalientes Convention forces, Castellanos officially took over the direction of the National Preparatory School on March 18, 1914.^[22] forced by Pancho Villa so that the School would not close,^[23] a position from which he was removed on June 14, 1915, by the engineer Félix Fulgencio Palavicini, Convention government Instruction Minister "for not having behaved in a revolutionary manner during the Victoriano Huerta's dictatorship" and having continued to teach his lessons.^[24][25]

His eminent teaching at the National Preparatory School would be lavished for almost fifty years even in very difficult social and personal times, until his death prevented it. For example, during the armed conflict that began in 1910 against Porfirio Díaz dictatorship. In February 1913 during the armed fightings of Ten Tragic Days in Mexico City, teacher Castellanos^[26] continued teaching at the Preparatory School with few students in attendance, or he attended and did not teach at all because no one could make it, all of this without receiving payment and taking great detours to avoid bullets. He did the same in 1929 and 1930 when the Preparatory School's budget was reduced, so students petitioned the University Council for payment of his salary. In response, the Council agreed that he would be paid his salary, but also that he would be reimbursed for any unpaid wages he had earned.^[27] In 1947, on the day of Bella Gabriela's death, his beloved wife, overcome with grief, showed up at the Preparatory School and taught his classes, because he was a teacher, his students would be waiting for him,^[28] and '"I could not leave unfinished the Iliad and Odyssey explanation, precisely, in the white cows and black cows passage: the humanity days and nights" he exclaimed taking off his bowler hat as a greeting to his stupefied students who knew his pain.'^[29]

In 1922 Castellanos joined the Escuela Nacional de Altos Estudios (National School of Advanced Studies), Humanities Division (later Philosophy and Letters Faculty) of the National University of Mexico (Autonomous after 1929) at that time on Licenciado Verdad Street, downtown Mexico City, and after at the colonial Casa de los Mascarones until 1954.^[30] There he was Spanish Language and Literature professor, Cervantine Literature and General Literature, a subject that included Greek and Latin classics.^[31] There were his Spanish Language and Literature fellow teachers Alfonso Reyes and Pedro Henríquez Ureña. And Julio Jiménez Rueda and Eduardo Nicol of Spanish Literature and Cervantine Courses like him.^[32] His lessons at this institution continued until 1953, three academic years before his death.^[33] About his classes at the Faculty, Roberto Oropeza Martínez wrote [1]: Roberto Oropeza Martínez:

… the teacher's prodigious memory allowed him to reproduce any passage from Don Quixote, to the infinite amazement of those who listened to him. The Cervantine Literature courses he taught at the Philosophy and Letters Faculty for fifty-nine semesters, between 1922 and 1953, were always different—as he himself asserted—because "the range of Cervantes studies is so broad," he affirmed, "that it could constitute a university degree in itself.""^[34]

The Castellanos Quinto great work was immaterial, intangible: he studied and taught great literature as a supreme intellectual endeavor, therefore, the only way to attempt any recovery of it is through testimonies:

Leonardo Pasquel^[35] wrote:

When I entered the National Preparatory School, there was no more popular and famous teacher at the old university alma mater than Erasmo Castellanos. It was 1929, [I met him] his literature class first day […] I saw him arrive, waving right and left, I saw him arrive, completely taking off the black bowler hat that covered his pale baldness surrounded by curly, mahogany-colored hair, which also had graying on it…^[36]

Álvaro Gálvez y Fuentes^[37] described:

… Erasmo Castellanos walked from one end of the platform to the other, while explaining to his students in the Universal Literature class, the inscrutable meaning of a Greek myth, from a page of the Iliad, or the symbolic value of each word and each image in a verse of the Divine Comedy. The teacher was an entertaining, thorough, and brilliant narrator, and many of his students thought that the Odyssey he told was better than the original text...^[38]

Leonardo Pasquel also commented:

Students preferred his lectures to those of other professors. The classroom at the National Preparatory School was filled with legions of young people eager to hear him. […] His muffled voice gradually became more and more tense with representing the ideas or images in play growing enthusiasm of. He pronounced true rhetorical pieces with ease and vehemence in our language most limpid and pure forms. Enraptured by Dante Alighieri or Cervantes explanation, which no one knew like him in Mexico, or the Spanish or Greco-Latin classics, his words flowed with clear diction and wrapped in the most beautiful robes of a harmonious and emotional style [...] Teaching was his life, his existence guiding principle, the purpose of that sublime vocation of one who teaches, the renewed and fruitful stimulus capable of sublimating him, the motive that brought forth in his time the mystic of culture, the martyr of literature and the passionate champion of the expression of beauty and the beauty of expression.^[39]

Armando Valdés Peza^[40] y Mauricio Ocampo Ramírez testified:

One of the reasons why in high school you can miss all classes except Castellanos Quinto, It’s his lessons spectacular nature. Senior high school is passed, we go to the Faculty, but you never stop returning to the same Amado Nervo classroom, to hear him, but, above all, to see him […] He is heroic with Homer, mysterious with Dante, pathetic with Shakespeare, cheerful with Cervantes […] Walk and walk in the fascinating world of Achilles and Virgil, of Macbeth and Don Quixote.^[41]

Salvador Novo reviewed:

Professor Castellanos Quinto explained to us the secret of the elegant, Parnassian sound of Salvador Díaz Mirón verses constructed with words in which the accent never recurs on the same vowel. With what delight teacher Erasmo recited to us select passages from Díaz Mirón, and made us perceive the music captured in them!^[42]

Bernardo Claraval^[43] recalled:

…I enrolled, in the first of those years, in the General Literature course taught by the teacher Francisco Monterde. And although his class was perfect, Castellanos Quinto's fame soon led me to join as an irregular student, because from the beginning, his course was oversaturated with students, attracting 150 or 200 young people who eagerly attended his wonderful explanations of the masterpieces that humanity has produced. […] He taught us to discern beauty and aesthetic values and even ethical ones […] We left the class with nostalgia and eagerly waited 48 hours for the next one. […] He taught me that only a deep love of truth, goodness, and beauty can convey the aesthetic and human value of literary masterpieces. He introduced me to the importance of Beethoven and Michelangelo in art. And, in the specific field of literary and artistic criticism, a Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo, a Menéndez Pidal, a Francisco Rodríguez Marín, a Winckelmann, and many others […] He taught me to have an open spirit to every current of truth.^[44]

Andrés Henestrosa praised:

His classes, more than classes, were performances, improvised spectacles in which he was everything: actor, director, prompter, audience, and impresario. From memory, without books aid, he explained the immortal texts: The Iliad and The Odyssey, The Divine Comedy, and Don Quixote, moments in which he demonstrated his extraordinary character. A great Cervantes scholar, an excellent Hellenist, and a renowned medievalist are epithets that were bestowed upon him. He knew those works like the back of his hand and enjoyed explaining them and delighting his listeners.^[45]

Arturo Arnaiz y Freg^[46] referred:

When the professor told us about King Lear wrath, he gave us precious locks of his beard. He threw them to those of us who sat in the front row of his class…! He is a great teacher! From him I learned the love to the Greeks […] And we also learned, from the inexhaustible source of his lips, the love to Hellas. The stories pale in comparison to the reality we experienced there. All of Olympus and the Homeric characters came down to live with him and with us.^[47]

Ricardo Garibay recalled:

His gaze was blazing when he walked with Achilles, with Diomedes, with Hector; sweetest when listening to our poems. His powers over life and death were entirely insane […] He taught us to read The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Comedy and Don Quixote. I followed him for several years, I became inseparable from him […] His genius was that of the preceptor, of the one who “establishes the spirit in the other” […] The two years of his preparatory courses were not enough to get to know him or to receive him.^[48]

Finally, Roberto Oropeza Martínez,^[49] his disciple, who worked tirelessly to leave a mark of the Master's poetry, teachings and life, recounted:

Erasmo Castellanos was Zeus, he was Phoebus Apollo and Heracles or Hermes. And he was also, anthropomorphic, all the champions of Hellas: Achilles, Agamemnon king of kings, and Diomedes or Philoctetes; he was those unsurpassed Achaeans; and it was when Erasmo Castellanos Quinto suddenly began to designate us - especially the girls - with the names and epithets of the most illustrious characters and gods of Olympus. Each class, Chronos would cut off the episodes at the most interesting moment, and we would protest in unison. It was all useless. We would have to continue in the next class or immerse ourselves in the sea of books and research. Furthermore, the lecture had to end exactly ten minutes before the deadline; and the teacher was careful and punctual to respect that brief period. After the suspension, he would use that time to discover values for Mexican literature […] he would ask his students who the writers, poets, storytellers, and orators of the group were.^[50]

Ricardo Garibay described him:

Erasmo Castellanos was one hundred or one hundred and fifty years old when we arrived at the high school in 1940. He was an Old Testament inhabitant. Long gray hair grew from his sideburns and the nape of his neck; his beard and mustache were threadbare and almost white. [...] He was small and slightly hunchbacked. He wore a bowler hat, white sneakers, and a black, double-breasted suit with wide, long lapels, or another light gray one. He owned nothing else. He carried his books and notebooks in a burlap. A wealthy disciple, Campanella, gave him a leather briefcase with a gold clasp lock. The master put his burlap with books in it. The most notable thing about his attire was the shoulder pads on his jacket. Giant. Just as they would befit a man two meters tall. «Greeks are the male beauty prototype, isn't it?» Yes, of course. «What is the most Greek male beauty striking aspect? The shoulders, isn't it?» […] «Man is shoulders» […] «he is all shoulders». So, the tailor would have had to fill the master jackets shoulders with arrobas of wadding.^[51][52]

Andrés Henestrosa painted him:

A voracious reader, a frugal writer, a master for whom no literature was unknown. He dressed slovenly and wore a bowler hat. One of his traits is that he didn't care about cultivating fame. Castellanos Quinto was a friend to people of the lowest class, and to every creature that suffered neglect, whether human or animal.^[53]

Yolanda Cabello explained:

Imagine a man wearing espadrilles who, taking off his bowler hat, stepping off the sidewalk, gave way to every lady who crossed his path on the Mexico City downtown streets.^[54]

"The Bachelor" Álvaro Gálvez y Fuentes characterized him:

He refused all praise in life, declined all honors. He only accepted the daily, silent, irreplaceable admiration and affection tribute from all of us who were his disciples. And he had legions of us in his long, uninterrupted career as a teacher. He lived with an austerity bordering on poverty. More than once, his worn and frayed sleeves and trousers were for us, his students, a humility silent lesson of those who dedicate their lives entirely to teaching and study. Because that dear, ineffable, marvelous Erasmo Castellanos did nothing else in his life but dedicate himself to learning and teaching. Perhaps for this reason, all of us his students always saw in him an example of selfless dedication to teaching.^[55]

Ruy Pérez Tamayo drew him:

Erasmo Castellanos Quinto was an National Preparatory School old teacher who had a saint adorably absurd figure, an Saint Jerome, El Greco and Don Quixote mixture, with long but sparse beards, marble-blue eyes that easily shed tears and then looked like agates, and an unsteady and slow walk that was made more grotesque by his tennis shoes that complemented his very humble attire.^[56]

Eduardo Miñúzuri explained in detail:

Humble, modest, […] he didn't dare rise to the level due to his talents and natural fame; he was never diminished by obligatory homage, received honor, or lavished favor […] We saw him reject honors, medals and money, diplomas, cheers, seats, and perks […] Sometimes we blushed at his eagerness to appear small, when it came to mingling with foreign figures attracted by his prestigious chair. 'I am nobody... I don't deserve this... Your presence overwhelms me... I dare not speak... I give up my place to you... My students deserve to hear you...' were his favorite evasions…^[57]

Ricardo Garibay pointed out:

The scoundrels of those fierce regions [Referring to those times Tacubaya Mexico City neighborhood, where the teacher lived] revered him. At the University, the professors took great joy in mocking him. He suffered the mockery. He lived in terror of it.^[58]

Leonardo Pasquel described the bullying effects on him:

Erasmo Castellanos's heart was overflowing with love. He was tender, affectionate, and naive to the point of being moving. Formal and ceremonious [...] he behaved like a perfect gentleman, overwhelming his farewells with courtesies and convivial gestures [...] All of this occurred spontaneously and whenever he felt confident, because otherwise, he assumed the person he was talking to was a spy from one of "his many enemies" teachers, according to him bitter and scheming rivals who relentlessly did him untold harm [...] Overwhelmed by the persecution mania that certain base actions had unleashed in him [...] When a commotion occurred in class, his nerves were out of control, and the teacher channeled his anxious thoughts through them, precipitating distrustful and suspicious attitudes. The persecution frenzy that strangled the core of his personality drove him to go off the deep end. Everything was—for him—his enemies work... Damaged by the onslaught of his passions, his mind was already disfiguring his life... He found difficult to distinguish between men kinds, and preferred to surround himself with dogs and cats, to receive their affection, symbolically, the security source denied by his fellow humans. Humble substitutes in the feeble human condition!^[59]

Horacio Zuñiga also deplored:

...uncomprehending or contemptuous, they systematically, surreptitiously, and covertly cornered him until he was forced to seek among animals, their stray cats and dogs, the affection they had always denied him!...^[60]

A significant part of Erasmo Castellanos's personality was his great love for animals, especially dogs and cats. Ricardo Garibay described this affection in detail:

No one enters his house. He receives people in the garden and says goodbye in the garden. From what we've been able to spy when he cracks the door, his house is a ruin, with all animals kinds crossing the space between the half-open door.

-Don't kill, never, nothing, ever. May death never come from your hand, my boy. The only truly bad and ugly thing is death.

There comes the master. He's coming. He's carrying two burlaps full of rice, bread pieces, meat chunks, and bones. He carries them like a good porter: on his back and with his face raised. He looks like a beggar. He walks very hunched but naturally, he doesn't run, and you can't see any effort in him. His bowler hat is a piece of scraps of cloth, or a bunch of scraps of cloth.

- Good evening, master.

We stood and bowed in greeting. We took the sacks from him.

-Soon, soon, it's not near. The poor must already be waiting.

From Mártires de Tacubaya,^[61] going up to El Chorrito,^[62] which bordered Chapultepec. By Los Pinos today - the presidential house - and from there, going down to the Cartagena Portal.^[63] And the fabulous thing: dogs were waiting for him at every corner. Groups of two, three, five, even eight dogs were waiting for him. All of them were scrawny, skin and bones, mangy, filthy. They smeared themselves on him, they climbed their paws on him, barked at him, jumped around him, licked him. He spoke to them, asked about their health, about the dangers of the streets, and scolded them when they tried to snatch their rations. They paid attention to him perfectly consciously.

They would accompany him for a block or two and see him off, barking vigorously. A few cats would also appear. The last dogs would accompany him to the door of his house.

Go away now. Be careful with cars, trucks, and trams, and especially with people; people don't know, they don't understand. See you tomorrow. Go away.

They waited for him to close the door. They barked and left.

These walks lasted three or four hours a day. At seven o'clock sharp, the dogs would arrive at the corners and sit and wait.

- Don't lie down, because they'll step on you or kick you, you sillys.

The dogs would sit and wait. And how suffered the man when he found one injured or visibly ill. There, in the street middle, heal it, feed it, talk to it, find it shelter. Time and again, those of us who accompanied him were: Rubén Bonifaz, Fausto Vega, Luis Morrón, Jorge Hernández Campos, Campanella, Vizcarra, or I.^[64]

• 1947 Mexico's Cervantes Society Prize, which held a competition for the best Cervantes research produced in the Americas during the Cervantes fourth centenary birth, offered a diploma and ten thousand Mexican pesos as prize. The call allowed submit the work by the author or by another person on her or his behalf, possibility that Francisco Pimentel, an Erasmo Castellanos friend, used to present "The Enchanters’ Triumph"^[65] a Castellanos work—printed by himself—without his prior consent or knowledge. Forty-two texts were received. The award ceremony took place at the Palacio de las Bellas Artes (Fine Arts’ Palace), with attendance of numerous intellectuals, academics, diplomatic representatives from several countries, and public. Because it was one of his main knowledge fields, the master, among the crowd, also attended. At the moment, the winner's name was announced: Erasmo Castellanos Quinto. The acclaim was thunderous, but for Erasmo Castellanos, the situation was confusing, unexpected, and shocking. Already recovered, and on stage, the teacher explained that he was sorry but he had not submitted any work, that obtaining that prize had not been and was not his wish, that it should have been won by a young Cervantes scholar, not an elder like him. He did not accept it despite the many pleas he received, including from the poet Carlos Pellicer. He left the stage and left, causing confusion, but later, much greater admiration and veneration for his person. He never accepted the prize but, since then, he was and is known as El Primer Cervantista de América (The America's First Cervantes Scholar).^[66]
• 1954 Belisario Domínguez Medal of Honor. Created by the Mexican Senate in 1953 to be awarded to Mexican women or men who have distinguished themselves by their science or virtue to an eminent degree, as Homeland or humanity servants.^[67] Awarded in 1954 for first time,^[68] Castellanos Quinto was the first recipient of that award.^[69] The teacher description that was made in solemn session in which the Senate awarded him the Medal, says:: "...we found the teachr Castellanos Quinto in one of the most modest homes in our country, surrounded by his friends, two or three venerable old men like himself, and four or five stray dogs he was able to save with his own help and with his professorship salary, so they wouldn't die of hunger. This selfless man, who didn't even have a suit suitable for appearing before the Senate; this wise Mexican man, deserving all our applause and all our respect, honors us with his presence...^[70]"
• 1955 Medal awarded by the National Autonomous University of Mexico professors to Erasmo Castellanos Quinto for his meritorious teaching and literary work, which was awarded to him a few days before his sudden death by Professor Rafael Cordero Amador, his fellow since 1922, the master having told him upon receiving it “...with a soft, broken voice: 'Cordero Amador: Homer, Virgil, Horace, Dante, Shakespeare and Cervantes are watching this scene from heaven’ and tears rolled down his cheeks...”^[71]

He was an Academia Mexicana de la Lengua (Mexican Academy of the Language) member.^[72] An institution composed of distinguished professionals and intellectuals from diverse knowledge areas in Mexico who, in addition to their expertise field, are great Spanish language connoisseurs and scholars, particularly the ways of speaking and writing it in Mexico.

Also acknowledged as notable, professor Castellanos Quinto was proposed and elected by the academics as Academy Corresponding Member^[73] at the December 28, 1919 session, occupying that position on March 20, 1920.

Subsequently, on July 4, 1928, he was elected Academy's Full Member to occupy chair VII, but, reluctant to shine, after some time - more than four years - without him appearing to address his formal acceptance speech - although he did actively participate with other activities and speeches in other sessions - the Academy agreed in its January 4, 1933 assembly, that Castellanos Quinto should resume his role as corresponding member, electing the historian Mariano Cuevas^[74] S. J.^[75] to occupy the full member's chair that professor Castellanos, at that time, abstained from taking.^[76]

Twenty-five years later, for his endless and outstanding brilliance and merits in Spanish language and great literature knowledge, he was again nominated and elected as an Academy Full Member, that time accepting, pronouncing his induction lecture on June 12, 1953, occupying the XIX chair,..^{[77][78][79][80]} Unfortunately, the Academy couldn't got his inaugural speech to publish it.^[81]

In 1946, his students Roberto Oropeza Martínez^[82] Enrique Vázquez Domínguez and Orlando Carrera, persuaded their teacher to give a recital of his own poetry entitled "Erasmo Castellanos Quinto", to which the poet and techer agreed because box office money, little or much, would go to the "Ten Million Campaign" for the Ciudad Universitaria, Mexico City (University City) build. This idea was supported by Mexico Cervantine Society. The recital was so successful that it was repeated three times, the last one at the Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico's main stage, where the professor and poet was accompanied by voice and piano in the background.^[83] Although the new campus began operating in March 1954, Erasmo Castellanos never taught there, having ceased to be a Faculty of Philosophy and Letters professor in 1953, cause his age.

Leonardo Pasquel his former student described teacher Castellanos Quinto death:^[84]

His knowledge passion and to excel in his chosen field imperative refined his desire to isolate himself as a defensive reaction to hostility surrounding him. He built his ivory tower and closed the doors behind him. Maladjusted and solitary, the world narrowed for him to the library. […] Some of his former students, who had reached national politics highest levels, strove to help the teacher,^[85] although rigidity of a neurotic symptomatology already prevented any adequate reaction. The definitive pretext for triggering the crisis was an attempted eviction from his house for non-payment rent. And the noble heart, which had beaten for almost eighty years with a rhythm out of step of his self-denial compared to its time, stopped its constant fluttering. The teacher had stopped suffering. A smile vibrated with humanity on his gaunt face. It was just after three in the morning on December 11, 1955.^[86][87]

Andrés Henestrosa commented:

…when he died, not even were available his biography most essential details, and everything was reduced to recounting his life anecdotes…^[88]

Horacio Zúñiga wrote:

His funeral was far from being an event social and national and, fortunately, it was far from the foolish pomp and offensive sumptuousness [...]…over the tomb that only guards carrion, the figure that became a symbol of Erasmo Castellanos Quinto already rose up like a statue of light: the humanist, the poet, the wise man, the saint, THE TEACHER, in short, the inmortal professor who, so Franciscan and Socratic, knew how to be, wisdom in spirit, beauty in word, apostolate in life and tenderness in heart!^[89]

Finally, Horacio himself, on master's death occasion, recalled how when his mother died his former teacher Castellanos accompanied him until his house and said to him:

Transform your feelings into beauty! I'm with you!, I'll always be here even if you don’t see me! And he hugged me again and once again the tears rolled down his curly beard, and I stayed…stammered…almost praying the poet’s sublime prayer: ‘An angel passed by here…and I didn’t know it…!’…And nobody knew it!…^[90]

The work to which Castellanos Quinto devoted his life was—as already mentioned— great literature study and teaching, so his printed work was limited, although this doesn't diminish its literary value. This is what has survived:

Del fondo del abra (From the bottom of the opening). Lyrical poems, published in Mexico in 1919 by Castellanos Quinto himself, who, in the prologue to the original edition, written by the humanist Luis G. Betancourt, Latin literature professor at the Advanced Studies School of the National University of Mexico (later Autonomous) says Castellanos Quinto published his youth poems book forced by his friends, because otherwise the teacher would never have made them known. In the colophon, which the master Castellanos wrote in Latin, he says "Typis editus ac perfectus apud auctorem. VIII Id. APR. Anno Dni. MCMXIX. Carmen Foncerrada exornavit." That in English means: " Printed, published, and completed by the author. April 8, Lord's year 1919. Carmen Foncerrada decorated it." Leaving it on record that -as it was- the printing, outside of everything common or customary that is to give it to a printing house or a publishing house, was done by himself (at home with some of his students help) with extreme care and quality in a manual printing press, with very beautiful titles and vignettes made by -as has been said- the artist Foncerrada, producing a true bibliographic gem, to which the professor Milton Alexander Buchanan,^[91] of the Italian and Spanish Department at University of Toronto, to whom professor Castellanos gave a copy with autograph dedication (currently in the Robarts Library reserved collection of that University) labeled that volume with its ex libris that says: "Keep as a precious jewel" for its literary content and unique and artistic edition.^[92] A fragment of a poem is transcribed from this book:

LEAVES, THORNS AND FLOWERS

Why, Florinda told me, do flowers live for one day?
Amid the mists of dawn that weep liquid pearls,
Adorned with stars, they open the moist clasp,
They contemplate nothing but a sun, they see nothing but a dawn,
And when the afternoon falls, and when the night closes,
Now without blushing and without tears the shadow finds them dead.
Why, Florinda asked me, do leaves live longer?
Spring smiles, they awaken into green shoots,
They swell their veins with sap, they cover the branches with splendor.
Summer burns, the light of the sun shines brightly,
And there is more vigor in the stems and there is more vigor in the leaves,
Then autumn begins, the greenery fades,
And the leaves, yellowing and withering, begin to fall;
And when winter comes, loose in snow and north winds,
It finds the bare branches in valleys, peaks, and hills.
Why, Florinda asked me, don't thorns wither?
They last as long as the branch and the same suns live;
Nights follow day and flowers lose their petals,
Years follow years, seasons change,
And the thorns endure, and the leaves come and go;
And though the branches wither, the stings do not die.
Why do the piercing thorns live so long?
Florinda closed her lips, I looked into her eyes at the night,
And in that night an abyss of doubts and anguish.
Florinda, I said laughing, put your soul into my songs,
I will light the stars in your pilgrim shadows
And I will decipher the enigma of leaves, thorns, and flowers.

…^[93]

La nueva interpretación de las siete murallas del noble castillo del Limbo (The new interpretation of the Limbo noble castle seven walls) published and printed in Mexico in 1937 also by Maestro Castellanos Quinto himself, "Work testimony to the Castellanos Quinto depth knowledge had about The Divine Comedy -Eneas Rivas Castellanos tells us-. The Limbo Castle is, Dante according, the place where immortals are kept, who, being pagans, are considered worthy of praise. Castellanos gives us a well-founded interpretation not only Dante Alighieri's work but also of his sources, focusing on the place immortals occupy in the rewards and punishments distribution after life.^[94][95][96]

Poesía Inédita (Unpublished Poetry) a posthumous book, a compilation by his loyal disciple and follower Roberto Oropeza Martínez, published by the Librería Porrúa in 1962, in which - Oropeza tells us in the prologue - "everything that was not included in the only poems book published by Erasmo Castellanos: Del fondo del abra is gathered here [...] It is the disciple everlasting gratitude, the still adolescent admiration, fortunately, which brings us to this honor appointment with the one who no longer exists but scattered in those who collected some of his dust particles...", that is, his poems obtained from the professor's manuscripts that were provided to Oropeza by his relatives and people who were in charge of his few possessions -except his extensive library-, among them, in the portfolio that his student Campanella gave him, his invaluable poems written throughout his years "Some with complete clarity and order - Oropeza continues - but most of them scattered across cards, notes on sheets of paper and in many cases repeated in countless variations." which were a challenge for him to identify the final versions.^[97][98] From this collection of poems, a fragment of the:

ELEGY TO THE TENOCHTITLAN DESTRUCTION

Beautiful Tenochtitlan, only in a dream
The mind can imagine your shadow
How bright the roofs shine!
How they shine
Your enameled walls!
How great
Magical architectures become entangled
By your squares and your temples!
Of poppies
Your gardens become quickened,
They float slowly
In the fluid mirror of your streets
The flowering chinampas
And there, far away,
The blue spine of your mountains
Sprinkled with snow,
Majestic clouds glide by,
Blinking of stars,
Dawns that shed dew,
Fire twilights
And the smoke on the lofty peaks
Announcing war

The war...yes...reverberates in the Teocalli
Huitzilopochtli tragic and bloody
From the hoarse huéhuetl in the hollow trunk
That resonates in altered thunder
And livid terror ripples the lakes
With the chill of death.
And the feathered war helmets
They sway in the winds
And the terrible macanas pass by
Of flint with sharp teeth,
The warrior's garment is tiger skin
The bow already stretches the vibrant string
And in the quiver they prepare for the fight
The whistling arrows.

…^[99]

A los cadetes de Chapultepec (To the Chapultepec Cadets). Poetry delivered by Erasmo Castellanos on the distribution of prizes and rewards awarded to the students of the Colegio Militar de México,^[100] on December 5, 1909, in the Chapultepec Forest monumental roundabout. Today the only existing copy of this eleven-page printout is in the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign library.^[101][102]

• On May 3, 1958, the Federal District Department authorities, Mexico City Government today, named the street that was previously called "Calle de la Universidad" ("University Street", because that is where the Royal and Pontifical University of Mexico building was located during New Spain times) after professor Erasmo Castellanos Quinto. Centro Histórico de la Ciudad de México.^[103]
• On the occasion of the National Preparatory School centennial celebration on February 3, 1968, its campus number 2, then located in the building on Licenciado Verdad and República de Guatemala Streets, Historic Center of Mexico City, was named Erasmo Castellanos Quinto. In 1978, it was moved to its new buildings at 1418 Río Churubusco Avenue, Carlos Zapata Vela Neighborhood, Iztacalco Municipality, Mexico City, preserving the professor's name.^[104][105]

• Erasmo Castellanos Quinto sculpture by Humberto Peraza, 1975, located at Plaza Cervantina in Santiago Tuxtla, Veracruz, Mexico, on 450 city foundation anniversary.^[106]
• Erasmo Castellanos Quinto statue by Ernesto Tamariz also from 1975, originally erected in the Plaza de Loreto^[107] in the Mexico City Historic Center, moved in 1993 to the Preparatory School No. 2 esplanade that bears his name, monument today popularly known among students as “The Erasmo" for being a reference point in their school.^[108]
• Erasmo Castellanos Quinto sculpture donated by the State of Veracruz government, placed on Paseo de la Reforma Avenue near Peralvillo, Mexico City, stolen on an unknown date for its bronze to be trafficked.^[109][110]
• Avenue named after Erasmo Castellanos Quinto, in the El Centinela and Educación neighborhoods in the Coyoacán borough, Mexico City.

In Mexico there are various schools: kindergartens, primary and secondary schools, as well as libraries that bear Erasmo Castellanos Quinto's name.

• Anguiano Valadez. Adolfo, Poesía Siglo XX (20th Century Poetry): Carlos Pellicer, Fray Gerónimo Verduzco, José Gorostiza, Ramón López Velarde, Erasmo Castellanos Quinto, Griselda Álvarez, Marco Antonio Montes de Oca, Pablo Neruda. Compañía editorial impresora y distribuidora publishing house. Mexico, 2004, 354 pages.
• Castellanos Quinto. Erasmo, Las siete murallas del castillo del limbo (The new interpretation of the Limbo noble castle seven walls), Universidad Veracruzana publishing house. Mexico, 1986, 208 pages.
• Castellanos Quinto. Erasmo, Poesía inédita (Unpublished poetry), Mexico, Librería Porrúa publishing house, 1962, 113 pages.
• Garibay. Ricardo, Fiera infancia y otros años (Fierce childhood and other years), Océano publishing house, Mexico, 1982, 134 pages.
• Medina Valencia. José de Jesús y Segura López. Luis, autor, Grandes maestros de la juventud: semblanzas biográficas de grandes maestros preparatorianos (Great teachers of youth: biographical sketches of great preparatory teachers). Mexico, unidentified publisher house, circa 1977, 77 pages.
• Oropeza Martínez. Roberto, Terebinto en Aroma: semblanza de Erasmo Castellanos Quinto (Terebinth in Aroma: Erasmo Castellanos Quinto profile), Escuela Nacional Preparatoria, UNAM publisher house, Mexico, 2000, 129 pages.

• Del fondo del abra at the Internet Archive (From the bottom of the opening)
• A los cadetes de Chapultepec at the Internet Archive (To the Chapultepec Cadets)