Monografias 228-CH01.qxd

Transcription

Colección Támesis
SERIE A: MONOGRAFÍAS, 228
THE POETRY OF SALVADOR ESPRIU
TO SAVE THE WORDS
This first book-length study in English of the poetry of Salvador
Espriu (1913–85) examines the work from two standpoints. First,
it explores the structural implications of symmetry and numerology, in a chronological rather than thematic survey of the poetry –
a procedure that involves a consideration of how each book (what
could be termed in most cases a macro-poem) attains its distinctive character while having common preoccuaptions and stylistic
traits. This aspect of the study entails a critical evaluation of recent
investigations by Maria Rosa Delor on Espriu and the Cabbala.
Secondly, it examines the tension implicit in Espriu’s poetry
between involvement and detachment or between the civic and the
lyric. One issue addressed is why Espriu is perceived both as the
symbol of moral resistance agains Francoism and as a hermetic,
‘difficult’ poet. By drawing on ideas broached in Seamus Heaney’s
The Redress of Poetry, it investigates the relationship between
Espriu’s private and public personae, notably the way in which
his poetic integrity is not compromised by ideologico-political
realities.
Central to the study is an awareness of the precarious status of
the Catalan language in the period when Espriu wrote most of his
poetry, and of how his work represents, by dint of its linguistic
character, an act of defiance and affirmation, in Delor’s view, a
‘metalinguistic literature’.
D. GARETH WALTERS is Professor of Hispanic Studies at the
University of Exeter.
Tamesis
Founding Editor
J. E. Varey
General Editor
Stephen M. Hart
Editorial Board
Alan Deyermond
Julian Weiss
Charles Davis
D. GARETH WALTERS
THE POETRY OF
SALVADOR ESPRIU
TO SAVE THE WORDS
TAMESIS
© D. Gareth Walters 2006
All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation
no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system,
published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast,
transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission of the copyright owner
The right of D. Gareth Walters to be identified as
the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with
sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
First published 2006 by Tamesis, Woodbridge
ISBN 1 85566 132 2
Tamesis is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd
PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK
and of Boydell & Brewer Inc.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library
This publication is printed on acid-free paper
Printed in Great Britain by
Athenaeum Press Ltd, Gateshead, Tyne & Wear
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
vi
Part 1: DEFINITIONS AND INTERPRETATIONS
Salvador Espriu, the Poet of Catalonia
Poetry and Politics
Critical Approaches and Methodologies
1
9
19
Part 2: THE PALINDROMIC CYCLE
Chronologies
Cementiri de Sinera [Sinera Cemetery]
Les hores [The Hours]
Mrs. Death [Mrs. Death]
El caminant i el mur [The Walker and the Wall]
Final del laberint [End of the Labyrinth]
30
34
51
76
95
111
Part 3: THE LATER POETRY
La pell de brau [The Bull Hide]
Llibre de Sinera [Book of Sinera]
Setmana Santa [Holy Week]
Haikus and Homages
126
142
156
173
Part 4: SUMMATION AND CONCLUSION
Les cançons d’Ariadna [The Songs of Ariadne]
Conclusion
189
202
Bibliography
Index
209
214
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I wish to thank Montserrat Caba of the Centre d’Estudis i Documentació
Salvador Espriu at Arenys de Mar for her invaluable assistance in providing
me with bibliographic materials on Espriu and for making the resources of the
Centre so readily available to me. I have also been encouraged by her interest
in this project from an early stage. I am also grateful to Olívia Gassol i Bellet
for kindly sending me a copy of a recently published book of hers on the poet.
I am especially indebted to Giuseppina Pella Nicastro for assisting me in
several ways in the preparation of the typescript and the compilation of the
bibliography. I am grateful to the Institut Ramón Llull for their generosity
in contributing the greater part of the sum required as subvention for the
publication costs of the book, and to the University of Exeter for providing
me with a further grant for the same purpose.
The Arts and Humanities Research Council of the British Academy assisted
me greatly in the completion of my study by awarding me a grant under their
Research Leave Scheme.
While the translations that appear in this book are my own, I have been
guided by the bilingual Catalan-Spanish editions that appear in the bibliography
and by the translations supplied by Louis J. Rodrigues for Salvador Espriu,
Selected Poems (Manchester: Carcanet, 1997). My aim has been to provide the
reader who has little or no knowledge of Catalan with largely literal versions,
with the intention of supplying a guide rather than explanations; the translations
are not designed as disguised interpretative tools. Only a relatively small
number of Espriu’s poems have been translated into English verse, and while it
is highly desirable that many more should be so rendered – including complete,
rather than abridged, cycles – it clearly does not fall within the scope of a book
of this nature to begin that task.
The publication of this work has been assisted by grants from the Institut
Ramón Llull and from the University of Exeter.
D. Gareth Walters
Exeter, September 2005
For Pella
Part 1
Definitions and Interpretations
Salvador Espriu, the Poet of Catalonia
Jordi Pujol, the former President of the Autonomous Region of Catalonia,
observed that Salvador Espriu was quite simply the ‘poeta nacional de
Catalunya’ [national poet of Catalonia].1 For Manuel Vázquez Montalbán he
was ‘un dels símbols de la resistència cultural i moral de Catalunya contra el
franquisme’ [one of the symbols of the cultural and moral resistance of
Catalonia against Francoism].2 Yet Espriu was an unlikely hero. He never sought
the limelight and disliked official recognition because he did not feel he merited
it; when he was awarded the Premi Nacional de les Lletres Catalanes he stated
that, in his view, others were more deserving of the honour.3 He could not be
accused of false modesty either: his own assessment, matching the impressions
of those who knew him, was that ‘el meu temperament és d’home molt reservat
i solitari’ [my temperament is that of a very reserved and solitary man].4 There
was, however, a sharp edge to this reserve. In 1952, in response to a request from
a publisher for a self-portrait in words, he provided an acerbic document in
which, after listing his favourite books, he outlined his pet hates and aversions:
Detesto los premios literarios, la avaricia y la suciedad, las felicitaciones
de Navidad y de santo (las cuales agradezco, desde ahí, de una vez para siempre, mientras pido a mis amigos que por favor non se acuerden nunca más de
mí durante esos días), los homenajes, el viento, el desorden y el ruido, salir
de noche, comer fuera de casa, lo que llama vida de relación, los conciertos,
las confidencias, aconsejar, las obscenas expresiones de la vanidad.5
[I detest literary prizes, avarice and dirt, greetings at Christmas and on birthdays (for which I am for once and for all grateful, while asking my friends
to have the goodness not to think of me again on those days), homages, the
wind, disorder and noise, going out in the evening, eating out, what is called
social life, concerts, confiding, advising, the obscene expressions of vanity.]
1 Memòria de Salvador Espriu (Arenys de Mar: Centre de Documentació i Estudi
Salvador Espriu, 1988), p. 147.
2 Barcelones (Barcelona: Empúries, 1990), p. 222.
3 Antoni Batista, Salvador Espriu: itinerari personal (Barcelona: Empúries, 1985), p. 59.
4 Batista, 60–61.
5 Cited in Maria Aurèlia Capmany, Salvador Espriu (Barcelona: Dopesa, 1971), pp. 9–10.
2
D. GARETH WALTERS
He concluded this diatribe with an expression of despair at humanity, which
he believed was moving inexorably towards ‘un inmediato y definitivo
cataclismo’ [an immediate and definitive cataclysm] – an indication of
Espriu’s concern with the Cold War and the Atomic Era.6 In this bleak and
sardonic vision, however, there appears as though by way of remedy a brief
comment on the role of poetry: ‘alguna ayuda para vivir rectamente y quizá
para bien morir’ [an aid to correct living and perhaps to dying well]. What
kind of experiences led Espriu to this misanthropic assessment and what
characteristics does his poetry possess to warrant the contradictory assertion?
The second question is the prime concern of this study, but we must also
address the first in order to gain an insight into the kind of man who would
write such poetry.
*
If, from the many photographs of him, Espriu resembles a solicitor rather
than what one might imagine a poet to look like then the impression is not
without foundation. For twenty years he worked as a notary, effectively
following in his father’s footsteps. At the time of the birth of his second son,
Salvador, on 10 July 1913, Francesc de Paula Espriu i Torres was a notary in
Santa Coloma de Farners, a small town in the province of Gerona. In 1915 he
obtained a similar post in Barcelona, and the family settled into an apartment
in Carrer Diputació in the fashionable area of the Eixample. The Esprius
were a well-to-do family as a result of inheritances as well as the father’s
profession, and enjoyed the services of three maids, a cook and a chauffeur.
Francesc Espriu was a man of liberal and anti-clerical views, as a result of
which the son did not attend the Jesuit school as would have been the norm
for the Barcelona bourgeosie.7 By contrast, his mother, Escolàstica Castelló i
Molas, was a devout Catholic whose religious instincts, according to Espriu,
betrayed a subconscious Calvinism.8
Salvador was the second of five children: three boys and two girls. His
happy, even idyllic, childhood years were clouded by illness and death. In
1924 his sister, Maria Isabel, succumbed to measles at the age of seven, and
two years later his elder brother Francesc died of septicemia after a fall; he
was fourteen years of age and had already demonstrated a talent for
sculpture.9 In response to this double loss the parents devoted even greater
6 Several poems in Les cançons d’Ariadna [The Songs of Ariadne] deal with this issue.
See Batista, Salvador Espriu: itinerari personal, p. 25.
7 Rosa M. Delor i Muns, Salvador Espriu, els anys d’aprenenatge (1929–1943)
(Barcelona: Edicions 62, 1993), p. 17.
8 Agustí Espriu i Malagelada, Salvador Espriu (Barcelona: Columna, 1996), p. 14.
9 Espriu i Malagelada, 23.
DEFINITIONS AND INTERPRETATIONS
3
attention to the three remaining children. In particular, Salvador’s health was
a cause of considerable concern. At the age of nine he was discovered to have
an accumulation of pus on his lungs. A risky but necessary operation to drain
his lungs was followed by a period of convalescence of three years, during
which time he was largely confined to bed. Salvador had been an energetic
and playful child. Yet if the long illness he suffered in the mid-1920s curbed
his physical activity it had the compensatory effect of enabling him to acquire
a remarkable knowledge of books and literature. He read beyond his years,
encouraged by his father, who bought him a 46-volume world history when
he started his secondary education.
For most of Espriu’s childhood and youth the family divided their time
between three places: the Barcelona apartment, an ancestral home in Arenys de
Mar, some 30 kilometres up the coast from Barcelona, and, from the time of his
illness, a house designed by the notable architect Puig i Cadafalch, in Viladrau,
a small town east of Vic. The choice of Viladrau was on medical advice: it was
believed that the altitude and clean air would be beneficial for the treatment of
Salvador’s lung problem. The property was surrounded by trees and flowers
and Espriu’s mother planted over two thousand roses there over the years.
Yet despite the beauty and tranquillity of the house at Viladrau and having his
main residence in Barcelona for virtually the whole of his life, the place that
made the biggest impact on Espriu was Arenys de Mar. In fact it had a decisive
effect upon his writing, not least his poetry. The family could trace its roots in
Arenys on both sides for centuries. Espriu’s ancestors included navigators and
merchants who had travelled widely, a reminder of the important maritime
heritage of Arenys. His great-grandfather on his mother’s side, Esteve Moles i
Bargués (1803–79), spent most of his life as a sea-captain, travelling repeatedly
to Puerto Rico and Cuba.10 His paternal grandmother was the niece of Bisbe
Jaume Català i Albosa (1854–1914), who was appointed Bishop of Cadiz in
1879 and of Barcelona in 1883. It was the house that he had built in the lower
part of Arenys that Espriu’s father inherited and which became the family home.
Even though these and other ancestors figure in Espriu’s writing, the
significance of Arenys resides in the place as an amalgam of people and
impressions rather than as the stage for any particular individual. It figures
throughout Espriu’s work as Sinera – a word achieved by reversing the letters
in ‘Arenys’ and replacing the ‘y’ by an ‘i’. Although the town has suffered
from urban development and the building of a trunk road it is still possible to
appreciate its distinctive physical appearance. Entering from the south one
immediately notices on the hill above the railway station and overlooking the
sea the town cemetery. Here in a modest niche are Espriu’s remains. The town
itself is built around a long steep street, which has a flood channel (‘riera’) in
10 See Carles Móra, Salvador Espriu i Sinera (Argentona: L’Aixernador Edicions,
1992), p. 102.
4
D. GARETH WALTERS
the middle – a practical measure to deal with the rush of water flowing down
from the hills as a consequence of heavy autumn or winter rains, and the
resultant concentration of the water into the narrow valley bed. The town is
undistinguished architecturally, although the church of Santa Maria boasts an
interesting baroque altar.11
When Espriu was a boy, Arenys de Mar was the kind of town that, by its size
and demographic mix, was likely to contain interesting or picturesque characters.
The family home itself was a focal point for the town’s social life: Francesc
Espriu entertained friends and acquaintances for small informal gatherings or
‘tertulias’. The future poet would sometimes be present at these and would
display the erudition acquired as a result of his wide reading, much to the
pleasure of his father. As a boy Espriu witnessed the indications of poverty and
deprivation, characteristic of small-town Spain in the early decades of the
twentieth century. The beggars who passed through the streets, the tramps and
vagrants, all found a place in his writing, often serving as memorable symbols.
Of all Espriu’s works it is perhaps his highly original play, Primera història
d’Esther [The First Story of Esther], that provides the most extensive and
nostalgic evocation of the Arenys de Mar of his childhood.12
In 1930, at the age of seventeen, Espriu entered the University of Barcelona
to study law and humanities. The previous year he had published – in a
limited edition of 100 copies, financed by his father – a novel entitled Israel
[Israel], which demonstrated his considerable knowledge of the Scriptures. It
was the only work of his to be written in Spanish; thereafter he would confine
himself to Catalan. In the stimulating intellectual environment of the university in the early years of the Second Republic Espriu blossomed as a prose
writer. He wrote two novels in as many years: El Dr. Rip [Dr. Rip], a bleak
tale about a doctor suffering from cancer who commits suicide, and Laia [Laia],
the story about a mysteriously attractive woman, set in a rural community. The
latter prompted negative evaluations, both on account of its supposed immorality
and what one critic deemed to be a defective knowledge of Catalan.13 A
feature of Laia which provoked differing responses in commentators on this
novel was Espriu’s predilection for grotesque descriptions and caricature. It
was a trait that he may have inherited from one of the more striking Spanish
Móra, 71–72.
See Mathilde Bensoussan, ‘Primera història d’Esther: la infantesa revisitada’, in
Salvador Espriu: algunes cartes i estudis sobre la seva obra. Edició en homenatge als 10
anys de la seva mort (Barcelona: Centre de Documentació i Estudi Salvador Espriu/
Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat, 1995), pp. 49–54; D. Gareth Walters, ‘From
linguistic monument to social memory: translation strategies in Philip Polack’s version of
Espriu’s Primera història d’Esther’, Modern Language Review, 97 (2002), 863–76.
13 See Espriu i Malagelada, Salvador Espriu, p. 32. For early reviews of El Dr. Rip and
Laia see Delor i Muns, Salvador Espriu, els anys d’aprenenatge, pp. 41–53.
11
12
5
novelists and dramatists of an earlier generation, Ramón del Valle Inclán, and
it was to constitute an important strand in Espriu’s poetry.
In the mid-1930s Espriu turned his attention to the short story, publishing
several collections marked by the same acerbic tone as was present in the
novels, and drawing in greater measure on the places and people he knew
best, even extending his range to satirize some of his teachers at university.14
His cultural horizons had been greatly expanded by a 48-day cruise of the
Mediterranean in 1933. It was organized by the Ministry of Public Education
and Fine Arts and involved nearly 200 teachers and students from eleven
Spanish universities and the Schools of Architecture in Barcelona and Madrid.
Their visit took in North Africa, the Holy Land, Greece and the eastern
Mediterranean, Sicily and Naples. Espriu’s passion for classical literature and
Egyptian history was reinforced, and for years to come the places he visited
were to be the subject of description and allusion in his poetry.
Among his companions on this trip was a fellow student from Majorca by
the name of Bartomeu Roselló-Pòrcel. He was a poet of considerable talent
and became a close friend of Espriu. His death from tuberculosis in 1938 at the
age of 24 was a bitter blow to Espriu, especially as they had grown somewhat
apart as a result of political differences. Yet the memory of the friendship
remained vivid for Espriu for the rest of his life. He dedicated the first part of
his book of poems Les hores [The Hours] (1952) to the memory of the dead
poet, and over thirty years later, in the year preceding his own death, his
acceptance speech for membership of the Reial Academia de Bones Lletres
was effectively an evaluation of Rosselló-Pòrcel’s achievement as a poet.15
Yet profound though the influence of the Majorcan poet was on Espriu’s
life and work,16 he may have unwittingly curbed and postponed his poetic
career. The first record we have of a poem by Espriu dates from late 1934, a
composition entitled ‘Dansa grotesca de la mort’ [‘Grotesque Dance of
Death’] – a title very much in keeping with his satirico-burlesque manner at
this time. Delor i Muns has shown convincingly how this poem connects with
one by Roselló-Pòrcel, the similarly entitled ‘Dansa de la mort’ [‘Dance of
death’].17 Yet the Majorcan poet did not have a high regard for Espriu’s
poetry, and urged him to continue producing prose fiction. Whether this
14 In particular Carles Riba, whose name he disguised as CRIsant BAptista MESTREs,
the upper case letters forming an anagram of C. Riba, Mestre. Espriu referred ironically to
Riba, his teacher, as ‘mestre’. See Espriu i Malagelada, Salvador Espriu, p. 37.
15 Espriu i Malagelada, 94.
16 The most detailed account of their personal and literary relationship is provided by
Rosa M. Delor i Muns, La mort com a intercanvi simbòlic. Bartomeu Rosselló-Pòrcel i
Salvador Espriu: diàleg intertextual (1934–1984) (Barcelona: Publicacions de l’Abadia de
Montserrat, 1993).
17 Delor i Muns, 63–65.
6
D. GARETH WALTERS
advice was decisive or not is not clear but Espriu felt neither the confidence
nor the need to publish any poetry before the mid-1940s.
The political differences between Roselló-Pòrcel and Espriu related to the
perilous and febrile situation of Spain and Catalonia in the 1930s. Espriu
viewed the attempt to resume and enlarge Catalan autonomy as a separate and
independent state within the Iberian Federation as an act of criminal folly;
doubtless he would have agreed with Raymond Carr’s assessment that ‘by
revolting against an elected government in October 1934, the forces of the left
denied themselves the legal if not the moral possibility of denouncing the
rising of July 1936’.18 Espriu’s dismay at the revolt of 1934 and the far graver
events that succeeded Franco’s coup in 1936 was in contrast to the enthusiasm
displayed by Rosselló-Pòrcel, a committed communist who offered himself
unhesitatingly to the army of the Popular Front on the outbreak of war.19
For Espriu, a whole way of life was coming to an end. The most immediate
impact of the Civil War was upon his academic aspirations. He had graduated
in law in 1935 and in ancient history the following year. But the outbreak of
hostilities resulted in his having to abandon his studies in Egyptology, having
been awarded a grant for this purpose – the first of the kind in Spain. A potentially distinguished academic career was thus blighted. Espriu was conscripted
soon after the start of the War but because of his delicate health was not
required to go to the front; indeed his clerical duties were such that he was
able to return home every evening. The realities of war were not lost upon
him, however. The tit-for-tat violence that characterized the actions of the
extremists on both sides in the opening weeks of the struggle reached Arenys
de Mar, where the Espriu family remained during the summer of 1936 rather
than go to Viladrau. On 28 July, two parish priests and a Capuchin monk were
assassinated on the outskirts of the town. Some days later, Republican militiamen
removed religious objects from the family home and burnt documents from
the archive.
Espriu continued to write short stories in the years of the Civil War and also
toyed with the idea of publishing poetry: in 1937 he had prepared a hundred
poems for a collection to be entitled Les hores. The enterprise never came to
fruition, however, and Espriu destroyed around 90 of these compositions,
although a book of poems with this title eventually appeared in 1952 in a
completely revised form. But no such hesitation characterized his foray into
another literary genre. In the wake of the entry of the Nationalist troops into
Barcelona and the defeat of the Republican cause, Espriu wrote Antígona
[Antigone]. This was a play which revolved around the tale of another civil
war, that between the brothers Eteocles and Polynices. Their sister Antigone
18 Raymond Carr, Modern Spain 1875–1980 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980),
p. 131.
19 Espriu i Malagelada, Salvador Espriu, p. 40.
7
had attempted to make peace between them, and Espriu, on his own
admission, coveted a similar effort at reconciliation in Spain in 1939, hoping
that the defeated would be forgiven.20 He was to be disappointed.
The repression of Catalan identity that occurred in the years following
Franco’s victory was not unprecedented. Catalan-Castilian relations had been
coloured by the conflict of centralism and regionalism since the reign of
Philip IV in the seventeenth century. At the end of the War of Spanish
Succession in 1713 and with the defeat of the supporters of Archduke Charles
of Austria – the candidate whom the Catalans had backed for the vacant
Spanish throne – the new Bourbon king, Philip V, imposed a new constitutional
arrangement upon the region: the Nova Planta. This amounted to a curtailment
of Catalan political rights, and comprised an attack upon its culture as well as
its institutions that had a long-term effect. Only at the start of the twentieth
century was it to recover a measure of autonomy. Even these modest forms of
self-government were to be removed in the 1920s during the period of the
dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, a bitter opponent of Catalan nationalist aspirations. In 1931, however, the advent of the Second Republic led to the return
of autonomous government in the establishment of the Generalitat, a constitutional and parliamentary arrangement that originated in the Middle Ages. It
was not to survive for long.
The end of the Civil War plunged Catalonia into an abject state similar to the
one imposed upon it by the Bourbon victory in 1714. The repression was, if
anything more remorseless: as petty as it was severe. Catalonia was paying the
price for supporting the Republican cause, but it was its aspiration for autonomy
or separatism more than its hosting various left-wing factions opposed to
Franco that was viewed as the greater evil, hence the Nationalist slogan of
‘mejor rojo que roto’ [better red than broken]. After 1939, the policy was not
confined to the destruction of Catalan institutions: there was a determined effort
to reduce Catalan culture to the status of a regional curiosity. Yet this acceptance
of a quaint, folksy Catalanism did not extend to the national dance, the sardana,
which was prohibited – presumably because it was a collective or group
activity. The main focus of the attack, however, was on the language. Book
publishing virtually ceased. In 1936, before the start of the Civil War, 865 books
were published in Catalan; in 1944, the year in which Espriu started writing
Cementiri de Sinera, only five.21 Streets and squares were renamed to conform
20 ‘Antígona se sitúa al lado del hermano vencido y le ofrece honras fúnebres porque
se levanta contra la justicia del vencedor. Porque hay una justicia más alta que la justicia
de la guerra, es la justicia de la convivencia y la paz’ [Antigone places herself beside the
vanquished brother and offers him funerary honours because she is rising up against the
victor’s justice. Because there is a justice that is loftier than the justice of war, and that is
the justice of co-existence and peace]. Capmany, Salvador Espriu, p. 77.
21 See Francesc Vallverdú, El escriptor catalá i el problema de la llengua, 2nd edn
(Barcelona: Edicions 62, 1975), p. 106. That there was any publication at all in the 1940s was
8
D. GARETH WALTERS
to what was linguistically as well as politically acceptable: the largest street in
Barcelona, now restored to its name of Diagonal, was named after Franco.22
The Catalan language may have been officially tolerated in domestic life – it
would have been difficult to enforce such a ban – but anyone overheard
speaking the language in the street or on a public telephone was liable to be
rebuked or ridiculed. Needless to say, in such a climate, intellectual and artistic
life withered. University teachers who could not demonstrate complete commitment or sympathy for the new dispensation were dismissed.23 Many writers,
musicians and painters went into exile, and those, like Espriu, who remained
endured what was termed an ‘interior exile’: deprived of the social as well as
the creative outlets that the free use of their language implied. An indication of
how powerfully the Nationalist victory impacted on the very sense of Catalan
identity may be seen in a detail from Espriu’s experience of this time. On
30 March 1939 he wrote to Joan Llacuna about poems that Llacuna had written,
stating that they deserved publication.24 Because these poems were in Catalan,
that was going to be virtually impossible, but what is significant is that Espriu
wrote this letter in Spanish. For him not to use his own language when writing
about a matter of this nature constitutes a highly unusual, if not unique, action
on his part, but it is a reminder that in 1939 Barcelona was, to all intents and
purposes, a city that had been occupied by a foreign power.25 This was, after all,
the same writer who, towards the end of his life, declared that he did not wish
mainly due to one of two factors: religious works would receive the imprimatur of ecclesiastical censorship, while personal contacts or friends could also facilitate the publication of
the occasional work. For an account of how the edition of one of the classics of Catalan
literature – Verdaguer’s L’Atlàntida – could be used in a sense against the language, see
D. Gareth Walters, The Politics of Verdaguer’s L’Atlàntida: Centenary Commemorations
and Conflicting Editions, University of Bristol Occasional Papers Series No. 30 (Bristol:
University of Bristol Department of Hispanic, Portuguese and Latin American Studies, 1999).
22 See Vázquez Montalbán, Barcelones, p. 232.
23 It has been estimated that the University of Barcelona lost around half of its teaching
staff at the end of the Civil War. See Albert Balcells, Catalan Nationalism: Past and
Present (London: Macmillan, 1996), p. 127.
24 See Delor i Muns, Salvador Espriu, els anys d’aprenenatge, p. 471. Joan Llacuna was
born in Igualada, in the district of Anoia, in 1905. He published his first collection of poems
in 1934, and it seems likely that the poems that Espriu read would have been those published
as Aurora de l’Aragall in 1948. A handful of his poems appear in Anthology of Catalan Lyric
Poetry, ed. Joan Gili (Oxford: The Dolphin Book Company, 1953), pp. 319–23.
25 The chapter of Vázquez Montalbán’s Barcelones that attempts to evoke the city in
the early years of the Franco dictatorship is entitled ‘La ciutat ocupada’ [‘The occupied
city’]. The term ‘conquest’ is one employed in a terse briefing from Franco’s headquarters
on 26 January 1939: ‘Barcelona ha sido conquistada’ [Barcelona has been conquered]. A
photograph of General Yagüe walking through the streets of Barcelona on the same day
eerily foreshadows Hitler’s triumphant visit to Paris the following year. The photograph is
reproduced in Paul Preston, The Spanish Civil War 1936–39 (London: Weidenfeld and
Nicholson, 1990), p. 159.
9
to leave ‘un borrall en castellà’ [a fragment in Castilian], as a result of which he
never revised his only Spanish work, the novel Israel.26
Espriu’s feelings of cultural and intellectual alienation were soon to be
exacerbated by his domestic situation. With the death of his father in 1940 he
became responsible for the welfare of the family: his mother, his younger
brother and his sister. Foreseeing the need for economies, the house in Viladrau
was sold once his father had become ill; Espriu was so upset by this that he
never went to the town again. He attached himself to a notary in Barcelona,
retaining many of his father’s former clients but his relationship with his senior
partner, Antonio Gual Ubach, was strained as they were so unlike each other.
Espriu was even moved to write poems about the matter. The following years
were the hardest of his life. He expressed his sense of desolation during this
period with eloquent simplicity in an interview given to Joan Vidal in 1968:
Ustedes no saben lo que fueron los años 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46,
47, 48, 49, 50 y buenas parte de la década siguiente. Lo detallo de este modo
porque si dices ‘del treinta y nueve al cincuenta’, en seguida ha acabado.
Fíjense que dicho de este otro modo toma ya otro relieve. Imagínense lo que
fue este lapso, pasado día tras día. Para mí fue terrible.27
[You cannot know what the years 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49,
50 and a good part of the following decade were like. I say it in this way
because if you say ‘from 1939 to 1950’ it’s over immediately. Note how
when it is said in the other way it acquires another dimension. Imagine what
this period of time was like, day after day. It was terrible for me.]
Yet it was from this slough of despond that Espriu emerged as a poet; it was in
these years that he acquired the determination to initiate and to carry through
an immense and monumental poetic undertaking. Writers often discover
themselves when operating under pressure, and so it was that Espriu secured a
foothold as perhaps the greatest Catalan poet of the twentieth century.
Poetry and Politics
If Espriu seems an unlikely hero from his appearance and demeanour then his
poetry does not appear to conform to what might be expected from a ‘national
poet’ either. Not only is his verse lyrical rather than epic or narrative in nature,
it is lyricism of an intensely uncompromising character. In a word, Espriu’s
poetry is difficult; we could add that it is frequently obscure and hermetic. It
is not surprising then that commentators have found the idea of a ‘popular’
Espriu perplexing. Maria Aurèlia Capmany finds it hard to account for this
26
27
Memòria de Salvador Espriu, p. 193.
Cited in Capmany, Salvador Espriu, p. 22.
10
D. GARETH WALTERS
‘acuerdo entre una poética y la consciencia popular’ [accord between a
poetics and the people’s consciousness].28
If one were pressed for an immediate explanation then the key may be found,
unexpectedly perhaps, in the self-description cited above. What this acerbic
document betrays among other things is a willingness to speak the truth. If
Espriu, in such utterances and, more importantly, through the poetry he wrote in
the 1940s and 1950s, struck a chord with his fellow-countrymen, it was because
they recognized the experiences as their own and, moreover, valued the tone in
which they were articulated. For Espriu did not only write in a different language
from the one imposed upon Catalonia in the years of the Franco dictatorship;
he wrote a different kind of language. The official discourse favoured hyperbole and grandiloquence. The Barcelona newspapers of the 1940s not only
reproduced the text of Franco’s recent speeches but also carried obsequious
commentaries on them with such titles as ‘glosas al discurso del Caudillo’
[observations on the Caudillo’s speech]. Espriu satirizes such linguistic excesses
in his play Primera història d’Esther, written in 1948, in a passage where the
speeches of the fawning courtiers are cast in the form of a jangling rhyme:
Apoteòtic!
Aquest mot exòtic
em torna neuròtic,
prostàtic, cianòtic,
elefantiàtic,
penibètic, tític
i àdhuc apoplètic
i arterioscleròtic.29
[Apotheotic! That exotic word makes me neurotic, diabetic, cyanotic,
elephantiatic, prostatic, paralytic, and even apoplectic and arteriosclerotic.]
The humour is achieved by the dictates of rhyme leading to increasingly
arcane and inappropriate terms, ending in ‘tic’. Yet the word ‘apoteòtic’ that
spawns this series of rhymes was used on several occasions in obsequious
pieces in the daily La Vanguardia in 1947 to refer to Franco, as when he paid
a visit to Manresa. The headline read: Llegada del Caudillo a Manresa. – La
población le tributó un apoteótico recibimiento. [The arrival of the Caudillo
at Manresa. – The people gave him an apotheotic welcome.]30
Capmany, 9.
Salvador Espriu, Primera història d’Esther. The Story of Esther, trans. by Philip
Polack, The Anglo-Catalan Society Occasional Publications, No. 6 (Sheffield: Sheffield
Academic Press, 1989), p. 22.
30 Cited in Salvador Espriu, Primera història d’Esther, ed. Sebastià Bonet (Barcelona:
Centre de Documentació i Estudi Salvador Espriu, 1995), p. 118.
28
29
11
By comparison with such effusions Espriu’s poetry is spare and concise.
Yet it would be an error to view his poetry, challenging as it is, as removed
from political realities. Indeed, one reading of his work, as we shall see
below, is in terms of an attempt to define or even to redeem history. Beyond
this, however, there are times when Espriu catches what can be best described
as a national mood when he strikes the two notes of defiance and aspiration.
Such utterances are present mainly in the poetry dating from the late 1950s,
coinciding with the emergence of the ‘Nova Cançó’ [New Song], the Catalan
protest song movement. The influence was reciprocal. Performers like Raimon
set Espriu’s poetry to music and, returning the compliment, Espriu wrote
poems that evoked the linguistic simplicity and ideological daring of the
singers of that movement. In such a vein is the poem ‘El meu poble i jo’[My People
and I] from Les cançons d’Ariadna [The Songs of Ariadne], whose title also
serves as its refrain. This occurs ten times in the poem, and the shortness of the
stanzas lends the poem the air of a communal song. It contains subtle but
immediately comprehensible imagery: the people have drunk the bitter wine
of mockery and have had to listen to the powerful arguments of the sabre, but
there is a relish in the eventual triumph achieved by survival – a survival that
is, above all, linguistic:
Salvàvem els mots
de la nostra llengua
el meu poble i jo.
A baixar graons
de dol apreníem
el meu poble i jo.
Davallats al pou,
esguardem enlaire
el meu poble i jo.
Ens alcem tots dos
en encesa espera,
el meu poble i jo.
(OC, I, 147)
[We saved the words of our language, my people and I. We learned to
go down the steps of sorrow, my people and I. Down in the well, we
look above, my people and I. We both arise in ardent waiting, my
people and I.]
The poem is not, however, dedicated to a protest singer but to a scholar.
Pompeu Fabra was a scholar and lexicographer, responsible for compiling the
standard Catalan dictionary of the first half of the twentieth century, and he
was foremost in establishing the norms of the modern usage of the language.
12
D. GARETH WALTERS
He became one of the iconic figures of the Catalan cultural resistance – a
point not lost on the Nationalist thugs who burnt the books in his personal
library.
However, it is the preceding poem in Les cançons d’Ariadna that lays claim
to being Espriu’s most famous and patriotic piece. Dedicated to Raimon, its
title – ‘Inici de càntic en el temple’ [Beginning of a Canticle in the Temple] –
is deceptively daunting. It is a poem that has become the unofficial national
anthem of Catalonia. As in the poem to Pompeu Fabra it has a refrain, although
it is used so sparingly that it hardly seems one. But the positioning of the twoword summons at the start and end of the poem gives it the air of a call to arms:
Ara digueu: «La ginesta floreix,
arreu als camps hi ha vermell de roselles.
Amb nova falç comencem a segar
el blat madur i, amb ell, les males herbes.»
Ah, joves llavis desclosos després
de la foscor, si sabíeu com l’alba
ens ha trigat, com és llarg d’esperar
un alçament de llum en la tenebra!
Però hem viscut per salvar-vos els mots,
per retornar-vos el nom de cada cosa,
perquè seguíssiu el recte camí
d’accés al ple domini de la terra.
Vàrem mirar ben al lluny del desert,
davallàvem al fons del nostre somni.
Cisternes seques esdevenen cims
pujats per esglaons de lentes hores.
Ara digueu: «Nosaltres escoltem
les veus del vent per l’alta mar d’espigues.»
Ara digueu: «Ens mantindrem fidels
per sempre més al servei d’aquest poble.»
(OC, I, 146)
[Now say: “The broom is flowering, on the fields there is the red of
poppies. Let us start to cut with a new sickle the ripe wheat, and with
it, the weeds.” O, young lips unsealed after the darkness, if you knew
how much our dawn has been delayed, how long it is to wait for a
rising of the light in the gloom! But we have lived to save the words
for you, to give back to you the name of every thing, so that you may
follow the straight path to attain full dominion of the earth. We looked
closely into the depths of the desert, we descended to the depths of
our dream. Dry reservoirs become mountain tops climbed by the
steps of long hours. Now say: “We listen to the voices of the wind on
the high tide of the corn.” Now say: “We shall remain faithful for ever
more in the service of this people.”]
The poem ends with the invocation of the people – a notion that had dominated
‘El meu poble i jo’ – and which echoes what one of the earliest singers of the
13
‘Nova Cançó’, Josep Maria Espinà, had said of the singers of that movement: ‘no
buscàvem, només, un public; buscàvem un poble. I el poble hi era’ [we did not
only seek a public; we sought a people. And the people were there].31
It is as upfront a poem as Espriu ever composed and it seems almost churlish
to venture the opinion that it is untypical. Nonetheless, its clarity and astonishing
strength of imagery are not achieved at the price of an uncharacteristic
coarsening of language or vision. The biblical overtones, evident in the resonant
voice of the prophet and the elemental evocation of place, validate the unseen
depths of suffering and patience out of which the ringing assertion of devotion
will arise. It is perhaps the unambiguous note of triumph that is most at odds
with what we might expect of most of Espriu’s poetry. Moreover, the resonant
symmetry of phrasing and syntax make it a poem better recited than read
silently. Yet it is neither a populist nor a rabble-rousing piece. The linguistic and
metrical control testifies to the poet as seer, not as the people’s spokesman.
Espriu’s poetic oration is fastidious, even aristocratic, in conception and
realization. That a poem like ‘Inici del càntic en el temple’ should be more
remarkable for its restraint than for its passion is no surprise, though, when we
consider the poet’s ideological stance.
Espriu was a ferocious champion of Catalanism in the darkest years of the
Franco era. But in his own way and on his own terms. He had never aligned
himself to any political faction unlike his friend Rosselló-Pòrcel, although in
later years he was ready to lend his signature to petitions and took part in the
celebrated sit-in at the Capuchin Monastery in the district of Sarrià in Barcelona
in 1966 in support of the movement for the creation of a democratic union of
students.32 He was briefly detained in the wake of this protest, and over the years
a police file had been kept on him.33 Following the death of Franco, in the period
known as the ‘Transition’, Espriu found himself drawn into a controversy when
the position of the Catalan language in the new dispensation was being
considered. His advocacy of joint official status for the Catalan and Spanish
languages was rooted in both practical and ethical reasoning. On the one hand,
he thought that it would be foolish to attempt to ban or to curb a world
language – as Spanish was; on the other, he believed that to do so would be to
demonstrate the same kind of intolerance as had been displayed towards Catalan
over so many years. As a sign of how heated the debate had become, the writer
Quim Monzó mockingly re-wrote the last two lines of ‘Inici de càntic en el
31 Cited in Josep Porter-Moix, Una història de la Cançó (Barcelona: Departament de
Cultura de la Generalitat de Catalunya, 1987), p. 151.
32 A first-hand account of this protest is provided by Joan Botam in Carles Móra,
Salvador Espriu i Sinera, pp. 107–108.
33 See Antoni Batista, Salvador Espriu: itinerari personal, pp. 113–15. Such documents
are often a mine of unintentional humour such as the observation dated 14 March 1966 that
Espriu was a ‘Persona de ideas marcadamente catalanistas’. Evidently it had taken a long
time for the penny to drop!
14
D. GARETH WALTERS
temple’ in a mix of Spanish and Catalan: ‘I ens mantindremos fidels per siempre
más al servicio d’aquest pueblo’ (the Castilian words or parts of words are
indicated in italics).34 Yet, it was Espriu who, in a television interview in the
same year of 1976, expressed his commitment to Catalonia in the following
terms: ‘Vivo para mi lengua, para mi pueblo catalán, para mi nación catalana,
para mi cultura’ [I live for my language, for my Catalan people, for my Catalan
nation, for my culture].35 It was the first time on Spanish television that the
concept of Catalan nationhood had been mentioned. Espriu, however, did
not support separatism any more than he favoured the banning of Castilian.
Whether he was naïve or sophisticated in maintaining such apparently
contradictory opinions will probably depend on the position from which he is
being judged – whether the political or the cultural. What is evident in his
attitude is an even-handedness, an unwillingness to reach for the instant
judgement – a trait that is also manifested in some of the poems that make
explicit allusion to the Civil War and its consequences for Catalonia.
Espriu saw the conflict and its outcome as a catastrophe. In the opening
poem of La pell de brau [The Bull Hide], after referring to the bloodshed as
a blasphemy, he cites without distinction or discrimination the participants
and the symptoms of the violence:
Alhora víctima, botxí,
odi, amor, lament i rialla,
sota la closa eternitat del cel.
(OC, II, 13)
[Now victim, executioner, hate, love, lament and laughter, beneath
the closed eternity of the sky.]
Similarly comprehensive is his pity, as in ‘Prometeu’ from the third part of
Les hores:
M’he compadit dels homes, de la freda tristesa,
de l’estrany temps dels homes endinsats en la mort,
i els portava cristall i cremor de paraules,
clarosos noms que diuen els vells llavis del foc.
(OC, I, 243)
[I have had pity for men, for the cold sadness, for the strange time of
men sunk in death, and I brought them crystal and warmth of words,
bright words spoken by old lips of fire.]
By the same token he chides both victor and vanquished, as in ‘Viatge
d’hivern’ from the second part of the same collection:
34
35
Batista, Salvador Espriu: itinerari personal, 31.
Batista, Salvador Espriu: itinerari personal, 35.
No sé l’indret de l’illa
de l’esperança: només,
que sang que no he vessat
m’ha destruït el món.
15
(OC, I, 227)
[I do not know the place of the island of hope: merely, that blood that
I have not spilt has destroyed my world.]
Espriu does not sentimentalize the defeat: he is severe on those who have too
willingly relinquished or compromised their principles. In ‘Malalt’, a
predominantly autobiographical poem from Les cançons d’Ariadna he refers to
Catalonia as a ‘terra de l’odi’ [land of hatred] (OC, I, 55), adding, with a characteristically sly touch, that it is a place where ‘tothom ha de ser lladre/ o poeta
fracassat’ [everyone must be a thief or a failed poet].36 In ‘Indesinenter’
[‘Indesinenter’], from the same collection, he compares the abject and the
defeated to a hungry dog – an image he uses repeatedly:
Nosaltres sabíem
d’un únic senyor
i vèiem com
esdevenia
gos.
Envilit pel ventre,
per l’afalac al ventre,
per la por,
s’ajup sota el fuet
amb foll oblit
de la raó
que té.
Arnat, menjat
de plagues,
aquest trist
número de baratilli,
saldo al circ
de la mort,
sense parar llepava
l’aspra mà
que l’ha fermat
36 Espriu makes similarly sharp and ironic observations about his compatriots in ‘El meu
amic Salom’ [‘My Friend Salom’], one of the fictions contained in Ariadna al laberint grotesc
[Ariadna in the Grotesque Labyrinth] (1935). The piece takes the form of a conversation
between an unknown narrator and Salom, Espriu’s alter ego. One passage is strangely
prophetic: referring to his own task as ‘redeemer’, Salom observes how he has had to swim
against the tide for twenty years in combating the wickedness, hypocrisy and ignorance of
his fellow countrymen. See Narracions, 15th edn (Barcelona: Edicions 62, 1990), p. 19.
16
D. GARETH WALTERS
des de tant temps
al fang.
(OC, I, 144)
[We knew of one sole lord and we saw how he became a dog. Corrupted
by the belly, by pandering to the belly, through fear, he crouches
under the lash in foolish oblivion of the reason that is his. Motheaten, eaten by plagues, this sad side-show performer, this has-been
in the circus of death, licks without ceasing the harsh hand that has
held him down for so much time in the mud.]
In this poem Espriu points to his own conduct in the years of repression by
way of contrast:
Li hauria estat
senzill de fer
del seu silenci mur
impenetrable, altíssim:
va triar
la gran vergonya mansa
dels lladrucs.
[It would have been easy for him to have made an impenetrable and
mighty wall out of his silence: he chose the great and submissive
shame of his yelps.]
I have chosen these quotations to preface a consideration of the double
pressure to which a poet like Espriu is subject. His is by no means an unusual
predicament among modern poets: the proliferation of totalitarian or authoritarian regimes in the first half of the twentieth century meant that freedom of
expression was often at a premium.37 If a Catalan poet such as Espriu did not
have to endure the same threats and punishments that a poet like Osip
Mandelstam was to face in Stalin’s Russia, he still had to live through what
has been described as ‘cultural genocide’.38 Indeed Espriu feared that his
language might not survive.39 It is tempting to define his reaction to the
37 In 1920, of the 28 nation-states of Europe, 26 enjoyed some form of democratic
government. At the end of 1938, this number had been reduced to twelve. By the end of
1940, seven of these 12 states had been invaded by nations that were dictatorships.
38 See Jude Webber and Miquel Strubell i Trueta, The Catalan Language: Progress
towards Normalisation, Anglo-Catalan Occasional Publications, No. 7 (Sheffield:
Sheffield Academic Press, 1991), p. 15.
39 ‘Bien esto [sc. ‘la lengua catalana’] parecía a punto de desaparecer. Estuvimos muy
cerca de ello, muy cerca. Yo lo vi destrozado, yo . . . quedé espantado, literalmente
espantado’ [In fact, it (the Catalan language) seemed to be on the point of disappearance.
We were very near to it, very near. I saw it destroyed, I . . . was frightened, literally
terrified]. Cited in Baltasar Pórcel, ‘Salvador Espriu en esta tierra’, Destino, no. 1645, 12
April 1969. According to Miquel Arimany, Espriu considered Primera història d’Esther to
17
political crisis of the greater part of his adult life as that of a marginalized poet
fighting a cause, albeit in a sophisticated fashion, and involving different
levels and registers of dissent. Yet, it is my contention that his poetry – as distinct from his own opinions and, more significantly, those that commentators
extrapolate from his work (much as I have done above) – resists such a
straightforward assessment. It responds to historical circumstances insofar as
it is conditioned and on occasion determined by them.
The earliest assessment of Espriu’s first book of poetry, Cementiri de
Sinera [Sinera Cemetery], appeared in April 1947 in an issue of the journal
Ariel, to which Espriu himself contributed in the late 1940s. The reviewer,
Josep Romeu, raised the issue of the social utility of art:
Una honradesa, una exigència, una singularitat i una puresa com les que
trobem en el seu art difícil, no poden sacrificar-se a una major claredat –
que no és més que miratge – , encara que un fet social ho reclamés. Un
poeta i un literat no poden expressar-se d’altra manera que la seva, la que
els hi és consubstancial. D’aquesta manera o el silenci; i el silenci fora
funest. (my emphasis)40
[An integrity, a necessity, an individuality and an innocence, such as we find
in his difficult art, cannot be sacrificed to a greater clarity – which is no
more than a mirage – even if social facts should demand it. A poet and a
man of letters cannot express themselves in any way other than their own,
in a way that is natural to them. Either in this way or else silence; and
silence would be disastrous.]
This reveals a very precise understanding of the other kind of pressure to which
a poet like Espriu would be exposed. The constraint of censorship, which I have
already mentioned, is perhaps the lesser of the two problems. More challenging
is the poet’s need to balance what he will feel to be poetic integrity with an
obligation to the community or, in other words, the requirement for his poetry to
be a response – preferably a direct response – to the conditions that create the
initial pressure. Romeu’s perceptive analysis anticipates the detailed exposition
of a poet’s responsibilities in Seamus Heaney’s The Redress of Poetry. Indeed
there is a close resemblance between Heaney’s formulation of his understanding
of what happens in Thomas Hardy’s ‘Afterwards’ and Romeu’s of what he
deems to be Espriu’s priority in Cementiri de Sinera: ‘the poem is more given over
to the extraordinary than the ordinary, more dedicated to the world-renewing
be ‘el testament d’una llengua pròxima a l’extinció’ [the testimony of a language near to
extinction], although in a second preface to the play, written in 1982 he appears to distance
himself from such an extreme assessment. The issue is discussed in Primera història
d’Esther, ed. Sebastià Bonet, p. 84.
40 Cited in Delor i Muns, Salvador Espriu: els anys d’aprenenatge, p. 486.
18
D. GARETH WALTERS
potential of the imagined response than to the adequacy of the social one’.41
Heaney, too, acknowledges the pressure on poets and their commentators ‘to
show how poetry’s existence as a form of art relates to our existence as citizens
of society – how it is “of present use” ’(p. 1); indeed, at a wider level of
reception, the burden of proof is likely to be why it should not be ‘an applied art’
(p. 2). The consequence of such a doctrine is that those whom Heaney terms
‘engaged activists’ will expect the ‘redress of poetry to be an exercise of leverage
of their point of view’ (p. 2). They will not be ‘grateful for a mere image – no
matter how inventive or original – of the field of force of which they are a part’
(p. 2). They will have little time for poets who ‘add a complication where the
general desire is for simplification’ (p. 3). Heaney, by contrast, argues that poetry
‘should not simplify. Its projections and inventions should be a match for
the complex reality which surrounds it and out of which it is generated’ (p. 8).
He goes further. Poetry, he affirms, ‘cannot afford to lose its fundamentally selfdelighting inventiveness, its joy in being a process of language as well as a
representation of things in the world’ (p. 5). He believes that, even if this
may seem a truisim, it bears repeating ‘in a late twentieth-century context of politically approved themes, post-colonial backlash and “silence-breaking” writing
of all kinds’ (p. 5). Consequently poetry ‘is understandably pressed to give voice
to much that has hitherto been denied expression in the ethnic, social, sexual and
political life’ (p. 5). But Heaney believes that ‘in discharging this function, poets
are in danger of slighting another imperative, namely to redress poetry as poetry,
to set it up as its own category, an eminence established and a pressure exercised
by distinctly linguistic means’ (p. 5).
Heaney’s concept of the poet’s responsibility provides a useful way in to a
deeper discussion of the political dimension of Espriu’s work and, in particular,
of his most celebrated work, La pell de brau [The Bull Hide], completed in the
late 1950s and published in 1960. Not only is it Espriu’s best-known work, it is
also his most polemical, as indicated by Arthur Terry: ‘Des que va ser escrita,
ara fa vint anys, La pell de brau ha rebut més lloances i més blasmes que cap
altra obra d’Espriu, de vegades per raons que tenen poc a veure amb la seva
qualitat poètica’.42 [Since it was written, twenty years ago, La pell de brau has
received more praise and more disapproval than any other work of Espriu, on
occasion for reasons that have little to do with its poetic quality.] It is this same
critic, who was a friend of Heaney’s, who makes the case for reading Espriu’s
collection in terms similar to those employed subsequently in The Redress of
Poetry. In a review published in 1963 of Espriu’s Obra poética, Terry observes
of La pell de brau: ‘Si Espriu ha sentit la necessitat de prendre part en la
Seamus Heaney, The Redress of Poetry (London: Faber and Faber, 1995), p. xvii.
Arthur Terry, ‘La poesia pública d’Espriu: una interpretació de La pell de brau’, in
Sobre poesia catalana contemporània: Riba, Foix, Espriu (Barcelona: Edicions 62, 1985),
pp. 139–69 (at p. 166).
41
42
19
polèmica sobre l’Espanya contemporània – i és l’aspecte de La pell de brau més
comentat – , el més important és que l’hagi fet com a poeta’ [If Espriu has felt
it necessary to take part in the debate about contemporary Spain – and it is the
facet of La pell de brau that has provoked most comment – what is of greatest
importance is that he should have done so in his capacity as a poet].43 The
similarity with Heaney’s injunction ‘to redress poetry as poetry’ is evident.
Indeed, in the closing paragraph of the previously cited study on La pell de brau,
Terry also anticipates Heaney’s contrast of the ‘imagined response’ and the
‘social response’: ‘El poeta, igual com el filòsof, té sempre el deure de fer les
preguntes adients, i . . . té sempre l’obligació especial de presentar-les a través
de les formes de la imaginació’.44 [The poet, just like the philosopher, always
has the right to ask the appropriate questions, and . . . he is always obliged to
present them through the forms of the imagination.]
The erroneous understanding of La pell de brau was in essence two-fold in
nature. Apart from the distortions or magnifications caused by textual
selectivity, there was a tendency to isolate it – again for tendentious reasons –
from the poetry that preceded it. Such a deficiency was, admittedly, less an act
of wilfulness than the result of ignorance, for the collection would have
attracted commentators who had no knowledge of what Espriu had written
previously. As a consequence, the affinities afforded by the third and final
sections of both Les hores and El caminant i el mur [The Walker and the Wall],
written only three or four years before La pell de brau and where what was
defined as the ‘civic’ element is no less evident, were not heeded. Neither was
the sense of continuity between it and the immediately preceding collection,
Final del laberint [End of the Labyrinth].45 The establishment of La pell de
brau as an integral part of the Espriu poetic canon rather than a thing apart –
an aberration to be either celebrated or deplored – was a task that coincided
with an ever-increasing variety of critical responses to the poetry as a whole.
Critical Approaches and Methodologies
This diversity of approaches from roughly 1970 was probably due to a
combination of factors. With the greater political freedom of the last years of
Franco’s rule it was less necessary to make Espriu’s work serve an ideological
or political purpose, and it was possible to examine his work according to
more aesthetic criteria. It should not be forgotten, however, that the publicity
generated by La pell de brau would have encouraged critics to embrace a
wider vision and to adopt a greater sophistication of approach. At the same
43 Cited in Olívia Gassol i Bellet, La pell de brau de Salvador Espriu o el mite de la
salvació (Barcelona: Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat, 2003), p. 21.
44 ‘La poesia pública d’Espriu’, p. 169.
45 Terry, 162–63.
20
D. GARETH WALTERS
time, Espriu had become the most eminent poet of Catalonia, taking over the
mantle from Riba. As well as bringing out new books of poetry after the
appearance of La pell de brau, his earlier poetry was increasingly being republished, mainly in the form of collected or complete works. Finally, from
the 1960s onwards literary criticism was becoming more diverse and theoretical,
though the more radical and innovative tendencies in postmodern criticism
did not have such an immediate impact on the literature of the Hispanic world
as it did upon works in English and French.
One of Espriu’s earliest champions, Josep Maria Castellet reveals something
of this critical novelty, certainly as far as Catalan literature was concerned. In
the preface (‘Justificació’) to his study of the poetry of Espriu he emphasizes
the methodological aspects of his book, notably by reference to the theories of
Roland Barthes and Claude Lévi-Strauss. Castellet disarmingly admits that they
provided him with a greater insight than he was able to derive from thematic
analysis or close reading – an approach which enabled him to understand only
about a third of Espriu’s poems.46 He also acknowledges the usefulness of
Northop Frye’s theoretical description of literary genres, and applies the
method to a designation of Espriu’s poetic styles (p. 20). Especially significant,
not only for his own understanding of the poet but also for later commentators,
was Frye’s concept of the ‘encyclopaedic form’, applicable to such works as the
Bible, the Divine Comedy, and modern versions of epic such as those of Proust
and Joyce. Castellet suggests that such a form was the key to understanding the
scope of Espriu’s poetry: ‘es tractava d’una «forma enciclopèdica», és a dir, un
gènere literari el simbolisme del qual adopta una forma anagògica, qualificatiu
que aplicat a la literatura la defineix com una “totalitat unitària d’un complex
verbal” ’(p. 20) [it was a matter of “encyclopaedic form”, that is to say, a literary genre, whose symbolism adopts an anagogic form, a designation that,
applied to literature, defines it as a “unitary whole of verbal complexity”].
Castellet’s study is in fact structured in such a way as to mimic his methodological models. Yet it does not altogether follow through their theoretical
implications; in particular, the tenacious character of structuralist analysis is
largely absent. The study is, however, important in two respects. First, because
more than any previous critic, Castellet perceived how essential it was to view
Espriu’s poetry not only in terms of unity but of continuity: ‘una dinàmica, un
movement cíclic, que relacionava uns llibres amb uns altres i que els englobava
en un mateix conjunt’ (p. 16) [a dynamic, a cyclical movement, that related
books to each other and which embodied them in the same set]. After the
partial and piecemeal approach to La pell de brau, such an approach was
novel. Secondly, in the section of the study that he labels ‘Recomposició’
[Recomposition] he prepares the ground for future studies of Espriu’s sources
46 J. M. Castellet, Iniciació a la poesia de Salvador Espriu, 3rd edn (Barcelona:
Edicions 62, 1984; 1st edn 1971), p. 16.
21
by providing a concise yet detailed account of the poet’s recourse to those
cultures and civilizations which he had studied in depth: the Egyptian, the
Jewish and the Greek (pp. 94–126).
Castellet’s contribution prompted both a continuation of his own line of
enquiry and incursions into other areas of study. Commentators such as
Carles Miralles and Maria-Pau Cornado were to probe more deeply into
Espriu’s sources.47 Others, notably Maria Isabel Pijoan i Picas, adopted a
structuralist approach, hinted at in Castellet’s study, but in her case adapted to
the figurative structuralism of the French anthropologist, Gilbert Durand.48
There were also new fields of investigation. From the late 1970s, attention was
increasingly turned to the metrical and technical features of the poetry,49 while
subsequently Espriu’s predilection for the Japanese poetic forms of the haiku
and the tanka have been the subject of a number of studies.50
A landmark in the largely neglected area of biographico-critical studies
was Rosa M. Delor i Muns’s previously cited Salvador Espriu: els anys
d’aprenenatge (1929–1943). Yet this painstakingly exhaustive survey of
Espriu’s life and works in the period of his adolescence and youth represents
only part of this scholar’s contribution to an understanding of the writer. More
striking perhaps are the studies that arise from the awareness, prefigured in
Castellet’s book, of the unity of Espriu’s output. Delor i Muns argues that the
symmetrical patterns that, as Castellet stressed, are evident over much of the
poetry also reveal a preoccupation with numerology and underlying that,
the cabbala. Numerological analysis forms a significant part of an article on
Mrs. Death,51 while the cabbala figures, among other places, in her consideration
47 Carles Miralles, ‘El món classic en l’obra de Salvador Espriu’, Els Marges, 16 (May
1979), 29–48; M.-P. Cornado, ‘La identificació entre Catalunya i Israel en l’obra de
Salvador Espriu’, Serra d’Or, XXXII, no. 365 (May 1990), 48–50. The latter’s unpublished
doctoral thesis (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 1990) comprises a survey of biblical
influences.
48 M. Isabel Pijoan i Picas, Salvador Espriu o els itineraris de la poesia (Barcelona:
Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat, 1991); Viatge per l’imaginari de l’obra de
Salvador Espriu: deu anys d’estudis espriuans (1985–1995) (Barcelona: Publicacions de
l’Abadia de Montserrat, 1995).
49 Antoni M. Badia i Margarit, ‘Salvador Espriu, ordenador de mots en extensió i
profunditat’, in Homenatge a Salvador Espriu amb motiu d’ésser-li conferit el grau de
Doctor Honoris Causa (Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona, 1980), pp. 33–125; Denise
Boyer, ‘Lecture d’un poème d’Espriu’, Iberica. Cahiers Ibériques et Ibero-Américains de
l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 1 (1977), 57–70.
50 For example, Denise Boyer, ‘Les tankes espriuanes’, in Salvador Espriu: algunes cartes
i estudis sobre la seva obra, pp. 55–69; Sebastià Bonet, ‘D’uns haikus espriuans inèdits’, in
Nexus. Revista semestral de cultura, no. 31 (Barcelona: Fundació Caixa Catalunya, 2003),
pp. 28–37.
51 Delor i Muns, ‘Mrs. Death o el llibre de la generació maleïda’, Els Marges, 34
(1986), 37–60.
22
D. GARETH WALTERS
of some of Espriu’s short stories.52 It is, however, from a recently published
essay that we get the most focused and concentrated discussion of what Delor
i Muns believes the cabbala represented for Espriu.53
The cabbala can be related to Espriu’s conception of the Iberian Peninsula
as Sepharad. Delor i Muns suggests that the basis for this is to be found in
Isaac Luria, a philosopher who was responsible for a renewed interest in the
cabbala in the sixteenth century and who also formulated the myth of exile
with reference to the expulsion of the Jews from Spain.54 Espriu himself
acknowledged that he had consulted works about the cabbala as a young man,
and in what might appear to be an astonishing claim informed Delor i Muns
that even at the start of his career – from the time he published Laia in 1932 –
he had planned the whole of his work to come. Delor i Muns believes that the
cabbala is at the heart of this project. Its aim is to relate the finite and infinite,
brought about by emanations from the Absolute Being. Scriptural passages
are treated as symbolic, and interpretation is based on the special significance
of numbers. In her essay, Delor i Muns includes a schema of the whole of
Espriu’s poetry, whereby individual books are seen to correspond to the ten
Emanations or Sephiroth, which are the basis of the cabbalistic doctrine
(p. 18). Having established this connection, Delor i Muns addresses the issue
of what would correspond in Espriu’s system to the Torah, the revealed will
of God as contained in the Jewish Scriptures. Her deduction is that Espriu’s
Torah is ‘la llengua catalana, perquè l’obra escrita és la manifestació
transcendent del seu ésser com a llengua, aquella part que pot ser revelada a
través de la creació literària’ (p. 22) [the Catalan language, because the
written work is the transcendental manifestation of its being in terms of a
language, that part that can be revealed through literary creation].
The reasoning is sophisticated but this scholar’s conclusions require three
qualifications. First, there is something of a leap of reasoning between repeating
Espriu’s claim that he had all his work planned from the start and asserting that
this plan comprised a cabbalistic formulation. Secondly, in the cabbala, the ten
Sephiroth were arranged in the shape of a tree, which was divisible into further
triangular patterns with particular meanings. Three of the Sephiroth constitute
uniting links between three pairs of opposites, and by this means produce three
triads, respectively denominated the Intellectual World, the Sensuous or Moral
World, and the Material World.55 Moreover, each of the Emanations relate to
human qualities or attributes, such as intelligence, wisdom, love and firmness, and
Delor i Muns, Salvador Espriu: els anys d’aprenenatge (1993), pp. 256–61.
‘Significació de la cabala en Espriu: metafísica i compromís’, Nexus. Revista semestral
de cultura (2003), pp. 14–27.
54 Delor i Muns (2003), 17.
55 See Christian D. Ginsburg, The Kabbalah: its Doctrines, Development and
Literature (London: George Routledge and Sons, 1925), p. 101.
52
53
23
their location in the cabbalistic tree related to parts of a human body which can
then be grafted onto it. In assigning Espriu’s books of poetry to their position on
the sephirotic tree, however, Delor i Muns does not attempt to justify their
particular location. For instance, what is it about La pell de brau that should lead
to it being placed in the slot occupied by love in the scheme? Thirdly, the assertion
that Espriu’s Torah is the Catalan language is uncontrovertible, but almost
because of that, it could be wondered why he should have needed the esoteric
medium of the cabbala to expound what emerges from even a casual knowledge
of his work as a truism.
In any case, the relationship of Espriu’s work to the cabbala, as defined by
Delor i Muns, centres on the vision rather than the detail. In an oeuvre as
coherently organized as his, this is not without its usefulness but it does not
get to grips with the poetry, inasmuch as individual poems. In fairness to this
commentator, however, it has to be recognized that she does not shirk from
what could be termed the micropoetic (as opposed to the macropoetic) task in
other places, especially in her previously cited study of the intertextual
relationship between Espriu and Roselló-Pòrcel, La mort com a intercanvi
símbolic. What she does not achieve, however, is a connection between the
two kinds of approach: the global and the particular.
Espriu may have betrayed a guarded sympathy towards a cabbalistic
understanding of his work as a whole, but he was wary, if not hostile, about a
kind of analysis that smacked of decoding. On occasion these misgivings
appear in a poetic form, as in the opening poem of El caminant i el mur, whose
very title – ‘No t’he de donar accés al meu secret’ [‘I Must not Give You Access
to my Secret’] – is uncompromisingly direct, although the invocation of the
biblical location constitutes an appropriately esoteric touch that correlates the
pain that must not be displayed:
És fidel i callat el meu antic dolor:
no t’ha d’obrir la porta de les ombres i el clos
on tinc només amb mi els laments de Gadara.
(OC, I, 307)
[My ancient grief is faithful and silent: it must not open for you
the door of shadows and the enclosure where I have only the
lamentations of Gadara with me.]
In a poem from Les cançons d’Ariadna, Espriu writes:
mai dels versots no comprendràs ni pum.
En teixiré l’ordit, no me l’embanquis,
si vols mirar l’esforç dels saltimbanquis.
(OC, I, 16)
[you will never understand a jot of my verses. I will weave the thread,
do not prepare it for me yourself, if you want to observe the effort of
the acrobats.]
24
D. GARETH WALTERS
Delor i Muns observes that there is a play on words here: the verb ‘embancar’
means both to prepare the material for weaving and to run a ship aground. The
reader who rashly undertakes the former act may come to grief on the
metaphorical sandbank.56 Indeed, to judge from the tone of Espriu’s
comments in the preface to a bilingual Catalan-Castilian edition of his poetry
about those who may seek to analyse his poetry, such a cautionary note is
timely. For here he rails against ‘els insolents, engreixinadors i estúpids
terroristes intel⭈lectuals . . . els qui, per cínics, han esdivingut, no pas commovedors gossos adjectius, sinó nutritives ratasses de claveguera’57 [insolent,
greasy and stupid intellectual terrorists . . . those who, in their cynicism, have
become, not poignant adjectival dogs, but nourishing sewer rats].
Such an outburst is reminiscent of the diatribe that is in the selfpresentation published in 1952 and quoted at the start of this study (see p. 1),
but this is altogether more combative. Indignation spawns imagery (dogs,
rats), but who are these intellectual terrorists? Espriu obviously has in mind
those who will pore over his work and pronounce upon it; we can likely
presume, moreover, that he has in mind those who may seek to ‘explain’ him.
That this bilingual edition is destined for a much wider readership may have
prompted Espriu to pen these words as a kind of warning against the careless
and/or intrusive interpreter of his work. In any case such a statement is not
untypical of his concern about over-interpretation. More measured, albeit
ironic, are his observations on the distinction made by some critics between
the lyric and civic qualities of La pell de brau: ‘potser sí que es pot establir
aquesta separació entre poesia estrictament lírica i poesia diguem-ne cívica,
però jo no m’atreviria a allargassar-me massa sobre aquesta questió, perquè
temo que donaria massa la raó als critics, que quedarien massa complaguts, i
aixó no els és pas gens convenient58 [maybe, indeed, it is possible to establish
a division between poetry that is strictly lyrical and poetry that is, let us say,
civic, but I wouldn’t dare to spend too much time on this matter, because I
fear it would vindicate the critics, who would then get smug, and that isn’t
fitting for them].
A more specific instance of his reluctance to endorse exegetical approaches
to his poetry emerges in an interview with Pijoan i Picas. Pressed to admit the
influence of the mystical poetry of St John of the Cross, whether conscious or
unconscious, on Final del laberint, Espriu responded laconically: ‘Crec
honestament ni gens ni mica’ [I believe, in all honesty, not in the slightest].59
‘Significació de la cabala en Espriu’, p. 16.
Salvador Espriu, Años de aprendizaje. Poesía/1. Obras completas, trans. Andrés
Sánchez Robayna and Ramón Pinyol Balasch (Barcelona: Edicions de Mall, 1980), p. 8.
58 Batista, Salvador Espriu: itinerari personal, p. 29.
59 Cited in Maria Isabel Pijoan i Picas, Espriu en la fi del laberint (Barcelona:
Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat, 1989), p. 216.
56
57
25
When asked if any other authors had influenced this work, he acknowledged
that the Old Testament figured large, but denied that the New Testament was
a source. To emphasize this point he cited what he considered to be a case of
reading-in by another commentator on the same book, although his firmness
here is as notable for its courtesy as the earlier observation was for its venom:
Tanmateix, una persona de cultura amplíssima, la Dra. Katalin Kulin, de
Budapest, troba a risc seu, referéncies, no tan sols a la mística cristiana, sinó
a la pròpia figura de Crist, per exemple, quan jo alludeixo a un pastor. Cal
tenir, però, en compte que la Dra Kulin (i em penso que ho puc dir sense
comprometre-la, ni de lluny) és una calvinista convençuda, o així em va
semblar entendre-ho. Si m’he equivocat, que em vulgui perdonar.
[However, a highly cultured individual, Dr. Katalin Kulin, of Budapest, has
discovered, at her own risk, references, not only to Christian mysticism, but
to the very figure of Christ, for example, when I refer to a shepherd. We
must take into acccount, however, the fact that Dr Kulin (and I think I can
say it without embarrassing her, even at a distance) is a committed Calvinist, or it seemed so to me. If I’m wrong then may she forgive me.]
Exegetical approaches to poetry can, however, err in two directions. There
is the attraction of over-interpretation, but there is, too, the opposite danger of
underestimation. This is the result of summary analysis: paraphrasing a poem
and then interpreting or quite simply reproducing the paraphrase. As with
over-interpretation it derives from the desire to seek, or even more, to express
the ‘meaning’ of a poem. Even as sympathetic a commentator as Delor i Muns
is not entirely immune from this tendency. Part of her analysis of poems
from the first two sections of Les hores takes the form of a series of brief
summaries of the meanings of each of these followed by the title of the
respective poem, and presented as a logical sequence:
el discurs es bolca sobre la problemàtica personal del jo poetic centrada en
la seva relació amb la divinitat («Arbre»), sorda i muda a una situació de
present que es defineix per la desesperança («Espera»). La solitud del jo
(«Galop») no pot fugir d’una situació de mal que és sinònim de tenebra
(«Naufragi») respecte al passat que és l’única llum («Claror») . . .60
[the narrative is absorbed with the personal problems of the poetic ‘I’ that
is centred on his relationship with the divinity (“Tree”), who is deaf and
mute in a present situation that is defined by despair (“Hope”). The loneliness of the ‘I’ (“Gallop”) cannot flee from a malaise that is synonymous
with darkness (“Shipwreck”) in the context of the past that is the only illumination (“Brightness”).]
60
Delor i Muns, La mort com a intercanvi simbòlic, p. 152.
26
D. GARETH WALTERS
Even if we overlook the fact that some of these poems are presented out of
sequence in this description of the logically evolving and connected stages of
an argument, it is still questionable as an analytical method. It over-emphasizes
the function of a poem’s language as code by a process of abstraction in both
senses of the word: it pulls a meaning out of the poem, which is supplied as
a parallel statement, and it translates image to idea, that is, it renders abstract
what was concrete. Both these actions betray a metaphorical imperative: the
poet’s A (ranging from the individual image to the whole poem) is converted
into the analyst’s B.
I am not claiming that such a practice is invalid. For one thing, whether we
like it or not, it is a mode of working with poems that has become a habit; for
another, poets sometimes invite de-coding. What I do question, however, is
the implication that this is the best or only way of responding to poetry when
we have to write about it. My priority in this study is different, though I offer
it as an alternative or, better, a complementary approach rather than as the
correct one. In a nutshell, my concern is less with what the text means and
more with what it does: with a process rather than a product. By way of
introducing this methodological alternative I offer a reading of one of the
poems cited in the summary provided by Delor i Muns, the four-line, 25-word
composition entitled ‘Galop’ [‘Gallop’]:
Mentre cavalques temença, camins,
poltrades de nit i de veus, solitari
cec genet oratjós, en la pau tot de sobte
caigut, no pensat ja per sempre.
(OC, I, 209)
[While you ride fear, roads, herds of colts of night and of voices,
lonely blind stormy rider, in a peace suddenly fallen, forever unenvisaged.]
Delor i Muns defines (for want of a better word) this poem as ‘la solitud
del jo’ [the loneliness of the ‘I’]. One might have believed that the danger
with the summary definition would have been over-simplification, that is, of
being able to identify the essential mood or theme but failing to qualify it
sufficiently. But it does not always happen like that. Thus while Delor i Muns
characterizes the poem as being about solitude, a reading that does not aim to
produce a definition but which instead reacts to the movement of the poem
will hardly confirm such a description. For poems, even such brief ones as
this one, move through time.
Perhaps the first thing to say about a poem like this is that the difficulty
resides not so much in what it means as in what it says. As there are many
poems of this type in Espriu’s output it is worth exploring in detail the features
that create this difficulty. A quick reading of the poem (and short poems invite
the initial rapid glance when we can seemingly absorb it all in one glance or
one breath) reveals that there is no main clause, although this fact will be
27
appreciated as such after the perception that there is something ‘missing’. If
this is disorientating then so, too, is the attempt to discover the syntactical
function of some of the disproportionately large number of nouns in the poem.
The use of the second-person verb form leads us to expect an addressee, and
although we have one – the blind horseman – this realization will not be
immediate or obvious. It is in fact significantly delayed, as it occurs almost
exactly half way through the poem, and it is also concealed because three other
nouns intervene between it and the verb. These are all objects of the initial
verb, but we do not readily accept this. ‘Camins’ and ‘poltrades’ clearly fulfil
this function from the semantic angle – perhaps the most immediately
apprehensible mode of reception – but the first noun, ‘temença’ does not. Had
there been a comma before as well as after the noun one would have taken it for
an apostrophe; indeed, the existence of the comma afterwards – marking it off
as the first in a series of nouns – may momentarily incline us to think of it in
this way, as the meaning or the semantic field of the noun may be paramount
at this point in our reading of the poem. For ‘temença’ would seem better
equipped in this context to supply the function of an apostrophe rather than of
a direct object.
Nonetheless, the addressee is the blind horseman who rides over the dark
roads by night. We could therefore say that he was the subject of the poem.
What is wrong about the definition provided by Delor i Muns is that she
confuses subject with meaning, and focuses on just one of the attributes of the
subject – his loneliness – and projects this onto the speaker. This seems
unduly selective as well as reductive. It does not do justice to the experiencing –
the performance – of the poem, in particular, the kind of momentary
obscurities and uncertainties that I have detailed in an attempt to describe
what happens when we read the poem. Indeed, the final portion of the poem –
what follows the apostrophe – is, if anything, more resistant than the opening
to ready comprehension. We can accept the sudden introduction of peace as a
contrast, as the kind of development that even the briefest lyric frequently
supplies, but the final line is intriguing. ‘Caigut’ is a teasing and hence
troubling verb: the idea of silence falling is a ready-made metaphor, but in
this context the idea of falling will also make us think of the rider falling off
his horse – an impression that counteracts the notion of serenity that the
invocation of peace would be suggesting. If what this prompts in the reader’s
mind is complex, then the final phrase is complicating. The subject of ‘no
pensat’ cannot be ‘peace’ because there is no gender agreement, yet this
would have been the easiest semantic ‘solution’: that peace should not be
envisaged connects logically to what has been said before. The phrase must
therefore either refer to the horseman, or else to the concept of the horseman,
falling (with whichever sense) into silence. What has happened, then, is that
the poem hints at a likely meaning, only to make that meaning unacceptable
or impossible, and then, rather than provide us with an eventual solution, offer
us an ambiguity.
28
D. GARETH WALTERS
Such processes occur within a matter of seconds as we read and respond. A
crucial difference of methodology between my way of reading this poem and
that provided by Delor i Muns will depend on whether we regard these
processes in reading as important. An approach that is geared to the search for
meaning will not be concerned with these readerly uncertainties, as they will
be regarded as a disposable means to an end, which will require a statement
that is an outcome, if not a tidying-up. The alternative view is that the journey
is as important as the destination, that the search is as important as the
meaning, or, more emphatically, that the search is the poem. Even without
appealing to Espriu’s unease about interpreters of his poems, the very nature
of his poetry, especially that present in the brief lyrics of the kind represented
by ‘Galop’, invites an attention to the details that emerge in the form of an
account of what happens when we read. The shifts, the contradictions, the
uncertainties, the surprises and the bafflements, then, are not obstacles or,
even, accessories to the meaning. They are (if we must retain the term) the
meaning; accordingly, the kind of experience with which I come away from
‘Galop’ is not so much solitude as a complex of emotions – danger, threat, fear,
terror – intertwined in the verbal maze of the poem that is both a parallel for
the darkness of its subject and a prompt for a matching reaction by the reader.
This preoccupation with what the poetry does is a mode of approach that is
valuable at the level of the individual poem. At the opposite level of scale,
however, in the case of the whole output, it is, I believe, essential to follow
Susan Sontag’s dictum, also warning us against accepting the primacy of
‘meaning’ in critical understanding:
The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art –
and, by analogy, our own experience – more, rather than less, real to us. The
function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is
what it is, rather than to show what it means.61
As Delor i Muns has amply suggested, this will be a more vital task with
Espriu than with other poets, given his conception of the unitary nature of his
work and the possible or likely influence upon it of the cabbala. Any assessment
of his poetry as a whole needs to be alert to the fact that its unity is not so much
the combination of parts to form a whole as the amalgamation of smaller units
to form a larger one. One view of his work, as already indicated, would see his
complete poetry as a subsidiary unit of his entire production. A study of the
poetry alone has necessarily to forego this particular relationship, but we are
still left with a whole range of smaller units that make up the larger one that is
the poetic oeuvre. At the most obvious levels there is the individual book and,
as the microcosm in Espriu’s poetic universe, the individual poem. There are,
61 Susan Sontag, ‘Against interpretation’, in A Susan Sontag Reader (Harmondsworth:
Penguin Books, 1983), pp. 95–104 (at p. 104).
29
however, further refinements in the scheme of unities. Some books are divided
into sections, each of which has a unitary character, while some books may be
considered together as a grouping or a cycle. The most obvious instance of
such a unit – one that falls between the individual collection and the complete
poetry – concerns five books that Espriu published in the decade between the
mid-1940s and mid-1950s. Even though he was in his forties when this cycle
was completed, we can properly regard it as his early poetry, the greater part of
his output before the appearance of La pell de brau.
Part 2
The Palindromic Cycle
Chronologies
The unity of the first five complete collections Espriu published between
1946 and 1955 is obvious; there is no need for recourse to any esoteric or
cabbalistic scheme to discover this. Castellet refers to their ‘rara construcció
simètrica’ [unusual symmetrical construction], forming as they do a pattern
that is chiastic or palindromic in nature: the first and last of the cycle have
30 poems each, the second and fourth, both divided into three parts, 44
poems, and the central, third book has 30 poems.1 In summary we have:
30 44 40 44 30. Delor i Muns observes that the total number of poems
from these five books is 188, and, in accordance with her theory regarding
Espriu’s distinctive numerological preoccupation, reduces this by successive
addition to 8: 1 8 8 17; 1 7 8.2 Eight is the cabbalistic number of
perfection, but also of death, and on that basis appropriate in the light of
Espriu’s observation that his work was ‘una meditació de la mort’.3 It is
possible that Delor i Muns is over-zealous in her numerological interpretation
of other details in these books, but it is perhaps significant that Espriu himself
specifically cited the number 188 in the preface he supplied to a bilingual
edition of his poetry.4
Establishing exactly when Espriu determined the structure of the cycle is,
however, a more complicated matter. It may have been as late as 1954, the
year before the final book, Final del laberint, was written and published, that
the precise shape was determined. Before completing the second book in the
sequence, Les hores, between April and November 1954 by writing the 12
poems that comprise the third and final part of this collection, Espriu had
explicitly in place the 30 poems of the first book, the 32 of the first two parts
of the second, the 40 of the third and the 44 of the recently completed fourth.
These admittedly constitute the majority of the 188 poems of the cycle, but
do not between them hint at the clear symmetrical pattern that was to emerge.
The completion of Les hores was therefore crucial: by adding the number of
1
2
3
4
Iniciació a la poesia de Salvador Espriu, p. 28.
‘Mrs. Death o el llibre de la generació maleïda’, p. 41.
Cited in Castellet, Iniciació a la poesia de Salvador Espriu, p. 30.
Salvador Espriu, Años de aprendizaje, p. 6.
THE PALINDROMIC CYCLE
31
poems necessary to make it balance El caminant i el mur, the fourth book, the
idea of having a fifth collection – as yet unwritten – to balance the first would
have been obvious unless, of course, it had already been decided. In any case
it is not surprising perhaps that Espriu should have written this final book in
the cycle in what was for him the remarkably short space of three weeks,
between 18 March and 11 April 1955, as the structural shape and function that
this collection should have was by now evident.
Yet if the final appearance of the five books may not have been decided
until late in the decade in which they were largely written, then there is
evidence that Espriu was working towards some kind of symmetrical scheme
rather earlier. The final poem of the central collection, Mrs. Death, shares its
title, ‘Final del laberint’ [‘End of the Labyrinth’], with the last book in the
cycle, while the antepenultimate poem has the same title, ‘Cementiri de
Sinera’ [‘Sinera Cemetery’], as the first. This may suggest that Espriu was
conceiving a title for the final book in the series by 1951 – the year in which
Mrs. Death was published. It would be appropriate, given his penchant for
symmetries, for the conclusion of the central point in the group of five
collections to contain signposts pointing respectively back to the start and
forward to the end of the cycle.
Even if we take at face value Espriu’s claim that he had planned his whole
output from the very start it does not of course imply that every detail in the
scheme was foreseen. We cannot know for certain to what extent he had
been formulating the structure of the cycle of five books before the early
1950s. If he had, it is still possible that he was further encouraged to create a
symmetrical grouping of books on a numerological basis by the example of a
work of Spanish poetry published in 1950, Jorge Guillén’s Cántico. Guillén
worked on this book for thirty years, publishing interim editions so that it
grew from 75 poems in the edition published in 1928 to 334 for the definitive
one of 1950. It is in five parts, some of which are further sub-divided: the first
and fifth both have three sections, while the third – like a microcosm of the
whole work – had five. Guillén was a poet whom Espriu greatly admired: he
owned copies of his work, gave a book of his as a gift to the poet Joan Argenté
i Arigal,5 and dedicated a poem to him, ‘Salutació a Jorge Guillén, abans de
la seva mort’ [‘Greeting to Jorge Guillén before his Death’] (OC, II 279).
Moreover there are similarities of style and approach between the two poets:
the same rapt attention to the detail of the natural world described in brief
lyrics.
The clarity of the arrangement of the five books that make up the cycle –
whenever conceived – is not precisely reflected either in the dates of
publication or of composition. The five works were published by and large in
the order in which they eventually appeared in the collected poetry, but two
5
See Memòria de Salvador Espriu, p. 14.
32
D. GARETH WALTERS
qualifications need to be made. First, there is the split publication of Les
hores, the first two parts of which preceded the third by three years; in fact,
this final part of the second collection in the cycle was first published together
with the fifth, Final del laberint, in 1955. Secondly, there is the matter of Les
cançons d’Ariadna. This book differs from the five that make up the cycle and
also from later collections by being in the nature of an evolving work subject
to periodic expansion, very much like Guillén’s Cántico. In its definitive form
it comprised 100 poems, written over several decades, but in its original
edition it contained only 33, varied in nature and written over a period of
fifteen years. This edition appeared in 1949 and thus lays claim to being
Espriu’s second book of poetry, but both he and his commentators have
treated it as separate from the cycle that began with Cementiri de Sinera. It is
difficult to decide where to place it for critical purposes as it contains his
earliest and some of his latest poems. Editors tend to place it before the cycle
of five books, but I shall consider it last, as representing a summation of his
poetic achievement.
A notable feature about the process of composition is the varying pace at
which Espriu wrote. Except for Les hores, the dates he supplied for the
collections indicate an almost unbroken progression: Cementiri de Sinera –
1944–45; Mrs. Death – 1945–51; El caminant i el mur – 1951–53; Final del
laberint – 1955. Even if we include Les hores and Les cançons d’Ariadna,
although they contain a greater element of provisionality about composition
dates than the other collections, then we can identify two periods that were
especially fertile, at either end of the decade in which the cycle was produced.
The period 1944–46 yields Cementiri de Sinera plus – according to the dates
supplied in the first edition at least – the majority of the poems of Les cançons
d’Ariadna (1949), and probably some poems from Mrs. Death. Between them
there is a likely maximum of around 60 poems. In the space of a single year –
between April 1954 and April 1955 – we have the 42 poems that derive from
the final part of Les hores (12 poems) and the whole of Final del laberint (30
poems). By contrast, in the five-year period from 1946 to 1951 the only poems
that Espriu dates as being written are the 40 of Mrs. Death, although we can
reasonably assume that some of the compositions that figure in the first two
parts of Les hores, and probably certain of the Les cançons d’Ariadna, were
products of these years. There was not, however, the same intensity, that kind
of focus that the conception and the completion of a unitary book would
demand. It should be noted, though, that in this comparatively fallow period for
poetry Espriu wrote one of his greatest and most ambitious works, Primera
història d’Esther.
The most barren period in Espriu’s career was during the years following
the end of the Civil War. These were the years that coincided with his need to
seek employment as a notary in the office of the dreaded Antonio Gual
Ubach, but his silence was not merely a product of personal circumstance.
Several commentators have characterized the state of Catalan literature and
33
culture in these years in terms of silence. Maria Aurèlia Capmany refers to ‘la
tierra devastada por el silencio’ [the land devastated by silence],6 while the
description of Josep M. Castellet and Joaquim Molas is more evocative:
I fou el silenci: un silenci ple d’humiliacions i de por, de desorientació i
d’impotència. Fou un silenci dens, que traduïa la incomunicabilitat més
absoluta: els esperits dividits; els homes separats físicament i geogràficament; els mitjans de comunicació amb els lectors, perduts; la societat, desfeta; l’esperança, incerta.7
[And it was the silence: a silence laden with humiliation and fear, with disorientation and impotence. It was a dense silence, that conveyed the most
absolute lack of communication: the souls that were divided; the men who
were separated physically and geographically; the means of communications with the readers that were lost; a society that was undone; a hope that
was uncertain.]
According to Antoni Vilanova it was ‘un temps de d’oprobi de vergonya,
d’injusta humiliació i de silenci asfixiant per a les nostres lletres’ [a time of
opprobrium and shame, of unjust humiliation and of a silence that was
asphixyating for our literature], a silence that was, he adds, broken by Espriu’s
Cementiri de Sinera.8 During these years Espriu’s literary production was
confined to writing the first draft of his story ‘Tres sorores’ [‘Three Sisters’].
He did, however, contribute to the 3-volume Iniciación a la historia universal
(Barcelona: Apolo, 1943) and his pen was characteristically sharp-edged. As
Delor i Muns points out, this was a work to be consulted by generations of
students and Espriu took it upon himself to introduce them to concepts such as
tolerance, mutual comprehension and dignity, which they would not have been
experiencing as political or even social realities in their daily lives.9 Espriu also
made pointed allusions to lost cultures and civilizations – such as those of the
Hittites and the Cretans – and to the timeless quality of violence. Pertinent,
too, for the poetry he would soon be writing, was his disquisition on the
significance of the term ‘patria’ for the Greeks and Mediterranean peoples. His
conception of a homeland as a place where a man was born and where he
would die, in imitation of his ancestors, would emerge with particular force in
Cementiri de Sinera.
Another chronological issue to be addressed is the position of
Espriu’s poetry in his work as a whole. The 1930s, as we have seen, were
Salvador Espriu, p. 13.
Josep M. Castellet and Joaquim Molas, Poesia catalana del segle XX (Barcelona:
Edicions 62, 1963), p. 117.
8 ‘El símbol del mur a la poesia de Salvador Espriu’, in Homenatge a Antoni Comas.
Miscellània in memoriam, ed. Lola Badia (Barcelona: Facultat de Filologia, Universitat de
Barcelona, 1985), pp. 569–87 (at p. 583).
9 Rosa M. Delor i Muns, Salvador Espriu, els anys d’aprenenatge, p. 481.
6
7
34
D. GARETH WALTERS
overwhelmingly given over to prose fiction, and his play Antígona dates from
1939. Yet only three poems for certain survived from before this year,10 while
none is documented as having been written between 1939 and 1944, the year
in which he started Cementiri de Sinera and Les cançons d’Ariadna.
Although Espriu may have been discouraged by Rosselló-Pòrcel’s less than
enthusiastic reaction to his poetry when he was still a student it is unlikely
that this of itself would have delayed his poetic vocation. Indeed around
1943–44 Espriu visited Carles Riba at his home to read him some of his
poetry and provoked a decidedly frosty response.11 Clearly this did not deter
him as it was shortly after that he started work in earnest on his poetic
enterprise. The more likely motive for the delay is a positive one: it was only
by 1944 that Espriu felt that poetry was the most appropriate vehicle for his
creativity, and the choice of genre was not least a matter of expediency. In the
same interview with Joan Vidal in which he refers to his experience of the
darkest years of the Franco era by referring to these years individually by
date, he observes: ‘Bueno, al pensar entonces que me era necesario reducir mi
expresión a una possible quintaesencia, me decanté por la poesía, la cual yo
podia “construir” de memoria, por la noche, cuando no lograba dormir. Al
levantarme escribía el resultado.’ [Very well, when I thought then that it was
necessary for me to reduce my expression to its quintessential form, I moved
towards poetry, which I could ‘construct’ by heart, at night, when I couldn’t
get to sleep. When I got up I wrote down the result.] He wrote poetry, then,
out of a necessity for concision of expression in his beleaguered native
language, exploiting his insomnia to best effect. He realized that poetry –
especially lyric poetry – does not need the space of prose, and it is by this
token, as well as by its essential character, less conspicuous. Such a
consideration matters in a period of strict censorship; indeed Espriu’s
reference to memory is reminiscent of the way in which Russian poets under
Stalin would communicate poems orally rather than commit them to paper, as
though they were operating in a pre-Gutenberg era.12
Cementiri de Sinera
Such a reduced or, in Espriu’s terms, quintessential mode of expression
favours the briefest of lyric forms, as Cementiri de Sinera testifies. Only 1 of
10 These are ‘Dansa grotesca de la mort’ [‘Grotesque Dance of Death’], ‘Llàtzer’
[‘Lazarus’] and ‘El sotjador’ [‘The Watcher’], all of which were to appear in Les cançons
d’Ariadna (OC, I, 33, 76, 78). See Delor i Muns, Salvador Espriu, els anys d’aprenenatge,
p. 414.
11 See Espriu i Malagelada, Salvador Espriu, p. 51.
12 See Edward F. Stanton, ‘Machado and the poetry of cultural memory’, in Estelas en la
mar: Essays on the Poetry of Antonio Machado (1875–1939), ed. D. Gareth Walters (Glasgow:
University of Glasgow Department of Hispanic Studies, 1992), pp. 126–37 (at p. 127).
35
its 30 poems exceeds twenty lines in length, while 7 are of a mere five lines.
Of these, 6 constitute Espriu’s earliest examples of the tanka, a Japanese verseform, which together with the better-known haiku, he was to cultivate in
subsequent books. Indeed his late collection Per al llibre de salms d’aquests
vells cecs [For the Book of Psalms of these Blind Old Men] comprises a
sequence of 40 haikus, while others were unpublished at his death.13
Cementiri de Sinera, written between March 1944 and May 1945 and
published in the Spring of 1946, bears all the hallmarks of a clandestine
publication. It was edited by the writers Josep Palau i Fabré and Joan Triadú,
and the latter provides a vivid account of the circumstances of publication,
which involved collecting the proofs under cover of darkness for greater
security and taking them to Espriu, who corrected them with scrupulous
attention to detail.14 The print-run was naturally small: just over 100 copies
and without an imprint but bearing the improvised editorial name of ‘La
Sirena’. Yet, as so often, literature produced in such circumstances makes a
deep impression. Castellet, who was 19 at the time and, as we have seen, was
to become one of the leading critics of the poet, describes how he came across
a copy and was thus first acquainted with Espriu’s poetry: a fellow-student at
the university had a brother who was a close friend of the poet. It was only
through such informal networking that cultural exchange was possible.
Cementiri de Sinera is a prototype for many of the later books of poetry. This
is so not only because of the size and style of individual poems but also because
of the way in which they form a coherent set. When commentators refer to the
unity of these collections it not so much a generality of theme or impression of
mood that they are heeding as features that are specifically inscribed in the text.
In particular, in those books where the poems are identified by number rather
than by title there is a pronounced tendency for compositions to be connected
by means of the repetition of an image or an idea in the form of a single word.
Thus, for example, poems I and II of Cementiri de Sinera both contain the word
‘mar’ [sea], while ‘pàtria’ [homeland] figures in poems II and III. The constant
use of such a procedure also leads to the formation of clusters of significant
images in parts of books. In Cementiri de Sinera, for instance, the word ‘silenci’
[silence] appears in four of the compositions between poems V and XIII, but
only once thereafter; by contrast words that imply the opposite of silence –
‘veu’ [voice], ‘cançó’ [song], ‘paraules’ [words] – occur seven times after poem
XIV and only once before. Such an analysis is of course only a pointer. In
particular, it is not enough merely to identify and classify the terms – the task,
even the objective, of stylistic analysis – but to register their location and their
13
14
See Sebastiá Bonet, ‘D’uns haikus espriuans inèdits’, in Nexus, pp. 28–37.
Memòria de Salvador Espriu, p. 195.
36
D. GARETH WALTERS
significance through effect within the collection – the reality of the reading
experience.15
Moreover, the repetition of a word does not necessarily suggest similarity or
stasis; indeed, Cementiri de Sinera, like all Espriu’s collections, is characterized
by development and discovery – it is a poetic adventure. One way in which he
achieves this dynamic character is by converting images into symbols. This is the
more striking because Espriu is not a poet given to excessive metaphor.16 J. M.
Castellet has shown how the word ‘tree’ evolves in a four-fold process from
simple image through emotive image and then metaphor to a symbol within an
allegory.17 This analysis is undertaken over four separate collections, but it is
possible to discover a similar complexity involving four stages in the case of the
rain image in Cementiri de Sinera alone. First, we have the literal allusion, as in
poem III – ‘un poc de pols sorrenca/endurida de pluges’ [a little sandy dust made
hard by the rains] (OC, I, 175) – or in the one-word sentence that opens poem
VIII: ‘Plourá’ [It will rain] (OC, I, 180). At the heart of the following poem, there
is a more decorative rendering in the guise of a simple image – ‘Vol de records
de pluja’ [Flight of rain memoris] (OC, I, 181), which in turn is succeeded in
poem X by a striking metaphor: ‘l’exèrcit de la pluja’ [the army of the rain] (OC,
I, 182). Finally, in the longest poem of the collection (which I shall consider
more fully below), the image is incorporated into a chain of others – sea, house,
homeland, shipwreck – that form a clearly symbolical, if not allegorical process:
Com necessito
contar-te la basarda
que fa la pluja als vidres!
Avui cau nit de fosca
damunt la meva casa.
(OC, I, 197)
[How much I need to tell you about the fear that rain makes on the
windows! Today a dark night falls upon my house.]
15 The shortcomings of stylistic analysis have been brilliantly exposed by Stanley Fish
in ‘What is stylistics and why are they saying such terrible things about it’, in Is There a
Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretative Communities (Cambridge, MA, and
London: Harvard University Press, 1980), pp. 68–96.
16 ‘Cementiri de Sinera ja és un llibre de la poesia que avui anomenem, encara
imprecisament, d’intenció o d’expressió realista, és a dir, despullada de metàfores (però
rica d’imatges), escrita amb paraules senzilles i precises, de vers eixut i de sintaxi lògica’.
[Cementiri de Sinera is a book of poetry that nowadays we would label, albeit imprecisely,
realist in intention or expression, that is to say, devoid of metaphors (though rich in
imagery), written with simple and precise words, and in plain verse and with logical
syntax.] Castellet and Molas, Poesia catalana del segle XX, p. 148. Of poem II, David
Rosenthal asserts: ‘Like all of the Sinera Cemetery sequence, the poem comes to us naked,
stripped of metaphors though full of vivid imagery. Espriu permits himself no symbolic or
rhetorical flights’. ‘Salvador Espriu and postwar Catalan poetry’, Contemporary Poetry, 5
(1982), 12–23 (at p. 18).
17 Iniciació a la poesia de Salvador Espriu, pp. 69–70.
37
Another feature of Espriu’s use of imagery in Cementiri de Sinera is the
readiness with which it acquires historical or political overtones. This is an
important consideration because it would suggest that the division of his lyric
poetry from one that could be termed social or civic – such as critics were
eager to do in the wake of the publication of La pell de brau – is even less
defensible. Characteristic of the collection is the combination of natural
imagery and terminology drawn from the very different semantic field of
politics or warfare. At the end of poem VII the poet describes how he goes to
the cemetery on the hill to observe a religious procession:
Per contemplar-los pujo
on el xiprer vigila.
Clarors de lluna besen
jerarquia de cimes.
(OC, I, 179)
[To contemplate them I climb to where the cypress tree keeps watch.
Brightnesses of the moon kiss the hierarchy of the treetops.]
The unusual choice of noun in the final phrase is the greater for the contrast
it offers to the penultimate line – uncharacteristically conventional for Espriu.
The evocation of rain at night in poem X also contains an unexpected military
metaphor:
Vent nocturn, himne, bronze
antic contra l’exèrcit
de la pluja . . .
(OC, I, 182)
[Night wind, hymn, ancient bronze againt the rain’s army . . . ]
The image of imprisonment is likewise used incongruously within precise
and delicate evocations of nature, both in the winter scene of poem VI:
Les aranyes filaven
palaus de rei,
estances que empresonen
passos d’hivern.
(OC, I, 178)
[The spiders spun king’s palaces, rooms that imprison winter’s steps.]
and in the description of a cloudy sky in poem VIII:
Algun ocell voldria
penetrar les difícils
presons de llum.
(OC, I, 180)
[Some bird would wish to penetrate the difficult prisons of light.]
38
D. GARETH WALTERS
A connected image-idea is that of enclosure, associated above all with the
cemetery. In poem II, it is linked to homeland: ‘Quina petita pàtria/ encercla el
cementiri!’ [What a small homeland surrounds the cememtery!] (OC, I, 174).
The cemetery is both the focus of the work and the poet’s point of departure.
The homeland is Sinera, and, through that, Catalonia, but registered at an
intimate level. Thus it is a ‘pàtria/ que mor amb mi’ [homeland that dies with
me] (OC, I, 175), and in two poems a ‘petita pàtria’ [little homeland] (OC, I,
174; 197). In this way the historical dimension is absorbed into a personal
experience and will lead, as we shall see, to a collective consciousness.
The work opens with a striking metaphor:
Pels rials baixa el carro
del sol, des de carenes
de fonollars i vinyes
que jo sempre recordo.
(OC, I, 173)
[Down the lanes the sun’s chariot goes, from hills of fennel and vines
that I always remember.]
This evocation of the sun flooding the lanes and hills above the town has a
mythological resonance: Apollo’s chariot rather than the peasant’s wagon or
the rickety traps that are heard in the streets of Sinera in poem IV. But the
energy unleashed by this metaphor is deceptive. In the immediately
succeeding poems there is an unmistakable feeling of defeat. The poet is cast
in the role of an impotent observer, reduced to a state of hapless passivity:
Aquesta mar, Sinera,
turons de pins i vinya,
pols de rials. No estimo
res més, excepte l’ombra
viatgera d’un núvol.
(OC, I, 174)
[This sea, Sinera, hills of pine and vineyards, dusty lanes. I love
nothing else, save the wandering shadow of a cloud.]
There is a sense, too, of ‘slow’ time, of futility:
Claror d’abril, de pàtria
que mor amb mi, quan miro
els anys i el pas: viatge
al llarg de lents crepuscles.
(OC, I, 175)
[Brightness of April, of a homeland that dies with me, when I look at
the years and their movement: a voyage along slow dusks.]
These lines have an alluring quality. They hint at self-indulgence, and rather
in the manner of a lingering adagio too readily flirt with nostalgia; the notion
39
of a journey along slow dusks is especially redolent of surrender to a
comfortable emotion. This mood is not surprising because the opening poems
articulate the regret for past times and vanished experiences: ‘El lent record
dels dies/ que son passats per sempre’ [The slow recall of days that are gone
for ever] (OC, I, 174); and more poignantly:
Els meus ulls ja no saben
sinó contemplar dies
i sols perduts.
(OC, I, 176)
[My eyes now cannot but contemplate lost days and suns.]
Yet even within the limited confines of these brief lyrics there is scope for
what emerges as a contrasting and corrective profundity. The loss that we
perceive in the poet’s life is more urgent than nostalgia and more radical than
regret. It is a loss of identity, a consequence of which is his incapacity to
respond actively to his surroundings. This deeper sensation is encapsulated in
a cryptic, bleak phrase at the opening of poem III: ‘Sense cap nom ni símbol’
[With neither name nor symbol]. Here the silence that dominates the first half
of Cementiri de Sinera is tantamount to annihilation.
The aura of passivity is evident too in the emphasis on memory. On the
whole, memory is viewed as a positive element in the work of Espriu, as a
means even of salvation.18 I believe its function in Cementiri de Sinera is
otherwise, not least because it is recognizably limited in its effect. Thus I
cannot share Peter Cocozzella’s view that ‘the reconstruction of past experiences
through nostalgic recollection’ constitutes one of the two basic motifs of the
cycle.19 Its impact, rather, is concentrated in the opening poems and,
associated as it is with defeat and inactivity, represents a means rather than an
end. Indeed the last half of poem IV and the first part of the next hint at the
desperation, even the sterility, of memory:
Al meu record arriben
olors de mar vetllada
per clars estius. Perdura
en els meus dits la rosa
que vaig collir. I als llavis,
18 See Castellet, Iniciació a la poesia de Salvador Espriu, pp. 42, 154. On the
significance of memory in Greek thought and in the Jewish and Christian tradition and its
connection with Espriu, see Delor i Muns, La mort com a intercanvi simbòlic, pp.
137–41.
19 See Peter Cocozzella, ‘Recollection and introspection in Salvador Espriu’s
Cementiri de Sinera’, Catalan Studies (Estudis sobre el català): Volume in Memory of
Josephine de Boer, ed. Josep Gulsoy and Josep M. Solá-Solé (Barcelona: Hispam, 1977),
pp. 259–65 (at p. 261).
40
D. GARETH WALTERS
oratge, foc, paraules
esdevingudes cendra.
(OC, I, 176)
[To my memory there arrive the smells of a sea watched over by
bright summers. There lives on in my fingers the rose that I plucked.
And on my lips, wind, fire, words, that are ashes now.]
Pels portals de Sinera
passo captant engrunes
de vells records. Ressona
als carrers en silenci
el feble prec inútil.
(OC, I, 177)
[Along the doors of Sinera I go begging for crumbs of old memories.
There echoes silently in the streets the weak, useless plea.]
Such lines serve to underscore the failure of recollection, implicit in the
negative motto – ‘Sense cap nom ni símbol’ [With neither name nor symbol] –
of poem III.
If the poet’s emotional point of departure is the abject one of unavailing
memory then in literal, or spatial terms, it is the cemetery, identified almost
invariably with the cypress trees. Again the location and distribution of
imagery is important: the cypress tree is mentioned in no fewer than eight of
the first ten poems, but only twice in the remaining twenty. In the early part
of the collection it figures as a constant companion to the poet although
without any recourse to pathetic fallacy: ‘fidels xiprers verdíssims’ [faithful,
deep green cypress trees] in the fifth poem (OC, I, 177); and, as accompanier
of his defeat – ‘Sense cap nom ni símbol/ ran dels xiprers’ [With neither name
nor symbol beside the cypress trees] – in the third (OC, I, 177). Yet, it is also
associated with a positive function, for in several poems it serves as a spur to
movement. Even in poem I there is a sense of resolve in the concluding future
tense that contrasts with the melancholy of recollection:
Passejaré per l’ordre
de verds xiprers immòbils
damunt la mar en calma.
(OC, I, 173)
[I shall walk along the order of still green cypress trees above the
calm sea.]
It is such a movement onwards that is also registered at the end of poem VI,
again contrasting with the inertia that precedes it: ‘Avanço per rengleres/ de
xiprers’ (OC, I, 178) [I advance along rows of cypress trees]. The symmetrical
neatness of the rows of cypress trees possesses a symbolic resonance that is
transferred to the poet, who, by poem X, has discovered by now a role as a
41
witness. Through him, this ordered beauty is made actual, and this realization
is tantamount to being a poet:
Ordenador de rengles
de xiprers i silenci,
conferiré serena
autoritat de màgics
ceptres a mans augustes.
(OC, I, 182)20
[Arranger of rows of cypress trees and silence, I shall confer the
serene authority of magical sceptres to august hands.]
It is through such activity, and not through the passivity of memory, that the
poet starts to recover some contact with reality. No longer subject to an
emotional inertia he moves on – an idea inscribed in several verbs of motion:
‘passejaré’ [I shall walk], ‘avanço’ [I advance], ‘pujo’ [I climb]. Memory has
been replaced by observation; witness the growing emphasis on contemplation,
which is manifested eventually in an energetic visual imagination, successively
at the end of poems VIII, IX and X: ‘Passen dofins pels límits/ d’aquesta mar
antiga’ (OC, I, 180) [Dolphins pass near the edges of this old sea]; ‘claror de cel
plorada/ en miralls momentanis.’ (OC, I, 181) [brightness of a sky wept in
momentary mirrors]; ‘Déus pastors amuntanyen/ dòcils ramats de núvols.’ (OC,
I, 182) [Shepherd gods drive meek flocks of clouds up the mountain]. This
rediscovery is the product not only of determination but also of a patient,
organized and disciplined process. Like the rows of cypress trees, Cementiri de
Sinera presents a structured picture of the poet cherishing the objects of a
regained world. And the act of observing that makes this possible focuses on
obvious presences: on things and, especially in the central section of the
collection, on natural phenomena.
This part of the book comprises two temporal sequences. The first – poems
X to XVII – is a diurnal sequence of eight poems dominated by night, which
is present in the first two and last two of the set. The other sequence – poems
XVIII to XXI – is shorter and again cyclical in nature: four poems that
contain allusions to each of the seasons, beginning with summer and ending
with spring. Moreover, having regard for Espriu’s predilection for numbers,
this group is significant for two reasons. It occupies the exact centre of the
collection by the criterion of poem numbers: nine before and nine after. It also
comprises twelve poems and thus suggests a third temporal sequence: the
20 The notion of the natural world acquiring meaning, even reality, through being
witnessed is expressed among others by Rilke in the first and ninth of the Duino Elegies,
and by Antonio Machado at the conclusion of Campos de Soria, where, addressing various
landscape features, he asks: ‘Me habéis llegado al alma,/ ¿o acaso estábais en el fondo de
ella?’ [Had you reached my soul, or perhaps were you in its very depth?]. Campos de
Castilla, ed. Geoffrey Ribbans (Madrid: Cátedra, 1989), p. 138.
42
D. GARETH WALTERS
twelve months of the year. It is pertinent to note that the central section of the
fourth book in the palindromic cycle, El caminant i el mur, whose title
‘Cançons de la roda del temps’ [‘Songs of the Wheel of Time’] (OC, I,
319–32) explicitly suggests the passage of time, comprises a diurnal sequence
of twelve poems. The poems of the central section of Cementiri de Sinera
furnish a sense of continuity. They represent both the certainty of the cyclical
passage of time and a clear and secure point of contact for the poet with the
world. As a result they betray order and bearing. There is also a feeling that
is best described as liberation, a new-found vitality of seeing, anticipated in
the closing lines of poems VIII, IX and X quoted above. After the confined
spectrum of the opening poems, with their limited range of reference –
principally the cemetery and the sea – we experience what is by comparison
a lexical release in the temporal sequences. There is a joy in naming the trees
stirred by the dawn wind (OC, I, 184), in observing the patterns of shadows
on the cemetery wall, (OC, I, 185), and in heeding the magnified sounds at
dusk (OC, I, 187). No less vivid are the evocations of the ‘foc proper dels
pàmpols’ [the imminent fire of the vine leaves] (OC, I, 190) or of the
hawthorn and berry (OC, I, 192) of the seasonal sequence.
In this central section, the sense of onward movement, tentatively achieved
in the opening poems, is consolidated. It is in this new context that a positive
contact with the past is to emerge: a bond with the dead, with the ‘vides
perdurables/ damunt el cementiri’ [lives that endure above the cemetery] (OC,
I, 188) and the ‘velles mans . . . sota vells arbres’ [old hands . . . beneath old
trees] (OC, I, 190). Both temporal sequences culminate in poems of muted
expectation. The conclusion of the diurnal cycle takes the form of an
invocation:
Ai, la negra barca,
que per mi vigila
des de la nit alta!
Ai, la barca negra,
que ve pel meu somni
del mar de Sinera!
La veu de la dama,
lluny del temps. Escolto
la cançó de marbre.
(OC, I, 189)
[Ah, the black boat which watches over me from the high night! Ah,
the black boat that comes for my dream from Sinera’s sea! The voice
of the lady, far from time. I hear the song of marble.]
This gloomy boat represents another shift from literal to metaphoric. In poem
VI we read how the ships of Sinera did not put out to sea in winter. The black
43
boat in the later poem is the ship of death, while the lady is most obviously
Death herself, an anticipation of the eponymous Mrs. Death of the third book
in the cycle. The poem is mysterious because the perceptions of voice and
song are ambiguous. Is the voice distant from the poet, or is it removed from
time and thus immune to its vicissitudes? Does the marble emphasize the
tomb as burial-place or as a monument that survives? These are questions to
pose rather than resolve, for the poet is still prey to the dual tendency of
passive resignation and active contemplation. Even the poem on summer does
not escape the burden of lost times:
L’estiu tardà s’allunya
del foc proper dels pàmpols,
quan jo només espero
hores passades.
(OC, I, 190)
[Late summer goes away from the imminent fire of the vine leaves,
when I wait only for the hours that have gone.]
Ambivalent, too, is the final poem in the seasonal cycle – one of the most
striking of the collection:
Lliures cavalls, a l’alba,
per la deserta platja.
Veus i tambors proclamen
la primavera.
Després, fet nou silenci
damunt el mar, les hores
encadenades besen
la sorra molla.
(OC, I, 193)
[Free horses, at dawn, on the deserted beach. Voices and drums
proclaim the spring. Then, with silence renewed, above the sea, the
chained hours kiss the wet sand.]
The initial picture is a marvellous evocation through a condensed set of
images: the horses running free, their hoof beats echoing on the empty beach,
and this at dawn on a spring day. With the accompanying voices the impression
is overwhelmingly one of liberation. But this is only a fleeting glimpse, as the
negative signifiers ‘silenci’ [silence] and ‘encadenades’ [chained] remind us
of the bleak reality with which such a vision must contend. That they can arise
at all does, however, represent an achievement, although I could not put it
more emphatically than that. It would be a misrepresentation of the collection
thus far to claim that it has marked a progression from darkness to light. The
most that can be said is that the poet has recognized and recorded the signs of
defeat, and that his response has been a painstaking reconstruction, a task
44
D. GARETH WALTERS
demanding patience and humility. It is important to recall the handicapped
persona of the early part of the book, notably in poem V when he was reduced
to begging for memories. He was desperately seeking scraps of recollection
to help rebuild a lost reality and a lost identity. Through the simplicity and
intensity of observation – through the here and now of the passing of a day
and of the seasons – this has been accomplished.21
Yet over and above the individual act of contemplation there is to emerge
a collective observation, something that could be properly designated ‘observance’. In some poems there is a social memory and celebration, expressed
in the poet’s familiarity with customs and traditions. These range from
references to local feast-days and processions to the allusion to one of the
principal industries of Arenys de Mar: lace making.22 At the start of poem
VIII the lace makers’ delicate craft inspires a fanciful analogy for the cloudy
sky, whose homeliness is enhanced by the personification of the hill
(Muntala) above the town:
Plourà. L’àvia Muntala
desa el sol a l’armari
del mal temps, entre puntes
de mantellina fetes
per ditets de Sinera.
(OC, I, 180)
[It will rain. Granny Muntala puts the sun away in the cupboard of
bad weather, among the manila lace made by the fingertips of
Sinera].23
It is poem XIX, however, part of the seasonal sequence, that confirms the
bond between the poet and his people. This is a poem that possesses a strikingly
pagan element: the ancient cult, the ritual dance, the vines, the sacrifice, the
initatiation:
Els ostiaris
d’un culte antic obrien
les portes a la dansa
del santet i el diable . . .
21 As Castellet and Molas point out: ‘De la desorientació i la impotència, de la voluntat
de sobreviure i de la nostalgia del passat o de l’esperança del futur, alguns escriptors
tragueren els fils per a teixir a poc a poc una quotidianeïtat que, segons l’humor individual
de cadascú, es traduí en poesia’ [From disorientation and impotence, from the will to
survive and from the nostalgia for the past or the hope for the future, a number of writers
extracted the threads slowly to weave a mundanity that, according to individual
temperament, was translated into poetry] Poesia catalana del segle XX, p. 117.
22 See Agustí Espriu, Núria Nogueras and Maria Assumpció de Pons, Aproximació
històrica al mite de Sinera (Barcelona: Curial, 1983), pp. 49–53; 191–202.
23 Aproximació històrica al mite de Sinera, 67.
El vent escampa
fum de tardor per marbres
de rics altars, per vinyes
on l’or és dens, i marca
amb un senyal el rostre
del qui farà la via
vers el xiprer.
45
(OC, I, 191)
[The ostiaries of an ancient cult opened the doors to the dance of the
little saint and the devil . . . The wind disperses the autumn smoke
over the marble of rich altars, through vines thick with gold, and it
marks with a sign the face of the man who will make his way to the
cypress tree.]
In view of the constant association of the cypress trees with the poet earlier
in the book it would be justifiable to make the same connection here for the
anonymous individual who goes towards the cypress tree. The smoke from
the ritual fire appears to anoint him, and this figure is now given an identity
that was denied at the start of the work.
But the process of recovery is advanced a stage beyond discovery and
identity. The poems that succeed the temporal sequences serve as preparation
for the self-knowledge that is to emerge in poem XXV. Poem XXIII is a bleak
utterance that should warn us against subscribing to the simple ‘darkness to
light’ reading of the collection. It contains a poignant evocation of the epigraph
to the book, the quotation from the Book of Ecclesiastes – ‘I totes les filles de
cançó seran humillades’ [And all the daughters of song will be humiliated]
(OC, I, 171):
Mentre s’apaga
la llum d’abril i cessen
les filles de cançó,
en un crepuscle immòbil,
he caminat estances
de la casa perduda.
(OC, I, 195)
[While the light of April dies and the daughters of song cease, in a
still dusk I have walked through the rooms of the lost house.]
It could be feared that this represents a regression – that after the movement
outwards and onwards there is now a turning-in on the self, a return to
passivity, especially because of the associations of ‘crepuscle immòbil’. The
rebuttal of positive elements at the start of the next poem seems to confirm this:
No naixerà cap marbre
d’eternitzades ones
ni s’alçaran vols d’àngels
d’imaginats imperis.
(OC, I, 196)
46
D. GARETH WALTERS
[No marble of eternalized waves will be born nor will flights of
angels rise up from imagined empires.]
The remainder of the poem evokes strife – the fury of the storm and a suggestion
of catastrophe through the apocalyptic final image, the ‘xiprer que sap l’incendi/
del mar i d’aquest núvol’ [cypress tree that knows of the conflagration of the sea
and this cloud]. The poet wanders through the empty rooms of Sinera, an image
of self-examination, of a probing that is the continuation of the journey of
discovery. The consequence of this momentary solipsism is a poem that
Castellet has praised as ‘un dels més bells poemes elegiacs de la postguerra’
[one of the most beautiful elegiac poems of the post-war period]:24
A la vora del mar. Tenia
una casa, el meu somni,
a la vora del mar.
Alta proa. Per lliures
camins d’aigua, l’esvelta
barca que jo manava.
Els ulls sabien
tot el repòs i l’ordre
d’una petita pàtria.
Com necessito
contar-te la basarda
que fa la pluja als vidres!
Avui cau nit de fosca
damunt la meva casa.
Les roques negres
m’atrauen a naufragi.
Captiu del càntic,
el meu esforç inútil,
qui pot guiar-me a l’alba?
Ran de la mar tenia
una casa, un lent somni.
(OC, I, 197)
[Beside the sea. I had a house, my dream, at the edge of the sea. High
prow. On free waterways, the slender boat that I piloted. My eyes
knew all the peace and order of a little homeland. How much I need
to tell you of the fear that rain makes on the windows! Today a dark
night falls upon my house. The black rocks draw me to destruction.
24
47
Captive of the canticle, my struggle, useless, who can lead me to the
dawn? Beside the sea I had a house, a slow dream.]
It is, by some way, the longest poem of the collection. This is not as trivial
an observation as it seems because its length affords space for the poet to
unburden himself. In this instance such a term is not a sloppy cliché: it is determinedly the poem’s function. In subsequent books, too, we shall encounter a
crucial moment in the form of a key poem, which will often represent a crisis
or other kind of emotional heightening. Poem XXV of Cementiri de Sinera is
the culmination of a process. Many of the ideas and images of earlier poems
coalesce here: sea, house, ship, homeland, rain, song, dawn. The entry into the
house has elicited a confession which is an acknowledgement of a confrontation with a fearful reality. The switch to the present tense in the fourth
and fifth stanzas and the recourse to the temporal marker ‘avui’ indicate that
the poet is reliving a sequence of experiences: the violence, the destruction, the
captivity, and the hope for liberation. The writing is uncomplicated, and the
unequivocal clarity of the symbolism – such as that of the shipwreck25 –
anticipates the so-called social or civic poetry. The sense of loss is inescapable,
both in the near-refrain that frames the poem and in the parallel image of the
homeland that no longer offers peace and security.
Indeed the immediate reaction to this confession is a lapse into
despondency. Indeed, were we not to be alive to the poet’s vacillations by this
point we would regard poem XXVI as bespeaking a definitive surrender to the
most irredeemable emptiness:
No lluito més. Et deixo
el sepulcre vastíssim,
abans terra dels pares,
somni, sentit. Em moro,
perquè no sé com viure.
(OC, I, 198)
[I struggle no more. I leave you the vastest grave, once the land of our
fathers, dream, meaning. I die, because I don’t know how to live.]
But still the process of recovery witnessed over a large part of the collection
is to be enacted once more in poem XXVII:
Somni, sentit, concretes
barques al vent, difícil
paraula que puc dir-me
25 In their study and anthology Castellet and Molas entitle one of the chapters on
Catalan poetry written during and immediately after the Civil War ‘Terra de naufragis’
[‘Land of shipwrecks’], while one of the sub-chapters is designated ‘El naufragi i la mort’
[‘The shipwreck and death’]. Poesia catalana del segle XX, pp. 130, 143.
48
D. GARETH WALTERS
encara, entre vells límits
de la vinya i el mar. No lluito
contra l’esforç de viure
no sabent com. M’encerclen
blanques parets, pau alta
i bona ran dels arbres,
sota la pols i l’ombra.
(OC, I, 199)
[Dream, meaning, solid boats in the wind, difficult word I can still
say, between the ancient boundaries of the vineyard and the sea. I
don’t struggle against the effort of living not knowing how. White
walls surround me, a good and lofty peace beside the trees, beneath
the dust and the shade.]
Indeed, this, and the preceding poem, could almost serve as a micrcosm of the
entire work. Poem XXVII appears to mimic the activity of reconstruction in its
syntax and lexicon: the painful word-by-word advance and the acknowledgement of its achievement against the odds. We sense a poet who is beleaguered
yet resolute, mouthing words to establish a stronghold within the territory that
he can call his. These two poems also indicate the potential for continuity and
development in Espriu’s structural conception of his books. There is an
unexpected variation of the phrase ‘No lluito més’ [I struggle no more] from
the first of these, for in the second the phrase is expanded to ‘No lluito/ contra
el esforç de viure/ no sabent com’. [I don’t struggle against the effort of living
not knowing how.] But this constitutes an opposite idea: the instinct for
survival is greater than the will to surrender. The repetition of the initial phrase
in this way not only provokes surprise and pleasure but also starkly reflects the
recuperative trend of the collection. Such a success is measured in the sober
awareness and calm acceptance – a ‘lofty peace’ indeed.
This peace has a divine dimension in poem XXVIII:
Aquesta pau és meva,
i Déu em vetlla.
Dic a l’arrel, al núvol:
«Aquesta pau és meva».
(OC, I, 200)
[This peace is mine, and God watches over me. I say to the root, to
the cloud: “This peace is mine.”]
Such a statement would have been impossible prior to the acts of
contemplation and confession – indeed the invocation of God towards the end
of the collection has a logical liturgical positioning. The explicit inscription
of voice in the direct-speech repetition of the opening phrase is no less
momentous, reinforcing as it does the eradication of silence.
The last two poems serve a similar function to that outlined in poems
XXVI and XXVII. The negative thrust of the penultimate composition gives
the reader another jolt after the calm certainty of poem XXVIII:
49
Pas de l’amic que sento
privat de Déu, encara:
cerques un nom inútil,
per aturar-te?
Sabràs millor quin era,
pel nom, el secret últim
de qui va precedir-te?
Tan sols un home.
(OC, I, 201)
[The step of a friend that I hear, still deprived of God: do you seek a
useless name, a place where to stop? Will you know better who it
was, by his name, the last secret of the one who preceded you?
Merely a man.]
Yet this isolation is momentary and the troubled questions are answered both
in the evocation of a legacy and in the lapidary concluding poem:
Quan et deturis
on el meu nom et crida,
vulgues que dormi
somniant mars en calma,
la claror de Sinera.
(OC, I, 202)
[When you stop where my name calls to you, wish that I should sleep
and dream of calm seas, the brightness of Sinera.]
The second line is testament to how far we have travelled from the bleak cry
of ‘sense cap nom ni símbol’ [with neither name nor symbol] in poem III.
Castellet suggests that the perspective of the last five poems is from inside the
tomb.26 If that is so, then we can also appreciate the anticipatory union of the
poet with the dead in earlier poems: the ‘vides perdurables’ [enduring lives]
of poem XVI (OC, I, 188) and the ‘velles mans’ [ancient hands] of poem
XVIII (OC, I, 190).
Espriu himself referred to Cementiri de Sinera as a meditation on death.
This is a deceptively simple definition, and one that might be regarded as
inapposite unless a complexity of associations is ascribed to the terms
‘meditation’ and ‘death’. Castellet and Molas are wary about the definition:
‘La poesia d’Espriu és elegiaca, i l’elegia no és forçosament “meditació de la
mort”.’ [The poetry of Espriu is elegiac, and an elegy is not necessarily a
“meditation on death”.]27 Enrique Badosa is right to remind us that
meditation does not have to imply inactivity, for Espriu’s is ‘la poesía de la
26
27
Poesia catalana del segle XX, p. 148.
50
D. GARETH WALTERS
auténtica acción’ [the poetry of authentic action].28 Nor is death a merely
negative term. The collection enacts how from it the poet derived resolution
and objectives, working out in artistic terms what Capmany discerned in his
life in the post-war years. Living in ‘una patria habitada por los muertos’ [a
land inhabited by the dead], Espriu eschewed sinecures. He would not live a
lie: ‘Diarios, revistas, instituciones le ofrecen unas prebendas, una vida que
él, Salvador Espriu, no quiere, porque es una vida que le ha sido impuesta sin
derecho ni justicia. Y escoge la muerte, la muerte cívica, la muerte como
única arma ética que le queda’.29 [Newspapers, journals, institutions, all
offered him sinecures, a life that he, Salvador Espriu, did not want, because it
was a life that had been imposed upon him wrongly and unjustly. And he
chose death, civic death, death as the only ethical weapon left to him.]
Cementiri de Sinera is also a meditation away from death – an impetus
discernible in the process of recovery and the assumption of identity. Indeed,
to write such a work in Catalan in 1944 was an act of faith and defiance, an
act similar to the one described by Seamus Heaney in an essay on Robert
Lowell when he refers to ‘the poet’s double responsibility to tell a truth as
well as to make a thing’.30 When Espriu wrote his play Primera història
d’Esther a few years later, his intention appears to have been to create a work
that would parade the richess and variety of the language, confronted as it was
by a threat to its very survival. The implications and achievement of
Cementiri de Sinera are, however, more complex. On the one hand there is the
sense of the precariousness of things, somehow made tangible and perhaps
invulnerable by the act of naming.31 Then in poem XXII Espriu employs an
architectural metaphor for his craft as a poet:
Damunt la sorra molla
suporto l’equilibri
d’un ordre arquitectònic . . .
La veu trencada, cristall
del meu dolor, diumenges
amb demà sempre igual,
sempre igual, mentre s’apaga
la llum d’abril i miro
de mantenir les voltes.
(OC, I, 194)
[Above the wet sand I support the balance of an architectural
order . . . My shattered voice, crystal of my sorrow, Sundays with
Antología de Salvador Espriu, 2nd edn (Madrid: Plaza y Janés, 1972), p. 11.
Capmany, Salvador Espriu, p. 19.
30 ‘Lowell’s Command’ in Finders Keepers: Selected Prose 1971–2001 (London:
Faber and Faber, 2002), p. 206.
31 See Antonina Paba, ‘Per una definizione della “parola” nell’opera poetica di
Salvador Espriu’, Rassegna Iberistica, 34 (1989), 17–28.
28
29
51
always the same tomorrow, always the same, while the light of April
dies and I look to keep the vaults from falling.]
The making of the poem is a difficult and perilous occupation but its
presence and its very shape are a monument to survival. The peculiar force of
a collection like Cementiri de Sinera, encapsulated in the grace and ambition
of this poem, is that it compels us to envisage permanence in the midst of
vulnerabilities: the weak foundation, the frail voice that cannot hide its pain,
the sameness of a life that seems futureless. For combating and celebrating
this existence on the edge of oblivion is the poet who, Atlas-like, willingly
carries the burden of the fragile, valuable structure of his ‘thing made’ upon
his shoulders.32 The light of a spring evening fades, as it did in earlier poems,
but he is no longer trapped by memory at the melancholy hour. He has now
assumed the liberating responsibility of creativity.
Les hores
Espriu, it may be recalled, had planned to publish a collection of poetry
entitled Les hores in 1937, and had 100 poems available for the edition. For
reasons that have never been made clear he destroyed around ninety of these
although some of the remainder, it can be assumed, found their way into the
definitive publication of the first two parts of a book with the same title in
1952. Yet the three poems that can be dated with certainty from the 1930s –
‘Dansa grotesca de la mort’ (1934), ‘El sotjador’ and ‘Llàtzer’ (both 1937) –
were to be included in Les cançons d’Ariadna rather than Les hores.33 It is
likely that among the ten or so poems that survived the axe in 1937 there
would have been pieces that Espriu published in the literary journals Poesia
and Ariel in the late 1940s.34 Three poems from what was to become Les
hores – ‘Missatge’ [‘Message’], ‘Arbre’ [Tree’] and ‘Terra negra’ [‘Black
Earth’] – also appeared together with another nine by Espriu from Cementiri
de Sinera and the as yet unpublished Les cançons d’Ariadna and Mrs. Death
in an anthology entitled Els contemporanis, edited by Josep Janés and
published in November 1947.35
A looming presence in Les hores is Rosselló-Pòrcel, whose influence is
discernible textually as well as spiritually.36 The book is, however, most
32 The analogy with Atlas is also made by Maria Isabel Pijoan i Picas, Salvador Espriu
o els itineraris de la poesia, p. 124.
33 See Delor i Muns, La mort com a intercanvi simbòlic, p. 147.
34 Delor i Muns, Salvador Espriu, els anys d’aprenenatge, p. 484.
35 The other nine poems were poems 4, 8, 23, 26 and 29 from Cementiri de Sinera;
‘Cançó d’Esperança Trinquis’ [‘Song of Esperança Trinquis’], ‘Cançó de Tipsy Jones’
[‘Song of Tipsy Jones’] from Les cançons d’Ariadna; and ‘Matrimoni’ [‘Marriage’] and
‘Després dels arbres’ [‘After the Trees’] from Mrs. Death. See Delor i Muns, 488.
36 See Delor i Muns, La mort com a intercanvi simbòlic, pp. 169–81.
52
D. GARETH WALTERS
accurately defined as an elegiac triptych, of which only the first part is
explicitly dedicated to the memory of the Majorcan poet. The second part
remembers Espriu’s mother, who died in 1950; and the third – written
considerably later than the first two parts – bears the intriguing dedication
‘Recordant allunyadament Salom (18-VII-1936)’ [Remembering Salom from
a Distance (18-VII-1936)]. Salom is the pseudonym that Espriu uses to refer
to himself, while the date is that of the start of the Civil War. This section then
effectively marks the ‘death’ of Espriu insofar as a whole way of life had
come to an end and his hopes for the future had been dashed.
What catches the eye about Les hores is not only the long period of gestation
but also the relationship between the people and events alluded to, and the
corresponding dates of composition. The earliest of the three deaths – the
metaphorical death of Salom – is commemorated in the part of the collection
that was written last. Here the poetry postdates the event by eighteen years. In
the case of the first part, marking the death of Rosselló-Pòrcel in 1938, it is
possible that some poems – probably those that survived the aborted edition of
1937 – predated the event, but there is no doubt that the majority would have
been written afterwards. A different pattern again emerges in the second part.
Espriu’s mother died in the year preceding the publication of the first and
second parts, and in addition to the three poems that had already been
published from this section it is reasonable to assume that many of the
remaining poems would also have been written before her death.37
The fact that many of the poems that figure in the first and second parts of
Les hores were written before the deaths of those to whom they are dedicated
offers further proof of the importance Espriu attached to what could be termed
the macro-unit. It also sheds light on his understanding of the relationship
between art and life. Rather than create poetry out of the experience of
bereavement – which is how we would conventionally imagine the process
to be – he fits the deaths into the scheme and structures of his poetry. Les
hores is an unusual elegy, both in its combination of real and metaphorical
deaths and in its relegation of events to the literary form that commemorates
them.
Such an inversion in our preconception of how elegies ought to function is
paralleled in a likely initial impression of the first two parts of the collection.
Rosselló-Pòrcel and the poet’s mother would have been among those for
whom Espriu had the most profound affection. Yet there is little in the
sections of Les hores in their honour that we could describe – again thinking
of standard elegiac expressions – as an outpouring of emotion. The poems in
these sections are as spare and hermetic as any Espriu wrote. Indeed the
opening poems of all three sections of the book provide no obvious focus
on the person who has died. The first poem of the first part is concerned with
37
La mort com a intercanvi simbòlic, 151–52.
53
self-exploration and self-definition; the second part opens with a luminous
vision, evoking, in all likelihood, the Mediterranean cruise that Espriu
undertook in 1934, the year given as the starting-date of this part of the
collection; the third section starts with poems that convey an aesthetic
sensation – the product of the poet’s holiday in Italy in the summer of 1954 –
and thus far removed in mood as well as in time from the tragic events of
1936, the year of Salom’s ‘death’.
The objects or the causes of the elegiac mode are not apparently highlighted. The fact, as well as the tone, of elegy emerges gradually and fitfully.
Castellet indicates that it is only by the eighth poem of the first part that
Espriu focuses directly on the death of Rosselló-Pòrcel.38 In his view the first
seven poems comprise the poet’s confrontation with death. This understanding is at odds with the subsequent biographico-critical reading by Delor
i Muns, who believes that it is not so much death as the dead friend that is
present from the very start, even though there is no second-person presence
in the first poem, ‘Mirall fragil’ [‘Fragile Mirror’]:
Allunyat en abismes,
on el rostre m’espera,
m’atanso a veure’m.
Quan l’ombra endinsa
el pur cristall, em sento
en silenci somriure.
(OC, I, 205)
[Far away in abysses where the face awaits me, I draw near to see
myself. When the shadow pierces the pure crystal, I sense myself
smiling in silence.]
Delor i Muns suggests that the face reflected in the waters of the abyss is not
that of the poet but that of his friend as reflection: ‘el seu doble en edat i
projectes literaris’ [his double in age and literary projects].39 She suggests a
possible biographical prompt for the poem – a photograph of Rosselló-Pòrcel
looking at himself in the mirror, of which she says: ‘Hi ha molt de narcisisme
en el gest i la mirada de Rosselló. Si Espriu tenia present el record d’aquesta
fotografia la lectura de «Mirall fràgil» desvetlla un profound sentit’ [There is
much that is narcissistic in the gesture and expression of Rosselló. If Espriu
had this photograph in mind the reading of “Mirall fràgil” arouses a profound
meaning] (p. 156). She also provides a biographically-centred reading of the
second poem ‘Rostre’ [‘Face’], relating it to the night that Espriu spent in
vigil beside the body of the dead poet:
38
39
La mort com a intercanvi simbòlic, p. 156.
54
D. GARETH WALTERS
Dolor de somni, m’alço
nocturna font, per rebre
la teva set. Medusa,
ulls maternals. T’infantes
per sempre pau, en veure’m
des de records, boirosos
estius, miralls, navili
asserenat de marbre.
(OC, I, 206)
[Grief of dream, I arise noctural fountain, to receive your thirst.
Medusa, a mother’s eyes. You always bring forth peace when you see
me from memories, misty summers, mirrors, a ship made serene in
marble.]
Of this, Delor i Muns writes:
Aquella nit, alguna cosa de molt important es va produir en la seva persona:
d’un canto la pietat de l’amic vivent es transformava en font que calmava
la set de vida del mort; d’altra banda, els ulls del viu, en contemplar el rostre, verificaven aquella mort, i esdevingut Medusa per virtut d’aquesta
mateixa certesa, mutava en marbre asserenat el somni doloros, l’angioxa
que deforma l’expressió del rostre’.40
[That night, something very important occurred in him: on the one hand, the
pity of the living friend was transformed into a fountain that calmed the
thirst for life of the dead man; on the other, when the eyes of the one who
was alive looked at the face they confirmed that death, and having become
Medusa by dint of this very certainty, he changed into serene marble the
sorrowful dream, the anguish that deforms the expression on the face.]
In her observations on succeeding poems, this specific biographical approach
is complemented and refined by a more sophisticated understanding, notably
in the way in which she establishes a connection with Greek funeral rites. The
danger with the hypothesis of biographical detail on the one hand, and the
identification of cultural precedent on the other, is that it tends to circumvent
both the working-out of the individual poem and how this figures in relation
to its neighbours. In any case, the methodological assumptions implicit in the
interpretation of the first two poems are open to question. The notion that a
photograph may have inspired ‘Mirall fràgil’ is acknowledged to be only a
possibility, but even if it were demonstrable fact, it is hard to see how it would
thereby acquire ‘un profund sentit’ [a profound meaning]. In the case of
‘Rostre’ what this critic does is to transplant an image in the poem to her
writing about it, specifically how she imagines the poet to be feeling on the
40
La mort com a intercanvi simbòlic, 157.
55
night that he spent in vigil: his pity was a fountain that assuaged the dead
friend’s thirst for life. This seems unjustifiably reductive, not least in the way
in which it confidently ascribes pronouns to persons and assumes a precise
knowledge of what is, in any case, for the purpose of the poem’s effect, only
incidental detail.
More profitable, it seems to me, is one detail in the analysis of ‘Mirall fràgil’
that it is easy to overlook given the priority afforded the biographical
approach: the reference to Narcissism. Indeed I suggest that a mythical frame
of reference is more rewarding than any biographical decoding for both of the
first two poems. The figure of Medusa is invoked in ‘Rostre’, juxtaposed with
the antithetical ‘ulls maternals’ [eyes of a mother]. Delor i Muns gamely tries
to explain (away) the contradiction, but rather than attempt to do so it may be
better to be alert to the implicit presence of two other ‘negative’ myths in these
poems. In ‘Mirall fràgil’ the anxious urge to contemplate one’s own face,
yielding the ultimate smile, enacts the myth of Narcissus; Delor i Muns’s use
of the adjectival form of the name at least partly acknowledges this. In ‘Rostre’
the initial linkage of the fountain with thirst brings to mind the figure of
Tantalus. We would do well not to ignore these mythical allusions or
resonances, for in the third part of Les hores it is through another myth – the
heroic myth of Prometheus (OC, I, 243) – that a crucial development in the
book is manifested. Indeed, at the risk of over-simplification we might posit
the thesis that one of the transformations achieved in the collection is in the
fact that Prometheus should supplant Narcissus.
A point of contact for the contrastive phrase ‘ulls maternals’ [eyes of a
mother] will eventually come in the thirteenth poem of the first part, in the
affectingly simple lament of a grieving mother, ‘Petita cançó de la teva mort’
[‘Little Song of your Death’] (OC, I, 217). Its concluding sentence – ‘La teva
mare plora/ en el carrer de l’Elm’ [Your mother weeps on the street of the
Elm] – provides the most obvious connection with the maternal eyes of the
second poem. What we can learn from this kind of cross-referencing is that
we do not need to be hasty and over-zealous in interpreting; we should not be
impatient to account for every image or idea, especially those that are
puzzling or contradictory, at their point of occurrence. Espriu affords himself
space to develop ideas gradually and to interrelate them at a distance, and as
a consequence he appears to invite us not to jump to conclusions.
Indeed, even as we proceed beyond the opening two poems we do not
readily encounter signals of clarity or priority. Even if we accept the
anecdotal thrust of the first two poems along the lines of the biographical
extrapolation supplied by Delor i Muns, the third poem ‘Espera’ [‘Waiting’]
breaks with this:
Aleshores diré: «Cims i núvols
i terres al lluny i la lenta
ferida del riu i l’incendi
56
D. GARETH WALTERS
del cel, molts crepuscles
damunt el desert i els vells arbres
estimats com a déus, per als homes
retornen encara.
Però jo, que esperava aquest dia,
vet aquí que sóc mort.»
(OC, I, 207)
[Then I shall say: “Hilltops and clouds and lands in the distance and
the slow wound of the river and the fire in the sky, many dusks above
the desert and the old trees cherished as gods, still return for men. But
I who was waiting for that day, see here that I am dead.”]
One way in which this discontinuity arises is suggested by Delor i Muns when
she refers to the poem as a negative gloss on a passage from Isiah 12:1.41 The
more general biblical resonance is evident in the lexicon, the mode of phrasing
and the quasi-prophetic use of the verb. Together with the carefully constructed enumeration with its fastidious attention to the use of the conjuction,
which forms the greater part of the poem, these elements of theme and register
represent a divergence from the tentative manner of the first two poems, that
were laconic in expression and angular in execution. There is, too, a change in
the function of the pronouns: if, from the biographical reading, the first-person
form represented the poet or speaker and the second-person, the dead friend,
then here it is the speaker who is dead. With hindsight (that is, when we
remember what happened to us when we read) we will recall the ‘I’ (or poet)
who dies in ‘Espera’ on reading of the death of Salom (or poet) whose death
is the motive of the final commemoration in Les hores. What ‘Espera’ also
illustrates is an important structural difference between this collection and
Cementiri de Sinera because it is not unique in the way it breaks a pattern. If
one were pressed for an emotional rationale for such disruptions – the
snapping of thematic or stylistic threads – then it might be seen as a symptom
of the wandering mind of a person maintaining a long vigil.
The invocation of trees in ‘Espera’, which Delor i Muns relates to the
cedars of Lebanon, is repeated in the sixth poem ‘Arbre’ [‘Tree’]. But Espriu’s
versions are misreadings of the biblical text:
Arrelat en dolor de la cendra,
un home només, et portava, sepulcre,
pare mort, dintre meu, en silenci,
i et cridava amb paraules de vent
d’antics millenaris, que encenen la ira.
(OC, I, 210)
[Rooted in the pain of ashes, merely a man, I brought you, sepulchre,
dead father, within me, in silence, and I shouted to you with words of
the wind of ancient times, that rouse to anger.]
41
La mort com a intercanvi simbòlic, 165.
57
Whereas the Scriptures speak of consolation and hope for the future, Espriu’s
poem offers silence and darkness. The density of the negative signifiers is
given added weight by over-punctuation in the bleakly negative second and
third lines of the above quotation, where it is not so much each word as each
syllable that is underscored.
The vision of night, with which this poem concludes, is also dominant in
those that precede and follow it. Yet it is not the night of the vigil that is
suggested primarily, but night in a wider, elemental sense, associated with
primal and instinctive fears, as in the poem ‘Galop’ (considered in Part 1) and
in the characteristic Espriu metaphor of the ‘exèrcits de la nit’ [armies of the
night] in the tanka ‘Tardor’ [‘Autumn’] (OC, I, 208). In like vein is ‘Naufragi’
[‘Shipwreck’]:
On fugir? Només ombra, record,
fosc domini. Orba i lenta, en triomf
per carrers d’aigua negra, la nit
ha besat aquest marbre.
(OC, I, 211)
[Where can I flee? Only shadow, memory, the dark dominion. Sightless and slow, triumphantly through the streets of black water, the
night has kissed this marble.]
This is redolent of panic and despondency, grimly recording the victory of
death-as-night. It is only with the poem that actually bears the title of night –
the ninth of the section – that the biographical aspect emerges with any
clarity:
Pallidesa. Supliques,
apregonat, amb llavis
àvids de neu, més càntic,
moments d’abril. Encara
en clos de nit bornaven
guerrers, música, porpra,
fràgils records de sedes,
quan vas quedant immòbil,
sense retorn de l’aire,
dura blancor que vetllo.
(OC, I, 213)
[Pallor. You beseech, from the depths, with lips hungry for snow,
more song, April moments. Yet still in night’s enclosure were the
movements of warriors, music, purple, fragile memories of silk, when
you remain immobile, without the return of the breeze, a hard
whiteness that I watch over.]
The poem bears the hallmarks of several others from the collection: the
truncated phrasing, the obtrusive punctuation that works against the flow of
58
D. GARETH WALTERS
the sentence, the clusters of nouns, frequently in groups of three.42 In its
emotional impact, however, it stands apart from its predecessors. The
emergence of detail directly connected to the elegiac occasion makes us think
of the poem in terms of a release because compared to the glimpses, the
obscurities and the contradictions of earlier poems it comes across as focused
and single-minded. Here, too, even the fragmentary is comprehensible
because it is concerned with the specific – with memories and the experience
of a lost presence. This poem also forms the prelude to a sequence that enacts
an explicit narrative of lament: the night spent in vigil, the arrival of dawn, the
evocation of a primitive music of mourning, and two differing verbal
manifestations of grief. The first has a religious feel, though its vocabulary
hints more at pagan ritual than at Christianity:
Quan roures enyorosos
de verds marins comencen
crepusculars missatges,
volent-te foc, demano
nova claror, que siguis,
davant altars on cremen
ardents silencis d’ales,
encès cristall, més flama,
llum de cançó senzilla.
(OC, I, 216)
[When the yearning oak trees of darkest green begin the twilight
messages, needing fire from you, I seek a new brightness, that you
should be, before altars where the ardent silences of wings are burnt,
a kindled crystal, more flame, the light of a simple song.]
In this sinuous utterance, suggestive of a prayer at a funeral pyre, are two images
which effectively provide the subjects of the next two poems. The invocation of
the ‘light of a simple song’ immediately yields a poem that is remarkable both
for its simplicity and, in more than one sense of the word, for its clarity. It is also,
as Carles Miralles43 has shown, one of the pieces offering the closest textual
parallels with the poetry of Rosselló-Pòrcel. The opening provides the clearest
42 Delor i Muns comments on the importance of the three-fold enunciation of the name
of the deceased by reference to Greek funeral rites: ‘En el ritual del colossos, els oficiants
pronuncien tres vegades el nom del difunt damunt la pedra. A Les hores trobem abundants
exemples de sèries de tres sintagmes nominals que metonimitzen el nom de Rosselló i per
tant recorden aquest ritu’ [In the ritual of the colossos, the celebrants pronounce the name
of the deceased three times on top of the stone. In Les hores we find many examples of
series of three noun syntagmas which serve as a metonymy of the name of Rosselló and
which therefore recall this rite]. La mort com a intercanvi simbòlic, p. 162.
43 ‘Salvador Espriu’, in Història de la literatura catalana, vol. X: Part moderna, ed.
M. de Riquer, A. Comas, A. Molas (Barcelona: Ariel, 1987), p. 413.
59
of variants of a line from the Majorcan poet’s ‘Auca’ [‘Picture Book’], which
reads ‘Ma mare, fadrina, canta al carrer de l’Om i broda’ [My mother, young
maiden, sings in the street of the Elm and embroiders’]:
La teva mare broda
en el carrer de l’Om.
La teva mare broda,
broda claror.
La teva mare canta
una cançó,
la vella història trista
d’un gran amor.
La pluja li contava
la teva mort,
la pluja li contava
com has mort sol.
Albes de fred agrisen
tot el record.
La teva mare plora
en el carrer de l’Om.
(OC, I, 217)
[Your mother is embroidering on the street of the Elm. Your mother is
embroidering, enbroidering brightness. Your mother is singing a
song, the old sad story of a great love. The rain told her of your death,
the rain told her how you died alone. Cold dawns cloud the whole
memory. Your mother is weeping on the street of the Elm.]
Here the nature of the stylistic divergence is far more obvious. It is song-like
in a way that few of Espriu’s poems are: the heavily accented and predictable
rhythm, the assonance, the repetitions of phrase. Its air of folksong is
enhanced by its combination of the everyday and the fanciful, for instance in
the way it envisages the rain as narrator.
Yet the poet does not forget that it is, like all the poems, part of a larger
unit. Despite her tears – which link her with the ‘ulls maternals’ of the second
poem of the section – the grieving mother still embroiders the ‘claror’
[brightness] that was requested in the previous poem and which becomes the
title – ‘Nova claror’ [‘New Brightness’] – and subject of the next:
Damunt les meves hores, l’altivesa
d’un càntic vell que sento en llunyanies
de nit, de fum, de solitud vetllada.
Quin fosc record dominarà per sempre?
Torna la intacta serenor de l’alba.
(OC, I, 218)
60
D. GARETH WALTERS
[Above my hours, the loftiness of an old song that I hear in the
distances of night, of smoke, watched over by loneliness. What dark
memory will rule for ever? The unbroken serenity of dawn returns.]
Earlier we saw how the symbolic resonances of night, garnered in poem after
poem, ultimately yielded one where it clearly belonged to the narrative of the
vigil. With ‘Nova claror’ we witness a reverse process. Previously, dawn had
figured in the tanka ‘A l’alba’ [‘At Dawn’] (OC, I, 214) as a detail in the
sequence of mourning; here, it emerges as a resonant response to the petition
of ‘Oració en la teva mort’ [‘Prayer on your Death’] (‘demano/ nova claror’
[I seek new light]), acquiring an unequivocal symbolic value in the last two
lines. Dawn eliminates the dark recollection, and the evocation of an ancient
song serves as a continuation of the image of music that had been present in
both the preceding poems. Indeed, there is not only continuity of idea here but
also density. The ‘càntic vell’ [old song] occurs in a poem whose title invites
us to see it as the work that the grieving mother was embroidering. Her craft
is also incorporated in a song and is the response to the earlier prayer for
‘nova claror’.
We can justifiably identify this group of poems as the climax of the first
part of Les hores, a point where we discern a crucial leap from experience to
expression – where grief has outreached itself, where mourning has been of
some avail.44 We shall encounter such occasions in other books, too: lines,
poems, and groups of poems that have a heightened impact, indicative of such
emotional achievements as survival, revelation or redemption.
The outreach that this cluster of poems suggests is perhaps also coded in
the unexpected figure of the archer that appears at the start of the poem that
follows ‘Nova claror’ [‘New Brightness’]: ‘avui l’arquer tot nu,/amb l’arc i
l’alba’. (OC, I, 219) [today the totally naked archer, with his bow and the dawn].
The arrow suggests target, destination, future, enhanced by the pristine connotations of nakedness and the recurrence of the dawn symbol. Yet the sensations
of solitude and loss also reassert themselves in this poem, especially when
there is an invocation of the dead poet: ‘Et perds, germà dificil/ de la rosa i
44 Analogous to the process implied in these poems – not least because of its allusion
to ancient Greece – is a passage in the first of Rilke’s Duino Elegies, where the poet
celebrates the creativity that can emerge from grief: ‘Is the story in vain, how once, in the
mourning for Linos,/ venturing earliest music pierced barren numbness, and how,/ in the
startled space an almost deified youth/ suddenly quitted for ever, emptiness first/ felt
the vibrations that now lifts us and comforts and helps?’ Rilke, Selected Poems, translated
with an introduction by J. B. Leishman (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1964), p. 62.
Compare too Espriu’s remarks on what he hoped his poetry could achieve: ‘una mica
d’ajuda per a viure rectament i potser per a ben morir’ [‘a little bit of help in living correctly
and maybe in dying well’]. Evocació de Rosselló-Pòrcel i altres notes (Barcelona: Joaquim
Horta, 1957), p. 117.
61
el foc’ [You lose yourself, difficult brother of the rose and the fire’]. The
apostrophe to the vanished friend recalls a more detailed description of
Rosselló-Pòrcel in an earlier poem:
Pressento
com esdevens difícil,
pervers, príncep de mortes
cendroses flors, paraules.
(OC, I, 212)45
[I foresee how you become difficult, perverse, prince of dead flowers
turned to ashes, words.]
Also accompanying the renewed sense of pain and insecurity in the final
poems of the section is a return to the fragmentary mode. The penultimate
poem, ‘Seqüència’ [‘Sequence’], consisting of three incomplete sentences,
conveys a sense of dissolution, of lost bearings. Yet as a result of this, the act
of recollection is a source of radiance:
D’ahir, només, i ja sense vestiges
d’algun dolor fidel que t’acompanyi
on ets perdut. Flama extingida, cendra
d’unes paraules que del tot morien.
El teu record, llum de llunyanes tardes.
(OC, I, 220)
[From yesterday, alone, and now without traces of some faithful grief
to accompany you where you are lost. Extinguished flame, ash of
words that utterly died. Your recollection, light of distant afternoons.]
In the final poem of the section, a tanka, it is the recollection itself that is
difficult:
Escolto sempre
el teu etern silenci
a la muntanya.
Altres temps, altres hores
fan el record difícil.
(OC, I, 221)
[I always hear your eternal silence on the mountain. Other times,
other hours make recall difficult.]
45 Reflecting in later years on the life and work of Rosselló-Pòrcel, Espriu meditated at
some length and with an evident depth of feeling on how memories of those once dear to
us are tinged with regrets and guilt: ‘Hem estimat les persones situades al voltant nostre,
però hem vist els seus defectes – els seus defectes i les seves molèsties –, que sovint ens fa
la vida difícil . . . Oblidàvem que la gent es mor i que la reparació es fa imposible’ [We
loved the people who were around us, but we saw their deficiencies – their deficiencies and
the way they irritated us – which often made our life difficult . . . We forgot that people die
and that it is impossible to make amends.] Evocació de Rosselló-Pòrcel i altres notes, p. 71.
62
D. GARETH WALTERS
Such a ‘difficulty’ can be of two kinds: the recall is painful or, with the passage
of time, it has become blurred – that is, the act of remembering is harder to
achieve. There is, however, a detail of considerable significance in this
valedictory utterance that reminds us how when we read Espriu’s books of
poetry we witness a constant development – changes that may happen gradually
or even imperceptibly but which have the effect of making us realize how far we
have progressed along the way. We have already observed such a process in
Cementiri de Sinera, while in the first section of Les hores there is a symbolic
change of emotional standpoint. In the opening poem, it will be recalled, the poet
was plunged into the abyss in an act of self-exploration; in the final one, on the
mountain peak he no longer searches for the self, but instead heeds the presence
of the other, of the dead poet. In this ethereal setting the ‘eternal silence’ is more
redolent of the tranquility of contemplation than of the absence of voice.
*
The opening poem of the second section connects with the final one of the
first:
La fruita d’or, llunyana.
– Deixa enrera el record
de la perduda tarda.
Deixa enrera la veu
de la muntanya.
Navega fora port,
a l’esperança.
Calma, illa, veler,
la fruita d’or.
(OC, I, 223)
[The golden fruit, far off. – Leave behind the memory of the lost
afternoon. Leave behind the voice on the mountain. Sail out of the
harbour, towards hope. Peace, island, boat, the golden fruit.]
There is an urge for progression here, reminiscent of the way in which we
sensed the desire to move beyond memory in Cementiri de Sinera. Yet the
biographical factor creates an ironic contrast with the text. A likely prompt for
this poem is the poet’s recollection of the Mediterranean cruise of 1934 – the
year that is given as the start-date of the first two parts of Les hores. But
the poem counsels against taking refuge in memory, and specifically against
the voice on the mountain, which was heard (or, more precisely, not heard)
at the end of the last poem of the first section.
The purposeful mode continues in the second poem but the assertion is
tempered by the darkness which envelops the speaker as he sets out on his
voyage of discovery:
A la conquesta
de servituds de príncep,
ànima, nau, viatgera,
vas a l’atzar, sense llum,
per la lluita d’un dia.
I a l’altre,
tot ja és tenebra.
63
(OC, I, 224)
[For the conquest of the prince’s servants, soul, ship, journeying, you
go at random, without light, for a single day’s struggle. And on the
next day now all is darkness.]
The qualification is symptomatic of a clash over the greater part of this
section between striving and resignation. The stoical pose is evident in the
next poem, the first of three tankas in this part of Les hores. We can plausibly
regard the ‘lives’ so far removed from the poet as those of Roselló-Pòrcel and
Espriu’s mother:
Sota la pluja,
arbres, camí, silenci,
vides llunyanes.
Sense recança miro
com el meu pas s’esborra.
(OC, I, 225)
[Beneath the rain, trees, path, silence, far-off lives. Withour rancour I
see how my steps are obliterated.]
The contrast between this and the previous poem could not be stronger. Not
only is it a backward glance but one that has learnt that the signs of the past
are vanishing. To express this idea Espriu has recourse to an image that will
recur not only again in this collection but in later books as well: that of life as
a journey. Indeed, it also appears at the end of the next poem, ‘Vianant’
[‘Traveller’]:
Avança en somnis
el caminant. Ressona
com un cor, des del silenci,
el pas del caminant.
(OC, I, 226)
[In dreams the traveller proceeds. Like a heart, the traveller’s step
resounds out of the silence.]
The simile is unerringly precise for the remorseless feel of these lines: it lends
a measured inevitability to the journey and represents the traveller in terms of
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D. GARETH WALTERS
an audible presence as well as a well-worn symbol. Characteristically, the
preceding sentence had supplied a contradictory signal:
Em cridaven a unir-me
amb rebels que obeeixen
disciplines de pluja.
[They summoned me to join the rebels who obey the disciplines of
rain.]
The double pressure – the conflicting imperatives of waiting and acting – is
encapsulated in the line that precedes this call to arms: ‘vetllo, abraço, rondo’
[I watch, I cling, I roam]. The following poem enunciates the passive
response and, for the first time in the cycle of five books, there is a direct
allusion to the Civil War:
La pluja clama sempre
damunt la fortalesa de Déu,
però jo no responc sinó amb silenci,
perquè el temps ha passat.
Somric al gran missatge
d’aquelles hores. Només
sé ara que la sang
Per una erta plana
de mar, de nit, camino
un hivern solitari.
No sé l’indret de l’illa
de l’esperança: només,
que sang que no he vessat
(OC, I, 227)
[The rain always shouts above God’s citadel, but I only respond with
silence, because the time has passed. I smile at the great message of
those hours. All I know now is that blood that I have not shed has
destroyed my world. Along a barren plain of sea, of night, I travel a
lonely winter. I do not know the address of the island of hope: only,
that blood that I have not shed has destroyed my world.]
The imagery recalls poem XXV of Cementiri de Sinera. But if the symbolic
rainstorm of the poem from the earlier collection provoked dread and a
confessional urge, then in the present utterance it elicits, because – in the
poet’s own words – time has passed, silence and an enigmatic smile. In this
response there is a mixture of resignation, cynicism and – specifically in the
matter of bloodshed – a feeling of detachment, even of self-absolution. The
65
path of life now appropriately crosses a harsh, winter landscape, distant from
the sunny island conjured up in the opening poem, which is now seemingly
beyond the poet’s reach.
The hint of cynicism in this poem comes to the surface in the following
one, ‘Port de retorn’ [‘Port of Return’], which continues with the image of the
storm. Indeed it comes over as a trenchant riposte to the expectancy and
radiance of the first poem. The retort to the injunction ‘Navega fora port,/ a
l’esperança’ [Sail out of the harbour, towards hope] in this opening poem
could not be severer, as the poet wills destruction on the ships of hope: ‘Que
caiguin als abismes’ (OC, I, 228) [Let them fall into the abyss].
This represents a dead-end and it leaves a bitter taste in the mouth. It is
aptly succeeded by three poems that reinforce the sense of defeat. As a
complement to the plain assertion that ‘Les esperançes/ han mort a temps’
[Hopes have died in time], the following poem (OC, I, 229) exploits the
negative associations of the rain image: ‘La lenta pluja/ no va a cap banda’
[The slow rain goes nowhere]. This final phrase mirrors the laconic opening,
again referring to the rain – ‘No ve d’enlloc’ [It comes from nowhere] – while
the sarcastic tone of the following abrupt question, ‘Partir?’ [Leaving?], is
carried over into the following poem entitled ‘Dansa de la mort’ [‘Dance of
Death’], in particular in the adjectives of the opening lines:
Per l’atzar diversíssim
del nostre temps, la pluja
subtil ha d’aplegar-nos.
(OC, I, 230)
[In the diversest of chances of our time, the subtle rain has to join us.]
Yet it is the third poem of this group, ‘Missatge’ [‘Message’], that is more
like a Dance of Death:
– De llunyanes riberes glaçades,
de la memòria fidel de la nit, on no arrela
el somni vagarós de l’esperança,
ve per tu, ve per tu, petit home.
Mira com et volta el triomf dels asfòdels,
mira com avança la dama
sense ulls, la barca
del vell solitari.
Ve per tu, ve per tu. A mostrar-te,
per tot el silenci del mar, el reialme
fidel de la nit, on floreixen
pàllidament, en triomf, els asfòdels.
(OC, I, 231)
[– From far-off frozen shores, from the faithful memory of night,
where the loitering dream of hope comes for you, little man, comes
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D. GARETH WALTERS
for you. See how the triumph of the asphodels surrounds you, see
how the lady without eyes advances, the boat of the lonely old man.
It comes for you, it comes for you. To show you over all the silent sea,
the faithful kingdom of night, where triumphantly pale asphodels
bloom.]
It is as doom-laden a poem as any that Espriu wrote. The lady and the black
boat of death were present in poem XVII of Cementiri de Sinera but there is
a frightening imminence about the dangers here: the lady is blind and there is
almost a relish in the unidentified speaker’s repeated threats to the ‘little
man’. So menacing is this poem that even without knowing that the asphodel
was the flower of the dead in Greek mythology we would have guessed that
its ‘triumph’ was going to be macabre.
It is at this point of death and surrender that Espriu surprises us, even more
than he had at a similar juncture in the first part, with a poem that goes against
the drift:
Portat enllà del glaç, en captiveri,
a la suprema llum que va pensar-me
neguitejada cendra, sempre atreta
per l’alta serenor de les estrelles,
sento clamar l’eterna rebellia
de les vides del foc i de la terra,
del mar, del vent, dels arbres millenaris.
Per la força del plany que ens agermana,
lliure i fidel, orbes presons rompudes,
aplegaré l’exèrcit innombrable
al meu entorn, cabdill d’un vol vastíssim
que haurà de fer-nos, on la nit acaba,
iguals als éssers resplendents de glòria.
(OC, I, 232)
[Borne beyond the ice, as a captive, to the supreme light that
conceived me as unquiet ash, always attracted by the lofty serenity of
the stars, I sense the howl of the endless rebellion of the lives of fire
and of the earth, of the sea, of the wind, of the ancient trees. In the
power of lament that makes us brothers, free and faithful, with the
blind prisons broken, I shall assemble the great army around me, at
the head of a vast flight that will make us, where night ends, equal to
the beings that are resplendent in their glory.]
This unexpected piece is entitled ‘Lliure vol’ [‘Free flight’], and its trajectory
is indeed heavenwards. The terminology of the opening and closing phrases
is that of Platonic ascent and angelic vision. This is no longer a terrestrial journey
but a lofty aspiration, the more valuable because of the earthly constraints. Yet
even these are transformed by dint of a sense of common lament into a
liberating power, evident in the key verb ‘agermana’. The transcendental urge
67
of this poem may be a glimpse rather than a promise, but, because of it, the
remorseless and futile course that the section had taken is changed – a
reminder how Espriu’s books are forever moving through time.
The next poem, as delicate an evocation as could be desired, comes across as
a wistful impression of transience and fallibility through the concluding image:
Nua, vençuda
per l’esplendor de l’alba,
la viatgera
plena de crims, inútil
vol vacillant, falena.
(OC, I, 233)
[Naked, defeated by the splendour of the dawn, the fleeting traveller
full of crimes, useless tremulous flight, moth.]
By the delay in the identity of the poem’s subject until the last word, this
tanka possesses the playful air of a riddle despite the weightier implications
of its ideas. In any case, there is a renewal of the exalted vein of ‘Lliure vol’
in the next poem ‘Kerübim’ [‘Cherubim’]:
Si jo en el meu vol pogués confondre’m
entre l’exèrcit de les veus santíssimes
que lloen per damunt de les estrelles
l’alta bellesa!
(OC, I, 234)
[If I in my flight could be lost among the army of the holiest voices
that sing the praises of lofty beauty above the stars.]
The Christian overtones may be an unconscious tribute to the piety of
Escolàstica Castelló, but the last three poems of the section return to more
familiar territory. In ‘Terra negra’ [‘Black Earth’], the pilgrim on the path of life
reappears, though now without the negative accretions of earlier poems. By
contrast with the suggestions of the ethereal world-picture of ‘Kerübim’ there
is, as in some poems of Cementiri de Sinera, an evocation of primitive religion,
as the journey of life finds an exotic complement in the ship traversing a strange
landscape, for which Espriu draws on his knowledge of Egyptian culture. This
is the boat of Osiris, moving inland towards the eternal dwelling:
Riu amunt, entre murs de desert,
ve la barca del déu. Mil estendards
flamegen en els pals, radiants de sol.
Sacerdots remadors canten vells himnes
al senyor de la mort, mentre fereixen
el llot, les aigües grasses.
(OC, I, 235)
[Up the river, between the desert walls, the god’s boat comes. A
thousand standards blaze from the mastheads, glowing in the sun.
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D. GARETH WALTERS
Priests intone, as they row, old hymns to the lord of death, while they
wound the mud, the thick waters.]
Again, at roughly the same point as in the first section, there appears the
archer. Aptly in view of the preceding poems the arrow’s trajectory is
described as a ‘noble vol harmònic’ (OC, I, 236) [noble harmonic flight]. Yet
this figure signals on this occasion not an advance into the future, but the
opposite: ‘Fidel al temps, retorno/ al meu origen’ [Faithful to time, I return to
my origins]. This return is in one sense literal:
Qui sap la greu partença
d’avui o de demà,
o qui diria encara
una paraula?
Només somric i penso
a destruir el nom
amb el silenci.
(OC, I, 237)
[Who knows the solemn departure today or tomorrow, or who could
still utter a word? I merely smile and think how I can break the name
with silence.]
The smile in silence in this, the final poem of the second part repeats what
appeared in the opening poem of the book when the poet contemplated his
reflection in the waters of the abyss. It marks a sober and subdued conclusion
to a section characterized by greater extremes of darkness and light than the
first part. We also witness in this section a greater potential for a more
expressive and expansive mode of poetry amid the predominantly spare and
ascetic utterances. In the third part, the one that marks the death of Salom, this
potential will be fully realized.
*
We should by now be accustomed to the shifts and contradictions that are
a feature of Espriu’s poetic structures. Nonetheless, it is perhaps only because
it appears in a different section that the first poem of the third part may not
register as an especially violent about-turn even by his own standards:
Sentir només, saber de cada cosa
el nom senzill, el simple nom, carícia
com de l’abril damunt les noves fulles,
mentre la llum de pluja de la tarda
s’allunya a poc a poc amb els jacints.
Clar moment de la flor, emmirallada,
molt guardada, darrera
bellesa d’unes flors dintre els meus ulls.
Després, per l’aire, a penes
fràgil record, enllà del verd intens
d’herba que mulla aquesta lenta pluja.
69
(OC, I, 239)
[Merely to sense, to know of every thing the simple name, the sheer
name, a caress like that of April upon the new leaves, while the light
of the afternoon rain slowly moves away with the hyacinths. Bright
moment of the flower, reflected, closely guarded, ultimate beauty of
some flowers within my eyes. Then, in the breeze, barely a fragile
memory, beyond the intense green of grass made damp by that slow
rain.]
At the end of the second section, the poet had expressed the wish to ‘destroy
the name with silence’. Here it could not be more different. Naming is here an
act and an art as much as it was in the temporal cycles of Cementiri de Sinera,
but there is now a sensual relish in the extensions of phrase and the savouring
of stimuli. Rapt though his gaze is, the poet’s attention is not confined to the
hyacinths, as he absorbs the phenomena that enhance their beauty: the spring
rain, the late afternoon light. Their impact lasts like that of perfume lingering
on the breeze, and they survive as a memory when no longer visible.
This concluding acknowledgement of transience, however, barely clouds
the radiance of the poem, and this sunny impression is continued in the
following one, ‘Oliverar prop de S. Chiara’ [‘Olive Grove near Santa Chiara’]:
Més benigna claror, encara l’ample cel
enllà dels dolços sants, darrera les muntanyes
que limiten avui el meu somni feliç
de la planura al sol, de l’encalmada plata?
Oh bellesa que tanco al lentíssim esguard,
com empresono als ulls tota la llum mirada!
(OC, I, 240)
[Is there a kinder light, the broad sky beyond the gentle saints, behind
the mountains that mark the boundary today of my happy dream of
the sun’s plain, of the stilled silver? O beauty that I enclose in the
slowest glance, how I imprison in my eyes the whole of the light I
behold!]
This poem, like others from this section, was directly inspired by Espriu’s
holiday in Italy in 1954. The title refers to a church in Assisi, and the
luminosity which entrances the poet prompts an initial interrogation of
wonderment at the juxtaposition of the natural world and the religious
presence. And, as with the previous poem, this one has an expansive manner:
it gives the impression of someone with the time and inclination to assimilate the visible and spiritual world in long, deep breaths. (In plainer terms,
what happens is that in this section, unlike the first two, there is an almost total
reliance on the longer line with hendecasyllables, alexandrines and the 14syllable line predominating.) Yet, the ecstatic vision of the of Assisi church and
olive grove disappears as the aesthetic abruptly yields to the political:
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D. GARETH WALTERS
Però lluny, pels camins de l’aire i de la mar,
pel batec de la sang, amb un continu plany,
em crida el gran dolor de la terra que estimo.
[But far away, in the pathways of the air and the sea, through the
throb of blood, with an endless lament, the great grief of the land that
I love is calling me.]
Belatedly we appreciate the significance of the dedication at the start of the
section. Indeed, apart from an allusion to Perugia in the title and opening lines
of the fourth poem (OC, I, 242) the remainder of the section does not dwell
further on the Italian visit. It is given over to poems that delve into the burdens
and opportunities of responsibility. In part, this summons has the character of
a civic obligation, but more than that it responds to a sense of artistic duty.
The third poem ‘Pontos’ [‘Pontos’] effectively establishes the premise: a
blend of collective catastrophe and consequent individual defeat such has
already been discerned in the crucial poem XXV of Cementiri de Sinera. The
allusion to a ruined temple in the later poem fulfils a similar symbolic
function to that of the lost house of the earlier one. ‘Pontos’ also refers to the
vulnerability of the poem – of the lament that is literally ‘without song’:
Damunt la roca nua de la mort,
puc ja només alçar l’alta columna
d’aquest dolor, un aspre, solitari
crit sense cant,
sense record del cant . . .
(OC, I, 241)
[Upon the bare rock of death, I can only erect the lofty column of this
pain, a bitter, lonely cry without song, without memory of the
song . . . ]
Yet the distinctive triumph of this section comprises the will to sing, the
determination not to subside into silence. The alluring appeal of non-expression
is not an option here, and the poet consequently acquires a heroic dimension.
This is evident in the closing lines of ‘Augusta Perusia’ [‘August Perugia’]:
Però jo, despullat del record de les barques,
pujo la meva vida fins al cim de les àguiles,
pujo la nua vida als solitaris cims,
perquè em coroni un lliure vol d’ocells.
(OC, I, 242)
[But I, deprived of all memory of the boats, raise up my life to the
peaks where there are eagles, I raise up my bare life to lonely
summits, so that I may be crowned by the birds’ free flight.]
This is unusually rhetorical for Espriu, yet it is an apt prelude to three poems
that could be viewed as the climax of the whole book. They are formally and
71
structurally similar to each other: two of the three poems have twelve lines,
while the other has eleven; the line length is mainly the alexandrine with
occasional lines of 14 syllables, both characterized by the recourse to
hemistiches. The first and last poems of this sub-group could be interpreted as
the most robust of responses to the question that Heaney suggested was on the
lips of all who have to do with poetry: how poetry’s existence is ‘of present
use’.46 The death of Salom on a July day in 1936 evidently did not entail the
death of the poet, as the first poem of this group, ‘Prometeu’ [‘Prometheus’],
makes clear:
El somni de llibertat esdevé la cadena
que em lliga ja per sempre al meu cant dolorós.
M’he compadit dels homes, de la freda tristesa
de l’estrany temps dels homes endinsats en la mort,
i els portava cristall i cremor de paraules,
clarosos noms que diuen els vells llavis del foc.
Àguila, vinguda del naixement del llamp,
d’on veus com és pensada la blancor de la neu,
cerca, per a la llum, la més secreta vida:
per al sol, palpitant, tota la nua vida.
Obriràs amb el bec eternament camins
a la sang que ofereixo com a preu d’aquest do.
(OC, I, 243)
[The dream of freedom becomes the chain that binds me always to
my grieving song. I have had pity for men, for the cold sadness of the
strange time of men steeped in death, and I brought them crystal and
heat of words, bright names spoken by old lips of fire. Eagle, come
from the birth of lightning, from where you see snow’s whiteness is
envisaged, seek, for the light, the most secret life: for the sun,
palpitating, all of naked life. You will forever open with your beak
paths to the blood that I offer as the price of this gift.]
If the poet’s role had previously been something that we glimpsed or
guessed, then here we are left in doubt. One could scarcely imagine a piece
where the mantle of poetry is not as readily assumed but where the burden
of vocation is as weighty. The Prometheus myth is, of course, tailor-made for
such an aspiration, but it is developed with the most sonorous intensity; the
poem maintains a leisurely pace yet each word is measured and precise. In
this way even the incidental detail acquires the force of the momentous
event: the description of the location from where the eagle has set out has an
elemental quality that we feel is no less than the poet as Prometheus
deserves. But the balance and euphony can mask unexpected, even violent,
leaps. For example, such is the pathos of the poet’s destiny in the second line
46
The Redress of Poetry, p. 1.
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D. GARETH WALTERS
that we may gloss over the paradox of the first, which is the basis for the
emotional nuancing of the poem. To say that the piece is merely a version of
the Prometheus myth does not do it justice. It is infused with the spirit and
language of Christianity as a result of its compassionate impulse and its
openness to self-sacrifice; in particular, the offering of the final line is clearly
suggestive of the Eucharist.
The central poem of this group, ‘Omnis fortasse moriar’, presents us with
an apocalyptic vision. Rather than any historical event, the combat described
here has a titanic quality, and it is apt that it should possess such a mythical
power given the titles of the surrounding poems:
El vespre és ple de sang, i no sé quin combat
magnifica el llarg plany del ponent, rera els cims.
Del fons d’uns ulls de cec he vist com surt el gos
maligne de la nit i corre pels camins
amplíssims de la por, lladrant la meva mort.
(OC, I, 244)
[The dusk is full with blood, and I do not know which combat
magnifies the long lament of the setting sun, behind the summits.
From the depths of a blind man’s eyes I have seen how the evil dog
of night emerges and runs along the broadest paths of fear, barking
my death.]
The scene has the cosmic grandeur of a painting such as Goya’s Colossus, but
the second part of the poem focuses on the impact of such a catastrophe upon
the poet. Only a minimal vestige of identity survives this abject defeat; the
final image suggests a man hanging on by his fingertips in the face of a
cataclysm:
Oh, l’ocell que no canta, el bosc silenciós,
adormit príncep, vent! Ara cauré tot sol
i no seré més nom, ni record, ni dolor.
Escolto com se’n van aquelles clares veus
de la fulla i de l’aigua, estima l’últim cor,
a poc a poc em sento agermanat al fang.
[O, the bird that does not sing, the silent wood, sleeping prince, wind!
Now I shall fall alone and I shall no more be name nor memory nor
pain. I hear how those bright voices of the leaf and the water go away,
love the final heart, gradually I feel myself a brother to the mud.]
Often with Espriu a poem is apt to provoke another that functions as an
interrogation of what has immediately preceded it. We have seen such a
process several times already, and it is the case, too, with ‘Prometeu’. Taken
alone this could appear over-cooked in its studied eloquence, but after reading
the final poem in this group of three, ‘Ofrenat a Cèrber’ [‘Offering to
73
Cerberus’], we are better equipped to value its gritty achievement as a sign of
momentary defiance rather than definitive triumph. The later poem reveals a
distinct edge of bitterness:
He donat la meva vida a les paraules
i m’he fet lenta pastura d’aquesta fam de gos.
Ah, guardià, caritat per als ossos,
car ja t’arribo sense gens de carn!
Vaig enfonsar les mans en l’or misteriós
del meu vell català i te les mostro
avui, sense cap guany, blanques de cendra
del meu foc d’encenalls, i se m’allunya
per la buidor del cap el so del vidre fràgil.
Ara ballo amb dolor, perquè riguin les goles,
per obtenir l’aplaudiment dels mil lladrucs,
i em coronen amb un barret de cascavells.
(OC, I, 245)
[I have given the whole of my life to words, and become the slow
chewing of this dog’s hunger. Ah, guard, have some pity for these
bones, for now I come to you without any flesh! I plunged my hands in
the mysterious gold of my old Catalan and I show them to you today,
without any profit, white with the ashes of my bonfire, and through the
emptiness of my head the sound of fragile glass recedes. Now I dance
with grief, so that they may guffaw, to earn the applause of a thousand
bursts of barking, and to be crowned with a cap and bells.]
Once more the poet’s devotion to his art is imaged as an act of sacrifice, but
the noble resonance has been replaced by a grim hunour. If the Prometheus of
the earlier poem represented the apotheosis of the generously plangent song,
then the figure who stands before the gates of the Underworld, confronted by
the monstrous dog, Cerberus, is a lean and impoverished poet. What is more,
his function is seen ultimately as that of the joker with his cap of bells,
reduced to the role of an anguished and reluctant entertainer. The final lines
of this poem comprise a savage misreading of the close of ‘Augusta Perusia’,
where there was an aspiration for a liberating flight: ‘pujo la nua vida als
solitaris cims,/ perquè em coroni un lliure vol d’ocells’ [I raise up my bare life
to lonely summits, so that I may be crowned by the birds’ free flight] (OC, I,
242). Yet out of this nadir the poet salvages a gift of great worth: his language,
‘el meu vell català’ [my old Catalan]. Although this appears damaged and all
but destroyed, he still has enough life and breath to name it as an ancient and
precious commodity.
After the concentrated intensity of these three poems the following one
with its shorter lines organized into three-line stanzas is not only lighter
rhythmically but, as its title – ‘Perquè un dia torni la cançó a Sinera’ [‘So that
One Day the Song will Return to Sinera’] – implies, song-like in construction.
It combines allusions to other works of Espriu with the sardonic edge of the
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D. GARETH WALTERS
immediately preceding poems.47 Its tone is diffusely, even whimsically,
melancholic but the politico-historical focus is again sharp, with another
direct allusion to the fate of the Catalan language:
Però tu riuràs,
car veus com es tanquen
llavis catalans.
(OC, I, 246)
[But you will laugh, for you see how Catalan lips are closed.]
After acknowledging the frailty of his voice and his powerlessness the poet
falls back on that act of naming that had been the remedy in Cementiri de
Sinera:
Sols queden uns noms:
arbre, casa, terra,
gleva, dona, solc.
Només fràgils mots
de la meva llengua,
arrel i llavor.
[There only remain some names: tree, house, land, soil, woman,
furrow. Only fragile words of my language, root and seed.]
There follow a couple of poems in the vein of the sub-group of three at the
centre of this section. The first of these explicitly counters the negative thrust
of the song-like poem in the conjunction of its opening line, and thereafter
looks towards some kind of salvation:
Que no sigui, però, la cançó de l’odi,
nascuda de la injusta i llarga humiliació.
Ara em despengen uns dits piadosos
de les forques senyorials de la paraula,
i cau a poc a poc la clara pluja
en aquesta terra nostra de pobres sembrats.
(OC, I, 249)
[But let it not be the song of hatred, born of unjust and long
humiliation. Now pious fingers cut me down from the aristocratic
gallows of the word, and drop by drop the bright rain falls on this land
of ours, impoverished in seed.]
The image of the third and fourth lines serves to cancel out the metaphor of
words as gallows in the previous poem – an indication of the peril of the
47 The principal references are ll. 1–9 (Cementiri de Sinera); ll. 37–39 (Primera
història d’Esther); l. 40 ‘L’ós Nicolau’ [‘Nicholas the Bear’] from Les cançons d’Ariadna.
75
poet’s activity – and accompanying the alleviation of the present poem is a
rare gentleness that blossoms in the extended metaphor that celebrates the
overcoming of the fear of death – a notion that had been starkly enunciated in
the final line of the previous poem:
Oblido dolçament les ones i les hores,
i la por de morir m’esdevé una tranquilla
mirada de caminant molt cansat a la porta
de l’hostal silenciós i càlid de la nit.
Enllà quedava la remor de les amples aigües,
em criden al repòs del profund desert,
el meu maligne nombre se salva en la unitat.
(OC, I, 249)
[I sweetly forget the waves and the hours, and the fear of death
becomes for me the tranquil gaze of the weary traveller at the door of
the silent and warm inn of night. Behind there remained the sound of
the broad waters, they call me to rest in the depths of the desert, my
malign number is saved in unity.]
The fact that the whole book has been constructed around the recollection of
three deaths makes this an especially valuable and moving perception. The
unity at the end of the poem is a sign of knowledge and solidarity, experiences
that now seem to be of avail. In the brief poem that follows it is the gain that
accrues from suffering that is to the fore, not the loss. By contrast with the
preceding poem this is short-breathed. There is anguish here but it is
controlled, and the serene conclusion with the four-part division of the lines
emerges as the reward for the discipline of the long-suffering pilgrim on the
journey of life. The tone is accordingly valedictory, not embittered:
Seran temps de repòs, i em decanto a mirar
per darrera vegada la llum d’un llarg ponent.
Ara, sense cap por, tot sol, m’allunyaré,
nit endins, Déu endins, per la sorra i la set.
(OC, I, 250)
[There will be a time to rest, and I strain to see for the last time the
light of a long sunset. Now, without any fear, quite alone, I shall go
away, into the night, into God, through the sand and the thirst.]
The penultimate poem has the kind of detailed title – ‘Spiritual, amb la
trombeta de Louis Armstrong’ [‘Spiritual with the Trumpet of Louis
Armstrong’] – that is a feature of some of the poems of Les cançons
d’Ariadna. Yet there is nothing specifically jazz-like about the poem itself
except perhaps its improvisatory air. It lacks the concentrated vision of
previous pieces, thus conforming to the pattern of the first two sections of the
book where the crucial poem or poems occurred roughly three-quarters of
the way through. But the present poem is neither flimsy nor anti-climactic.
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D. GARETH WALTERS
A notable feature – and a pointer to the kind of poetry Espriu wrote in the
mid-to late-1950s – is the adoption of a collective voice and the evocation, for
analogical purposes, of the fate of the people of Israel:
Ara els camps són erms,
i anirem a la terra d’Egipte,
on el blat ja creix.
Tots els pous són secs,
i anirem fins a l’aigua tan ampla,
a calmar la set.
(OC, I, 251)
[Now the fields are barren, and we shall go to the land of Egypt,
where the wheat already grows. All the wells are dry, and we shall go
to where the water is broad, to assuage our thirst.]
At the very end there appears the figure of the archer, again at the same point
as in the first two sections: ‘A la naixença del riu,/ alt arquer solitari’ [At the
birth of the river, lofty lone archer]. The final injunction, recalling the
previously cited observation by Espriu on one of the functions of poetry, does
not, however, presage the mood of the final poem, ‘Piragua’ [‘Canoe’] (OC,
I, 252). So, as the title implies, at the very end of the book there is another
journey, but we now have reason to suppose, in view of what the poet has
experienced and endured, that it will be more propitious than the voyage
alluded to in the opening poems of the second section; that it should be at
dawn adds to this impression. Indeed the conclusion confirms that the little
craft will move fearlessly and determinedly into the future, and in so doing
assert a freedom of action as it eschews the backward glance:
Dessota dels ponts reials
de l’ampla nit ja passa.
Cor endins d’aquella mar
sense retorn s’allunyava.
[Now it goes beneath the royal bridges of the broad night. Heart
inwards from that sea it moved away, never to return.]
Mrs. Death
The third book in the cycle differs structurally from the others. Unlike the
works that immediately precede and follow, it is not divided into parts, yet it
makes use of poem titles rather than numbers, unlike the first and last of the
series, which are thus more clearly continuous sequences.
The absence of division by the poet himself has not, however, deterred
commentators from attempting divisions of their own. Castellet suggests a
two-part distribution of twenty poems each, according to which the first
consists of satirical poems, while the second begins with the subject of
77
redemption through words, and concludes with poems on death akin to the
final compositions of Cementiri de Sinera and the second part of Les hores.48
He qualifies this division, a little confusingly, by then observing that for the
first time in his work Espriu displays three styles of poetry: the satirical, the
civic and the lyrical.
A far more complex interpretation of the structure of Mrs. Death is
provided by Delor i Muns, based mainly on numerology and the cabbala. As
we have already seen, she notes that the total number of poems in the cycle
of five books is 188, and that the successive addition of each of these digits
yields 8, the number of death, a concept contained in the title of the book at
the very centre of the cycle.49 Within the 40 poems of the book itself she
encounters several patterns and groupings based on number symbolism.
These range from the biographical – the connection between the number of
poems in the collection and (19)40, the year of the death of Espriu’s father
(p. 43) – to the biblical – the significance of the number 14 as an indication
of generation, especially in association with the House of David (p. 42). She
also discovers groupings of poems based on the Deadly Sins and on negative
representations of the theological and cardinal virtues (p. 49). Her essay is by
turns convincing and contentious.50
Both Castellet and Delor i Muns provide an understanding of the structure
of Mrs. Death that envisages discrete groups of poems involving a clear-cut
thematic progression. Nevertheless, while there are clear trends within the
book –such as those identified by these commentators respectively as from
the satiric to the lyrical and from Hell, through Purgatory, to Heaven – there
is not a rigid demarcation. As we shall see, there are poems in the first part
that do not conform to the label supplied for this section, and, likewise, there
are poems in the more ‘positive’ second part that do not have concerns or
characteristics attributed to this part. Rather than the continuity of sequence
in Cementiri de Sinera, what we encounter in Mrs. Death are connections at
a distance. We noted a limited mode of such a process in Les hores, but here
Iniciació a la poesia de Salvador Espriu, pp. 35–37.
‘Mrs. Death o la generació maleïda’, p. 41.
50 It is convincing especially in the way in which it relates poems to biblical events, as
when she uncovers versions of the Parables in certain poems (pp. 49–52). In her concern
to establish as many connections as possible with other sources, however, Delor i Muns
occasionally overstates her case and is guilty of approximations and inaccuracies. Thus it
is not true that Espriu was, like Dante, ‘nel mezzo del cammin’ when he started writing
Mrs. Death: he was 32, not 35. Also, in her detailing of how the book relates structurally
to the Divine Comedy she supplies an erroneous count of poems to correspond to the parts
of Dante’s work. By stating that the central section – the one matching Purgatory – has 15
poems she ends up with a total of 45 rather than the requisite 40 poems. In fact she
contradicts herself because she specifically identifies the correct number of 10 poems (nos.
26–35) as comprising the equivalent of this part of Dante’s poem (p. 44).
48
49
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D. GARETH WALTERS
it is a dominant feature of the structure. This procedure is integral to what I
believe to be a crucial metaphorical evolution in the work: the movement
from sickness to health or the enactment of healing.
The first two poems supply the characteristic groudnotes of the collection.
In the first, ‘Mentre representem’ [‘While we Act’], there is a view of
humanity as hapless and dominated by a wilful master (OC, I, 257). The
image is that of a puppet show, where the weary marionettes long to be released from the necessity of performing. Espriu gives the familiar symbol of
man controlled by a superior force (‘les grans mans enguantades’ [the great
gloved hands]) a significance that is nearer the political than the religious:
esperem només jeure,
mesclats, dintre la capsa
ben closa, sense somnis,
sense llums, on no arribin
records de neguitoses
entrades i sortides,
sons de ballable, gestos,
els violins patètics.
[we wait only to lie, in a heap, within the box that is tightly closed,
without dreams, without light, where the memories of anxious
entrances and exits, the sounds of music for dancing, the gestures,
and the pathetic violins do not reach.]
The idea of music, introduced at the end of this extract, will also emerge as
an ancillary image at key points in the book. The stimulus for the second
poem was, however, according to Espriu himself, pictorial:
Només hi ha nit i l’aspre
trot d’un cavall que ronda
i s’apropa a esborrar-vos
d’aquest record estèril.
(OC, I, 258)
[There is but night and the harsh trotting of a horse that roams and
approaches to eliminate that sterile memory from you.]
The grim evocation of a horse that carries all before it was inspired by
Brueghel’s Dance of Death, although we have already come across death and
night in poems from both the first two books. What follows, however,
constitutes a novelty in the cycle:
Entretant, us imposo
rítmics mots que combino
a l’atzar d’un ofici
sense repòs. Ai, públic
i alhora l’espectacle
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monòton, i el teu pare
de nas camús, i mares
tan damnades i cegues!
[In the meantime, I impose upon you rhythmic words that I combine
with the chance of an occupation without respite. Ah, audience and
now the monotonous spectacle, and your father with his snub nose,
and mothers so damned and blind.]
Not only is the figure conjured up here a variant of the puppet-master, but he
is presented as a first-person presence. A further feature of Mrs. Death will be
the recourse to a variety of speakers, on occasion within the one poem, whose
identity is not always clear. Indeed, the confusion of presences and persons is
evident in the illogical shifts from plural to singular in these lines, both with
pronouns (‘us imposo’; ‘el teu mare’) and nouns (‘pare’; ‘mares’). The effect
is akin to that of a painting by Picasso or Miró where we discern human
characteristics but cannot easily make out the fuller person. The tension this
produces as we read and try to comprehend contributes to the experience of
anxiety that is at the root of the collection. Another symptom of such anxiety
is present in the concluding lines of the poem:
I patiu a cadires
que són coixes i us claven
tot de llistons i estelles.
O a les mans que us enlairen
a l’últim crit, quan l’euga
arriba i se us emporta,
ara l’un, ara l’altre,
pel fred dels passadissos.
[And you suffer from the chairs that are wobbly and which stick into
you with slats and splinters. Or from the hands that lift you up at the
final cry, when the mare arrives and carries you off, now one, then the
other, through the cold of the corridors.]
Before the return of the horse of death, even more terrifying now as it picks
off its victims one by one, there appears another idea that will recur in later
poems: discomfiture, as an indication of unease or, in its more emphatic form,
as a malaise. Such an affliction is conceived both in terms of a physical
apprehension, as here, and of an intellectual void, as in the following poem,
‘Un home flac de Meir’ [‘A Weak Man of Meir’] (OC, I, 259). The autobiographical significance of the poem with its allusion to the drudgery of work is
evident enough – the ‘weak man’ of the title is the Espriu of the 1940s, making
his way to and from the office of Antonio Gual (who will appear in an
unflattering light in a companion poem later in the cycle as ‘Un home gras de
Meir’ [‘A Fat Man of Meir’] [OC, I, 272]). The incorporation of a place name
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D. GARETH WALTERS
from ancient Egypt supplies a piquant, sardonic detail that serves as a counter
to self-pity. What also contributes to making this poem bracing rather than
melancholic is the objectivization of the self as the poet addresses himself with
a mixture of compassion and impatience, explicit in the brusque opening
command ‘Suporta’t’ [Put up with it]. A disconcerting feature of the poem is
the appearance of the horse of death yet again, the more unexpected as it
succeeds a passage that conveys not the fear or anguish but the boredom of life:
En veure’t, com lamento
aquest treball monòton!
Lector de periòdics,
durant tants anys, tenies
opinió, vernissos
de cultura, principis,
gran èxit a tertúlies
de cafè. I de sobte,
sense avís ni cap pausa,
t’encamino a judici.
(OC, I, 259)
[When I see you, how I regret this monotonous work! A reader of
newspapers, during so many years, you had views, smatterings of
culture, principles, much success in café gatherings. And suddenly
without warning or hesitation, I direct you to your judgement.]
The juxtaposition of terror and tedium – the Inferno in the pseudoDantesque world of Mrs. Death – occurs over the first third of the collection.
The brevity and the futility of existence is communicated in poems about
social life and customs – ‘Dia de rebre’ [‘Visiting Day’] (OC, I, 261), ‘Els
fumadors’ [‘The Smokers’] (OC, I, 262), ‘Els toros’ [‘The Bulls’] (OC, I, 265) –
and, unusually for Espriu, in pieces that explore amatory relationships with a
cynical eye. It would be hard to imagine a more unromantic or anaphrodisiac
poem than the following:
Rius amb esclat, i miro
com creix dintre la gorja
una vulgar disfressa
de desigs metafísics. . . .
T’he vist plena de tristos
pecats i faringitis.
Però, captiu per sempre
de freds tentacles d’hores,
tant se val que t’estimi,
o bé qualsevol altra.
(OC, I, 267)
[You burst out laughing, and I see how there grows in your throat a
vulgar disguise of metaphysical desires. . . . I have seen you full of
81
sad sins and pharyngitis. But, always a captive of the cold tentacles
of the hours, it’s the same whether I love you or someone else.]
What this poem also illustrates is how Espriu is willing to coarsen his expressive
palette in Mrs. Death. Both Cementiri de Sinera and Les hores are characterized
by a sobriety of diction; indeed we could almost speak of a deliberately reduced
lexicon. Indeed the sheer range of the vocabulary in Mrs. Death recalls Espriu’s
practice in the play Primera història d’Esther, which was written in the same
period as the poetic work, and in which he sought to parade the richness of a
language facing extinction. The poem on love from Mrs. Death not only eschews
delicacy and euphemism but also juxtaposes technical, medical words with blunt
turns of phrase thereby enhancing the cynical standpoint. In like manner is the
description of Antonio Gual with his fat man’s paunch:
Greixors d’aquest gran ventre
(menges poc, ens afirmes,
i mai dels mais no tastes
bri de líquid: misteris
d’endocrinologia)
poden, és cert, privar-te
de contemplar les puntes
dels teus peus . . .
(OC, I, 272)
[The flab of that big belly (you don’t eat much, or so you say, and you
never taste a drop of the liquid made from hops: mysteries of
endocrinology) may, for certain, prevent you from contemplating the
tips of your feet . . . ]
The violence of imagination evident in these poems finds an equivalent in
the descriptions of the cruelty and wilfulness of the dictatorial figures and
presences in the collection, notably in the ironically titled ‘Redemptor
mundi’, which is a subtle evocation of the abuse of power. The combination
of callousness and sentimentality is chilling:
Salva màgics prestigis
del dos i dos són quatre,
decapitant modestos
transgressors de decàlegs.
Que fidel al seu crani
geomètric! Com plora
aquell gran cor, quan sonen
tecletes de piano,
si refilen dolcíssims
rossinyols a bardisses!
(OC, I, 264)
[He saves the prestigious magic of two and two are four, and beheads
the modest transgressors of decalogues. How faithful he is to his
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D. GARETH WALTERS
geometric cranium! How that great heart weeps when the piano keys
sound, if sweet nightingales trill in the hedges.]
In its incorporation of the everyday and the fanciful this poem emerges as part
sinister, part comical, reflecting the occasions when, despite ourselves, we find
that the depiction of evil can make us laugh. In such places as these, Espriu’s
indebtedness to the grotesque and satirical portraits in the novels and plays
of Ramón del Valle-Inclán, a writer whom he much admired, is clearly in
evidence.51 Castellet suggests that this poem could be a portrait of Hitler, and
as there is little in the detail to suggest this connection perhaps he had in mind
such parodic interpretations of the dictator as provided by Charlie Chaplin.52
The vision of bloodshed is no laughing matter, however, though again the
sheer force of the diction makes us acknowledge an imaginative verve:
S’aixecaran patíbuls
lloats per servils boques.
S’ompliran de sangota
bocois, cossis, garrafes.
(OC, I, 264)
[Gallows will be erected, praised by servile mouths. Barrels, vats and
bottles will be filled with corrupted blood.]
One image, in particular, serves as a focus for several – powerlessness,
illness, deprivation, tedium, violence – that we have hitherto uncovered. It
occurs in much of Espriu’s work and has roots in his boyhood years in Arenys
de Mar: beggars. As with much else in Mrs. Death it possesses a distinctively
lurid character. Thus, in ‘Els captaires’ [‘The Beggars’], the fourth poem of
the collection, impressions of power and degradation collide in a composition
that is like an outburst:
Al voltant de la meva
autoritat, la roda
essencial dels necis
i la sang, on cendregen
tristos amors, tot l’odi
contra vençuts i amos.
51 For a summary of the relationship between Espriu and Valle-Inclán and his opinion of
the Spanish writer see Peter Cocozzella, ‘Salvador Espriu i la seva «forma enciclopèdica»:
aspectes d’un sincretisme literari’, Catalan Review, 7 (1993), 37–49 (at p. 42).
52 Antoni Prats suggests that the phrase ‘cap quadrat’ [square head] in the portrait of
the figure in this poem suggets a Germanic type, presumably Hitler. ‘La fidelitat als
origens en la poesia de Salvador Espriu’, in Salvador Espriu: algunes cartes i estudis sobre
la seva obra, pp. 151–60 (at p. 159).
83
Faig del temps una corda
de funàmbul. M’ajuden
la rialla, la dalla.
Advers al vent, navili
desarborat. Germanes
endolades et miren,
blanc de lluna, d’escuma
I arriba, per la boira
de suburbis, perduda,
només una pregunta
de llavis de captaires:
«Dic, dic nobis, Maria,
quid vidisti in via.»
(OC, I, 260)
[Around my authority, the essential circle of fools and the blood
where sad loves turn to ash, all the hatred against the conquered and
the masters. I make of time a tightrope walker’s wire. I am helped by
laughter and the scythe. Against the wind, the ship uprooted.
Grieving sisters look at you, white with moon and foam. And above,
lost in the suburban mist, just a question on the lips of beggars: “Dic,
dic nobis, Maria, quid vidisti in via.”]
Once again we encounter linguistic violence and sense dislocations. There are
abrupt changes of speaker and subject: no sooner have we established the
subject of the first and second stanzas than we are presented in rapid
succession with the picture of the grieving sisters followed by that of the
abject beggars. Yet it is worth observing that the sheer noise of the poem is
achieved within an unvarying adherence to heptasyllables – a line-length that
is maintained throughout the collection. Against this metrical cage the
phrases hurl themselves like enraged beasts. It is not only the predictable
recourse to enjambement that contributes to this turbulence; the clang of
internal rhyme or near-rhyme – ‘rialla-dalla’ and ‘lluna-escuma’ – sets the
nerves on edge. Yet amid this cacophony a prayer is heard – a stanza from
the Easter sequence Victimae paschali laudes: ‘Dic, dic nobis, Maria,/ quid
vidisti in via’.
The answer to this question (the absence of a question-mark is as found) is
long in coming, evidence of the tendency to connection at a distance that is a
feature of the book. It is neither in this poem nor in the next; indeed we would
eventually assume that it is unheeded and the beggars will remain confounded
in the suburban fog. When there is a reminiscence in the twenty-second poem,
‘Els músics cecs’ [‘The Blind Musicians’] the question is forgotten. The scene
evoked is the same desolate urban landscape as depicted in ‘Els captaires’. If
anything, the wretchedness of the figures is even more pronounced in this
poem. Dogs bark at them as they stumble, exhausted, through the mud. If the
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D. GARETH WALTERS
discords in ‘Els captaires’ were metrical and figurative, then here they are
rendered literally, but the beggars’ music, suggestive of the trumpets of
Judgement Day, also holds the terror of a ‘danse macabre’:
Un fagot, un patètic
violí, en la dansa
suburbana dels tristos
morts amics. Més profundes,
amb excessiu missatge
de premi o de condemna,
trompetes del Judici.
(OC, I, 279)
[A bassoon, a pathetic violin, in the suburban dance of the sad dead
friends. More profound, with an extreme message of reward or
condemnation, the trumpets of Judgement.]
This is not where this thread ends, however. The opening of the thirty-sixth
poem, ‘Vexillum regis’ [‘Vexillum regis’], is comprehensible only in terms of
a response to a request, and, given that the identity of the speakers is
confirmed as beggars, it emerges as a reply to the plight of the hounded
figures in ‘Els captaires’ and ‘Els músics cecs’:
Ens han dit que podríem
acollir-nos a l’ombra
del gran pòrtic, captaires
en salvament. . . .
. . . Nosaltres
oblidem dolorosos
clots dels camins i, súbdits
ja d’un sol rei, amb himnes
nocturns, avancem rera
l’estendard, mentre apropen
lliures cavalls els límits
d’aquesta pau guanyada.
(OC, I, 293)
[They have told us that we can shelter in the shadow of the great gate,
beggars in salvation. . . . We forget the painful holes in the roads, and
now subjects of a single king, with nocturnal hymns, we advance
behind the standard, while free horses approach the boundaries of this
peace we have secured.]
This reply embodies transformation for the refuge afforded the beggars is
tantamount to liberation – appropriate in view of the fact that the poem’s title
is also that of an Easter hymn. The squalid urban setting – so often a symbol
of destitution and despair in early twentieth century poetry, as in Eliot, Alberti
and Lorca – has given way to a vista of mountain and stars. The beggars no
longer think of the wearying trek through the streets but march behind a
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banner. Three images towards the end of this poem reinforce this sense of
rehabilitation. The king (also referred to in the title) has replaced the tyrant
with his fawning coterie at the start of ‘Els captaires’; nocturnal hymns sound
in place of the grotesque dirge; the image of the free horses – an echo of a
memorable moment from Cementiri de Sinera – ‘Lliures cavalls, a l’alba,/ per
la deserta platja’ [Free horses, at dawn, on the deserted beach] (OC, I, 193) –
obliterates the ‘aspre/trot de un cavall’ [harsh trotting of a horse] of the second
poem of Mrs. Death, ‘Diseuese’ [‘Diseuse’] (OC, I, 258) and the mare’s ‘trot
de nit’ [trotting of night] in the following poem, ‘Un home flac de Meir’ (OC,
I, 259). If I refer to ‘Vexillum regis’ as a redemptive poem then again I would
claim to be identifying rather than creating a metaphor. The petition
addressed to Mary Magdalene in ‘Els captaires’ – a quotation from the Easter
sequence, Victimae paschali laudes – and its reply in ‘Vexillum regis’
suggests the hope of life beyond death, unlikely though that would have
seemed at the point of asking in the first of these poems. This achievement of
resolution is reflected too in the reception of the poem: the single focus, by
contrast with the incoherence of ‘Els captaires’, enables the reader to have an
immediate comprehension of narrative line and a control of the developing
sense structure.
Similarly uncluttered is the previous poem, the thirty-fifth of the collection,
‘Coèfor’ [‘Coefor’]:
I veuré l’altre rostre
al mirall, el que porto
latent des de l’origen,
sense por, car el vespre
amic farà de guia
pel vidre nu de l’aigua.
Clamaré: «Sóc i vetllo
i m’estimo. Voldries
l’ofrena del meu càntic?»
(OC, I, 292)
[I will see the other face in the mirror, the latent one I bear from my
origin, without fear, for friendly twilight will serve as a guide through
the naked glass of the water. I will proclaim: “I am, I watch, and I
love myself. Do you want the offering of my song?”]
This, too, marks the end of a process, and in its confidence and generosity
constitutes a corrective counter-poem to what has gone before. Delor i Muns
hints at such a procedure when she indicates how the ‘coèfor’ – etymologically he who brings offerings to the dead – is a transformation of the
tightrope-walker – ‘el vanitós funàmbul de la primera parte de Mrs. Death’
[the conceited tightrope-walker of the first part of Mrs. Death].53 She observes
53
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D. GARETH WALTERS
how the circus performer has become the poet endowed with the gift of his
art. This poem, however, embodies a wider redress. It is the resolution of such
poems as the companion pieces ‘Un home flac de Meir’ (OC, I, 259) and ‘Un
home gras de Meir’ (OC, I, 272), and more particularly, of ‘Els seus peus’
[‘His Feet’] (OC, I, 271) and ‘El ninot’ [‘The Scarecrow’] (OC, I, 280). The
vision of humanity in these poems is that of degradation and physical malaise:
pitiful victims whose impotence and ugliness provoke mockery and disgust.
‘Els seus peus’ is a sardonic poem that speaks of a scorn of the body that puts
one in mind of a satirist like Quevedo. Or, to use a contemporary analogy, it
is a poem that can be seen as a cynic’s response to the life-enhancing Odes of
Neruda with their celebration of the everyday and the trivial:
Cada matí contemplo
dos peus de vençut dintre
de sabates que riuen. . . .
Quin dolor de ferides
de pell i de carn viva,
tant temps! . . .
Refuso d’estimar-lo,
malgrat els vols de l’àngel.
Però li deixo cèntims,
a un interès ben mòdic,
per calçat necessari
al poc camí que resta.
(OC, I, 271)
[Every morning I look at the two feet of a defeated man within shoes
that laugh. . . . What pain from the wounds on the skin and the live
flesh, for so much time! . . . I refuse to love him, despite the flights
of the angel. But I leave him a few coins, at a reasonable rate of
interest, for the shoes he will need for the little bit of road that he has
ahead.]
Just in case we were relaxing with the little joke in the final stanza, in comes
the moralist with his spoil-sport final line, reminding us of the brevity of life –
again, this disconcerting blend of homeliness and homily is reminiscent
of seventeenth-century Metaphysical poetry. In ‘El ninot’ (OC, I, 280), the
malaise is moral as well as physical: the hapless scarecrow, serving masters
who satisfy his hunger by filling his belly with straw, rots in the vineyard,
pecked at by crows. If the owner of the feet in ‘Els seus peus’ was ‘vençut’
[defeated] then the scarecrow is ‘vençudíssim’ [most defeated]. Despised and
defeated, he epitomizes humanity at its most abject. There is no
acknowledgement here of the ‘flights of the angel’ – the capacity for
transcendence that was at least alluded to in ‘Els seus peus’. Yet, a dozen
poems later is the rehabilitated self of ‘Coèfor’ – a new face in the mirror, one,
that in a pseudo-Platonic sense, was there all the time and which had been
87
forgotten or neglected. At long last there is self-acceptance – a trust in self
that erases the loathing encapsulated in ‘Els seus peus’ and ‘El ninot’. It is
now time to ask what brings about this change: what warrants the assertions
of integrity and legitimizes the declarations of liberation in ‘Coèfor’ and
‘Vexillum regis’.
Two poems are decisive for this reversal; in the precise, medical, sense of
the term, they are crises. Characteristically they are not juxtaposed; indeed,
one appears before both ‘El ninot’ and ‘Els músics cecs’, and as such is a
premonition. This anticipatory poem, ‘Les germanes’ [‘The Sisters’], is the
eighteenth of the collection, and its critical nature has a contextual basis: it
follows the poem entitled ‘El funàmbul’ [‘The Tightrope Walker’], an
embodiment of peril, where the poet is represented as a circus performer – a
sardonic view of his art, which will in due course yield to a nobler conception
consistent with the trend towards health in the collection:
Pelegrí a la corda
de l’arc damunt l’abisme,
vaig portar vasos d’aigua,
sense vessar-los . . .
(OC, I, 274)
[Pigrim on the arc wire above the abyss, I carried glasses of water,
without spelling them . . . ]
‘Les germanes’ (OC, I, 275), like several poems from the first part of the
collection takes the form of a tableau vivant. The figures, however, are no
longer participants in a grotesque theatrum mundi. On the contrary, there is
an affecting tenderness in the picture of a sick girl and her sister. Through the
eyes of the invalid the reader has access first of all to the detail imprinted on
her mind, presumably through the hours of immobile gazing from her
sickbed: at the First Communion portraits, the wedding photographs. This is
of a different order from what has gone before. The intimate focus on the
homely is complemented by the mutual compassion of the sisters, as when,
in her pain, one goes silently to the window so as not to disturb the other’s
sleep:
. . . A l’hora,
però, de més sofrença,
m’alço, per no cridar-te,
i me’n vaig de puntetes
a la finestra, on miro,
en el reflex d’un vidre,
aquest teu son, les nostres
vides juntes, la roba
de dol etern, i sento
88
D. GARETH WALTERS
batecs de cors i portes,
lents tocs de missa d’alba.
[At the time, however, of greatest suffering, in order not to call out to
you, I get up and go on tiptoe to the window, where I see, reflected in
the glass, your sleep, our lives together, the clothes of eternal sorrow,
and I feel the the beating of hearts and doors, the slow pealing notes
of the dawn mass.]
This act is momentous, providing as it does a sense of comprehension: in the
sudden intensity of vision provoked by the reflections in the window there is
a concentration of image and recollection. It is comprehension with its
etymological implication of a bringing together, accomplished by the reader
as well as the figure in the poem. More than that, there is aspiration, rooted in
the concept of transcendence through illness – both a literary topos and a
pathological reality. As yet it is only a glimpse, for there are several regressive
moments to follow, but it both affirms that and depicts how liberation will be
possible.
I was going to say, because the order in which the poems appear suggests
it, that ‘Les germanes’ is the seed from which the definitively critical poem
would grow. But it would not be an apt way to put it, and the reason is not
merely one of distance – the fact that the poems are separated by thirteen
others. The complementary poem, ‘El jardí dels cinc arbres’ [‘The Garden of
the Five Trees’], the thirty-second of the collection, does not seem by
comparison with ‘Les germanes’ a flower springing from a hidden seed. In its
spare and concise manner it is more like a distillation of the earlier piece: a
more intense but less visually detailed poem that lacks the narrative
suggestiveness of the other. The area of experience is the same, though:
Després, quan ja m’havia
fet molt de mal i quasi
sols podia somriure,
vaig triar les paraules
més senzilles, per dir-me
com passaven levíssims
ors de sol damunt l’heura
del jardí dels cinc arbres.
Era groc breu de posta,
a l’hivern, mentre queien
els últims dits de l’aigua
serpentina, d’alts núvols,
i l’estrany temps m’entrava
en presons de silenci.
(OC, I, 289)
[Afterwards, when it had caused me a lot of pain and I could almost
do no more than smile, I chose the simplest words, to tell myself how
89
the gold of the sun passed lightly over the garden of the five trees. It
was a brief yellow of a winter sunset, while the last fingers of the
sinuous water fell from high clouds, and the strange time came in to
me in prisons of silence.]
The title refers to the Espriu family home in Arenys de Mar – the Sinera of so
much of the writer’s work – where he spent many boyhood summers. As a
child Espriu suffered from ill health and this poem has a clear autobiographical
frame of reference, even though the garden of the five trees would have been
little more than a patio.54
It is common to speak of poetry, because of its unique capacity for emotive
concentration and reverberation, in terms of ‘power’; a designation such as ‘a
powerful expression’ is one we readily, perhaps unthinkingly, formulate. It is
an opposite quality, I suggest, that permeates this poem. As with ‘Les
germanes’ Espriu evokes a double vulnerability: the child and the illness. If it
is not empowering, though, it is certainly an availing poem because it
succeeds in facing down the hubbub and the degeneration in its non-assertive
way. Through such fortitude and discipline the previous illnesses – physical,
moral, spiritual – are healed; they have become, at this point in the cycle,
things of the past. This passive dignity is the product of a wisdom that goes
beyond the speaker’s years, nourished in the rapt contemplation of a winter’s
afternoon. Like the sister at the window, the child is a figure who serves as
rebuke and redemption – a shaming, but restorative, presence. As he chooses
the simplest words for the silent litany of description of the setting sun and
the late shower, he is potentially, if not already, a poet.
Indeed in the part of the collection that separates the two ‘crisis’ poems, the
idea of the poet’s role and significance, that had been so important in the final
section of Les hores, comes to the fore. Following ‘Les germanes’ is a group
of bleak poems culminating in ‘Els músics cecs’ and ‘El ninot’ that alternate
between despair and resignation. Yet arising from these is the saving grace of
poetry. There is a telling moment at the start of ‘Díptics de vivents’ [‘Diptychs
of the Living’], whose opening lines serve as a link with the previous poem:
Del mar han de salvar-me
potser un vers, unes clares
paraules, mentre valguin
tota la meva vida.
(OC, I, 278)
[From the sea I must be saved perhaps by a verse, by some bright
words, while they have value for my whole life.]
The previous poem is entitled ‘El mar’ [‘The Sea’] and it acquires a symbolic
resonance through such phrases as ‘sofrim camí de barca/ al temps mort’ [we
54
See Carles Móra, Salvador Espriu i Sinera, p. 42.
90
D. GARETH WALTERS
suffer the way taken by the boat in a time that is dead] (OC, I, 277), while the
unequivocal sense of defeat is also conveyed in the symbol of winter: ‘sóc
endinsat en negre/ hivern’ [I am plunged in dark winter]. In this context, the
opening of ‘Díptics de vivents’ [‘Diptychs of the Living’] achieves the force
of a resolution. It is hardly defiance, given its tentative nature, but it is a line
in the sand and potentially a way back. These poems – the twentieth and
twenty-first of the collection – come at the very centre not only of Mrs. Death
but also of the cycle of five books. In the wider picture, such a counterstatement as that provided by the opening of the second of these poems serves
as a pointer to how the poet conceives his salvation; in the specific case of
Mrs. Death, it is an indication that a healing process is under way even though
it will be a chequered one.
In subsequent poems the poet’s sense of the value of his activity is
connected to the awareness of a community role, a task realized via the evocation of Jewish history and topology. In ‘El governador’ [‘The Governor’]
there is an unexpectedly emphatic assertion: ‘lentament m’alço príncep/ de la
nit del meu poble’ [I arise slowly as the prince of the night of my people] (OC,
I, 282). Two poems further on, in ‘Les oliveres’ [‘The Olive Trees’], the
conception is that of the poet as both seer and saviour:
Jo, solitari
llegidor de profètics
vols de falcons, voldria
guiar tan dolorosos
somnis dels altres homes
cap a clarors llunyanes
d’aquell cel.
(OC, I, 284)
[I, the solitary reader of prophetic flights of falcons, would like to
lead the sorrowful dreams of other men towards the distant
brightnesses of that sky.]
At the end of this poem and at the start of the next it is the nature of poetry
itself that is the issue. It is not now a matter of a salvaged line of verse or a
few cherished, vulnerable words; it is, instead, a thing of power and beauty,
despite the lingering anguish:
Aleshores ja foren
els meus versos com llances
immortals, i l’imperi
d’eterna llum vindria
per vella plata d’arbres.
(OC, I, 284)
[So my verses would be like immortal lances, and the empire of
eternal light would come through the old silver of the trees.]
91
D’un vell color de plata
jo voldria que fossin
els meus versos: d’un noble,
antic color de plata. . . .
Trist i lliure, camino,
davant la mort que mira,
a la llum, per la plata
antiga dels meus versos.
(OC, I, 285)
[I would that my verses were of an old silver colour: of a noble,
ancient silver colour. . . . Sad and free, I walk, in front of the death
that looks, towards light, through the old silver of my verses.]
According to Delor i Muns, Espriu considered the following poem, ‘Les
paraules’ [‘The Words’] (OC, I, 286) to be his best. She views the poem in
terms of the Torah, underlining the link of poetry and history in Espriu.55 Yet,
as so often happens in Mrs. Death, this poem marks a step backward, evoking
as it does the ‘molt tedi/ de tarda de diumenge’ [great boredom of a Sunday
afternoon] and the fear that the poet will turn in on himself again:
Intentes
d’amagar-te ben dintre
del teu hivern, on puguis
amb tants records encendre
l’últim foc. Després mires
amb ulls ja buits i penses
a dormir.
[You try to hide yourself very well within your winter, where you
could with so many memories light the final fire. Afterwards you look
with eyes that are now empty and think about sleeping.]
It will require the availing presence of the child in the second of the ‘crisis’
poems, ‘El jardí dels cinc arbres’ to complete the recovery.
The process of healing has involved going down the well of childhood
recollection. This is a resource that, like the poet’s communion with the dead,
has its origin in the mythical world of Sinera. In Primera història d’Esther,
Haman, the scourge of the Jews, a monster to rival the ironically designated
55 ‘Espriu, per la seva doble condició d’escriptor, per una banda, i d’historiador, per una
altra, es plantejava com una responsabilitat moral i intel.lectual la “lectura” d’aquells fets
històrics que s’havien esdevingut a Espanya i a Europa durant aquells darrers anys’
[Espriu, by dint of his double role as writer, on the one hand, and historian, on the other,
conceived as a moral and intellectual responsibility the ‘reading’ of those historical facts
that had occurred in Spain and Europe during the preceding years]. ‘Mrs. Death o el llibre
de la generació maleïda’, p. 39.
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D. GARETH WALTERS
‘Redemptor mundi’ of Mrs. Death, attains a momentary humanity as he
remembers the meals of his childhood.56 What is only a faint illumination in
the play becomes a luminous vision in ‘El jardí dels cinc arbres’. After this
poem, seemingly, all things are possible. Indeed the next, the thirty-third of
the collection, has the concept of ‘afterness’ in its very title. ‘Després dels
arbres’ [‘After the Trees’] (OC, I, 290) has what is termed in ‘Vexillum regis’
‘aquesta pau guanyada’ [this peace that has been earned]. It is in the homely
imagery of the ‘benigna olor de terra/ i pa llescat a taula’ [benign smell of
earth and sliced bread on the table], with its eucharistic resonances, and in the
rest of an endless sleep ‘ben lliure/ d’espera i de temença’ [free from hope and
fear]. It seems appropriate then for Delor i Muns, following the poet’s own,
albeit unspecific, suggestion to envisage the final five poems in terms of
Paradise in the Dantesque scheme.57 I believe that it is, however, necessary to
consider what form this ‘Paradise’ takes, and how it relates to what has gone
before, especially given the prominence of the metaphors of sickness and
healing.
An answer can begin with the four-line extract from an Easter asperges
prayer known as the ‘Vidi aquam’ that Espriu supplies as a postscript to his
text:
Vidi aquam egredientem de templo
a latere dextro, alleluia. Et omnes
ad quos pervenit aqua ista salvi
facti sunt et dicent: alleluia, allelluia.
(OC, I, 299)
In terms of the dialectic of poem and counter-poem that I have identified as a
characteristic of the cycle this quotation serves as another response to the
stanza from the Easter sequence ‘Dic nobis, Maria’ found at the end of ‘Els
captaires’. The words of the ‘Vidi aquam’ draw on a passage in Exekiel, 47:9
that describes the restoration of the temple as part of a vision of the new
Jerusalem. Renovation and resurrection are the keynotes of the final poems,
the Paradise section according to Delor i Muns. Resurrection, however,
implies a death and indeed these poems repeatedly enunciate the notion of a
death that is necessary for life. The last four lines of ‘Després dels arbres’ are
redolent of the peace of death and seemingly prepare us for an absorption into
the comforting security of the dead very much, as Castellet has indicated, as
happens at the end of Cementiri de Sinera:58
m’adormiré per sempre,
escoltant cops d’aixades
56
57
58
See Walters, ‘From linguistic monument to social memory’, p. 873.
molt lentes als camps amples,
remor de vespre als pàmpols.
93
(OC, I, 290)
[I shall sleep for ever, listening to the blows of slow spades on the
broad fields, the sound of evening in the vine leaves.]
This mood is confirmed in the final phrase – ‘el repós perdurable’ [the
enduring rest] (OC, I, 292) – of the thirty-fifth poem (‘Coèfor’), while the
liberation in poem 37 (‘Riu’) [‘River’] is that of death:
. . . De l’angoixa
del torrent m’allibero,
oblidant i perdent-me
en lentes aigües clares.
(OC, I, 294)
[I free myself from the anguish of the torrent, forgetting and losing
myself in slow clear waters.]
The following poem has a valedictory note:
. . . Són collides
ja les flors, i s’encalmen
records, mirades, ales,
tot el meu mar. . . .
(OC, I, 295)
[The flowers are now plucked, and memories, glances, wings, my
whole sea, are now calmed. . . . ]
The sense of closure here is like that of death: the plucked flowers hark back
to the epigraph, a quotation from Shakespeare’s Cymbeline: ‘Whiles yet the
dew’s on ground, gather these flowers’. Moreover, does not the title of this
poem – ‘Cementiri de Sinera’ [‘Sinera Cemetery’] – confirm, through the
intetertextual allusion, the idea of death as a solution, in other words, as the
goal of the collection? If the answer is yes, then it is hard to square such a
reading with the emphasis on healing that I have shown to be so crucial. But
‘Cementiri de Sinera’ is not the last poem, and the two that follow it are such
as to render the question invalid.
In poem XXXIX, ‘Senyor de l’ombra’ [‘Lord of the Shadow’], we read:
. . . D’un silenci
novíssim, ara neixo,
lliure a la fi del cercle
obsessiu de les coses.
(OC, I, 296)
[From the newest silence I am now born, free at the end of the
obsessive circle of things.]
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D. GARETH WALTERS
and in the last poem, ‘Final del laberint’ [‘End of the Labyrinth’] these lines
appear:
. . . Mira
quanta nit, quina extrema
solitud se t’emporta,
per la rialla, a l’home
justificat i lliure
que neix del teu silenci.
(OC, I, 297)
[See how much night, what extreme loneliness bears you away,
through the laughter, to the man who is vindicated and free and who
is born from your silence.]
The emphasis in these concluding poems prompts the question posed in
T. S. Eliot’s Journey of the Magi: ‘were we lead all that way for/ Birth or
Death?’.59 What kind of birth is it that requires death? The answer is in the
Pauline gloss on Christ’s death and resurrection, an idea that connects with
the concluding ‘Vidi aquam’. It presumes the death of the old in order to give
birth to the new: ‘Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old
things are passed away; behold all things are become new’ (II Corinthians,
5:17). The metaphor of healing – or, in scriptural terms, the act of Christ’s
healing – is what facilitates this process, and it could also be added that the
figure of the child, present in ‘Les germanes’ and ‘El jardí dels cinc arbres’,
provides the necessary condition for the new life: ‘Whosoever shall not
receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein’ (Mark,
10:15).
Ultimately, then, there is a sense of integrity and redemption: the state of
repose achieved in the final poem has a mystical intensity. Yet this silence is
not just a metaphor of peace. As Susan Sontag observes: ‘silence never ceases
to imply its opposite and to depend on its presence’.60 Such a consideration
has a particular force here: the reference to ‘la rialla’ recalls the sardonic
laughter of that most cacophonous of poems ‘Els captaires’. This echo is
moreover a sobering reminder of Espriu’s thematico-structural concept of the
five cycles. It is Sisyphean in character: each of these works has to undertake
the same task of recovery as its predecessor(s), and in Mrs. Death this
struggle is articulated through the metaphors of illness and healing, ultimately
analogous to the Pauline understanding of personal salvation. Of all the
lyrical journeys it is the most arduous and troubling but, precisely because of
that, its achievements and the rewards that accrue to the reader are all the
more valuable.
Selected Poems (London: Faber and Faber, 1961), p. 30.
‘The aesthetics of silence’, in A Susan Sontag Reader (Harmondsworth: Penguin,
1983), pp. 181–204 (at p. 187).
59
60
95
El caminant i el mur
The fourth book in Espriu’s cycle, divided into three sections, is structurally
the counterpart of the second. While the title of Les hores suggests a
preoccupation with time, which the collection itself does not quite bear out,
the material of the fourth book is more obviously temporal in its focus. In
broad terms we could say that the first section is mainly concerned with the
past projected from the present, the final section with the present and its
implications for the future, while the central part is based upon the passing of
a single day, from one dawn to the next, within which the memories and
aspirations of the poet are articulated. The first two sections contain 12
poems, a clearly significant temporal indicator relating to the twelve months
of the year and the twenty-four hours of the day – another example of Espriu’s
obsession with the symbolism of numbers.61
As Carles Miralles has indicated, the opening part of El caminant i el mur
is more obviously given over to memories of the poet’s mother than the
section in Les hores dedicated to her memory.62 Yet the opening poem, ‘No
t’he de donar accés al meu secret’ [‘I must not Give you Access to my Secret’]
(OC, I, 307) gives no hint of this. It is, as we have already seen (p. 23), a
resolutely defensive poem, which both calls attention to the poet’s anguish
and spurns the curiosity that would seek to plumb his pain. The second poem,
‘Petit eco en el Styx’ [‘Little Echo in the Styx’] (OC, I, 308), is more inward
looking. Like those who cross the river Styx the poet, a ‘presoner de
mancament/ que creix en un vell dolor’ [‘a prisoner with defects who grows
in an old sorrow’], wrestles with his thoughts in an attempt to rescue some
memories. In the following poem, a tanka (OC, I, 309), there is a fragile
recollection of the smell of roses, and this is the prompt for ‘Les roses
recordades’ [‘The Remembered Roses’], one of the tenderest and simplest
poems that Espriu ever wrote:
Recordes com ens duien
aquelles mans les roses
de sant Jordi, la vella
claror d’abril? Plovia
a poc a poc. Nosaltres,
amb gran tedi, darrera
la finestra, miràvem,
potser malalts, la vida
del carrer. Aleshores
ella venia, sempre
61 For Castellet, the number suggests the twelve signs of the zodiac rather than the
twelve months of the year. Iniciació a la poesia de Salvador Espriu, p. 39.
62 ‘Salvador Espriu’, p. 417.
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D. GARETH WALTERS
olorosa, benigna,
amb les flors, i tancava
fora, lluny, la sofrença
del pobre drac, i deia
molt suaument els nostres
petits noms, i ens somreia.
(OC, I, 310)
[Do you remember how those hands brought us roses on St George’s
Day, the ancient brightness of April? It rained a little. From behind
the window, we, bored and perhaps unwell, watched life go by in the
street. Then she came, always sweet-smelling and kindly, with the
flowers, and she shut outside and far away the suffering of the poor
dragon, and she spoke very softly our pet names, and smiled at us.]
The contrast between the willing intimacy of the opening second-person
address and the vehement distancing of the first poem of the section could not
be greater. We may reason that the addressee is the poet himself but, as he
seeks to bring a memory to life, the gentle urgency of the question makes us
feel that is directed at us. It is as though we too had been with his brothers and
sisters awaiting the mother’s return on the feast day of St George, the patron
saint of Catalonia, when roses are traditionally given as a sign of love and
friendship. This poem is another instance of what I have previously identified
as key moments in the sequences, a feature that the continuous flow within
most of the books will almost inevitably yield, just as a long musical phrase
will have melodic or harmonic emphases. ‘Les roses recordades’ is not a
crucial poem in the same way that ‘Les germanes’ or ‘El jardí dels cinc arbres’
were in Mrs. Death, but it comes across as a redemptive one. The brightness
of the April day, here as elsewhere, bespeaks personal illumination. This is not
the intense radiance of the poems inspired by Italy in the third section of Les
hores; rather than the aesthetic appreciation of a painfully beautiful setting,
here it is the illumination that comes from a childhood recollection, one that is
recaptured with gratitude. The picture of the children, bored and unwell, is
poignant when set alongside the many occasions, notably in Mrs. Death, when
similar states of being had no such saving grace, no such alleviation, as that
provided by the mother’s return. We will, by now, recognize the articulation of
the names and the bestowal of a smile as valuable, even momentous, acts.
That such insights are precious because they are transient is borne out by
the succeeding poem, a tanka (OC, I, 311), where the mother’s hands are
described as ash, even though the memory of the smile remains. The poem
that follows, however, regains a measure of consolation. The description of
Christmas and the recourse to intercession provide some kind of security
against the realization that,
. . . les mans oloroses de molsa,
les benignes mans de la meva
97
mare, són quietes per sempre,
allí, sota la nit dels xiprers.
(OC, I, 312)
[. . . the fragrant hands of moss, the kindly hands of my mother, are
quiet for ever, there, beneath the night of the cypress trees.]
The tanka that follows again shuts the door on any glimmer of hope:
Carrers. I sempre
més nit, les parets altes.
Sord al feblíssim
lament antic, camino
ja del tot solitari.
(OC, I, 313)
[Roads. And always more night, the high walls. Deaf to the weakest
of ancient laments, I now walk quite alone.]
This is emphatically bleak: every image or idea serves to reinforce the
negative timbre of the preceding one. The poems that follow continue in this
vein, and the elegiac mode reaches a climax in ‘Sí a la cendra’, a poem that
is like a planctus for the dead mother:
– No veurás la fondària
on s’encalma la pluja,
ni sabràs com van caure,
nobles i lents, els últims
avets de la muntanya.
No sentiràs si vénen
a poc a poc els passos
de l’orb fins a la porta.
Dormiràs ja per sempre,
sense més nom ni somnis,
triat per la mirada
de l’arquer, a trenc d’alba.
– Per què tantes paraules
per al meu cansament?
(OC, I, 315)
[You will not see the depths where the rain is calmed, nor will you
know how the last fir cones, noble and slow, fell in the mountain. You
will not hear if the footsteps of the blind man come slowly to the
door. You will forever sleep, with neither name nor dreams, chosen by
the glance of the archer, at daybreak. Why so many words for my
weariness?]
There is an evocation here both of Viladrau (the fir trees) and of Arenys de
Mar (the blind beggars passing before the house), but these are unavailing.
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D. GARETH WALTERS
The repeated negative future tenses hammer home the fact of death. It is not
surprising, then, that the concluding lines should be redolent of emotional
exhaustion, nor that in the following poem, ‘Thànatos’ [‘Thanatos’], the poet
should imagine various responses to his own death. The conclusion of this
poem reveals a streak of ruthless self-appraisal, typical of Espriu at his
bluntest:
Quan arribis, si et sento,
hauré de saludar-te
amb un gran crit. Car moro
sense cap saviesa,
però molt ric de passos
de perdut vianant.
(OC, I, 316)
[When you come, if I hear you, I will have to greet you with a loud
cry. For I die without any wisdom, but very rich in the steps of a lost
traveller.]
Yet the emotional resonance of these lines is not quite clear-cut. The choice
of the adjective ‘rich’ implies the gain of experience, however arduous, and it
is perhaps on that basis that the following tanka can refer to ‘un debilíssim/
record d’infant’ [a very weak childhood memory] (OC, I, 317), another sign
of the vacillation between the potency and the failure of memory in the
section. The final poem is another inspired by Christmas:
Mira com vinc per la nit
del meu poble, del món, sense cants
ni ja somnis, ben buides les mans:
et porto sols el meu gran crit.
Infant que dorms, no l’has sentit?
Desperta amb mi, guia’m la por
de caminant, aquest dolor
d’uns ulls de cec dintre la nit.
(OC, I, 318)
[See how I come in the night of my people, of the world, without songs or dreams, with empty hands, bearing only my great
cry. Sleeping child, have you not heard? Wake with me, guide me
in my traveller’s fear, this pain of a blind man’s eyes within the
night.]
This prayer to the Infant Jesus comes from the depths of fear and pain and via
the familiar images of the traveller and the blind man. Yet a sense of vocation,
absent thus far in the book, comes to the fore. Indeed the poet’s destiny is
described in such a way as to suggest Christ’s mission: one who came at
night, in poverty, for his people and the world. The concluding poem thus
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manages to recapture something of the warmth of sentiment and the child-like
readiness to self-surrender that shone through in ‘Les roses recordades’.
*
The second section of El caminant i el mur is notable for having been set to
music by Manuel Valls and Raimon, both of whom figure in the dedication. The
title of the section, ‘Cançons de la roda del temps’, may well have suggested the
appropriateness of these poems as material for songs. The opening poem (OC,
I, 321) is a carefree dawn song, a summons to enjoy the new day. Although the
second poem, ‘Cançó de la mort a l’alba’ [‘Song of Death at Dawn’] is a darker
piece, containing another appearance by the lady who is Death, it is very songlike in its rhythm and, unusually for Espriu, its assonance:
Petita barca
damunt la mar
corre fortuna
llevantejant.
(OC, I, 322)
[The little boat upon the sea runs a risk as it sails towards the rising
sun.]
The boat alluded to here also appears in the next two poems. In the first, the
picture is most likely of a fishing vessel returning to shore in the golden light
of morning, an evocation that encourages the poet to a state of well-being:
‘Sóc. I en un lleu, benigne/ hàlit de vida d’aire’ [I exist. And in a light, benign
breath of life of the breeze] (OC, I, 323). The next poem, ‘Cançó del matí
encalmat’ [‘Song of the Becalmed Morning’] is even more richly emotional:
El sol ha anat daurant
el llarg somni de l’aigua.
Aquests ulls tan cansats
del qui arriba a la calma
han mirat, han comprès,
oblidaven.
Lluny, enllà de la mar,
se’n va la meva barca.
De terra endins, un cant
amb l’aire l’acompanya:
«Et perdràs pel camí
que no té mai tornada.»
Sota la llum clement
del matí, a la casa
dels morts del meu vell nom,
dic avui: «Sóc encara.»
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D. GARETH WALTERS
M’adormiré demà
sense por ni recança.
I besará l’or nou
la serenor del marbre.
Solitari, en la pau
del jardí dels cinc arbres,
he collit ja el meu temps,
la rara rosa blanca.
Cridat, ara entraré
en les fosques estances.
(OC, I, 324)
[The sun has turned the water’s long dream to gold. Those tired eyes
of the one who arrives at the calm have seen, have understood,
forgotten. Far away, beyond the sea, my boat goes away. From inland,
a song accompanies it with the tune: “You will lose yourself on the
journey that has no return.” Beneath the merciful light of the
morning, in the house of the dead of my old name, I say today: “I am
still here”. I shall fall asleep tomorrow with neither fear nor regret.
And the new gold will kiss the serenity of the marble. Alone, in the
peace of the garden of five trees, I have now gathered my time, the
rare white rose. Summoned, now I shall enter the dark rooms.]
This is both wistful and mysterious. The lulling description of the sun on the
sea has a rapt-like intensity, yet against this placid background there emerges
an emotional energy. Here the poet’s weariness is not synonomous with a
defeat of the spirit but the product of acute self-searching. Such an appraisal
involves a recognition of the past, an awareness of the present and a resolution
for the future. There is an intuition of the power of forgetfulness: even the
understanding of experience is no defence against obliviousness of the past.
What the remainder of the poem does is to suggest remedies. First, there is
the indication that alerts the poet to the danger of following a path without a
way back. This suggestion of the desirability of memory is envisaged in terms
of the song of an unidentified singer, and it clearly harks back to the epigraph
at the head of the section, a quotation from a celebrated Spanish traditional
ballad, ‘Romance del Conde Arnaldos’ [‘Ballad of Count Arnaldos’]: ‘Yo no
digo esta canción sino a quien conmigo va’ [I only say that song to the one
who comes with me] (OC, I, 319). This ballad relates how a knight went
hunting on Midsummer’s Day and came across a ship. The sailor piloting the
ship addresses this enigmatic line – an implicit invitation to journey with him –
to the knight. In Espriu’s poem, however, the song is seen as a warning rather
than an enticement, and the poet resolves to look to a path that holds the
possibility of return. To achieve a sense of identity he decides to keep faith with
his ancestors and his own past life. Fittingly, there are echoes of key poems
from earlier books. There is a dynamic quality about the poetry, notwithstanding
the continuing background calm. The assertion of past realities, embodied in
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the ancestral home in Arenys with its ‘garden of five trees’ that had supplied
one of the redemptive insights in Mrs. Death, provokes the poet to a greater
certainty about his present life and enables him to look towards the future
with greater seremity. Indeed, in a recall of poems XXIII–XXV of Cementiri
de Sinera, he probes the dark rooms of the house of memories, determined to
restore firm bonds with his past.
Characteristically, the next poem marks a retreat. Such a tendency for a
poem to be countered by its succcessor has been evident in all of the books
we have examined, but the process is more pronounced in the second section
of El caminant i el mur where poems often appear in antithetical pairs. Thus,
while in the first of the present pair, ‘Cançó del matí encalmat’ [‘Song of the
Becalmed Morning’], there was a positive reaction to the mysterious voice, in
the second, ‘Cançó de la mort resplendent’ [‘Song of Resplendent Death’],
the poet appears doubtful and vulnerable: ‘presoner/ d’un vell cant’ [prisoner
of an old song] (OC, I, 325).
The first of the two poems relating to the afternoon engages in that distinctive
kind of object naming that is associated with the need to record and recover:
Una a una,
en els meus ulls ordeno
les vides conegudes.
Casa, carena, barca,
ample respir de l’aigua,
clara rosa. Amb paraules
sempre noves vestia
la tarda ja nascuda.
(OC, I, 326)
[One by one, I order in my eyes the lives I know. House, hill, boat,
broad breath of water, bright rose. With words that are always new I
clothed the evening that had just been born.]
Here, however, the poet not only ‘arranges’ the objects that he contemplates
by dint of making poetry out of them but, in a beautiful image, clothes them,
thereby enhancing the conception of his craft.
The poem dedicated to evening has something of the immediacy of ‘Les
roses recordades’ from the first section. The epigraph refers to the childhood
recollection that is at the root of the poem, when the Espriu children went to
play on a hillside on the outskirts of Arenys:
S’enduien veus d’infants
el sol que jo mirava.
Tota la llum d’estiu
se’m feia enyor de somni.
El rellotge, al blanc mur,
diu com se’n va la tarda.
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D. GARETH WALTERS
S’encalma un vent suau
pels camins del capvespre.
Potser demà vindran
encara lentes hores
de claror per als ulls
d’aquest esguard tan àvid.
Però ara és la nit.
I he quedat solitari
a la casa dels morts
que només jo recordo.
(OC, I, 328)
[The children’s voices took away the sun that I was contemplating. All
of summer’s light made me long to dream. The clock, on the white
wall, tells how the afternoon goes away. A soft breeze soothes in the
streets at dusk. Perhaps tomorrow the slow hours of light will come
again for my eyes that are so avid for this sight. But now it is night.
And I have remained alone in the house of the dead that only I recall.]
The poem is simple but telling. The carefree picture is a deceptively lingering
one, as though the summer evening could last for ever; the clock that marks
the advance of dusk scarcely disturbs the scene, lulled by a gentle breeze. The
hope that such untroubled experiences could recur is, however, dashed by the
awareness of the present plight. The concentration of negative signifiers –
night, loneliness, death – in the final stanza is decisive and poignant.
The three poems on night that follow unsurprisingly exploit its symbolic
resonances. In the first of these, ‘Cançó de la mort callada’, the familiar
safeguard of naming objects is for once unavailing:
Rellotge: rosa, sorra,
rosa, desert. Després?
Por del perdut que mira
la claror de ponent.
(OC, I, 329)
[Clock: rose, sand, rose, desert. Afterwards? Fear of the man who is
lost, who looks at the light of the setting sun.]
The following lines are especially sombre on account of the impact of two
symbols – the wall and wings – communicating a sense of fear: ‘Mur de la
nit: a penes/ la remor d’unes ales [Wall of night: the faint sound of wings].
The song that follows speaks of the triumph of night, and the sinister
implications of the title are again reflected in the image of the horse, to which
is added here the sound of hunting horns. The conclusion is a simple and
anguished exclamation: ‘Ai, el vell arrelat/ dolor que no té alba’ [‘Ah, the old
ingrained sorrow that has no dawn’] (OC, I, 330). This mood is reflected in
the equally bleak penultimate poem. ‘Por ser cantada en la meva nit’ [‘To be
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Sung in my Night’] (OC, I, 331), but for the temporal section to come full
cycle it is necessary for it to end with a poem about dawn. What we have in
fact is one that relates to the time immediately before dawn, but which, as the
poem’s title indicates, has a religious connection: ‘Just abans de laudes’ [‘Just
before Lauds’]. This association is appropriate as the poem emerges almost
as an elegy for the poet himself, yet one that is enunciated together with the
sound of the song of a bird heralding the radiance of a new day:
Quan els purs llavis reposin, cansats
de la vigília del tercer nocturn,
començarà l’ocell la clarosa lloança.
Jo, que moro i sé
la solitud del mur i el caminant,
et demano que em recordis avui,
mentre te’n vas amb les sagrades hores.
(OC, I, 332)
[When the pure lips rest, weary from the vigil of the third watch, the
bird will begin its pure praise. I, who die and know the solitude of the
wall and the traveller, ask you to remember me today, as you
disappear with the sacred hours.]
This puts us in mind of the reference to Salom’s death in the epigraph to the
third part of Les hores, the social, cultural and civic death marked by the
outbreak of the Civil War. Here, though, there is both a feeling of release from
anguish at the end of the night’s vigil and the strength of resolve, encapsulated
in the juxtaposition of the verbs ‘die’ and ‘know’. Not for the first time we
discern the poet’s ability to look into the darkness and not to be daunted.
*
The third section, ‘El Minotaure i Teseu’ [‘The Minotaur and Theseus’],
lacks the thematic and structural coherence of the first two; indeed the range
and variety of its concerns is apt for a sub-division of the book that has the
implication of labyrinth. It also matches the last part of Les hores in its
complexity of concerns; like the earlier book, too, the third part is longer than
the preceding ones, not only in the number of poems but in their length.
If the previous sections could be said to be concerned with time as memory at
the individual level, then the opening poems of ‘El Minotaure i Teseu’ are given
over to time as history, at the collective level. The opening poem emphasizes the
collective subject through the insistence on a first-person plural form:
Hem pujat el nostre crit a tu
i ens posàvem de puntetes per semblar més alts.
Ens hem vist en la nostra nuesa,
ens hem mirat en la nostra solitud
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D. GARETH WALTERS
i hem engendrat després fills i filles,
al llarg de tot el tedi del nostre temps.
(OC, I, 335)
[We have raised our cry to you and we stood on tiptoe to seem taller.
We have seen ourselves in our nakedness, we have looked at
ourselves in our solitude and later begotten sons and daughters during
the whole tedium of our time.]
The more public pose of this poem is manifested too in a propensity to
exclamation and denunciation. It betrays the same bitterness as do many
poems of Mrs. Death: the awareness of the boredom of existence and the
cruelty of the age. What occurs now with far greater vehemence is the sense
of outrage at such things. The mantle of the Old Testament prophet assumed
by the poet is well suited to such a purpose, while the jangle of the internal
rhyme on ‘-or’ is a piquant touch, inappropriate as it is for the dignity of the
speaking voice in the poem:
. . . Des de la sorra
d’aquest desert, des de l’amarga
profunditat del pou, et clamo
contra l’olor, contra el color, contra el voltor.
[From the sand of this desert, from the bitter depths of the well, I cry
to you against the smell, the colour, the vulture.]
The following poem is even more scathing in its rebuke of the tribe, and the
Jewish-Catalan analogy is obvious. There is repulsion at the cowardice of a
people who are abject before the rule of violence:
Ara, rossí de lladres, poble meu Israel,
suportes que s’altivin servidors insolents,
quan els teus homes prínceps, envilits per la fam,
aprenen amb l’esquena les més subtils raons
de la força.
(OC, I, 336)
[Now, old nag of thieves, my people Israel, you allow insolent
servants to become arrogant, when your princely men, corrupted by
hunger, learn with their backs the subtle reasoning of force.]
The poet bemoans the loss of the tribe’s values and how, by meekly surrendering, it worships false gods: ‘car, ja perduts els arbres, abandonant la llei,/
us heu alçat morts ídols enfront del vostre Déu’ [for, now with the trees lost,
the law abandoned, you have raised dead idols to confront your God].
The following poem, ‘Assaig de càntic en el temple’, is one of Espriu’s
most famous. As such it is often taken out of context, but it is even more
moving when read after the first two poems of the section:
Oh, que cansat estic de la meva
covarda, vella, tan salvatge terra,
i com m’agradaria d’allunyar-me’n,
nord enllà,
on diuen que la gent és neta
i noble, culta, rica, lliure,
desvetllada i feliç!
Aleshores, a la congregació, els germans dirien
desaprovant: «Com l’ocell que deixa el niu,
així l’home que se’n va del seu indret»,
mentre jo, ja ben lluny, em riuria
de la llei i de l’antiga saviesa
d’aquest meu àrid poble.
Però no he de seguir mai el meu somni
i em quedaré aquí fins a la mort.
Car sóc també molt covard í salvatge
i estimo a més amb un
desesperat dolor
aquesta meva pobra,
bruta, trista, dissortada pàtria.
105
(OC, I, 337)
[Oh, how weary I am of my cowardly, old, so savage land, and how
I’d like to go far away to the north, where they say that the people are
clean and noble, cultured, rich, free, vigilant and happy! Then, in the
congregation, the brothers would say disapprovingly: “Like the bird
that leaves the nest, so the man who goes away from his own place”,
while I, by then far away, would laugh at the laws and ancient
wisdom of this my arid people. But I will never have the wish to
pursue my dream and I will remain here until I die. For I, too, am very
cowardly and wild and besides I love with a desperate sorrow this
poor, dirty, sad, unlucky land of mine.]
This is as fine a patriotic poem as could be desired. The critical note of the
previous poem is sounded initially, but it is less severe and shrill. It is not so
much the public voice of the wise man as of a disenchanted member of the
tribe who longs to escape. Indeed, there is an inversion of what happened in
the previous poems: now the speaker is the object of censure, and it is he who
would appear to be disloyal to the wisdom of the ages. There is, however, a
sting in the tail, realized in a movingly ironic fashion: through a recognition
of shortcomings in himself, similar to those he criticized, he affirms a deep
and desperate love for his homeland. The change from ‘terra’ in the second
line to ‘pàtria’ in the last is eloquent.
Following this brave utterance is another poem about love – but of a
markedly different kind. The hard-won and deeply felt love of country yields
to a sardonic piece about human relationships, reminiscent of ‘Poc més o
menys amor’ [‘More or less Love’] in Mrs. Death (OC, I, 267). This cynicism
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D. GARETH WALTERS
is allied to a defensiveness about revealing too much of the self, such as we
saw in the opening poem of the book (OC, I, 307):
Però no vols endevinar mai als meus ulls
qui sóc jo, com sóc jo, i ara m’omples
de buida, densa, sorollosa
argila de paraules,
fins a fer-ne un insalvable mur,
aquest curt pas
que ja del tot em separa
de tu.
(OC, I, 338)
[But you never want to guess from my eyes who I am, how I am, and
now you fill me with empty, dense, noisy words of clay, until out of
it an insuperable wall is erected, this short step that now separates me
completely from you.]
This preoccupation is continued in the sixth poem of the section where the
assertion of privacy – ‘Darrera aquesta porta visc’ [Behind this door I live]
(OC, I, 340) – appears even more to be a pretext for a cry of despair both at
the drab routine of earning a living – ‘meu diari odi contra el pa’ [my daily
hatred against the bread] – and ultimately in the recognition of the emptiness
of his life and his lack of aspirations. These are among the bleakest lines that
Espriu ever penned:
Sí, em pots trobar, si goses,
darrera el glacial no-res d’aquesta
porta, aquí, on visc i sento
l’enyor i el crit de Déu i sóc,
amb els ocells nocturns de la meva solitud,
un home sense somnis en la meva solitud.63
[Yes, you can find me, if you dare, behind the icy no-thing of this
door, here, where I live and feel the longing and the cry of God and
where I am with the night birds in my solitude, a man without dreams
in my solitude.]
Yet never one to engage in self-pity, the poet cannot resist preceding these
lines with a sly sideswipe at future critics who will one day explain his secrets
and so embarrass him: ‘l’alè dels crítics/ un dia aclarirà per a la meva
vergonya’ [‘the breath of the critics will one day clarify for my shame’]. The
close of the following poem, furthermore, serves, as so often, almost as a
rejoinder to the despair previously expressed:
63 According to Castellet, this poem represents one of the clearest expressions of
Espriu’s ‘tragic vision’. Iniciació a la poesia de Salvador Espriu, p. 156.
Escolta, compta ara els passos
d’un orb, el batec feble
del cor que m’he guanyat dintre la fosca.
107
(OC, I, 341)
[Listen, count now the steps of a blind man, the weak beating of the
heart that I have secured for myself within the darkness.]
As with the crucial poems in Mrs. Death, this is humility of the most
empowering kind: the sense of having achieved something modest but not
insignificant in the midst of adversity. The imperative ‘escolta’ has the tone of
one confiding, a sign of self-surrender that is the more telling because of the
repeated refusals to reveal secrets in previous poems.
The immediate consequence of such a gesture is a tough piece of selfexamination. As elsewhere, the poet looks at himself in a mirror and engages
in a frank and sardonic appraisal of his own art. What might appear eloquence
is just fine words, while he is always prone to ambush by darker imaginings:
vaig dir molt lentament clares paraules,
belles, fràgils, altes, les més nobles
que trobava en la foscor del meu record.
Des de sempre, però, allí hi havia
grasses, molles, llefiscoses bèsties,
que dels racons venien fins als llavis,
a rosegar-me els mots mentre naixien . . .
(OC, I, 342)
[very slowly I spoke clear words, beautiful, fragile, lofty, the most
noble that I found in the darkness of my memory. But, always lurking
there, fat, soft, sticky beasts came from the corners to my lips, to
nibble at my words as they came to life . . . ]
The image in the mirror is thus ‘perversa’ [perverse] and the act of writing
becomes ‘una impossible,/ inútil creació per la paraula’ [an impossible,
useless creation through the word].
In the following poem (OC, I, 343) the cynical note continues, but in a
return to the collective rather than the individual preoccupation, such as
occurred at the start of the section. This poem is a meditation on the folly of
men and their leaders, while the next contains a more specifically historical
allusion – the ‘vell setembre’ [a September long ago] refers to the surrender
on 11 September 1714 of the Catalans to the Bourbon king, Philip V. The
Jewish analogy is present, as too the tone of a lamenting prophet, bemoaning
God’s deafness to the hardships of his people:
Oh, les aspres,
desolades paraules
que Déu no escolta, l’àrid
esforç d’aquest meu poble
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D. GARETH WALTERS
sense esperances d’aigua,
sense demà!
(OC, I, 344)
[Oh, the bitter, desolate words that God does not hear, the arid effort
of this my people without hope for water, without tomorrow!]
There follows another shift – characteristic of the section – from the fate of
the tribe to the plight of the individual in a poem that is like those that
employed the metaphors of illness and deprivation in Mrs. Death. The final
sentence of the next poem – appropriately rambling and tortuous – provides
yet another instance of the poet as survivor, clinging to crumbs of consolation:
Cansadíssim,
ja cendra, sols espero,
obert a les ferides
de l’última resposta,
que la cruel rialla
dels de la sang, quan siguin
per sempre a les estances
de la llum, esdevingui,
endins del temps immòbil,
el consol, l’únic gaudi
de la meva tenebra.
(OC, I, 345)
[Very weary, now ash, alone I wait, open to the wounds of the
ultimate response, for the cruel laughter of those engaged in blood,
when they are always in the rooms of light, to become, within a time
that does not move, the consolation, the only joy of my darkness.]
Two poems ensue, again concerned with the poet’s dim view of poetry and
of his own art. If anything, the tone is even more sarcastic than previously:
‘els admirables versos de savis excellents’ [the admirable verses of the wise
and worthy] (OC, I, 346) in the first of these; and ‘aquest art de tan perfecta
escola’ [this art of such a perfect school] (OC, I, 347) in the second. He sees
himself as the Emperor with no clothes, and he is weary of ‘l’excés de mi,
sense missatge’ [the excess of me, without a message] (OC, I, 346).
The next two poems, ‘Llibre dels morts’ [‘Book of the Dead’] and ‘Perdut
en un paisatge de pelegrí clave’ [‘Lost in a Pilgrim’s Key Landscape’] form a
characteristic antithetical pairing. The title of the first of these (OC, I, 348) is
an allusion to the Egyptian Book of the Dead and the poem itself serves as a
reminder of the value of memories and objects.64 The second poem throws
cold water over such a positive attitude as it concludes in a gesture of defeat:
64 The influence of The Book of the Dead on Espriu’s poetry has been described by
Castellet, Iniciació a la poesia de Salvador Espriu, pp. 94–106.
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‘Inútilment cridaràs al desert/ el desesper del teu dolor de cec’ [Uselessly you
will cry to the desert/ the despair of your blind man’s sorrow] (OC, I, 349).
It is often from such depths that Espriu is able to pluck a poem of immense
strength. So it is with the sixteenth of the section, ‘Ho canta sempre una
escanyada veu’ [‘A Strangled Voice Always Sings It’]:
De sobte, en un dia tancat, quan la pluja
et fa proper, sols per a tu, el respir de les flors,
i lentes naus es perden en mars d’incerts perills,
i l’estrany temps s’ajaça com un vell gos cansat,
després de ben tornar-te als peus del Caçador,
sents com pels llargs camins de les teves ferides,
enllà de les dents closes dels teus morts,
en una resignada solitud arriba,
des del fons de la teva petita rebellia,
una clara, plena, humil, acceptació.
Aleshores diràs: «Sí, tot és just.»
Però no abans, mai abans, sinó quan vingui
amb l’aigua molt callada el respir de les flors.
(OC, I, 350)
[Suddenly, on a closed day, when the rain brings the breath of flowers
near you, just for you, and slow ships are lost on seas of uncertain
danger, and the strange time lies down like an old, tired dog, after
having safely returned to the Hunter’s feet, you feel how along the
long roads of your wounds, beyond the closed teeth of your dead,
there arrives in resigned solitude, from the depths of your little
rebellion, a clear, full, humble, acceptance. Then you will say: “Yes,
all is just.” But not before, never before, but only when the breath of
the flowers comes with the silent water.]
That Espriu should have included the word ‘slow’ is apt given the mood evoked
both by the way in which time is envisaged and by the leisurely pace of the
poem – the division of the opening two lines establishes a tempo that is
unhurried. The emotional timbre of the poem, no less, suggests an adagio of a
richly harmonic hue: the precision with which a scene and a moment is
captured is sensuous. It is not quite a serene poem, however: the drift towards
rhapsody is absent, as memory and nostalgia do not figure on this occasion.
There is beneath the measured pulse of the poem a tension that is the product
of waiting. Yet, almost as in the mystical experience, the desired goal arrives of
its own will – suddenly, as the opening phrase of the poem indicates – although
it requires the receptive subject. To this end, receptivity is tantamount to patience – patience not only in the sense of waiting uncomplainingly
but also with its etymological meaning of suffering. And if the word ‘slow’ is a
pointer to the mood, then ‘humble’ is a significant term for the posture. There
is a matching simplicity in the phrase that is articulated towards the end: ‘tot és
just’ [all is just]. Simple though it is as a phrase, it is a recognition that will have
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come at the price of pain and bitterness. Here the poet has transcended such
emotions, and protest has been turned into nothing less than gratitude.
The value of such moments is once more emphasized by means of contrast.
Yet the next poem does not initially indciate this:
Mentre la llum encara
és als camps i retornen
de la lenta llaurada
els bous a l’establia . . .
(OC, I, 351)
[When the light is still in the fields and the oxen return from their
slow pasture to the stall . . .]
This, however, is the setting for a procession of blind beggars; the poem’s
title, ‘El vell estimat Brueghel ho ha contat així’ [‘Dear Old Brueghel Related
it Thus’], alludes to a painting on the topic that also inspired Espriu to write a
book of haikus some years later. The poem is in the vein of several grotesque
pieces in Mrs. Death and it ushers in another that is redolent of submission to
whatever life may bring, envisaged as the force of nature:
En molta terra reposes els peus,
damunt la humida mort esdevens arbre.
Sense ja nom, ni cap fill, ni consol,
t’estimes, solitari, en cada mancament.
(OC, I, 352)
[You rest your feet on large tracts of land, you become a tree upon
damp death. Without a name, now, nor son, nor consolation, you
value yourself, in your solitude, in every defect.]
The last two poems embody another contrast: between Salom, Espriu’s alter
ego, who figures in the title of the first, ‘Escrit a manera de Salom’ [‘Written
in the Manner of Salom’], and Espriu himself, whose name, unusually,
appears in that of the second, ‘Sentit a la manera de Salvador Espriu’ [‘Felt in
the Manner of Salvador Espriu’]. The mood of these last two poems is
complex: the first one is tentative in its questioning, and concludes disconcertingly that endurance, aspiration and awareness are unavailing:
Passos i temps em guien a la pau,
i crido amb antic mot el meu desig.
Però setir només, sense comprendre,
no em salvarà del vell furor del vent.
(OC, I, 353)
[Footsteps and time lead me to peace, and I shout with an ancient
word my desire. But, merely to feel, without understanding, will not
save me from the old fury of the wind.]
In the final poem there is a brief allusion to the poet’s sense of mission, but,
as with the previous one, there is an anguished awareness that this is not enough:
Silenciós, m’alço rei de la nit
i em sé servent dels homes del dolor.
Ai, com guiar aquest immens dolor
al clos de les paraules de la nit?
111
(OC, I, 354)
[Silently, I rise up as king of the night and I know myself to be the
servant of men who are sorrowful. Ah, how to lead this vast sorrow
to the enclosure of the words of night?]
The book concludes with lines that are sober and haunting, especially when
we catch a fleeting glimpse of what has been lost:
I em perdo i sóc, sense missatge, sol,
enllà del cant, enmig dels oblidats
caiguts amb por, només un somni fosc
que va sortir dels palaus de la llum.
[And I lose myself and I am, without message, alone, beyond song,
among the forgotten who fell in fear, only a dark dream which went
away from the palaces of light.]
Yet, bleak as the notion of the poet having no message may seem, the feeling
of determined solidarity with the dead and defeated implies that presence and
witness may be just as potent as message and communication. A similar
sentiment will recur at the end of the last in the series of books that make up
the palindromic cycle, Final del laberint.
Final del laberint
Castellet believes that Final del laberint is Espriu’s most hermetic book.65
Despite, or perhaps because of, that, with the possible exception of La pell de
brau, it is also the one that has been the subject of greatest critical interest.
Unlike the other book, however, Final del laberint has provoked unusually
detailed analyses. A common factor in several of these has been the attempt
to uncover patterns and structures. Indeed, while sharp differences emerge in
interpretations of the book’s message, commentators largely concur in
accepting the presence of various journeys or quests within the sequence of
thirty, mainly short, poems.
As with his reading of Mrs. Death, Castellet implies a division into two
equal parts, although he also refers to a ‘final itinerary’ for the concluding
poems.66 The most explicit division, however, appears in the two most
developed accounts of the work. Pijoan i Picas envisages four sections: the
65
66
112
D. GARETH WALTERS
descent into the labyrinth (I–II); the ascent towards God (III–XXII); the
sea-journey (XXIII–XXVI); and, overlapping with the previous, the ascent to
the sacred mountain (XXV–XXX).67 Josep Grau i Colell believes the work
to comprise six stages, most of which he terms tests or challenges.68 The
completion of the final challenge, he argues, is what marks the ‘end of the
labyrinth’ (p. 135).
The approaches of these two critics differ considerably. While Grau i Colell
provides a largely descriptive, sometimes periphrastic, account of content and
development, only occasionally venturing into exegesis, Pijoan i Picas is only
too ready to engage in explanation by definition, frequently of a disconcertingly
assertive and deductive nature. Thus, in her view, the shepherd who appears
in poems from the early part of the book is not only a symbol of God – as
other commentators suggest, albeit in a rather less dogmatic way – but he is
also ‘el Déu de la infantesa’ [the God of childhood] and, moreover, ‘el Déu
del somni de la infantesa de la humanitat’ [the God of the dream of humanity’s
childhood].69 The wind that appears in the same poems is both ‘l’alé del
pastor-Déu’ [the breath of the God-shepherd] and ‘el canal per arribar a la
unió amb Déu’ [the channel to arrive at union with God] (p. 57). What this
critic also does is to make a sweeping statement about a symbol in advance
of a consideration of its contextual function. For example, we are informed,
before we read of how it operates in the poem, that ‘L’aigua és la substància
de la temporalidad, fugissera com el temps’ [Water is the substance of the
temporal, as elusive as time] (p. 60). Such processes involve assertion prior to
proof and are succeeded by a discussion which is then shaped to provide the
proof.
In mitigation of such an approach it has be acknowledged that Final del
laberint is richer in allusions and echoes than any of the other books
considered thus far; Miralles refers to its ‘conjunt riquíssim de suggeriments
que ens envien a diverses cultures’ [very rich amalgam of suggestions that
send us to diverse cultures].70 Even though his observations on the book only
occupy a couple of pages, he is considerably more nuanced than Pijoan i
Picas in his judgement, as, for instance, in his understanding of the function
of the significance of the shepherd: ‘Diverses figures divines (Apollo com
Osiris) poden ser el pastor’ [Various divine figures (Apollo or Osiris) could
be the shepherd] (p. 420). By contrast with Pijoan i Picas he is more alive to
the co-existence of different cultures in such a conception. Egyptian myths,
67 Maria Isabel Pijoan i Picas, Espriu en la fi del laberint (Barcelona: Publicacions de
l’Abadia de Montserrat, 1989).
68 Josep Grau i Colell, ‘Itineraris del jo líric en Final del laberint’, in Salvador Espriu:
Algunes cartes i estudis sobre la seva obra, pp. 107–35.
69 Espriu en la fi del laberint, p. 60.
70 Carles Miralles, ‘Salvador Espriu’, p. 420.
113
in particular, have a particular importance in this collection, as Castellet has
amply demonstrated.71 The texts that have come down to us as The Book of
the Dead would have fascinated someone who was, as Castellet puts it, a
‘frustrated Egyptologist’ (p. 100).72
Of all the commentators, however, it is Katalin Kulin who has supplied the
most specific account of how these diverse cultural allusions function.73 She
is very effective in pinpointing the detail, from the classical mythological
references (Narcissus, Acteon and Artemis) to the Egyptian sources (the way
in which the tears shed by the god Ra produce bees). She is not exempt,
however, from the kind of over-interpretation that mars the study by Pijoan i
Picas, justifying such a heavy-handed approach by the book’s ‘complexity’:
‘La complexitat d’aquest cicle poètic demana l’analisis detallat de tots els
motius en cada poema, car és millor d’arriscar el retret d’ingènua prolixitat
que caure en una interpretació impressionista’ [The complexity of this poetic
cycle requires a detailed analysis of all the motives in every poem, because it
is better to run the risk of ingenuous prolixity than lapse into impressionistic
interpretation] (p. 253). As we have seen already, her association of the
shepherd with Christ provoked a sceptical response in Espriu (see above
p. 24). Indeed, in the fascinating interview which Pijoan i Picas disarmingly
includes as an appendix to her book on Final del laberint, the poet constantly
refuses to acknowledge such sources as the New Testament and the mystical
poetry of St John of the Cross.74 The interview epitomizes the evasive and
sceptical response of the poet, though the tone is impeccably courteous and
humble. His wariness about being wrongly interpreted is manifested in the
way in which he refuses to accept the premise of certain questions, and claims
not to be able to answer others. He also regards the proposition that the book
could be divided into two parts as wrong-headed: ‘Aleshores, parlar de dues
parts en una obra que es va realitzar amb tanta fluïdesa i sense cap pausa, tal
vegada, podria semblar un contrasentit’ [So, to speak of two parts in a work
that was achieved with such fluidity and without a pause, could seem a
contradiction] (p. 215). One can only wonder what he would have made of the
division into four or six parts.
Even though we should never feel pressured into attributing primacy to
what writers say about their own works, this discrepancy in almost everything
to do with Final del laberint between Espriu and his commentators should
give us food for thought. His misgivings on this occasion cannot be attributed
For the text and a brief study of this work, see E. A. Wallis Budge, The Book of the
Dead, with a new introduction by David Lorimer (London, Boston, Melbourne and
Henley: Arkana, 1985).
73 Katalin Kulin, ‘Anàlisi de Final del laberint’, Revista Canadiense de Estudios
Hispánicos, 13 (1988), 253–70.
74 Pijoan i Picas, Espriu en la fi del laberint, pp. 215–16.
71
72
114
D. GARETH WALTERS
for a desire for privacy because what is at stake are sources and intentions
rather than revelation. It is misrepresentation, not intrusion, that he fears.
In the prologue to the first edition of the collection, Espriu refers to the two
epigraphs: extracts from the work of the mystic Meister Eckehart and the
theologian Nicholas de Cusa that are speculations of the nature of what has
been termed ‘negative theology’ – the attempt to define or to attain God in terms
of negation, renunciation and absence.75 Espriu states that he left these quotations – in German and Latin respectively – untranslated because he believed
his readers would not require them.76 In Castellet’s view this observation is
ironic because he believes that readers need not only a translation but also an
explanation of these passages.77 There is, however, a good case for taking
Espriu’s words at face value because to do so would be consistent with recognizing his anxiety about wrong-headed analyses. His diffidence about the
epigraphs could be seen as an implicit appeal for readers to focus on what
comes out of the poetry rather than what goes into it – as the latter is a false
priority that can lead to the imposition of the ideology of the sources upon the
experiencing of text. Doubtless he would have approved of such finely-judged
summations as that of Miralles when referring to a passage from poem VIII: ‘Hi
ha figuracions mítico-religioses inconcretes darrera d’aquests versos, però que
llur sentit, globalment, és místico-religiós i té com a rerafons la mort’ [There are
unspecific mythico-religious figurations behind these verses, but their meaning,
on the whole, is mystical-religious, having death as a background].78 The key
word here is ‘inconcretes’ [unspecific] because it reveals an understanding of
how sources would have functioned in the making of these poems. For writers
as widely read and – perhaps more importantly – deeply read as Espriu, sourcematerial would have been assimilated and absorbed to such an extent that, to
parapharse T. S. Eliot’s famous dictum about Donne, thoughts or ideas would
have become experiences. One could argue that to extract influences and define
borrowings might be a valid exercise for less erudite poets, who would be likely
to be more self-conscious about their sources.
In any case, we stray into infertile territory with a book like Final del laberint
once we slip from talking about the poems as integrated pieces – the outcomes
of assimilation – to talking about the sources as though they had an independent function. If we fall into this habit – and the decoding approach readily
leads to it – then we will no longer savour the distinctive taste of a poem. We
will be content with a perception of what we believe to be the precursor or
precursors to which that feeling has a relationship, precursors that it is as
unnecessary as it is sometimes difficult to pinpoint.
75
76
77
78
See Castellet, Iniciació a la poesia de Salvador Espriu, pp. 127–40.
Cited in Pijoan i Picas, Espriu en la fi del laberint, p. 12.
Carles Miralles, ‘Salvador Espriu’, p. 420.
115
As with the previous books, I believe it is worthwhile acknowledging the
development of the poetic presence by an awareness of the shifts and
emphases of thoughts and emotions. The analytical consensus on Final del
laberint – whether we subscribe to the two-part, four-part or six-part division –
is that it has a wandering and restless quality: the changes of scene and symbol
as well as the clearly marked acts of journeying testify to such a dynamic of
movement and exploration.
The first two poems, however, do not suggest such events. The opening
piece has been the subject of much detailed consideration; it is what Castellet
chose for his sample analysis of a poem by Espriu.79 Commentators have
drawn attention to a connection between the closing lines of El caminant i el
mur – ‘només un somni fosc/ que va sortir dels palaus de la llum’ [only a dark
dream/ that went away from the palaces of the light] (OC, I, 354) and the first
two lines of Final del laberint: ‘Amb lent dolor esdevé somni fosc/ aquella
llum dels altíssims palaus’ [‘With slow pain that light from the high palaces
becomes a dark dream’] (OC, I, 359).
Yet, to my knowledge, nobody has noted a link between lines that occur
later in the poem and the very first poem of the previous book, ‘No t’he de
donar accés al meu secret’ [‘I Must not Give You Access to my Secret’]. The
opening of this poem reads: ‘Enllà de l’odi altíssim de la presó, potser/ els
tendres camps encara són caminats pel sol?’ [Are the gentle fields beyond the
lofty hatred of the prison still visited by the sun perhaps?] (OC, I, 307). The
closing lines of the one from the later collection contain the same image:
Però jo, que sabia el cant secret de l’aigua,
les lloances del foc, de la gleva i del vent,
sóc endinsat en obscura presó,
vaig davallar per esglaons de pedra
al clos recinte de llises parets
i avanço sol a l’esglai del llarg crit
que deia per les voltes el meu nom.
(OC, I, 359)
[But I, who knew the water’s secret song, the praises of the fire, the
soil and the wind, am plunged in a dark prison, I went down the stone
steps to the confined enclosure of smooth walls and I advance alone
to the terror of the long cry that spoke my name through the vaults.]
The poet inhabits a dark prison in these two poems, yet in both there are
glimpses of something better. As so often in Espriu, however, these perceptions
of remedy are fugitive: the tentative question in the poem from the earlier
collection and the lost connections with nature – imaged through the four
elements – in the other. This similarity between the opening poems of the two
79
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D. GARETH WALTERS
collections makes us aware of how each cycle has to undertake the same kind
of struggle. Whatever gains or advances may be achieved by the end of each
book seem to be forfeited as the poet has to go back to the start to re-engage
with his task.80 This dynamic of seeking is already inscribed in the heroic
intent with which the poet describes his arduous task, though this will not
begin immediately.
The second poem, indeed, opens with another image of imprisonment:
He caminat estances de la casa
on la destral del llamp no brilla mai.
Perquè no té finestres,
no podia saber.
Perquè no hi ha cap porta,
no en podia fugir.
(OC, I, 360)
[I have walked through the rooms of my house where lightning’s axe
no longer shines. Because it has no windows, I could not know.
Because there is no door, I couldn’t escape.]
This claustrophobic house is reminiscent of ones encountered in earlier
collections: the evocation of the family home in Arenys de Mar is a site of
self-discovery, an image also of the self. Yet in this place of darkness the poet
is not alone: he hears the sounds of lament from outside the house and the
self, and from this he derives, as he has before, the empowering traits of
solidarity, pity and responsibility:
Enllà dels passadissos sense llum
avança contra mi un terrible plor,
un plany elemental per altes prades,
per lliures vents i boscos i la nit
ampla i oberta sota les estrelles.
En un extrem perill de mort, em sento molt
germà d’aquell dolor que ja s’atansa,
orb i enemic.
Aleshores, quan la sang
és escampada amb ira per la roja tenebra,
esdevinc justificat, home sencer.
I diuen els meus llavis,
nascudes del coratge, del compassiu somriure,
obrint-me finalment l’únic pas de sortida,
80 See D. Gareth Walters, ‘Salvador Espriu 1945–55: la poética de la supervivencia’, in
Voces subversivas: Poesía bajo el régimen, ed. Trevor J. Dadson and Derek W. Flitter
(Birmingham: Department of Hispanic Studies, University of Birmingham, 2000), pp.
49–60 (at p. 60).
117
unes poques, fràgils, clares
paraules de cançó.
[Beyond the corridors without light a terrible lament advances
towards me, an elemental weeping across high meadows, through
free winds and forests and the vast and open night beneath the stars.
In extreme danger of death, I feel myself a brother of the approaching
pain, blind and hostile. Now, when blood is shed in anger in the red
dusk, I am justified, a complete man. And my lips, born of courage,
of the compassionate smile, finally opening my only path of escape,
utter a few fragile, clear words of song.]
Indeed so potent are these virtues that they give rise to the ‘song’ that provides
the way out of the house, though not out of the labyrinth. This, I would
suggest, in defiance of some critics, is not the house/prison of the first two
poems but, rather, the complex of journeys of discovery that begin with the
third poem.
The kaleidoscopic nature of these quests is enhanced by the diverse roles
assumed by the poet-persona and through his encounters with figures who, as
we have seen, draw on different cultures and mythologies. More than with
other books one can provide a coherent, if limited, summary of the narrative
thread that begins with the third poem and which is continued throughout. In
the first of the adventures the poet-protagonist meets a shepherd (III–IV) and
they go near a stream from which they drink (V). After a reference to the
dangers of looking at reflections in the water (VI) there appear a stag and a
hunter (VII). Night falls (VIII) and with it a fear of being hunted (IX), though
it is only when dawn comes that the stag seems to be killed (XI). The hunter
and the stag are replaced by a tree – into which we might presume that the
protagonist/stag has metamorphosed (XII–XIV) – only for this, too, in turn,
to die (XV). This process is succeeded by the concept of digging in the earth,
an act of cultivation that is a metaphor of poetic craft (XVI). There ensue
several poems that are meditations on the nature of poetry, including a
consideration of the relationship between the poet and his people
(XVII–XXII). A new scene emerges with the evocation of the sea and the poet
as voyager (XXIII–XXIV). There is yet another change when the protagonist
arrives at the shore and is beckoned by fires on the hillside to undertake his
final journey through meadows towards the mountain (XXV–XXVIII). He
reaches the snow-covered peaks and experiences a sense of release, although
such an experience is couched in an emphatically negative fashion
(XXIX–XXX).
Such a summary, akin to the one by Delor i Muns cited in part 1 (see
pp. 25–26), is wholly inadequate as a way of talking about the poetry; its
descriptive and reductive character is warranted only by the specific need in
this instance to suggest the mobile, if not voluble, character of Final del
laberint. In particular, we do not derive from it an understanding of the tone
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D. GARETH WALTERS
and manner of the collection which has the same concise feel as the first and
second parts of Les hores.
As an example of this kind of poem let us consider the seventh of the
collection:
Esdevindrà la tarda,
cérvol, mort amagada.
Or, presonera llum
als palaus de l’aranya:
claror de sol ponent
a poc a poc filava.
El corn del caçador
em cerca per la llarga
ferida de la set
en el mirall de l’aigua.
Com els ulls de la nit
m’acollien, em saben!
Molt lentament el glaç
allunya les paraules.
(OC, I, 365)
[The afternoon will become, stag, hidden death. Now imprisoning
light in the palaces of the spider: the brightness of a sunset was slowly
spinning. The hunter’s horn looks for me along the long wound of
thirst in the water’s mirror. How the eyes of night welcomed me, know
me! Very slowly the ice moves away the words.]
With poems of this kind we are often stretched: compelled to make connections
and deductions if we seek an understanding along the lines of what the poem
‘is about’. Such a procedure is not of itself defective if only because it is well
nigh instinctive. The danger arises when we do not concede the provisionality
or even unreality of the connections and, in the strictest sense of the phrase,
‘jump’ to conclusions. Thus the brief opening stanza of poem VII offers us three
nouns whose relationship to each other is undefined, yet which permit us to
hazard a linkage: the stag will meet its death in the afternoon. What we should
then acknowledge, though, is that the poem does not say this. Indeed, the verb
implies that in some way the afternoon will ‘become’ the stag or the stag’s
sudden death, but before we can affirm this we have to heed the punctuation:
the comma after ‘tarda’ militates against interpreting the transformations of the
afternoon as either of the following nouns.
The third stanza begins with a clarification that connects the stag to the
poetic subject. What follows is another kind of ellipsis: not a lack of
connections but a condensation of images. Thus, past (the stag’s thirst, the
reflection in the water), present (the sound of the hunter’s horn as he closes
119
in for the kill) and future (the wound he will inflict upon the stag) are
telescoped into a single sentence – represented as a single rather than several
acts. One of the benefits of an approach to reading that is relaxed rather than
intense – what is sometimes mischievously labelled ‘impressionistic’ as
opposed to ‘analytical’ reading – is that we will not perceive the description
as a contrived effect. Instead, it will appear as natural and appropriate: a blur
of images and feelings that the adoption of a linear pattern of narrative
explanation will cause us to miss.
The final sentence provides a potential problem. It is only a problem,
though, if we want to connect what it says with what has gone before in too
consequential a way. Admittedly, the nouns have a possible relationship with
previous images: the ice with the water, the words with the poetic presence,
figured as the stag. The trouble with this linkage is that it encourages a
speculation that takes us out of the poem: the water becoming ice could
symbolize the coldness of death, and with death the poet’s words would be
removed. Such an understanding could not be shown to be wrong because,
given the terms of the debate, the only counter-argument would be an alternative deduction. This kind of process is, however, unnecessary. If instead of
isolating the two nouns, ‘ice’ and ‘words’, we read the sentence as a whole –
which after all is what the poet has seen fit to give us – then we can appreciate
from the impact of the adverb and the verb, as well as of the nouns, the
sensation of life ebbing away. Such a way of reading and interpreting is
rigorous in outcome, despite the apparent relaxation of the methodology,
because it is comprehensive and ingestive, unlike noun-based decoding which
tends to the licence of word-association.
Another difficulty that arises with such concise utterances is of a kind we
saw previously in Mrs. Death. This involves not so much knowing what is
happening so much as who is doing things or to whom things are happening.
This is an uncertainty that is likely to arise when pronouns are used and when
subjects are undefined or varied. Among such poems is number XV:
És acabada la mort de l’arbre,
amb la destral ja tallaves el tronc.
És acabat el vell dolor de l’arbre,
i te l’enduies a fer-ne gran foc.
Caves la terra esdevinguda eixuta,
on s’assecaven les arrels del plor.
Caves endins de les teves paraules:
no saps trobar-ne la cançó.
(OC, I, 373)
[The death of the tree is finished, with the axe you were already
cutting the trunk. The old sorrow of the tree is finished, and you took
it away to make a great fire from it. You dig the earth that has become
barren, where the roots of weeping became dry. You dig inside your
words: you cannot find the song there.]
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D. GARETH WALTERS
This poem occurs at mid-point in the book and it marks a significant shift:
the introduction of the motif of creativity (digging in the soil, making the poem)
after the death of the tree. The second-person form of the first stanza obviously
alludes to the woodcutter; that of the next two lines, to the tiller in the fields;
and that in the last two lines, to the poet in search of a poem. This succession
of diverse figures contained in the second-person pronoun form has been well
described by Grau i Colell. He observes how the process betrays an antithesis:
‘Ens trobem, doncs, davant de noves metamorfosis: llenyataire (negatiu) en
cavador (positiu) i aquest, a la vegada, en cavador-poeta o “cultivador” de les
“paraules”, que no pot ésser altre que el mateix jo líric desdoblat en un tu de
referència’ [We discover new metamorphoses, therefore: wood-cutter (negative)
to digger (positive) and he, in turn, to digger-poet or ‘cultivator’ of the
‘words’].81 Yet the poem’s form and phrasing, founded on anaphora, gives the
impression neither of discrete figures nor of sharp contrasts. According to Grau
i Colell the structure is akin to the parallelistic system of the Psalms (p. 122),
and it thus encourages us to envisage the second-person form as one, not many.
This is not a hair-splitting distinction about how we read: it is a fundamental
assumption about what is being read. While the analysis by parts suggests the
intervention of several figures, the reading as a whole, and of the whole, makes
us believe that the woodcutter and the tiller are assimilated by the poet – that
they are not so much figures that precede him as figures that represent him, in
the manner of images and referent.
Indeed such a conception of the poet as central to this pivotal poem is
reflected in the immediately succeeding poems. There is, as in most of the
preceding collections, the idea of the poet as the teller of words, though we
will not have come across anything as resonant and emphatic as poem XIX.
The opening stanza provides the formula for the rest of the poem:
Diré del vell foc i de l’aigua.
Si crema molt la neu,
glaçava més la flama.
(OC, I, 377)
[I shall speak of the old fire and of the water. If the snow burns a lot,
the flame froze more.]
Each of the six stanzas begins with the verb ‘say’, changing from the future
to the present in the final one:
Dic la pluja, la pluja, la pluja clara
i el plor de l’endinsat
sense retorn per l’aigua.
81
Grau i Colell (1995), ‘Itineraris del jo líric en Final del laberint’, p. 123.
121
Dic el nom del no-res
enllà del fons de l’aigua.
[I speak the rain, the rain, the bright rain and the weeping of the
introvert who cannot return by water. I say the name of the no-thing
beyond the depths of the water.]
This poem is heady in the way in which it focuses on the objects of the natural
world, incantatory by dint of the repetition of ‘aigua’ at the end of seven of its
lines, and therapeutic in its capacity to absorb paradoxes and in its unexpected
power of healing. Yet at the very end of this life-enhancing utterance there
occurs a phrase – ‘el nom del no-res’ [the name of the no-thing] – that was
employed in the previous poem and which will become a motto for the
remainder of the collection.
This phrase is connected to the negative theology that was outlined in the
epigraphs that Espriu, it will be recalled, chose not to translate. The
incorporation of a negative element at the end of poem XIX should alert us to
his potential for countering the atmosphere established in one poem with an
opposing one in an adjacent piece. Accordingly, the opening line of the next
poem – ‘I després el silenci’ [And afterwards the silence] (OC, I, 378) –
immediately cuts the ground from underneath the feet of the celebratory
poem XIX.
In previous books the negative aspect of the poet’s craft often entailed
calling into question his function, the very value of what he does. In Final del
laberint, however, there is a more drastic rebuttal of his powers. This comes
to a head in poem XXII, a dialogue between the poet and his people, as
suggested by the exchanges between first-person singular and plural:
– Recorda’t de nosaltres,
per sempre allunyats de la llum de la barca,
privats dels camins del mar i de les ales.
Amb la terra esperàvem la pluja rara,
la set demanava una almoina clara.
La pluja venia i ens era contrària,
ens tancava enllà d’altes reixes d’aigua,
apagava el clam d’ombres ja penades.
Però amb els teus ulls nosaltres ploràvem
i ens fèiem arrel, l’arrel més amarga
d’aquest vell dolor d’amagades llàgrimes.
Plorem dintre teu, dins de les paraules,
en cada una de les teves paraules,
perquè ens recordis avui encara.
– El meu temps estrany el dol esborrava.
Molt a poc a poc la llosa va caure:
ni amb el vostre plany no podreu alçar-la.
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D. GARETH WALTERS
– Moríem en tu o has mort amb nosaltres?
Ets aquí també, ja cançó acabada?
Si per tu sentim com el toc s’enlaira,
que fosc han sonat les fosques campanes!
(OC, I, 380)
[‘Remember us, removed forever from the light of the boat, deprived of
the pathways of the sea and the wings. With the land we waited for the
rare rain, thirst demanded clear alms. The rain came and opposed us,
shutting us off beyond the high bars of water, and extinguishing the
protest of shadows already full of sorrows. But with your eyes we wept
and made ourselves root, the bitterest root of that old sorrow of hidden
tears. We weep within you, within the words, in each one of your
words, so that you would still remember us today.’ ‘Grief erased my
strange time. The gravestone slowly fell: not even with your lament
will you be able to reach it.’ ‘Did we die in you or have you died with
us? Are you here too, with a song that is already finished? If we hear
through you how the pealing rises, how dark the tolling of dark bells!’]
The long opening petition is heart-felt and redolent of despondency: the
tribe is impoverished in spirit and yearns for alleviation, seeing in the poet a
leader who will both suffer with them and, through his art, redeem them. This
is not a novelty. In several places, especially in the final sections of Les hores
and El caminant i el mur and in some of the poems in the central part of Mrs.
Death, there appeared expressions of the poet’s adoption of a pact with his
people, the assumption of leadership and a readiness for self-sacrifice. Yet such
acts do not emerge in poem XXII. The plea falls on deaf ears on this occasion:
it is, as Castellet says, ‘la inesperada ruptura del poeta amb el seu poble’ [the
unexpected break of the poet with his people].82 The poet succumbs wearily to
a death that is more metaphorical than literal, prompting an anguished
realization on the part of those for whom he should be speaking, formulated in
the desperate questions and in a final line that is like a death knell.
The concluding poems are, however, not so much suggestive of defeat as
of withdrawal. There is indeed resolve in the lead-in to the final poems,
nowhere more than in poem XXVI:
Camino amb esforç muntanyes amunt
i avanço per rengles i rengles de flames,
alimares de benvinguda de la nit.
Sento enllà una remor que s’atansa,
lliure galop de cavalls a les prades altes
que veig verdejar passats els límits del darrer bosc.
(OC, I, 384)
[I climb with effort the mountains above and I advance along rows
and rows of flames, night’s beacons of welcome. I hear a sound
82
123
approaching, the free galloping of horses in the high meadows that I
see turning green beyond the boundaries of the last forest.]
The positive indicators are obvious and require little comment except to
observe that there are distinct echoes of Cementiri de Sinera, the book that is
the parallel of Final del laberint in the palindromic scheme. The reminiscence
is evident both in the utilization of verbs of movement and aspiration and in
the repeat of one of the most memorable moments in the whole of Espriu’s
poetry: the evocation of horses running free, previously evoked in poem XXI
of the earlier collection (OC, I, 193).
Yet what such a beacon of expectation ultimately yields is the seemingly
nihilistic conclusion, the ‘no-res’ that has been a keynote of the later poems:
L’aire resplendent
arrela en el plany.
Ales de la sang
drecen a claror.
De la llum a la fosca,
de la nit a la neu,
sofrença, camí,
paraules, destí,
per la terra, per l’aigua,
pel foc i pel vent.
Salvo el meu maligne
nombre en la unitat.
Enllà de contraris
veig identitat.
Sol, sense missatge,
deslliurat del pes
del temps, d’esperances,
dels morts,
dels records,
dic en el silenci
el nom del no-res.
(OC, I, 388)
[The glowing light takes root in the lament. Wings of blood lead to
brightness. From light to darkness, from night to snow, suffering,
path, words, destiny, along the land, through the water, through the
fire and the wind. I save my malign number in unity. Beyond
adversaries I see identity. Alone, without a message, liberated of the
weight of time, of hopes, of the dead, of memories, I say in silence
the name of the no-thing.]
Commentators, I feel, have been over-keen to force the issue on how to read
the ending of the book. There has been an eagerness to explain in theological
terms, presumably because the epigraphs were of this nature. Together with
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D. GARETH WALTERS
the idea of journeying and searching, present in much of the work, this
conception readily leads to the presumption that Espriu was engaged in a
mystical quest. We have already seen how he vehemently denied the influence
of St John of the Cross on his work. Moreover, he pointedly rejected the bait
of a positive or optimistic religious interpretation in response to Pijoan i
Picas’s question about what theological or metaphysical conclusions were to
be drawn from the book. In the poet’s view it was ‘una òbvia conclusió de
fracàs en els dos vessants, teològic i metafísic’ [an obvious conclusion of
failure in the two aspects, theological and metaphysical].83
Yet it is hard to square the notion of failure with the bracing sense of
freedom in this final poem. It is equally difficult to accept it as a mystical
resolution. Perhaps the title of the collection has deceived commentators into
thinking of the book as a having a way out. Rather than a way out, however,
what we have, literally, is a way up – to the snowy mountain peak – and what
we have, emotionally, is an opting out. There is no exit, only a termination. It
is as though the poet has driven himself into the ground: the many journeys
in Final del laberint serve as a summary of the larger journeys that each book
in the cycle has articulated in its distinctive fashion. Indeed, the final poem of
Final del laberint alludes fleetingly to their recourse to the idea of trajectory
as well as to their emotional timbre and settings.
Out of this, the poet nonetheless emerges intact. He surrenders the burdens
of thought and emotion – the price for securing integrity and identity. This is
not, though, tantamount to an abdication of responsibility. The ‘failures’,
Espriu, perhaps advisedly, specified, are those of theology and metaphysics:
they are not of poetry. The poetry remains. Most obviously, a voice is needed
to articulate the nothingness, while, as Arthur Terry has pointed out, if the
poet resembles the philospher by an obligation to pose questions he is distinct
from him by doing so via forms of the imagination.84 The concept of salvation
may be present in both the last two poems, but this is the salvation afforded
by words and poems, not by beliefs and religions.
Finally, the poet’s admission that he has no message is rich in implications.
On the one hand, it suggests that even to try to determine if the mood or ethos
of Final del laberint is positive or negative misses the point. On the other hand,
it could be seen as yet one more warning to interpreters to proceed with care.
And the Olympian ring of the phrase ‘sense missatge’ [without message] also
contains an irony. Given Espriu’s predilection for the shifting stance – his
relentless exploitation of the capacity for poems in a sequence to be able to
question and to contradict each other – it should not surprise us that the final
poem of the final collection in the monumental cycle of five books does not give
us a definitive vision. Yet, within a couple of years of writing Final del laberint
83
84
Pijoan i Picas, Espriu en la fi del laberint, p. 219.
Arthur Terry, ‘La poesia pública d’Espriu’, p. 169.
125
he would be working on a book that, however judged, is the very epitome of
message: La pell de brau. Such an irony is entirely in keeping with the manner
of one who was not only, in the words he employed at the end of his interview
with Pijoan i Picas, ‘un simple home amb les seves contradiccions i les seves
limitacions’ [a straightforward man with his contradictions and limitations],85
but also an inventive and, odd though the description might seem, playful poet.
85
Espriu en la fi del laberint, p. 220.
Part 3
The Later Poetry
La pell de brau
The title of this book alludes to the comparison by the Greek geographer
Strabo of the map of the Iberian Peninsula to a bull hide hung up to dry. Yet
the most important point of influence on the work is Jewish: the use of the
term ‘Sepharad’ to refer to Spain, or, more precisely, Iberia. This was the word
used by the Jews who had been expelled from Spain in the wake of the decree
issued by the Catholic Monarchs in 1492 to refer to their lost land. The word
also figures in a biblical context: the location of the struggle between the
brothers Jacob and Esau. The term is, then, rich in association: the notion of
a war between brothers and, as an overarching image, the analogy between the
peoples of Israel and of Catalonia.
Espriu had already explored this affinity imaginatively and powerfully in
Primera història d’Esther, but in La pell de brau the point of reference is
broader. This was the work that first brought him to the attention of a public
outside Catalonia. It was translated twice into Spanish in the 1960s and
remains to this day the most translated of all Espriu’s books of poetry.1 The
year of its publication was, moreover, something of a watershed in the
movement against the regime in Catalonia. When Franco visited Barcelona in
May 1960 he was subjected to a demonstration at a concert in the Palau de la
Mùsica when members of the audience rose to their feet to sing the Catalan
national anthem. Among those detained after the protest, although he was not
at the concert himself, was Jordi Pujol, who had been responsible for drafting
a clandestine leaflet which had been circulated in advance of Franco’s visit.
It attacks the dictator because of the oppression and corruption of his regime;
it refers to the way in which intellectual and cultural life has been blighted by
censorship; it claims that the rights of working people have been removed.
Franco’s government is ‘rotundament antisocial’ [emphatically antisocial],
the result of concentrating power in an omnipotent leader: ‘En definitiva, tot
el poder radica en les mans d’un sol home, el que ara pensa venir a Barcelona,
que té pel poble i per les seves aspiracions un menyspreu absolut . . .’ [In
essence, all power is rooted in the hands of one man alone, the one who now
1 Among other languages it has been translated into French, German, Italian and
Swedish. For a list of translations see Gassol i Bellet (2003), La pell de brau, pp. 198–99.
THE LATER POETRY
127
intends to come to Barcelona, who has complete contempt for the people and
their aspirations].2 Such ideas are part-and-parcel of the lexicon of dissidence,
and accordingly it is not hard to imagine the kind of ripples that poem XLVI
of La pell de brau would have created:
A vegades és necessari i forçós
que un home mori per un poble,
però mai no de morir tot un poble
per un home sol:
recorda sempre això, Sepharad.
(OC, II, 65)
[At times it is necessary and inevitable that a man should have to die
for a people, but a people should never have to die for one man alone:
always remember that, Sepharad.]
In the climate of muted dissent but greater expectancy evident in such
events as the demonstration in the Palau de la Mùsica and the concerts given
by the singers of the ‘Nova Cançó’ lines like these inevitably exuded a frisson
of subversion. The direct appeal for all Spaniards to heed this message by dint
of the invocation of Sepharad underscores the defiance. Jordi Pujol observed
that it was this work of Espriu’s, above all, that made an impression upon him,
and how his generation had found its poet: ‘Espriu era el poeta que calia a la
generació que havíem nascut sota el signe de la derrota, però que confiàvem
que sempre hi ha una represa’ [Espriu was the poet that suited the generation
of those of us who were born under the sign of defeat, but who trusted that
there is always a recovery].3
Commentators quickly seized upon La pell de brau for its presumed
dissidence and categorized it as a new kind of poetry by Espriu, at an extreme
as ‘una obra reivindicativa, quasi pamfletària’ [a work that was combative,
almost pamphleteering].4 What was distinctive about this new manner, in
their view, was its directness: a willingness to address issues head-on. For
example, in the same poem which appears to point an accusing finger at
Franco we read the following:
Fes que siguin segurs els ponts del diàleg
i mira de comprendre i estimar
les raons i les parles diverses dels teus fills.
[Make secure the bridges of dialogue and seek to understand and love
the different ways of thinking and speaking of your children.]
2 Cited in Documents de Catalunya: recull de textos histórics, ed. Jordi Galofré
(Barcelona: Barcanova, 1990) p. 307.
3 Memòria de Salvador Espriu, p. 145.
4 Gassol i Bellet, La pell de brau, p. 34.
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D. GARETH WALTERS
The opening of poem XXX is in similar vein: ‘Diversos són els homes i
diverses les parles,/ i han convingut molts noms a un sol amor’ [Men are
diverse, and diverse are their languages, and many names have been apt for a
single love] (OC, II, 46). Diversity – a subversive concept over the years of
Franco’s rule. Just as Espriu in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War had
advocated forgiveness for the defeated so, twenty years later, he pleads for
tolerance for the cultural and linguistic variety of Sepharad. Elsewhere,
however, rather than the appeal to generosity it is the evocation of the bleak
and shallow reality of life in Spain in the 1950s with its deprivations and
escapism that comes to the fore. Poem XII has a sardonic note:
No saps que les aixetes s’han fet
perquè no hi ragi l’aigua,
i les cases perquè passis
més saludable fred,
i els trens i els camins per al suport
del meritori nivell
de la general felicitat?
Com que no vol mai ploure,
és clar que no hi ha llum,
i amb el diner no compres
res del que vols i perversament necessites,
excepte l’entrada
per al futbol de les festes
o per a la intangible cursa nacional.
(OC, II, 26)
[Don’t you know that taps have been made so that water won’t flow,
and houses so that you might endure a healthier cold, and trains and
roads to support the worthy standard of general happiness? As it never
wants to rain, it’s obvious that there is no light and with money you
can’t buy anything you want and perversely need, except the ticket for
the football match on Sunday or for the intangible national race.]
Poem XXV appears to encapsulate the resentment of the oppressed against
the capricious and indecent power of those who govern, although once again
Espriu does not spare the compliance of the downtrodden:
Detestem els grans ventres, els grans mots,
la indecent parenceria de l’or,
les cartes mal donades de la sort,
el fum espès d’encens al poderós.
És ara vil el poble de senyors,
s’ajup en el seu odi com un gos,
lladra de lluny, de prop admet bastó,
enllá del fang segueix camins de mort.
(OC, II, 41)
[We hate the big bellies, the big words, the indecent ostentation of
gold, the cards badly dealt by fate, the thick smoke of incense for the
THE LATER POETRY
129
powerful. The community where the masters lived is now vile, it
crouches in its hatred like a dog, it barks from a distance, but nearby
it accepts the stick, beyond the mud it follows the roads of death.]
I have quoted from 4 poems in the collection. La pell de brau, however,
contains another 50, and it would not be an easy task to discover such
seemingly straightforward observations in the vast majority of these. Yet on the
basis of a handful of poems Espriu’s priorities as a poet were being reevaluated.5 Initially the book fitted conveniently into what was termed social
poetry, a style that coincided with the preference for realism rather than
aestheticism. In part, this was a generational change, coinciding with the death
of Carles Riba, Espriu’s one-time teacher, in 1959. Riba had been the Catalan
poet with the highest profile since the Civil War, because of, rather than
despite, his years in exile. Subsequently Joan Fuster suggested that La pell de
brau be labelled civic rather than social poetry because it dealt with the
problems of ‘collective life’.6 This same critic, however, acknowledged that La
pell de brau was more than a commentary on Catalonia around 1960, but in
his conception of the work as complex he downplays its unity and coherence.
The early commentators on La pell de brau were, then, partial in both
senses of the word. On the one hand, the material on which they based their
definitions constituted only a small part of the collection; on the other, through
the limited lens of this handful of poems, they projected an interpretation that
conformed to a socio-literary desideratum. In Heaney’s terms, Espriu could be
made to ‘exercise a leverage of their point of view’. If such a reading was not
quite set in letters of gold it nonetheless became sufficiently established to
provoke a negative critical reaction. Because of its presumed socio-political
flavour, Joan Ferraté considered the work to be ‘inferior’, singling out the most
overtly ‘civic’ poems as ‘trivials i prescindibles’ [trivial and disposable].7
Fortunately, the book was also to benefit from two studies that are among the
earliest and most recent of approaches to the text, those by Arthur Terry and
Olìvia Gassol i Bellet. What both these critics have demonstrated is that La pell
de brau is neither an inferior nor markedly aberrant work; indeed, their
comprehensive surveys suggest that it is as challenging as its immediate
predecessor, Final del laberint.
Its difficulty (for want of a better designation) is, however, of a different
nature from this collection. It is neither as hermetic in manner nor as rigorous
in its development. We could not speak of La pell de brau as we could of Final
del laberint – and Cementiri de Sinera, too, for that matter – in terms of a
5 For a detailed account of the development of this assessment of Espriu as a committed
poet during the 1960s, see Gassol i Bellet, La pell de brau, pp. 17–27.
6 La pell de brau, 18.
7 ‘Salvador Espriu entre els lectors i els crítics’, Serra d’Or, X, no. 110 (November,
1968), 77–9.
130
D. GARETH WALTERS
journey. It is structured upon blocks of poems that do not obviously connect
with each other, even though the trademark connection whereby a word or
image is carried over from one poem to the next is present throughout. Whereas
the collections that form the cycle of five books tend towards concentration and
the precise focus, La pell de brau is distinguished by its variety. In part this is
inevitable given the fact that it is a much larger book than any Espriu had
produced hitherto; it contains more poems (54) and many of these are longer
than the average for the first five books. Yet it is far from being merely a random
collection. Its unity arises not in a thread-like fashion but from a more globally
integrated vision: it is not a gradually unfolding picture but a vaster canvas
whose significance emerges only when all the parts are revealed.
Nonetheless, the opening 10 poems or so are perhaps more tautly coherent
than any comparable grouping in Espriu’s poetry. The first is more straightforward than any of the other opening poems. It both explains the title and
supplies the metaphorical and allusive elements that evolve tenaciously in
succeeding poems:
El brau, en l’arena de Sepharad,
envestia l’estesa pell
i en fa, enlairant-la, bandera.
Contra el vent, aquesta pell
de toro, del brau cobert de sang,
és ja parrac espesseït per l’or
del sol, per sempre lliurat al martiri
del temps, oració nostra
i blasfèmia nostra.
Alhora víctima, botxí,
odi, amor, lament i rialla,
sota la closa eternitat del cel.
(OC, II, 13)
[The bull, in the sand of Sepharad, charged the hide that had been
stretched out, and lifting it converts it into a flag. Against the wind,
this bull hide, of the bull covered in blood, is now a rag coagulated by
the gold of the sun, forever liberated to the martyrdom of time, our
prayer, and our blasphemy. Now, victim, executioner, hatred, love,
lament and laughter, beneath the enclosed eternity of the sky.]
This is an arrestingly vivid way to start a work. The bull does not attack a rival,
but rather the bull hide, rather as though it were a matador’s cape. It is not a
cape, however, but a bloodstained flag that serves as reminder and reproach.
This single picture, rather like a political poster, is both condensed and
allusive: the bull, that echoes Picasso’s Guernica as well as relating to Strabo’s
geographical fancy, is a clear symbol of violence; his aggression is directed
towards his own kind, suggestive of a civil conflict, of a war between brothers;
and the bloodstained flag evokes a troubled and anguished nation. This
memorable opening provides the momentum for the poems that follow. In the
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131
second (OC, II, 14) the bull hide is a reminder of the bloodshed in which all
have been involved; in the third and fourth (OC, II, 15, 16), the protean nature
of the image is revealed when the stretched hide is seen as a drum, the beats
of which are in turn envisaged as the sound of a horse’s hooves. The horse is
associated with a lack of control and with foolish actions, which, in the fifth
poem, leads to a reflection on the unworthiness of the tribe and its moral
deficiency, reflected in its inability to elect a suitable leader:
No pot escollir príncep
qui vessa sang,
qui ha traït o roba,
qui no va alçar
a poc a poc el temple
del seu treball.
(OC, II, 17)
[He who sheds blood, who has committed treason or who steals, who
did not slowly erect the temple of his work, cannot choose a prince.]
A sign of the wickedness of the people of Sepharad is their predisposition to
worship false gods. Such an act is testament to their indulgence in the ‘pecat/
de la guerra sense victòria entre germans’ [sin of the war without victory
between brothers] (OC, II, 18).
The sixth poem and the ones that succeed it dwell on the idea of exile and
memory. Here the analogy with the fate of Israel is more evident. Once again
we hear the harsh words of the prophet, alternating between lament and
condemnation for his land and his people as he evokes the ‘àrids camps sempre
xops de sang’ [barren fields always soaked in blood] (OC, II, 18) and ‘aquest
país aspre i sec,/ ple de sang’ [this harsh and dry land, full of blood] (OC, II, 20).
Yet out of grief comes resolve. One way in which this is manifest is in the
particular kind of attachment to nation, reminiscent of the poem ‘Assaig de
càntic en el temple’ from El caminant i el mur (OC, I, XXX), as in the resolute
response to the proposition that there might be a better land in which to live:
«...
No és certament aquesta
la millor terra que trobàveu
a través de l’ample
temps de prova
de la Golah»,
nosaltres, amb un lleu somriure
que ens apropa el record
dels pares i dels avis,
responem només:
– En el nostre somni, sí.
(OC, II, 20)
[‘. . . This is certainly not the best land that you found during the
immense time of trial of the Golah,’ we with a light smile that reminds
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D. GARETH WALTERS
us of the memory of our parents and grandparents merely reply: ‘In
our dream, yes.’]
There is a weight of emotion in the shadow of the smile – a reaction that is
no less secure for being hard-won.
Such a response is also conducive to a determination to look forward,
hence the clear injunction at the opening of the eighth poem:
No ploreu més el temple
de temps enderrocat.
A ponent us esperen
lliures camins de mar.
(OC, II, 21)
[Weep no more for the temple demolished for so long. At sunset the
free paths of the sea await you.]
Yet this is the land of ‘l’aspre pa’ [bitter bread], a land made barren by
bloodshed. The deprivation suffered by Sepharad – ‘en la gran set d’aigua/
molt fam de pa’ [with great thirst for water much hunger for bread] – inspires
a sardonic edge in the tenth poem, leading to a change of emphasis: from
biblical symbolism to a caustic meditation on contemporary society, notably
in the twelfth poem (OC, II, 26) considered above.
This is succeeded by one of the most intriguing group of poems in the
whole of Espriu’s output. Rather more than with other pieces that we might
classify as difficult – for example the concise and elusive poems that figure in
the first two sections of Les hores – they invite a kind of interpretation that is
tantamount to decoding. Gassol i Bellet’s analysis comprises an indispensable
hermeneutic tool for a reading of the collection, but she warns against what
Umberto Eco has labelled ‘overinterpretation’.8 In this group of poems there
are striking and novel symbols, the combined effect of which provides
another instance of Espriu’s recourse to contradiction: the degeneracy of past
and present together with an urgent hope for the future.
In the first poem of this group, the thirteenth, the point of reference is
neither Sepharad nor contemporary Spain. The setting is a doom-laden
Venice, where death stalks in the guise of the hostess of a squalid inn –
‘Bacco Ernesta, non donna di mal affare’ – suggestive of a brothel. The
ultimate focus is on the dismally furnished rooms themselves:
Empassada l’escala – tres grosses d’esglaons –,
sabem que trobaríem la porta i el fredor
d’aquelles golfes closes a l’aire i a la llum,
en les quals arrambaven, potser per sempre més,
8
La pell de brau, p. 106.
THE LATER POETRY
claus i llistons, filferros, un ben suat amor
d’amo trist i minyona fent dissabtes d’estiu,
una crossa, disfresses de carnaval de nen
amb balls de segurs premis, palanganes d’esmalt
saltat a trossos, marcs, un vell braser d’aram.
133
(OC, II 27)
[Once we have negotiated the stairs – three clusters of steps – we
know that we would find the door and the coldness of the attic closed
from air and light, in which there had been put away, perhaps for
always, nails and slats, wires, the sweaty love of a sad master and a
maid doing the cleaning in the summer, a crutch, children’s carnival
masks for dances that had guaranteed prizes, enamel washbasins now
flaking, frames, an old copper brazier.]
There is a remorseless dreariness in this picture: in the enumerations
articulated within the seemingly unending and tortuous sentence that closes
the poem. Yet, at the end, like a prized possession that is unexpectedly glimpsed
among worthless objects, there is the brazier, whose significance is explained
in the following poem. Its three legs represent justice, honesty and toil – an
image that, as Gassol i Bellot has pointed out, has its origin in the Book of
Jeremiah.9 Most importantly for the immediate purpose of the poem it
represents a means of escape from the nadir of the present, associated as it is
with the appeal to youth and, as Terry indicates, regeneration:10
I convidem a taula els joves que badallen
i els mostrem imperativament el magre menjar,
perquè calmin amb ells una mica la gana
i puguin encendre després, amb els dits balbs,
havent ja obert a l’aire i a la llum les oblidades golfes,
els primers i eterns carbons al braser dels tres peus.
(OC, II, 28)
[And we invite to table the young men who yawn and we imperiously
show them the meagre fare, so that it may assuage their hunger a little
and so that, with numb fingers, having now opened the forgotten attic
to the air and the light, they may afterwards light the first and eternal
coals in the brazier with three legs.]
This faith in a new generation is to find expression in later poems, but
before that happens the conflict of degradation and renewal is manifested in
other symbols: the sun bird that is imprisoned and crucified and an ambiguous
figure by the name of Yehudi who represents Everyman – abject in his
drunkenness but noble in his readiness to sacrifice himself in imitation of the
9
10
‘La poesia pública d’Espriu’, p. 149.
134
D. GARETH WALTERS
bird, a figure who may be the ‘home perdut i gran’ of the nineteenth poem
(OC, II, 35).11 The Christological implications of these images have been
clearly outlined by Gassol i Bellet: the bird represents Christ’s divinity,
Yehudi, his humanity – a reading that is consistent with the necessity of redemption broached in previous poems and which was a prominent idea in Mrs.
Death. The complexity of this part of the book is enhanced by the eighteenth
poem, a piece inspired almost certainly by a literary dinner attended by Espriu
in honour of Josep Pla.12 The use made of this autobiographical detail could
not be more striking: the diners sit beneath the tree upon which Yehudi hangs
and make jocular comments to the dead man (OC, II, 33). The poem –
apparently the embodiment of bad taste – is in Espriu’s burlesque vein, the
scene inviting comparison with the soldiers who mocked Christ from beneath
the Cross. According to Gassol i Bellet, the target is the intellectual elite of
Catalonia, writers who have forgotten their obligation to the people they
serve.13
This section ends with a poem – the twentieth – of a very different kind. It
is in Espriu’s ethical vein and picks up the theme of regeneration. The
concluding injunction has a rousing air, reminiscent of the famous poem
‘Inici de càntic en el temple’ [‘Beginning of a Canticle in the Temple’],
considered in Part 1 (see p. 12):
Omplim ara la quilma d’olives i de blat
i del cor i dels llavis que ja sentim callats,
i ho durem tot a moldre als molins de Sepharad.
Que l’oli, la farina, el dolor i el treball
guareixin Sepharad, rei captaire, el malalt.
(OC, II, 36)
[We now fill the sack with olives and wheat and from our heart and
from our lips for we feel silent, and we take it all to be ground in the
mills of Sepharad. Let the oil, the flour, the sorrow and the toil heal
Sepharad, a beggar king, the sick man.]
Yet before such a process can come to pass, before the ‘sleeping prince’ of the
twenty-second poem is roused to leadership (OC, II, 38), there is a need for
toil, suffering and sacrifice:
Molins de Sepharad:
esdevindran els somnis
a poc a poc reals.
11 After the diaspora, the name Yehudi was understood as being synonymous with
‘Jewish’. See Gassol i Bellet, La pell de brau, p. 107.
12 See Castellet, Iniciació a la poesia de Salvador Espriu, p. 51.
13 La pell de brau, p. 116.
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135
Molí de vent, molí de sang:
cal moldre fins els ossos,
perquè tinguem bon pa.
Baixem, per les paraules,
tot el pou de l’esglai:
ens pujaran mots fràgils
a nova claredat.
(OC, II, 37)
[Mills of Sepharad: the dreams will gradually become reality.
Windmill, mill of blood: we must grind down to the bones, so that we
may have good bread. We go all the way down the well of fear by our
words: fragile words will raise us to a new light.]
Castellet observes that this poem marks a return to a more lofty moral tone,14
while Terry suggests that it is important in the re-establishment of the link of
people with poet that had been severed at the end of Final del laberint – a
connection that will be developed over the remainder of the work, what Terry
designates as the second part.15 It is, however, the anxiety rather than the
certainty of the moralist that is evident in this beautifully economical poem.
It is manifest in the sombre acknowledgement that the blood that has been
shed must serve some purpose yet there is also an awareness that the means
of salvation through words – whether language or poetry – is vulnerable. Like
a prophet, the poet awaits not only the means of salvation but the figure who
can realize it, as seen in a variant of the ‘sleeping prince’ motif in the twentythird poem:
Desperta, desperta i digues quina mà
podrà collir d’aquest vellíssim fang
la crossa de la nova autoritat.
(OC, II, 39)
[Awake, awake and say which hand will be able to pick up the staff
of new authority from this ancient mud.]
Only by displaying the most uncompromising humility can a worthy leader
for the future generations of Sepharad emerge (OC, II, 40). In the meantime
there is the waiting, and, as so often, the requirement for fortitude and
patience elicits a poem of special quality – one that illuminates those that
surround it:
Dèiem «Hivern de Sepharad!
Hem donat senyoria a la foscor i al glaç.»
14
15
‘La poesia pública d’Espriu’, pp. 154–55.
136
D. GARETH WALTERS
Però quan venien els cels d’estiu,
tampoc cap signe d’alba no hi llegim.
Si el vent s’encalma, sentim el respir
del repòs de la terra dormint
aquest difícil somni. Ara sortim
del recer a camp ras, al perill,
i enceníem
focs de guaita en la nit.
(OC, II, 43)
[We said: “Winter in Sepharad! We have given authority to darkness
and ice.” But even when the summer skies came, we read no sign of
the dawn in them. If the wind dies down, we feel the breath of the rest
of the earth as it sleeps this difficult dream. Now we leave our shelter
for the open fields, for danger, and we light warning fires in the night.]
This poem – the twenty-seventh – is as characteristic an Espriu utterance as
one could find. The references to the natural world are, as ever, beautifully
precise. There is a proper sense of what nature can be: there is no abandonment to indulgence either as compensation or in order to force a symbol.
The disengagement of the dawn from the summer skies shows how
meticulous the poet is in not surrendering to the potential impetus of a symbol
and thus slipping into a facile sentimentality. Moreover, this attention to the
detail of images yields the rich subtlety of the second stanza. The anxiety of
the sleeper is soothed by the stillness of night and he is absorbed by the very
pulse of the earth: the extension of the phrase is heartening, an easement of
mind despite the anguish. This emotional equilibrium leads to action, in the
same way as it does over many of the poems in Cementiri de Sinera: through
the serenity that is the product of reason and restraint comes fearlessness.
The beacons of the night provide the light that dawn does not yet supply – an
idea that is again reminiscent of lines from ‘Inici de càntic en el temple’ (OC,
I, 146).
This section closes with poems that reinforce the moral vision – a
preoccupation that appears increasingly authoritative and less shrill as the
collection proceeds. The plea for tolerance that is enunciated in the twenty-ninth
and thirtieth poems is far from the slogan that it could seem from being read out
of context. It emerges, rather, as the product of a generosity that understands the
complex nature of a people with a capacity for redeeming its crimes:
Sí, comprèn-la i fes-la teva, també,
des de les oliveres,
l’alta i senzilla veritat de la presa veu del vent:
«Diverses són les parles i diversos els homes,
i convindran molts noms a un sol amor.»
(OC, II, 46)
[Yes, understand and make yours, too, from the olive groves, the lofty
and simple truth of the wind’s imprisoned voice: “Diverse are the
THE LATER POETRY
137
languages and different the men, and many names will be apt for a
single love.”]
The focus changes again in the following poems. Castellet characterizes
the process as a kind of flashback. In effect, the retrospective element is two-fold
in nature: scenes from the poet’s childhood as mediated through the Sinera
poems of earlier collections. Yet such memories do not provide an idyllic
recollection, for they are accompanied by the more recent awareness of strife
described earlier in the collection, hence the blunt reference to the ‘bona terra
d’odis, xopa de la sang’ [good land for hatreds, soaked in blood] at the end of
poem thirty-three (OC, II, 49). Yet, as so often in Espriu, beyond the images
of dejection and degradation there is a glimmer of something better, as in the
haunting thirty-fifth poem. In the opening lines the leisurely beauty of the
summer scene abruptly fades:
Enlaire van passant blancs ocells vers el sud,
avui, per l’ampla llum d’aquest dia tan llarg,
i a poc a poc acaben camins de bon temps,
es tanquen les darreres portes a la llibertat.
(OC, II, 51)
[White birds pass by above towards the south, today, by the broad
light of this long day, and gradually the paths of good weather cease,
the last doors to freedom are closed.]
Indeed there then follows one of the bitterest motifs in Espriu’s poetry – the
renunciation of dignity, as with the hapless puppets of Mrs. Death:
. . . mentre ballen i ballen
sense parar els nostres peus cansats
i fem riure i riem fins a les llàgrimes,
fins a l’extrema inquietud de l’alegria.
[while our weary feet dance and dance without stopping and we, a
laughing-stock, laugh until we cry, to the point of an unquiet extreme
of joy.]
Yet the disturbing impact of these lines, with their sardonic paradoxes, is
dissipated in the concluding vision that restores the initial hint of nature as an
availing force. More tellingly, however, the act of recovery is embodied in
terms of the future and envisaged through the acute perception of nature as a
vindication of the human spirit:
Hi ha una mica de vent als pàmpols, als xiprers,
ran del fonoll, i sempre el mar, i les ales
138
D. GARETH WALTERS
ens obren més claror, desperten més desig
de cel piadós i gran, nou cel de Sepharad.
[There is a breeze in the vine leaves, in the cypress trees, beside the
fennel, and always the sea, and the wings open more brightness for us,
awake more desire of a merciful, great sky, the new sky of Sepharad.]
It is in the context of such an emboldened state that we could best read the
concluding lines of the thirty-eighth poem:
Escolta, Sepharad: els homes no poden ser
si no són lliures.
Que sàpiga Sepharad que no podrem mai ser
si no som lliures.
I cridi la veu de tot el poble: «Amén».
(OC, II, 54)
[Listen, Sepharad: men cannot exist if they are not free. Let Sepharad
know that we will never exist if we are not free. And let the voice of
all the people say: “Amen”.]
In Ferraté’s opinion, this is no more than a loosely attached slogan. The
message, however, is neither forced nor bogus; Terry believes it to fit into the
work’s ‘situació metafísica’ [metaphysical situation].16 It also emerges as a
convincing poetico-psychological development – a release of tension after the
vacillations and soul-searching, collective and individual. Such sudden shifts
of mood are, as we have seen, frequent in earlier collections. Gassol i Bellet,
however, relates the dialectic between positive and negative, and hope and
despair in La pell de brau more specifically to the history of the Jewish
people.17 Indeed the poems that immediately follow the exhortation to
Sepharad to value freedom are dominated by biblical references. The thirtyninth poem alludes to the Torah, to Mosaic Law and ends with a reference to
the Ten Commandments:
«No mentiràs, no robaràs, no mataràs»,
aquests eterns preceptes
válids arreu, a Israel i a la Golah,
al regne quasi conquerit de les estrelles
i també, algun dia, a Sepharad.
Almenys en el dia del judici
de Sepharad.
(OC, II, 55)
[“You shall not lie, you shall not steal, you shall not kill”, these
eternal precepts that are valid everywhere, in Israel and in the Golah,
16
17
‘La poesia pública d’Espriu’, p. 159.
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139
in the kingdom that has been nearly conquered by the stars and also,
some day, in Sepharad. At least on the day of the judgement of
Sepharad.]
These divine demands are answered by a poem that is addressed to a figure
of a kind encountered especially in Mrs. Death – a blend of tyrant and glutton.
This figure, described in the following poem as a ‘vell ric, solitari, sense
successor’ [a rich, lonely old man, without descendants’], concerned as he is
with his own wealth and the exploitation of others, has no time for sermons
about the Day of Judgement. The forty-first poem, the longest of the
collection, is rich in biblical detail, with allusions to the Prodigal Son, the reference in Matthew 15:14 to the blind leading the blind and, most importantly,
the story of Job, comprising as it does a timely lesson about suffering and
justice and the requirement to understand an omnipotent God who is ‘tan
impossible d’odiar com difícil d’estimar’ [as impossible to hate as He is
difficult to love].18
The remedy, as we have glimpsed before, lies in the future: the young
hands that must heal the wounds of the bull hide that is Sepharad must be
‘fredes, fortes, netes’ [cold, strong, clean] (OC, II, 59). The remainder of the
book is mainly concerned with what is necessary to achieve the salvation of
the people. In this context the celebrated forty-sixth poem (OC, II, 65), cited
above (see p. 127), is, as Gassol i Bellet argues, theological rather than
narrowly political in its thrust:19 The man who may have to die for his people
alludes to the sacrifice of Christ, and it is anticipated in the deaths of the sun
bird and Yehudi much earlier in the collection. The poem points to the need
for a matching selflessness in those from the new generation charged with the
responsibility of enabling the people of Sepharad to live for ever more
en l’ordre i en la pau, en el treball,
en la difícil i merescuda
llibertat.
(OC, II, 65)
[in order and in peace, in work, in the difficult and earned freedom.]
The means to such an end entails daring, and, accordingly, Espriu develops
with greater intensity and urgency than previously the notion of how deed
must supersede memory. In particular, the allurement of inertia – ‘la mort/
d’un repòs covard’ [the death of a cowardly repose] (OC, II, 66) – must be
resisted:
18
19
140
D. GARETH WALTERS
Vius i voldries no sentir-te en el perill:
tan imperativament et mostra l’índex de la por
el camí que porta des d’una lliure mar
fins aquella riba segura de la mort.
(OC, II, 67)
[You live and would wish not to feel in danger: so imperiously does
the finger of fear point out to you the road that leads from a free sea
to that sure shore of death].
The forty-ninth poem – fittingly an appeal to stiffen the sinews – is an
utterance of the utmost spiritual nobility:
Deixa que el greix dels eunucs trontolli d’estèrils rialles
i detura-les, quan et cansin, amb el puny ben clos.
Car tu ets home, vella mida de totes les coses,
i cercaràs en va una més alta dignitat
arreu del món que miren i comprenen els ulls.
Què pot desesperar-te, quin mal no suportaràs,
si acceptes el temps i la mort i l’honor de servir,
els nobles manaments de l’eterna llei?
Desdenyós de lloances, de premis i de guany,
treballa amb esforç perquè sigui Sepharad
per sempre altiu senyor, mai tremolós esclau.
I quan arribis a la porta de la teva nit,
en acabar el camí que no té retorn,
sàpigues dir tan sols: «Gràcies per haver viscut.»
(OC, II, 68)
[Let the flab of the eunuchs wobble with sterile laughter and stop
them, when they tire you, with a clenched fist. For you are a man, the
ancient measure of every thing, and you will look in vain for a loftier
dignity throughout the world that eyes can see and understand. What
can make you despair, what misfortune will you not endure, if you
accept time and death and the honour of serving, the noble
commandments of the eternal law? Scornful of flattery, of prizes and
profit, work with energy so that Sepharad may always be a proud
master, never a trembling slave. And when you reach the door of your
night, at the end of the journey with no return, know just how to say:
“Thank you for the life I have lived”.]
Gassol i Bellet has well defined this poem as a resumé of ‘tots els axiomes
que la veu profètica ha anat escampant per La pell de brau’ [all the axioms
that the prophetic voice has disseminated in La pell de brau].20 It is, perhaps
even more than that, a definitive expression of what Espriu understood by the
ethical imperative or, more plainly, by moral courage. In other hands and in
other places the eternal simplicities might seem little more than truisms, but
20
THE LATER POETRY
141
here the clarity and the rare certainty of the appeal are emotionally appropriate. The resonance is accurate right down to the moving valediction whose
force is best appreciated when measured against the innumerable perceptions
of defeat and doubt. Yet the poem does not depend upon aphorism and
homily; it is framed by images that are as evocative in their differing ways as
any of Espriu’s. The initial picture of grotesque and trivial humanity and the
exhortation to transcend it is vivid, the more so because of the imaginative
lexicon (‘greix’ [flab], ‘trontolli’ [wobble]) that enhances the caricature, while
the cacophonous alliteration (‘deixa . . . greix’) is like an opening salvo. By
contrast, the concluding evocation has the ring of reassurance even though it
may not seem so objectively: the door of the night and the path that leads in
one direction could have emerged as grim images of mortality. Here, instead,
they come across as signs of an arrival at a welcome destination – even a
homecoming – such is the benign energy of the final line.
Such an assertive poem could have well served as a conclusion. Espriu,
however, does not seem to favour the sonorous peroration: his pieces end
piano rather than fortissimo. This tendency to the more subdued conclusion is
manifested via two ideas in La pell de brau. In the penultimate poem, there is
the confirmation that the tortuous procedures involving example, reason and
psychological confrontation have yielded the fruit of fearlessness. The image
of the horse at night – a correlation of terror in other places – now constitutes
a threat that can be faced:
Amb l’únic guany de la nostra
humil esperança, quan arriba
davallant per la nit la cavalcada,
alliberats, ja no temíem
el pas i el domini del flac amblador.
(OC, II, 72)
[With the only gain of our humble hope, when the cavalcade descends
by night, liberated, we no longer fear the step and the dominion of the
feeble ambler.]
What we perceive ultimately is an act that has proved to be a source of
consolation, if not a means of salvation, on several critical occasions previously. The final poem rehearses the process whereby patience and humility
lead to a charitable understanding, and it affirms that the word – whether the
individual language or freedom of expression – will prevail. On this occasion,
however, it is made to seem that it is the collective, not merely the individual,
will that has won through. The enumeration of aspects of the natural world is
suggestive of the long trek – the experience of a people wandering and lost in
exile – at the end of which the name of Sepharad is inscribed on the bull hide
thereby returning us to the book’s point of departure. The final gesture is
again one of self-sacrifice as the poet donates the rewards of his intellectual
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D. GARETH WALTERS
and emotional vigil to his people, for he is aware that they too have endured
the tribulations that accompany strife and defeat:
Així hem resseguit
els rius i les muntanyes,
la seca altiplanura i les ciutats,
i dormim cada somni
dels seus homes.
Hem estat amb el vent
en els camps, en els boscos,
en la remor de les fulles i les fonts,
i anem escrivint
en aquesta pell estesa,
en un cor amagat i immortal,
a poc a poc el nom
de Sepharad.
(OC, II, 73)
[Thus we have reached the rivers and mountains, the dry plateau and
the towns, and we dream all the dreams of their men. We have been
with the wind in the fields, in the woods, in the rustle of leaves and
the fountains, and we continue slowly to write on this taut hide, in a
hidden and immortal heart, the name of Sepharad.]
It is easy to overlook the adverbial phrase ‘a poc a poc’ [slowly] but it carries
an immense weight of emotional resonance. It is as though the poet were to
say: ‘we relish the difficulty in writing this name because it reflects the long
wait made up of humiliation, suffering, despair and the fitful hope – a hope
that we now bequeath with this word’.
Llibre de Sinera
La pell de brau represents a watershed in Espriu’s poetic career and, mostly
by coincidence, in the period immediately following its publication his
personal circumstances were to take a turn for the better. In 1960 he was able
to end his association with Antoni Gual, the notary with whom he had worked
for twenty years. Espriu’s younger brother, Josep, who had qualified as a
doctor, secured him a post as a legal consultant to a medical insurance
company, the Asistència Sanitària Col⭈legial, that he had founded. In 1963,
the year which saw the publication of the Spanish translation of La pell de
brau, there appeared the first collected edition of his poetry, including the
recently completed Llibre de Sinera [Book of Sinera].21 Another important
development in the establishing of Espriu as the best-known Catalan writer of
his day came as a result of various initiatives by Ricard Salvat, the director of
an innovative academy of drama, the Escola d’Art Dramàtic Adriá Gual
21
Obra poètica (Barcelona: Albertí, 1963).
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(EADAG). The earliest venture involving Espriu was a scenic version of La
pell de brau that appeared soon after the completion of the work, while in
1962 and 1963 there were acclaimed performances of Primera història
d’Esther in Barcelona and other locations in Catalonia. The most significant
event, however, was the premiere in the Romea Theatre of Barcelona in
October 1965 of Ronda de mort a Sinera [The Round of Death in Sinera].
This work comprised a collage of Espriu’s texts, shaped in such a way as to
create a play in two acts with an interlude. The stage directions were Salvat’s,
but the words were Espriu’s, drawn in the main from his prose works but including the occasional poem, including one from his most recently published
work, Llibre de Sinera.22
Yet while Espriu’s quality of life had improved in some measure as a result
of these positive happenings it would be wrong to assume that it would be
reflected in his poetry. His poetry is a product of historical and personal
circumstances, but it is responsive to these in terms of vision rather than
detail. There is a little to be gained in scrutinising his poetry for the ebb and
flow of current events: his sense of history – and his favoured Jewish analogy
provides a sure pointer – is governed by moral preoccupation not by political
accident. The vicissitudes of the individual and the tribulations of the people
are enacted and re-enacted in a constant pattern involving alternating and
contrasting emotional states. The working-out of these conflicts obeys a
poetic imperative; indeed, it would be just as inaccurate to label it personal as
to consider it historical. All the books we have considered thus far achieve a
kind of momentum that is self-generating, involving development, contradiction, crisis and, if not resolution, then termination. Thus the processes and
the preoccupations of Llibre de Sinera, written between 1959 and 1962,
parallel those of earlier books, most obviously, because of the similarity of
title, Cementiri de Sinera, dating from fifteen years earlier. This is not to say
that it is a re-run of the earlier collection; indeed it would not be improper to
see the later book as a view of Cementiri de Sinera through the lens of La pell
de brau.23 Espriu i Malagelada goes so far as to claim that it possesses the
same note of civic commitment as this latter collection, hence the author ‘no
s’obsessiona només pel seu destí personal, sinó pel del seu país’ [is obsessed
not only by his personal destiny, but by that of his nation’].24 Likewise,
22 For the text and details of productions of the play, see Salvador Espriu, Ronda de
mort a Sinera (Barcelona: Empúries, 1985), and for a consideration of its significance and
relationship to other works of his, see Peter Cocozzella, ‘Salvador Espriu’s idea of a
theater: the sotjador versus the demiurge’, Modern Drama, 29 (1985), 472–89.
23 Castellet, however, suggests that the two main intertextual sources for Llibre de
Sinera are Cementiri de Sinera for poems I–XXIV and Final del laberint for poems
XXV–XXXIV. See Iniciació a la poesia de Salvador Espriu, p. 55.
24 Salvador Espriu, p. 63.
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D. GARETH WALTERS
Castellet believes that the very geographical concept of Sinera has changed,
although he does not subscribe to Espriu i Malagelada’s implied
categorization of the work as civic rather than lyric:
Sinera, en aquest llibre, és més que la mítica Arenys, geogràficament
delimitada com un poble de la costa catalana: és la comunitat històrica de
Catalunya la que és objecte de l’atenció i el cant d’Espriu, sempre des d’una
visió molt personal, producte de la constant tensió entre la subjectividad del
poeta i el procés històric de la seva «petita pàtria».25
[Sinera, in this book, is more than the mythic Arenys that is geographically
limited as a town on the Catalan coast: it is the historic community of Catalonia that is the object of Espriu’s attention and song, always from a very
personal perspective, the product of the constant tension between the subjectivity of the poet and the historical evolution of his “little homeland”.]
The differences between Llibre de Sinera and Espriu’s first book are perhaps
most tangible in the tone of the poetic voice insofar as it reflects the attitude
of the speaker. The first poem evokes the cemetery, but not in the wistful,
almost gentle manner of Cementiri de Sinera. It has a darker and harsher
edge, immediately evident in the brusque insistence of the opening question:
Remor de cops d’aixada, no la sents?
Rera les altes tanques de paret.
Sense repòs, però molt lentament,
enllà de la cleda contínua del temps.
Arrencaven els ceps, han cremat els sarments,
damunt la terra bona s’estenia l’erm.
Pel serpent del rial arrosseguem
passos neguitosos d’aquests peus de vell.
La saviesa clamava al guaret,
a les canyes seques que movia el vent:
«Contempla’t en mi com esdevens
aconseguida mort de tu mateix.»
Ajupits en l’ombra, caven comparets
a les despullades vinyes de l’hivern.
No hi ha llum per tota la buidor del cel.
Només uns cops d’aixada al fons del fred.
(OC, II, 81)
[Do you not hear the sound of the spade that is knocking? Behind the
high walled hedges. Without ceasing, but very slowly, beyond time’s
endless corral. They dug up the vines, they have burned the shoots,
25
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145
above the good land the wilderness stretched out. Along the snaking
river we drag the anxious steps of these old feet. Wisdom shouted in
the fallow land, in the dry reeds that the wind moved: “Look at
yourself in me, how you become your own achieved death.”
Crouched in the shade, the peasants hoe the stripped vines in the
winter. There is no light in all the empty sky. Only the blows of a
spade in the depths of the cold.]
In the earlier collection the description of the cemetery encircled by a
‘petita pàtria’ [little homeland] (OC, I, XXX) suggested a gentle sadness, a
perception of intimacy that was of itself already a source of consolation. It is
not so with the opening poem of Llibre de Sinera. There is the sense of an
irrational force in the way in which the sound of the gravedigger at work is
located beyond the here and now. There are other signs of how remorselessly
oppressive this poem is: the exaggeration whereby the preparation of the land
for a new season is conceived in terms of a scorched earth activity; the
dramatization of the self both into a plural subject and into the object of an
uncompromising message of death; and, after the doubly negative thrust of
the penultimate line, the echo-like return of the macabre resonance of the
spade hitting the earth.
Another indication of the more sombre poetic vision of Llibre de Sinera is
evident in the way in which childhood experiences, conveyed with an
ingenuous directness in such places as the first section of El caminant i el
mur, become the source of a more complicated, even turbulent, meditation.
The fifth poem of the collection begins with a description of children building
sandcastles as the trains passing nearby go up and down the coast. While in
other, earlier, collections, as well as in the tenth poem of Llibre de Sinera
(OC, II, 90), such a depiction might have sufficed for an entire poem, here it
is only part of the story. It is as though the child who looks up from his
activity becomes a man who sees beyond the beach and the railway line, a
man who sees a lot more than meets the eye:
Ombres de guaites, des de la Torre dels Encantats,
vetllen l’injust repòs dels erigits en amos
de les més tristes hores. Furguem cercant la sang
del cor del pou ben agostat dels somnis,
amb llargs pals punxeguts de vells captaires.
Ara les petites muntanyes que s’alcen a ponent
es posen una a una mantellines de boira
i entraven en corrua pel gran portal del vespre,
a poc a poc, car toco pel nostre temps ja mort.
(OC, II, 85)
[Shadows of sentries, from the Tower of the Enchanted, watch over
the unjust repose of those who have set themselves up as masters of
the saddest hours. We poke about, looking for the blood of the well
where dreams have dried up, with the long sharp sticks of old
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D. GARETH WALTERS
beggars. Now the little mountains that rise when the sun sets get
dressed one by one in mantillas of mist and enter in files through the
great gate of dusk, slowly, for I toll for our time that is now dead.]
The spectre of defeat and humiliation converts this potentially sunny poem
into a nightmarish plight. The notion of trying to discover some sign of life
and hope by prodding into a well devoid of dreams with the sticks of blind
men is as devastatingly brilliant an image as one could find in the whole of
Espriu’s work. The way in which the attempt to return to a description of the
natural world is thwarted by the tolling of the bell at the very end is no less
potent: it rounds off the poem with a shudder of despair.
The sense of dread present in the first and fifth poems of the collection is
even more marked in two poems where there appears one of Espriu’s most
potent images, that of the procession of beggars. Their appearance in Llibre
de Sinera is unlike anything witnessed previously in the poetry:
Amb els pals els captaires resseguien
un a un els barrots de les reixes del meu carrer.
Basarda de la fosca per l’esclat del sol,
venien del camí d’atzavares del Mal Temps,
s’atansaven a poc a poc des de la pujada
i demanaven almoina de cancell en cancell.
Un cop a la setmana els pobres arribaven,
en una lenta, quasi aturada processó,
i ens cridaven amb veus de ronca cantarella
al tenaç i obscè mercat de sutzures i mals.
La corrua passava davallant cap a la placeta
i es perdia després, pels alts plàtans polsosos,
enllà de l’ombra ja llunyana dels xiprers.
Com deixava sollats els portals, les eixides,
la mica d’aire de mar, la llum sencera de l’estiu!
(OC, II, 87)
[With their sticks the beggars felt their way one by one along the bars
of the grilles in my street. Terror of darkness by the flash of the sun,
they came from the road with agaves from the hill of Mal Temps,
from the top they slowly came down and begged for alms at every
gate. Once a week these paupers arrived in a slow, almost halted,
procession, and they summoned us with their harsh singsong voices
to the persistent and obscene market of filth and misfortune. The line
passed on down to the square and then went out of sight among the
tall, dusty plane trees, beyond the now distant shadow of the cypress
trees. How dirty they left the doorways, the courtyards, the breath of
a sea breeze, the integral light of summer.]
In Cementiri de Sinera the beggars did not function as figures in their own
right but as an image of the poet’s need to beg for scraps of memory: ‘captant
engrunes/ de vells records’ [begging scraps of old memories] (OC, I, 177). In
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147
Mrs. Death their role was symbolic – as part of the sensation of malaise and
disenchantment, but ultimately as figures that encounter redemption. In the
poem from Llibre de Sinera, however, the picture is comprehensive and the
detail is ruthlessly precise. It is as if only now, later in life (or at least later
than in previous poems), that the sensation of fear mingled with revulsion –
an experience which the child could experience but not define – emerges as a
revelation. And the devil is indeed in the detail. The opening announcement
of the blind beggars’ arrival by means of the sound of their sticks beating
against the grilles of the houses is sinister, if not malefic, while the notion of
the procession appearing to halt, so slow is its progress, seems like a threat:
will this terrifying spectacle ever disappear? The listing of the places through
which they pass thus serves as a reassurance that the vision will vanish. It is,
however, something of a false hope:
Però encara quedava, sempre ressagat, el vell cec
que s’ho mirava tot des de les plagues dels ulls,
àvides, xopes de sang, calentes,
obertes sense cap resposta
a les preguntes del nostre esglai,
esbatanades en el buit fins que les cobria
en un sobtat vol compacte la negror del moscam.
[But there still remained, always the last to leave, the old beggar, who
could see everything from the sores on his eyes, avid, bloodsoaked,
hot, open without any response to the questions coming from our
fear, wide open in the void until the black swarm of flies covered
them in a sudden flight.]
The old beggar is the more frightening because of his apparent insight. The
paradox of the blind man who can see better than the sighted is of course
something of a cliché, but the sheer intensity of how he is envisaged here
lends this concept a particular force: he is abject and squalid, yet Olympian
in his mysterious wisdom. He is the grotesque solver of riddles, a daunting
oracle. For he is not only the object of the unformulated interrogations of
dread at the end of this poem but also of the explicit question at the start of
the next – a question that strikes at the very heart of the poet’s preoccupation:
Al vell orb preguntava l’esglai
si el meu poble tindria demà.
I la boca sense llavis va llançar
la riota que no para mai.
(OC, II, 88)
[Fear asked the blind old man if my people had a future. And the
mouth without lips launched a guffaw that never stops.]
The blind man’s ridicule is devastating. The contemptuous laughter from
the mouth without lips is one of Espriu’s most memorable images of the
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D. GARETH WALTERS
pessimistic vision of his people’s future. Yet, as so often, it is precisely on
such occasions that there is the instinctive requirement to dig deep and,
through a cussed patience, to fight back:
Repreníem el somni tenaç
– contra el bou, el serpent, el senglar –
de la nostra difícil bondat,
de la nostra viril dignitat,
de la nostra fidel llibertat.
[We resume the tenacious dream – against the ox, the snake, the boar –
of our difficult goodness, of our virile dignity, of our faithful
freedom.]
It is not difficult to explain the animal symbolism, especially as the following
poem illustrates their significance: the ox is associated with lethargy and
cowardice, the serpent with the hidden threat of violence, the wild boar with
destruction. The assertion of virtue in the midst of danger and wickedness is the
poet’s only weapon, and we will know by now that the best it can provide is a
respite. Accordingly, the mood of the following poems is more composed,
though still with an edge of uncertainty. They recapitulate some of the evocations
of the childhood years in Arenys that had been depicted in Cementiri de Sinera
and El caminant i el mur: the familiar settings of hill and sea, the child playing
with paper boats and toy soldiers, and now without the superimposition of the
grown-up’s preoccupation as had occurred in the fifth poem. Nonetheless, the
dynamic of vacillation has been established and it is very evident in the group of
poems beginning with the fifteenth. This poem is of the kind previously
identified as critical, one that encapsulates and explores a complexity of idea and
emotion. The starting point is the awareness of the fleeting nature of alleviation,
expressed through the image of alms-giving – an indication of how the presence
of the beggars continues, yielding a potent metaphor:
Assentiré de grat, car sols se’m va donar
d’almoina la riquesa d’un instant.
Si podien, però, durar
la llum parada, l’ordre clar
dels xiprers, de les vinyes, dels sembrats,
la nostra llengua, el lent esguard
damunt de cada cosa que he estimat!
Voltats de por, enmig del glaç
de burles i rialles d’albardans,
hem dit els mots que són la sang
d’aquest vell poble que volem salvar.
No queden solcs en l’aigua, cap senyal
de la barca, de l’home, del seu pas.
THE LATER POETRY
L’estrany drapaire omplia el sac
de retalls de records i se’n va,
sota la fosca pluja, torb enllà,
pels llargs camins que s’esborren a mar.
149
(OC, II, 95)
[I will gladly agree, for only the richness of [momentary] alms were
given to me. If, however, the stopped light, the bright order of the
cypress trees, of the vineyards, of the sown fields, our language, and
the slow gaze over everything that I have loved could survive!
Surrounded by fear, amid the ice of mockery and the laughter of
clowns, we have said the words that are the blood of this ancient
people that we want to save. There are no furrows in the water, no sign
of the boat, of man, of his steps. The strange rag-and-bone man filled
his sack with scraps of memories and went away, beneath the dark
rain, beyond the storm, on the long roads that are blurred in the sea.]
The extensive enumeration of the second stanza, blending the concrete and
the abstract as the poet links landscape and language, has the air of
desperation – an infinite longing that is translated into a gaze that has to be
lingering, as though the act of looking away would precipitate a definitive
loss. That the poet should be alert to such a feeling of vulnerability is warranted by yet another acknowledgement of threats and mockery. His standard
defence – the collective commitment to the cherished utterance – is like that
of a weary but still vigilant sentry. The conclusion bears out his wariness. The
sign of extinction is initially communicated through a well-worn image: the
ease with which the wake left by the passage of a ship vanishes. Complementing this idea is the more original and disturbing figure of the rag-and-bone
man. He not only removes the recollections of the past; he also disappears
with them into the darkness and the sea – a double erasure.
This mood is reinforced in the following poem, which develops the nautical
image and muses with gloomy bitterness on the fate of a language that has
been assailed and a people that has been degraded: ‘Llengua embastardida,/
poble bou al fang’ [Bastardized language, ox people in the mud] (OC, II, 96).
Such a black reflection cannot but engender contradiction, albeit muted, and
this is what the next poem, the seventeenth, duly provides:
Però qui sap si algú, des del mar de naufragi,
un dia guanyarà la clara riba
i ordenarà de nou el pas afermat
pels oberts i dreturers camins.
Aleshores serà potser comprès el cant
que s’elevava i amb dolor venia
del cor mateix d’aquesta nit.
(OC, II, 97)
[But who knows if someone, from the sea of shipwrecks, will one day
reach the bright shore and once more set in motion the assured march
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D. GARETH WALTERS
through the open and honest roads. Then perhaps we will understand
the song that rose up and came with suffering from the very heart of
this night.]
Such a response hardly seems up to the task of rebuttal. There is, however,
strength of purpose in its guardedness and its refusal to renounce what is
reasonable and achievable. It just manages to prevail because, despite its
frailty, it has the virtue of not lapsing into a matching extreme of expression.
Indeed, as we work our way through Espriu’s work, we realize that the
poetry’s indefatigable spirit relies on composure rather than reaction. The fact
that we should acknowledge such ripostes as predictable is a guarantee if not
of a battle won then, at least, of a dogged stalemate. What we could term the
vocabulary of decency – of justice, of right action, of a readiness to bear pain –
thus becomes ingrained and durable. We expect it and we get it.
There is no respite from this conflict in the next poem, for the most part a
direct-speech address to an ostensibly unidentified second person singular.
Such a rhetorical tactic is often tantamount to a disguised monologue. Thus
the object of this indignant outburst could be, in part, the poet himself. The
unsparing reproach is certainly redolent of an act of soul-searching rooted in
guilt. The tirade covers familiar territory and employs favoured imagery: the
sale of a nation’s birthright for a pittance, the imposition of an alien language,
and the readiness to accept humiliation:
L’amo t’encerta cada dia el llom,
en fer-ne dòcil blanc d’escopinades.
Grunys de plaer i ben humil t’ajups
sota el fuet i les burles més grasses.
(OC, II, 98)
[The master succeeds in getting at your back every day, to make it a
soft target for spittle. You groan with pleasure and humbly cower
beneath the lash and the grossest jibes.]
This, the poet acknowledges, is a song born of loathing: ‘l’aspre cant/ d’una
veu d’ira’ [the bitter song of a voice of anger]. Indeed it even threatens to
invade perhaps the most cherished of the poet’s places – the ‘jardí dels cinc
arbres’ [the garden of five trees], the site of patience and healing in Mrs.
Death (OC, I, 289). Yet, the following poems suggest that the garden of the
poet’s childhood is secure. The association of this idyllic location with
sunlight, as in the poem from the earlier collection, is an indication of its
inviolability. It is different from the outside world: ‘Rera queda el fosc vent
del desert,/ l’hostil llebrer vençut de l’àrid malson’ [The dark wind of the
desert stays outside, the hostile vanquished hound of the arid nightmare] (OC,
II, 99). There ensue further memories of childhood: of visitors to the family
home (OC, II, 101) and evocations of the nearby countryside (OC, II,
102–103). The culmination of this interlude of repose is a poem that was
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included in Salvat’s Ronda de mort a Sinera and that inspired one of
Raimon’s most haunting songs:
Quan la llum pujada des del fons del mar
a llevant comença just a temolar,
he mirat aquesta terra,
he mirat aquesta terra.
Quan per la muntanya que tanca el ponent
el falcó s’enduia la claror del cel,
he mirat aquesta terra,
he mirat aquesta terra.
(OC, II, 104)
[When the light that has risen from the depths of the sea barely begins
to tremble in the east, I have looked at this land, I have looked at this
land. When on the mountain that closes the setting sun, the falcon
took away the light of the sky, I have looked at this land, I have
looked at this land.]
This formula of two lines introduced by a temporal conjunction – ‘quan’
[when] alternating with ‘mentre’ [while] – followed by the two-line refrain is
maintained over each of the nine stanzas of the poem. Its incantatory nature,
reminiscent, as Castellet has suggested, of a Psalm, enhances the directness
of its appeal.26 This is a love poem – a song that is testament to a rich and
intimate knowledge of homeland. On this occasion, it is about a cherished
place: what spirituality it possesses is topographical rather than historical. Its
sense of belonging is manifest and tangible, not ideal and abstract. Indeed it
is as if Espriu has determinedly attempted to keep the matter of this poem at
the level of the visual: the mention of memories in the sixth stanza is abruptly
abandoned in favour of a description of the sound of the crickets in the
seventh.
The pictures communicated by this poem spawn delicate evocations of a
rainy Arenys, but any move towards symbolism is again resisted, unlike in the
twenty-fifth poem of Cementiri de Sinera where the rain lashing the house at
night was invested with a clear historical significance: ‘Avui cau nit de fosca/
sobre la meva casa’ [Today a night of darkness falls upon my house] (OC, I,
197). Yet this disassociation of land from history is not to continue. The
warning signs come in the concise and bleak twenty-eighth poem with its
allusion to the familiar and sinister black boat: ‘Veig la negra barca/ per la
mar oberta’ [I see the black boat upon the open sea] (OC, II, 109). This ushers
in a group of poems with a different emphasis: the resumption of the conflict
between withdrawal and involvement and a sporadic musing upon the poet’s
26
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D. GARETH WALTERS
responsibilities and his shortcomings. The option of disavowal recalls the
apparent renunciation of role towards the end of Final del laberint, hence the
recourse to the concept of ‘no-thing’.
De retorn al no-res, conec abans
l’esforç possible del meu pas
i recordo com el poble va lluitar
entorn dels pous per la sorra colgats.
Ai, mancaments, aquest pes sempre igual
que anomenem la nostra llibertat!
(OC, II, 110)
[Returning to the no-thing, I know, before, the potential strength of
my footstep and I recall how the people fought around the wells
covered by sand. Ah, this guilt of ours, this unchanging weight that
we call our freedom.]
The prominent image in this set of poems is that of the well, as an indication
of the desire for retreat and concealment. It is complemented by the image of
a closed door (OC, II, 111–112) and serves as a symbolic equivalent of the
poet’s passivity and withdrawal in Cementiri de Sinera. Once again, however,
the temptation to shut out the world is resisted. Thus the resolution to seek a
peaceful sanctuary at the end of the thirty-first poem – ‘Davallo a la cega/
quietud del pou’ [I go down to the blind silence of the well] (OC, II, 112) –
is immediately rebutted at the start of the intense piece that follows:
El desig de repòs no serveix de refugi,
no hi ha cap emparança en el pou davallat.
Car sóc comprès en l’ordre indefugible
del torb que engendren els meus vells mancaments.
Ah, jutge, jutge de mi mateix, i alhora
apassionat acusador davant aquest jutge!
Però la veu s’escanya en atansar-se el ventre
sacsejat de rialles, tibant a seny d’inflor.
(OC, II, 113)
[The desire for rest does not serve as a refuge, there is no protection
in the well below. For I am understood in the unavoidable order of the
storm that my old defects engender. Ah, judge, judge of myself, and
now a passionate prosecutor before this judge! But the voice is drowned
as it reaches the belly that is convulsed by laughter, stretched by the
sign of its swelling.]
Yet the poet does not relish this involvement. He is swept along by an
unavoidable duty, the more onerous because he is achingly aware of his own
fallibility. He is not so much committed as implicated: he stands before the
mirror as his own judge and prosecutor. What is more, he has little faith in his
art. Just as he served as his own accuser so too he fears that his feeble voice
may provoke an echoing mockery from within himself. The concluding
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153
metaphor recalls the images of hunger and gluttony as correlatives of a
spiritual malaise in Mrs. Death and here, in like fashion, it is indicative of a
profound uncertainty and unease.
The following poem is rambling and seemingly chaotic in its kaleidoscopic
range of image and idea. It begins as the previous poem had ended, but moves
from the image of digestion through a variety of fleeting impressions as
though to exorcise the clear but reluctant commitment. The final sentence
seems as if it will never stop:
I llença el temps,
sense remor,
ben arrasats
el camp, el bosc,
la cort, el llar,
l’humil rebost,
a mar uns ulls
eixuts de plor,
ganyes de peix,
tel de moltó,
deixalles, sang,
un brut sarró,
un cap ja buit
de tot record.
(OC, II, 115)
[And time silently throws out the levelled field, wood, stable, hearth,
the humble larder, eyes dried of tears at sea, gills of fish, skin of
sheep, scraps, blood, a greasy pouch, a head now empty of all recall.]
The outcome of this vertiginous blur of impressions is an elimination of
recollection. Nonetheless, as some of the poems of Cementiri de Sinera and
La pell de brau should have taught us, this is not necessarily negative:
memory can be a hindrance to necessary action. Yet the next two poems
appear only to appease this indulgence in retrospection; indeed the second of
these has the hallmarks not only of recall but of closure:
Acaba aquí el viatge. Quan baixo de la barca,
sabia a ulls clucs com és al meu davant,
sempre pujat per cabres i per mates
d’espígol, de fonoll, de llet de bruixa
que a penes mouen aquelles primes mans
de l’ora quieta desvetllada al cim, el Mal Temps.
Límits estrictes d’una vella terra:
el seguici dels xiprers rera el carro del sol
que se’n va trontollant pels llargs i secs rials
i feia, en tramuntar, de la petita carena
llum i llunyania de l’horitzó de ponent.
He donat la meva vida pel difícil guany
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D. GARETH WALTERS
d’unes poques paraules despullades.
He vist la meva vida com un mur
en el silenci de la tarda i el seu pas.
(OC, II, 117)
[Here the journey ends. When I step out of the boat, I know with my
eyes shut what is before me, always climbed by goats and bushes of
lavender, fennel, of spurge that those slender hands of the quiet
breeze barely move on the top of the hill, on Mal Temps. The strict
limits of an old land: the procession of cypress trees behind the sun’s
chariot that staggers along the long and dry lanes and, on going
behind the mountains, makes the light and distance of the little hill,
the horizon of the western sky. I have given my life for the hardearned gain of a few bare words. I have seen my life like a wall in the
silence of the afternoon and its passage.]
There is a feeling of abdication about this poem. The journey’s end is in its
beginning, and this return to origins is literal: there are clear cross-references
to the first poem of Cementiri de Sinera (OC, I, 173). Now, however, memory
is less valued. The curt observation about ‘strict limits’ midway through the
poem curtails the rhapsody of recollection. The sights and scents that have
been learnt by heart and which can be rehearsed at will do not have the same
sheen as in the earlier book. There is, moreover, another manifestation of
disillusionment. The reiteration of vocation towards the end recalls another
poem, the opening line of ‘Ofrenat a Cèrber’ from Les hores: ‘He donat la
meva vida a les paraules’ [I have given my life to words] (OC, I, 245). In
Llibre de Sinera, however, this assertion of sacrifice is qualified by the
balancing two-line sentence that concludes the poem. Qualified, but perhaps
not entirely countered. The image of the wall suggests obstruction and
frustration but it also hints at solidarity while time passes. Indeed the phrasing
of the final line is not as redolent of despair as it may seem: as well as leading
to death the passage of time allows for change.
The more positive reading of the conclusion of this poem is validated by
the gleam of light and the flicker of life that emerge in the next:
Somric, car em sé moridor, i penso
en el bé, sempre tan àrid, i en el mal, que m’atrau.
Es desvetllava vent als pàmpols secs,
i encalça pels canyars parracs de somnis,
i gira, alçant lladrucs, entorn d’aquella
tancada solitud de casa, al lluny.
(OC, II, 118)
[I smile, for I know I am mortal, and I meditate upon good, always so
arid, and upon evil, that attracts me. The wind awoke in the dry vine
leaves, and pursued the rags of dreams among the reedbeds, and
twisted, provoking barking, around that closed solitude of a house, far
away.]
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It is a wary vision though. The qualification of the concepts of good and
evil is a reminder that Espriu’s poetry does not trade in certainties and that its
moral scope will never be conducive to either smugness or a one-dimensional
understanding. Indeed these lines offer no facile resolution; on the contrary,
all they seem to bestow is the recourse once again to withdrawal, to the
shuttered house in the distance. What is more, the paths that lead to the house,
as the next poem indicates, are barren. Yet, from the arid soil of the desert,
unexpectedly, there springs life:
L’arbre,
en l’arrelada
sequedat,
pujava
pels esglaons
de la claror
les branques.
(OC, II, 120)
[The tree in the rooted dryness, pushed the branches up the steps of
brightness.]
Such life, it is implied from the closing poems of the book, is tantamount to
creativity. The last word is, once again, the word itself as poetic initiative
asserts itself. No matter what is thrown the poet’s way he seems to prevail by
dint of a fierce poetic instinct that enables him to overcome obstacles:
‘Concedida als meus ulls l’estranya força/ de penetrar tot aquest gruix de
mur’ [Conceded to my eyes the strange gift of penetrating the whole thickness
of this wall] (OC, II, 121). Yet this gift has come at a cost and it is exercised
in the harshest of climates: ‘Aücs del vent albardà entorn de la casa’ [The
howls of a jester wind around the house]. Nonetheless, if the monument to the
poet-as-survivor is erected from the dust of barren soil, it is, as he pointedly
repeats, in this very soil that the tree will take root:
Vet aquí l’home vell, al davant de la casa,
com alça a poc a poc la seva pols
en un moment, àrid i nu, d’estàtua.
Terra seca després, ja per sempre
fora del nombre, del nom, trossejada
a les fondàries per les rels de l’arbre.
[Behold how the old man, in front of the house, slowly raises his
statue of dust in an arid, bare moment. Dry earth afterwards, now
forever outside the number, the name, broken to pieces in the depths
by the roots of the tree.]
The final poem confirms the ambivalence of this intuition:
Però en la sequedat arrela el pi
crescut des d’ella cap al lliure vent
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D. GARETH WALTERS
que ordeno i dic amb unes poques lletres
d’una breu i molt noble i eterna paraula:
m’alço vell tronc damunt la vella mar,
ombrejo i guardo el pas del meu camí,
reposa en mi la llum i encalmo ja la nit,
torno la dura veu en nu roquer del cant.
(OC, II, 123)
[But in the dryness there takes root the pine that has grown from it
towards the free wind that I order and utter with a few letters of a
brief, most noble and eternal word: I rise up, an ancient trunk above
the ancient sea, I shade and protect the steps of my path, light rests in
me and now I calm the night, I turn my hard voice into the bare rock
of song.]
The final four lines spell acrostically ‘mort’ [death], matching the conception
of the monument of dust. In Castellet’s opinion, this final poem has the firm
and unambiguous imprint of death, ‘aquesta vegada definitiva i irremeiable,
culminació d’una vida i una obra . . . mort desitjada i buscada, present en tots
els llibres d’Espriu’ [on this occasion definitive and irremediable, the
culmination of a life and a work . . . a death that is desired and sought, that is
present in all Espriu’s books].27 I do not share this view. Castellet overemphasizes the acrostic and does not heed what the poet actually says. What
this final poem affirms is as positive a legacy as could be imagined. The
subordinating conjunction with which it opens alerts us to the decisive
pronouncement: the tree that flourishes in the wilderness is an augury of
expressive achievement and poetic control. The concluding impression is that
of the poet, not as a prophet or a seer, but as a musician or, quite simply as
the epitomé of poet – an Orphean figure who is endowed with magic as well
as strength, a singer in whose fragile body there endures the stubborn gift of
transformation.
Setmana Santa
In the eight years leading up to 1962 Espriu wrote three complete books of
poetry (Final del laberint, La pell de brau and Llibre de Sinera) plus the final
part of Les hores. In the next eight years he was far less prolific: a collection of
forty haikus inspired by a painting of Brueghel – Per al llibre de salms d’aquests
vells cecs – and an integrated set of 40 untitled poems entitled Setmana Santa
[Holy Week]. In fact, 31 of these 40 poems were written in October 1970, and
even though Espriu produced more poems for the open-ended Les cançons
d’Ariadna it is evident that in the 1960s his poetic output was much reduced.
There is no obvious single reason for this. As we have seen repeatedly, for
Espriu, poetry was often associated with a beleaguered state – it was an
27
THE LATER POETRY
157
instinctive moral riposte in a troubled age, and perhaps the political and social
circumstances of Catalonia in the new decade did not require this kind of
literary intervention as much. If Espriu valued poetry as a companionable
activity in times of hardship and solitude, then maybe the lyrical pressure was
less at the very time that his status as a national poet was being confirmed.
Again, it may have been that he simply did not want to repeat himself: all the
books that make up the palindromic cycle and the two subsequent ones tend
to the same pattern of vacillation within a movement towards a resolution of
sorts.
Nine of the poems, which in Espriu’s words constituted a ‘suite’ and which
were eventually to form part of what we now know as Setmana Santa, were
written in 1962 in response to a commission from an annual publication on the
subject of Holy Week processions in Tarragona. In the important prologue to the
work, Espriu refers to how the subject of Holy Week had always appealed to
him; as far back as 1929 he had witnessed the processions in Seville.28 It was,
also, a commission that prompted the composition of the remaining thirtyone–poems. In 1970 Espriu received a request to contribute a book of poems to
the series, ‘Quaderns de Poesía’. In the October of that year, in a surge of
creativity, he supplied the additional poems within which the original nine were
distributed.29 Unsurprisingly, this collection is the richest in terms of New
Testament influences, the poet mentioning how he was guided by the account
of the Passion in St Mark’s Gospel and how he was also indebted to passages
in that of St John. He acknowledges the presence of the Jewish mystical
tradition, but, again, asserts that there is no trace of Christian mysticism.30
Indeed, towards the end of the prologue he observes that there is nothing in the
work to enable anyone to speculate on ‘el fantasma de mi «conversión»’ [the
spectre of my “conversion”] (p. 64). Yet, this defensiveness about a religious
commitment conceals, if not a faith after his own fashion, then the deepest of
respect. His attitude is well summarized by Espriu i Malagelada:
Espriu era un home que se sentia fortament atret per la religió. Per bé que
el racionalisme i el seu caràcter pessimista li feien molt difícil de donar el
28 In the prologue to the collection Espriu refers to the circumstances of the
commission: ‘Un amigo a quien no conozco personalmente, el señor Lluís Bonet i Punsoda,
me hizo pedir una publicación sobre el tema de la Setmana Santa para una publicación que
se edita con mucha pulcritud una vez el año, relacionada con la celebración de las
procesiones de este período litúrgico en Tarragona’ [‘A friend whom I didn’t know in
person, señor Lluís Bonet i Punsoda, asked me to produce something for a carefully edited
publication that comes out once a year, linked with the celebration of the processions of
this liturgical period in Tarragona’]. See Antología lírica, ed. José Batlló, 2nd edn (Madrid:
Cátedra, 1978), p. 60.
29 The poems that comprised the suite of nine poems were eventually to become nos.
XI–XVI, XXIV, XXX and XL of Setmana Santa.
30 Antología lírica, p. 61.
158
D. GARETH WALTERS
salt en el buit que implica la fe, no s’havia proclamat mai ateu; ans bé es
definia com a agnòstic «reverent i respetuós».31
[Espriu was a man who felt a strong attraction for religion. Although his
rationalism and his pessimistic nature made it very difficult for him to make
the leap into the void that is implied by faith, he had never labelled himself
an atheist; rather, he defined himself as a “reverent and respectful” agnostic.]
There are several indications of such a positive attitude in various of the
poet’s relationships, mainly with members of his own family. We have
already seen the references to his mother’s almost Calvinistic piety. In the
preface to Primera història d’Esther there is a recollection of how a set of
prints in the house of his aunt, Maria Castelló, served as a prompt for the
composition of the play, and how, in Espriu’s eyes, she becomes the embodiment of a community and a culture, the repository of modesty and piety.
She possessed ‘una cultura limitada però perfecta, que fonementava . . . en
una austera representació catòlica de la Divinitat’ [a limited but perfect
culture, that was founded . . . on an austere Catholic representation of the
Divinity].32 In the prologue to Setmana Santa the poet also pays tribute to
another aunt, a younger sister of his father, who became a nun and who died
of Spanish Flu in 1918. Although Espriu was only five years of age at the time
of sor Isabel de la Creu’s death, his memories of her were vivid and movingly
recalled; he also expresses the intention that she should be commemorated in
the poems of Setmana Santa.33 There is, in fact, in the tenth poem of the
collection a specific recollection: an allusion to a Communion tablecloth that
his aunt had embroidered shortly before her death, containing symbols of the
Crucifixion (OC, II, 139).34
In the prologue, too, Espriu draws attention to a clear point of contact
between Llibre de Sinera and Setmana Santa. He reproduces the final poem
of the earlier collection and draws attention to the acrostic – ‘mort’ – of the
final four lines. What is equally as evident from the opening poem of Setmana
Santa, however, is the way in which it undermines the secure vision at the end
of the previous book:
Eterna, noble, una paraula
en l’arrelada sequedat.
Primera història d’Esther, ed. Sebastià Bonet, p. 9.
33 Castellet refers to the passage in which he recalls his distant recollection of his aunt
as ‘un prodigi de prosa narrativa, de les millors del seu autor’ [a miracle of prose narrative,
among the author’s best]. Iniciació a la poesia de Salvador Espriu, p. 60.
34 Further evidence of Espriu’s attachment to his Catholic roots and his theological
knowledge is provided by a memoir by Ramón Roca-Puig, a priest, who, as a seminarist,
taught Espriu the catechism and who resumed his acquaintanceship with the poet in later
life. See Memòria de Salvador Espriu, pp. 157–61.
31
32
THE LATER POETRY
Ara, llum vell, ets apagat,
i ja ningú no seu a taula.
La veritat ens sembla faula,
es romp al nu roquer del cant.
En trossejats vents de l’espant
dansem el boig i la barjaula.
Alliberats, ens hem lliurat,
sota podrits dits de mesell,
al ball del crim. Volta el penell,
mai no parem, car l’amo és ell.
Endins del glaç d’uns ulls d’ocell,
aguait de forques, dels alçats
braços dels arbres dels penjats.
159
(OC, II, 129)
[Eternal, noble, one word in the rooted dryness. Now, ancient light,
you are extinguished, and nobody sits at table. Truth seems a fable to
us, the bare rock of the song is broken. In tattered winds of fear we
dance, the fool and the whore. Liberated, beneath the rotten fingers of
a leper, we have yielded to the dance of crime. The weathercock spins,
we never stop, for he is the master. Within the ice of a bird’s eyes,
ambush of gallows, of the high branches of the trees of hanged men.]
The first two lines may provoke the expectation that this poem will start
where the final one of the previous collection ended. What follows, however,
seems to give the lie to the positive Christian associations of the book’s title:
the extinguished light, the unoccupied table, the absence of truth. We inhabit,
once more, the same emotional territory as was evident in the first part of Mrs.
Death: the blur of images of illness, depravity and frenzy suggest a world
with neither reason nor values. The conclusion is based on an evocation of the
gallows, an image used in previous collections, and it is appropriately in the
form of an incomplete sentence. It conjures up a macabre scene – the sinister
birds waiting for their victims – enhanced by the implied conflation of the
branches of the trees with the arms of those who hang from them.
The mood of the succeeding poems is well and truly established by this
arresting opening. The second poem (OC, II, 130) speaks of a hostile, absurd
existence where reason has foundered and where life is ruled by the drawing
of tarot cards. The religious misreading is developed in images of food and
hunger in the following three poems. Such imagery has, again, been
employed in earlier books, but on this occasion it is invested with a specific
resonance. The Last Supper has been converted into an ugly triviality, a
travesty of the sacrament and a scene of almost comic horror:
. . . Ben mirat,
qui de nosaltres s’escarrassa
en el fregit? Uns dits de foll
mig cruejant l’han trossejat.
160
D. GARETH WALTERS
Mosses d’hostal ens han parat
llargues, feixuges, coixes taules.
(OC, II, 131)
[Looked at closely, which of us takes trouble about the fry-up? The
fingers of a madman have cut them, half cooked, into pieces. The
waitresses in the restaurant have prepared us long, heavy and wobbly
tables.]
There is neither physical nor spiritual nourishment. Instead, we are presented
with ‘fam en escenes de convit’ [hunger in banquet scenes] (OC, II, 132)
while the diners observe how ‘el cabrit/ esdevingué peix mal fregit’ [the kid
becomes badly fried fish] (OC, II, 133). Yet, as we have seen many times
before, it is on such occasions that Espriu calls upon reserves of decency and
diligence. It is not, as ever, merely a gesture: it possesses something of the
survivor’s instinct, yet the appeal is invariably to reason:
Som escarnits, sovint traïts,
molt sorollats per necis crits.
Mai no podrem, però, deixar
el lliure dret d’examinar
lleis, fonaments, límits, raons,
rengles d’enigmes sense fons,
amb lúcid, fred, subtil rigor.
Car viure té tan sols valor
si preguntem davant l’assot
justicier de l’únic mot.
(OC, II, 133)
[We are scorned, often betrayed, deafened by the shouts of idiots. But
we will not abandon the free right to examine laws, bases, limits,
reasons, the series of fathomless enigmas, with a lucid, dispassionate,
subtle rigour. For living is only worthwhile if we enquire with the
righteous whip of the unique word.]
The force of the word ‘però’ in the third line cannot be overestimated. It
encapsulates resolution and a combative spirit, and slams the door shut on the
sordid dining scene. The subsequent listing, word by slow word, of rational,
ethical qualities emerges as a measured litany. What lends this homily its
unique power is its formulation as an uncompromising necessity, hence the
recourse to such qualifiers as ‘mai’ [never], and ‘tan sols’ [only]. For this is
neither an option nor a desideratum: it is a right and thus a requirement. If one
were compelled to identify a motto for Espriu as poet, then surely these lines
would serve.
Such an utterance is, nonetheless, born of reason rather than faith, although
later poems will build upon such a seemingly secular virtue in response to a
question that has a clear Christian dimension: what is truth? The mood of the
[poems] that follow (VI–VIII), however, is not conducive to rational pursuit;
THE LATER POETRY
161
they are remorselessly bleak. So breathless is their articulation that, rather
than images, what we perceive are brief impressions or flashes of images.
They come across like forerunners of raps, as in-your-face as any poem could
hope to be:
Ben a trossos,
podrits cossos
són ja miques
de confit
a la boca
que remuga
brins de dona,
de marit.
(OC, II, 134)
[Reduced to pieces, rotten bodies, are now crumbs of candy to the
mouth that chews over wisps of a woman, of a husband.]
The quickfire patter of these lines supplies another religious parody in the
savage trivialising of the Eucharist. These poems offer neither truth nor light:
only the banality and degeneration of a meaningless death, as in the mocking
jangle of the ‘rialla/ de la dalla’ [laughter of the scythe] (OC, II, 134) and the
return of the gravedigger’s spade from Llibre de Sinera:
El magall
del cec temps
romp a palpes
l’endurit
camp de mill
mort de set.
(OC, II, 135)
[The spade of blind time breaks as it gropes the hardened field of
millet dead of thirst.]
Another image of degradation – that of the puppet who must obey the whims
of his master – emerges in the eighth poem. There is also an anticipation of
the Holy Week procession – the prompt for the suite of nine poems that were
later to be incorporated into the larger set:
Posa l’amo
fred marxamo
a la meva
solitud
i en un sac
se m’emportava
per greixors
de multitud.
Cremen l’aire
162
D. GARETH WALTERS
blens de ciris:
ara ve
la processó,
quietud
arrenglerada
que segueix
tocs de tambor.
(OC, II, 136)
[The master puts a cold stamp on my solitude and takes me away in
a sack amid the grease of the crowd. Candle wicks burn the air: now
the procession comes, a stillness that falls into line and follows the
beats of the drum.]
Yet if this is a religious procession it is one that is located in the midst of
human beings at their most abject – sordid and whimsical pipsqueaks. Only
at the point of boredom with their folly and inanity can they pause to make a
feeble plea for an immediate and trite alleviation:
Quan se’n cansen,
pidolaven,
per l’amor
o mort de Déu,
degotissos
de xavalla,
mentre cauen
flocs de neu.
(OC, II, 136)
[When they tire, they begged for the love or the death of God, trickles
of coins, while snowflakes fall.]
The variation by extension of the conventional phrase ‘for the love of God’
strikes a suitably sardonic note.
Yet this petition is of some avail if only because it succeeds in bringing the
maddening metrical beat to a halt. The ninth poem may be slight thematically,
but as a result of its delicacy and lightly-sketched descriptive charm it emerges as another of Espriu’s ‘redemptive’ poems, where, momentarily at least,
the momentum of darkness and despair is checked, just as the snowflakes
seem to be motionless, so slowly do they fall:
Són primes volves
fonedisses, molt lentes.
A mig camí de l’aire
paren de caure.
La freda nit tremola
en la cremor dels ciris.
(OC, II, 138)
[They are small snowflakes, melting, falling slowly. Half way down,
they stop falling. The cold night trembles in the heat of the candles.]
THE LATER POETRY
163
The poem that immediately precedes the group of six that formed part of the
original ‘suite’ is complex. The rapid, breathless rhythms return, and with them
the same blur of impressions and images. Yet among them is heard a voice:
I una veu
en agonia
va cridant
que només vol
la cendrosa
companyia
de paraules,
un llençol
d’amplitud
de vent que tapi
set i sang,
forats de claus,
vastitud
de la tristesa,
gran feresa
de carrers,
la nuesa
recordada
dels cabells
negres del sol.
(OC, II, 139)
[And a voice in agony shouts that it only wants the ashen company of
words, a sheet of the breadth of the wind that covers thirst and blood,
the nails of spikes, vastness of the sadness, the great horror of the
streets, the remembered nakedness of the black hair of the sun.]
The religious associations are evident again, but not as before. Whereas in the
opening poems the allusions took the form of a grotesque parody, what we
have here is significantly different. The voice is that of the suffering Christ
and it is also a voice that is grafted onto the experience of a lost and lonely
humanity. This poem is appropriately rich in allusion: not only the Communion tablecloth that was the work of sor Isabel de la Creu but also, as Espriu
himself noted in the prologue, a half-conscious reference to a phrase by Rois
de Corella.35
We are now a quarter of the way through the book and at the point where
the group of poems specifically concerned with the Holy Week processions
begins. The persistent recourse to religious parody has served, above all, to
demonstrate the gulf between the life of Christ and the human experience.
The events of Holy Week have thus far not served as a means of redemption.
35
Antología lírica, p. 61.
164
D. GARETH WALTERS
Instead, they have been rewritten in a negative and grotesque manner as an
indictment of the failure of individual and social life; later in the collection
we shall see how an historical dimension is involved. The effect is akin to
counterpoint: against the surface text that embodies the sordid insignificance
of base humanity there sounds the implicit text that holds open to us the
certainty and the permanence of the Passion. Another way of representing
such a dichotomy is in the presence or absence of truth – an issue that
preoccupies the poet in the second part of the book.
Even in the evocation of the Holy Week processions in the following poems
this comparative dimension is still present. There is, however, more emphasis
now on the pictorial aspect, sketched and fragmentary rather than visually
detailed, so that the effect is not so dissimilar to that achieved in what is
perhaps the most vivid poetic understanding of the festival, the ‘Poema de la
saeta’ from Lorca’s Poema del Cante Jondo. A poem like the fourteenth of
Setmana Santa with its imaginative description of the sounds that accompany
hooded penitents invites comparison with Lorca’s poem:
Mira com vénen
pel vespre lentes files
d’encaputxats. Les aspres
mans del temps percudien
sense repòs esteses
pells tibants, timbals, cranis
que llargament tombegen
sota els cops.
(OC, II, 143)36
[See how there come at dusk slow files of hooded men. The harsh
hands of time beat without repose the taut, stretched skins, drums,
skulls that prolong their echoes beneath the blows.]
In other places, however, the events of Holy Week are again applied to the
experience of the individual soul, as with the interpretation of Palm Sunday:
De primer s’alçarien
palmes, veus, en precari
triomf, quan s’atansava
ja la mort i li obríem
dintre nostre aquest àrid
camí que ha de deixar-nos
ben al fons de l’abisme.
(OC, II, 141)
36 Compare the opening of Lorca’s ‘Procesión’ [‘Procession’]: ‘Por la calleja vienen/
extraños unicornios. ¿De qué campo/ de qué bosque mitológico?’ [Along the street come
strange unicorns. From what field, from what mythological wood?]. Poema del Cante
Jondo. Romancero gitano, ed. Allen Josephs and Juan Caballero, 8th edn (Madrid:
Cátedra, 1985), p. 169.
165
THE LATER POETRY
[First, palms, voices, would be raised in precarious triumph, and
when death then arrived we opened for him within ourselves this arid
road which had to leave us right at the bottom of the abyss.]
The single sentence of this poem supplies an unusually profound understanding
of human fallibility as represented in the Passion story: the fickleness inherent
in the reception that the crowd gave to Christ as he entered Jerusalem, and the
subsequent awareness of hollowness and abandonment occasioned by their
collusion in his death. In the final poem of this group from the original suite,
the focus is rather more on the individual response as the poet imagines himself
wandering through the moonlit streets, presumably when the procession has
ended. The analogy with the vita Christi is again present:
A poc a poc m’entrava
el ferro de la llança
del meu temps.
(OC, II, 145)
[Slowly there pierced me the iron of the lance of my time.]
On this occasion the allusion is historico-political and it provokes in the poet
a feeling that we have seen in previous books: the desire for withdrawal, to
escape, momentarily at least, from the requirements of being a poet, here
related to the fear of death that properly accompanies complicity in the
Crucifixion:
– Com fugiria ara,
on aniré,
quina clau m’obriria
cap recer?
Timor mortis conturbat me.
[How would I now flee, where shall I go, what key would open some
shelter for me? Timor mortis conturbat me.]
Appropriately the next group of poems develops the notion of fallibility,
again with reference to the New Testament. The seventeenth and eighteenth
poems meditate on the metaphor of the camel passing through the eye of the
needle, pointedly addressed to one who is ‘Amic del fort i tan injust/ ordre, de
l’or’ [Friend of the strong and unjust order, of gold] (OC, II, 146), while the
nineteenth returns to the events of Holy Week, to the betrayal of Jesus, an idea
that is fully explored in the emotive twentieth poem, which marks the midpoint of the collection:
Trenta diners, a Sepharad,
són una grossa quantitat.
166
D. GARETH WALTERS
Et venc per ells, i fins per res,
no sols aquest despullat pres,
sinó la nostra dignitat,
el cel, els camps, les deus, el blat,
tot el país, de mar a mar,
llengües, costums, passat, futur,
el pensament, la llei, el fur.
És un bon preu, no et costa car.
Només pretenc de rosegar,
segur, tranquil, un tros de pa,
al sol, xau-xau, un os de gos.
Fes i desfés, com si no hi fos.
(OC, II, 150)
[Thirty pence, in Sepharad, is a fine sum of money. I sell you for this,
and even for nothing, not only this naked prisoner, but our dignity, the
sky, the fields, the fountains, the wheat, the whole country, from sea
to sea, languages, customs, past, future, thought, law, code. It’s a
good deal, it doesn’t cost you much. I only seek a crust of bread to
gnaw at, safe and content, in the sun, bit by bit, a dog’s bone. Do and
undo, as if I weren’t there.]
With this poem we are back in the world of La pell de brau, but even in that
book there were few poems as pointedly bitter as this one. The idea of the
betrayal of Catalonia – of its culture, history and birthright – has figured
previously, but here it merges with the Passion story. It is not a matter of
analogy, however, but of addition: the thirty pieces of silver are enough to
acquire not only the person of Christ – the ‘despullat pres’ [the naked prisoner] – but everything that is contained within what is understood by ‘nation’.
These are concerns of immense value and detailed painstakingly and sorrowfully. Equally dolorous is the snappy sentence that follows – a throw-away
line for a seemingly throw-away item. It is a sarcastic reassurance to the
purchaser that he has secured a bargain, for in this transaction the ‘dearest
thing’ that is owned is cast off as if it were a ‘careless trifle’. The collapse into
degradation, to the ready acceptance of the crumbs that fall from the rich
man’s table, is again a familiar image, but the extension of the metaphor to
include the willingness to gnaw a dog’s bone gives it a savage edge. The final
line of the extract provides a further brutal indication of the repercussions of
the bargain-basement sale: it began with the loss of dignity and concludes
with the loss of identity. Well might the poet observe wearily at the end of the
poem that ‘llargs anys de neu han capolat/ el poble meu de Sepharad’ [long
years of snow have worn out my people of Sepharad].
There is no lessening of the sense of guilt and shame in the next three
poems. Espriu now focuses on another aspect of the Passion story that also
highlights mankind’s shortcomings and cowardice: Peter’s denial. The first of
these poems is mainly concerned to provide the setting: the Mount of Olives,
THE LATER POETRY
167
the torches in the darkness, and the arrest of Christ (OC, II, 151). The second
poem meditates on Peter’s weakness, and although it is redolent of grief, it
offers a trace of compassion for the inconsolable disciple:
Fel de poder ambigu, fang,
reflexos d’or mesclat amb sang:
això et pertany, i res no mou
a perdonar-te, car saps prou
què vas negar, pedra. Desprès,
et cal plorar per sempre més.
(OC, II, 153)
[Gall of ambiguous power, mud, reflections of gold mixed with
blood: this is what belongs to you, and nothing moves to forgive you,
for you know full well that you denied, stone. Afterwards it was right
for you to weep forever more.]
Man’s nature is ambivalent: there are traces of nobility amid the misery.
Moreover, in the guise of Peter, here addressed etymologically as ‘pedra’
[stone], he is endowed with the capacity of awareness of his deed and his
plight.37 The following poem is even more a matter of shade and light. The
point of reference in the Passion narrative is the empty tomb where Christ was
buried. Images of degradation and fear are interwoven with indications of
mystery, even salvation: ‘senyals de llum/ en la buidor’ [signs of light in the
darkness] (OC, II, 154). At this point, too, there emerges the question that
Pontius Pilate posed to Christ in John 18:38: what is truth? The following
poem provides one answer or, at least, a reaction. In a word it suggests that
the truth is painful, once more by blending scriptural details – Christ under
arrest, the cock crowing – with an awareness of humanity’s sense of terrible
isolation: ‘La solitud de l’home/ i el seu secret esglai’ [The loneliness of man
and his secret fear] (OC, II, 156). The next poem, the twenty-fifth, repeats the
question. The poem incorporates a translation of a Latin anagram by way of
the solution, which, Espriu indicates, was incorporated into the Communion
tablecloth embroidered by his aunt: ‘Quid es veritas? Est vir qui adest’. Of
greater import here, however, is another idea, anticipated two poems earlier,
that of the broken mirror. Castellet indicates how Espriu had used this image
previously in Primera història d’Esther.38 In one of the poems, the image is
37 Espriu’s understanding of the significance of Peter’s denial bears out what Richard
Holloway sees as the ‘dramatic sense of Peter’s desolation’. His words are ‘few and
simple, yet they have carried that look of grieving love through history. And they connect
us to our own denials. Peter’s tragedy is not that he was a bad or cynical man, but that he
was an ordinary man who could not live up to his own ideals’. The Gospel According to
Luke (Edinburgh: Canongate Books, 1998), p. ix.
38 Iniciació a la poesia de Salvador Espriu, p. 62.
168
D. GARETH WALTERS
that of broken glass scattered in all directions: ‘Vidre llançat, esmicolat,/ als
quatre vents de la ciutat’ [Glass, shattered into pieces, thrown to the four
winds of the city] (OC, II, 157). The idea has its roots in the Jewish mystical
tradition, especially in the work of Isaac Luria, a philosopher from Gerona
who was responsible for the doctrine of zimzum or retraction. This postulates
a theory of creation as a pristine truth that shatters into fragments, each one
of which emits light and thereby is a reflection of the truth. In Espriu’s
version of the theory each shard of glass will serve to enlighten the traveller
who might otherwise stray into the path of error.
The question about truth is articulated for the third time at the start of the
twenty-sixth poem. On this occasion the response is unhelpful. Indeed it is
almost nonsensical:
Què és la veritat?
Qui sap si tu, tal volta tu
o també tu. Potser ningú.
(OC, II, 158)
[What is truth? Who knows if you, perhaps you or also you. Perhaps
nobody.]
Such an emphatic negation of the glimpse of truth afforded by this poem, not
least the parody of the exchange between Pilate and Christ, sets the tone for
a group of poems that broach other aspects of the Passion narrative, now
without regard for a strict chronology; thus the destruction of the temple at
the point where Christ dies (OC, II, 162) appears in the midst of a group of
poems concerned with Palm Sunday. Once again, scriptural details are subject
to oblique reflections. The humble gesture of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem on
a donkey is the point of contrast for an image of arrogance: that of the expert
horseman, mounted on his saddle of knowledge. This, however, is no guarantee of security:
Però sents
com s’esmuny
de la sella
la certesa
de ser
tu mateix.
(OC, II, 160)
[But you feel how there slides from the saddle the certainty of you
being yourself.]
Indeed, the following poem serves to intensify the negative perception, for the
reckless rider is attracted by the folly of man: ‘Remor de veus de folls: cap
fe./ Per què, però, te’n vas amb ells?’ [Sound of voices of madmen: no faith.
Why, then, are you going off with them?] (OC, II, 161). Little surprise, then,
that his pride should precede a fall. If he was slipping from his saddle in the
THE LATER POETRY
169
twenty-seventh poem, at the end of the thirty-first he hits the ground. It is as
though his fall is precipitated by the signs of upheaval in the natural world at
the point of Christ’s death. In this poem the rider appears to be culpably
oblivious to or unmoved by the most vivid of Passion images – the three
crosses on the hill and the tomb where Christ would be placed. The additional
detail of the dogs gnawing at the feet of Christ’s two fellow victims is visually
and symbolically arresting, evocative of the shame and the brutality of the
rider, who is Everyman, trapped within the limits of his selfish pursuits, and
who amply bears out the moral shortcomings – the sheer ignorance of guilt –
to which he confesses at the start of the poem, for the truth that has been so
coveted is here concealed:
Res no comprenc del fons del plet.
Culpes de qui? Tels de secret
van embolcant la veritat.
Avui me’n vinc al lloc pelat.
Dalt del cavall del meu saber,
furgo tenebres amb plaer.
Volto per on eren alçats,
junts, els tres pals dels condemnats . . .
Gossos amb fam roseguen peus,
fins als turmells inflats, dels reus.
La terra es mou. La llum del llamp
m’abat de cop en aquest camp.
(OC, II, 164)
[I understand nothing about the basis of the case. Who is to blame?
Secret veils are concealing the truth. Today I approach the barren
place. On the horse of my knowledge I have pleasure in poking about
in the darkness. I go around where the three posts of the condemned
men were erected together . . . Hungry dogs gnaw at the prisoners’
feet, up to their swollen ankles. The earth moves. The ray of lightning
flattens me in this field.]
Characteristic of Espriu is the shift of speaker: from the poet addressing the
horseman in the previous poem to the horseman himself describing his fate in
this present one. We thus are less aware of a morally superior poet directing
messages at reprobates; rather, it is as though the poet himself acknowledges
his involvement in misdeed – he, too is Everyman – and thus does not divest
himself of guilt.
The following group of poems indeed reinforces the idea of a collective
responsibility. The key image is now that of the dance, the ‘clos ball de
tothom’ [enclosed dance of everyone] (OC, II, 165). It harks back to the
Medieval Dance of Death, evident in the inclusive enumeration in the thirtythird poem: ‘Mesclats homes i dones, vells, infants,/ rostres iguals’ [Men and
women, the old, the young all mingled, their faces the same] (OC, II, 166).
The dance in these poems, however, suggests a complexity of notions that are
170
D. GARETH WALTERS
tantamount to death, above all, the terrible hollowness and chaos of a life
badly lead, of values forsaken. The frenetic pace of this dance, whose beat,
frighteningly, is sounded ‘amb tocs cruels als cranis tombejants’ [with cruel
beats on the resounding skulls] appropriately prepares us for a group of three
poems that have the same rap-like metre of poems from the early part of the
section.39 In the frenzy of this dance there is neither respite nor selfawareness:
Entorn
de l’eix
del buit,
al ball,
mai cap
repòs,
tampoc
sentit.
Potser
només
l’esglai
d’un crit.
(OC, II, 167)
[Around the axle of the void, in the dance, never any rest, nor sense.
Perhaps only the terror of a cry.]
In all three poems the dance is equated with a nightmare: a ‘pervers/ malson’
[perverse nightmare] (OC, II, 168) in the first, and the ‘negra torre/del
malson’ [black tower of a nightmare] (OC, II, 170) in the second. In the last
of these poems, however, the poet seems to come to the sudden realization
that the horror to which he is subject is within him – another instance of how
the Passion story is, for Espriu, no less than for others, a fable of the
individual soul, confronted by evil yet equipped with choice, which he may
or may not exercise:
Sóc jo mateix
el meu malson.
No ens destriem,
però potser
ara refuso
d’esguardar
els fixos ulls
sentits al fons
39 The location of these two small groups of poems may be significant. The earlier
group begins with the sixth poem of the collection, the later one, with the sixth last poem
of the book.
THE LATER POETRY
de les respostes
del mirall.
171
(OC, II, 171)
[I am my own nightmare. We cannot separate ourselves but perhaps
now I refuse to look at the fixed eyes felt in the depth of the responses
of the mirror.]
The final part of Setmana Santa focuses appropriately on the events
succeeding the death of Christ, notably the discovery of the empty tomb and
His encounter with Mary Magdalene, who loved him most (OC, II, 172). Her
inability to convince the Disciples of the truth of her vision of the risen Christ
is the prompt for uncertainty and anxiety. Yet, as he stares into the void, at the
edge of the abyss, the poet reaches into himself and repeats the ethical imperative voiced at a similarly abject point in the fifth poem. The motto is also
a mantra:
Però comprenc
que cal voler
lúcid, sencer,
il⭈limitat,
mai més sotmès
a pors, al pes
de les raons
d’autoritat,
ben arrelat
en sòlid fons,
el lliure dret
de preguntar.
(OC, II, 173)
[But I understand that one must wish for something that is lucid,
integral, unlimited, never again subject to fears, to the weight of the
reasons of authority, deeply rooted in a sound foundation – the free
right to enquire.]
Expressed with such intensity, reason is akin to faith. Or – to place it in a
larger context – merely to have defended the priority of reason, during the
quarter of a century between Cementiri de Sinera and the completion of
Setmana Santa, over what could be euphemistically termed the ‘difficult’
years, represents an act of faith. Every idea, every word, of Espriu’s mantra
serves as a reprimand for its time and about its time – as defiant in its political
implication as it is reassuring in its moral authority.
Not for the first time in his books of poetry he eschews the peroration, for
what follows this sonorous utterance is more subdued. The penultimate poem
provides an immediate qualification to the ethical prerogative as the poet
worries about the real motive of his questioning:
172
D. GARETH WALTERS
és que tan sols voldries
reposar, destriar-te,
que fugi el fred de l’ombra
del teu malson?
(OC, II, 174)
[is it that you only want to rest, to observe yourself, for the cold of
the shadow to flee from your nightmare?]
The spectre that is raised is a familiar one – the desire for withdrawal from
the combat of life. Yet the call to awareness is potent, even though the
presence of Christ – what we might here interpret as the desire for the truth,
given the earlier preoccupation with the issue – is envisaged as an elusive
mystery, almost as if it were something we dare not believe in:
Però la llum de l’alba
t’apropa llunyanies
de vent de mar, i s’alcen
vols d’ocells, una mica
de pols, remor de fulles
del mort hivern, a penes
incertitud de passos
molt lleus en el camí.
[But the light of dawn brings you the distances of the wind of the sea,
and flights of birds rise up, a little dust, the sound of leaves of dead
winter, barely the uncertainty of the lightest steps on the path.]
The concluding poem – one of the original set of nine from 1962 – adopts
as its starting-point a line from the Easter sequence Victimae paschali laudes,
which had been an important motif in Mrs. Death: ‘Dic nobis, Maria, quid
vidisti in via’. The tentative mood of the previous poem is maintained in the
wary responses to questions whose point of reference is the exchange between
the Disciples and Mary Magdalene:
Esguardes al camí
la incertitud de l’alba?
Potser no, potser sí.
(OC, II, 175)
[Do you observe on the path the uncertainty of dawn? Perhaps no,
perhaps yes.]
The canny riposte is testimony perhaps to a deep-rooted resistance to the truth
whereby the Disciples’ suspicions are converted into an individual spiritual
edginess; Espriu after all, was a self-confessed agnostic, albeit a ‘reverent
and respectful’ one.40 At the end, not for the first time, we are left with the
40
See Espriu i Malagelada, Salvador Espriu, p. 56.
THE LATER POETRY
173
certainty of the word, not only as a testimony but also – appropriately in view
of the subject of Setmana Santa – as an ineradicable and unalterable
inscription. Over much of the book the relationship between the religious
subject and the secular theme has been strained. Such a tension, of course, is
fertile, allowing the poet to explore the depths of degeneracy and
despondency, but the trend of the collection, like that of Holy Week itself, has
been that of the fragile soul limping towards some kind of redemption. To the
end, Espriu is as uncompromisingly downbeat as ever, but now at least we
sense that an emotional equilibrium has been achieved:
No provis de tocar-me
cap mot, si et sembla trist.
Prou saps que no podries:
el que he escrit és escrit.
[Do not try to touch me with any word, if it seems sad to you. In any
case you know that you could not do so: what I have written is
written.]
Haikus and Homages
Setmana Santa was to be the last of Espriu’s integrated books. In the final
decade of his life the emphasis shifted from the single unit comprising
constituent poems to the individual poem within the whole book. This former
kind of undertaking was neatly defined by an editor of one of Lorca’s poetic
works as a ‘libro poético’ [poetic book] as distinct from a ‘libro de poesías’
[book of poems].41 This change of priority was gradual rather than sudden
and can be seen as the culmination of a trend that was implicit in the reduced
poetic activity of the 1960s. The poetry that Espriu wrote in the last decade
of his life is accordingly more relaxed than that produced previously.
Moreover, there is, more commonly, a specific source of inspiration. He
writes about works of art, other poets and writers, friends, places and current
affairs. Most of these poems do not betray the intensity and passion of the
earlier unified books, but through the lightness of Espriu’s touch they come
across as variously charming and Olympian.
Yet there is nothing slight about the work that he published in no. 37 of
Qüestions de Vida Cristiana (Barcelona) in 1967. Indeed, Per al llibre de
salms d’aquests vells cecs [For the Book of Psalms of these Blind Old Men]
can be considered as his penultimate integrated collection – a sequence of
41
p. 16.
Canciones y Primeras canciones, ed. Piero Menarini (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1986),
174
D. GARETH WALTERS
haikus inspired by Brueghel’s painting The Parable of the Blind. It follows
Setmana Santa in his collected works as Espriu started it later, and this is a
sensible positioning as the connection between Setmana Santa and Llibre de
Sinera is thereby more evident, while the artistic inspiration of Per al llibre
forms a link with Formes i paraules, poems inspired by the works of the
sculptor Apel⭈les Fenosa. Per al llibre also relates to Setmana Santa by
having a religious subject: the Brueghel painting, upon which the collection
meditates, is a powerful realization of Christ’s parable of the blind guiding the
blind and falling into a ditch (Matthew 15:14 and Luke 6: 39).
A notable feature of Per al llibre is its lexical virtuosity. Espriu does not
use any word that is a noun, adjective, verb or adverb more than once – an
achievement that perhaps only someone with as prodigious a knowledge of
Catalan as he could bring off so effortlessly.42 Striking, too, is the poetic form
chosen for this work. The haiku – a poem of seventeen syllables distributed
over three lines – is normally employed to depict a scene trapped in a moment
of time rather than as a vehicle for a continuous narrative, but few of the
40 poems that make up the collection have this descriptive quality. Indeed,
dialogue is more significant than scene-painting; for example, there is no
mention of the church that figures in the background of the Brueghel painting
and which could have served a symbolic function in the poem just as it does
in the painting.43 The predominantly narrative manner also encourages
enajambement, a consequence of dividing many of the haikus into two nearly
equal parts, a feature that is dominant in the opening sections:
I
Qui fa de guia
és el més cec. Alçàvem
al sol les nines.
II
Fixes, ben llises,
blancs vestits de la nostra
desesperança.
III
Clapiten gossos
al meu voltant. Rastregen
caça segura.
42 This is an even more remarkable feat if account is taken of the existence in
unpublished form of another 60 haikus that seem to have been destined for a much enlarged
edition of Per al llibre. See Sebastià Bonet (2003), ‘D’uns haikus espriuans inèdits’, 28–37.
43 The painting depicts how the blind are walking at some distance from the church if
not away from it – symbolic of how those who do not follow the Christian life and values
are doomed.
THE LATER POETRY
175
IV
Palpem adversos
murs de llum, cel de pluja,
pell de la fosca.
V
Llarga corrua
d’ombres. Per la temença,
remor de passos.
(OC, II, 179)
[The one who leads is the blindest one. We lifted our pupils to the
sun. Fixed, very smooth, the white clothes of our despair. Dogs yelp
around me. They smell a sure prey. We feel the hostile walls of light,
the rainy sky, the skin of darkness. Long rows of shadows. Through
fear, the sound of footsteps.]
The narrative priority does not, however, preclude that kind of penetrating
attention to specifics, which is a hallmark of the haiku. In these lines the
notion that the blind rely upon other senses to compensate for their deprivation of sight yields precise and delicate details. Apart from the heightened
awareness of the sounds of the dogs and their own footsteps (III, V), there is
an imaginative realization of how the perception of darkness and light is
achieved by a desperate act of touching (IV).
These lines suggest that the work will contain some of Espriu’s favourite
images. The picture of the beggars accompanied by barking dogs and a rainy sky
is closely reminiscent of ‘Els músics cecs’ from Mrs. Death (OC, I, 279), and the
conception of the beggars themselves as defeated and abject has more in
common with that poem than the terrifying yet intuitive old beggar in the seventh
and eighth poems of Llibre de Sinera (OC, II, 87, 88). Yet in the twenty-fourth
haiku, we discover that one of the beggars possesses the same name ‘Altíssim’
[Most high] – as the blind narrator of Primera història d’Esther although the
figure in Per al llibre lacks the wisdom and dignity of the character in the play.
Yet what we do get in the poetic work is a glimpse of wisdom, albeit one
that is partial and perverse, in the form of ‘trossos de laments’ [scraps of
laments] and ‘filagarses de buits diàlegs’ [shreds of empty dialogues] (OC, II,
182). These dialogues are little more than snatches of conversation or
seemingly random thoughts. There is a rough and ribald quality about the first
exchange on the subject of drunkenness:
IX
– Company, vacil⭈les,
embriac de begudes
de polseguera?
X
– Germà, no tasto
176
D. GARETH WALTERS
cap altre vi.
– Que puguis
sempre comprar-lo.
XI
– Amb diners d’odi
d’esquerp jueu: mig cèntim
per glop us pago.
(OC, II, 180)
[Friend, you’re staggering, drunk on dust drinks?; Brother, I don’t
taste any other wine. – You could always buy it.; With the hate money
of a surly Jew: I’ll pay you half a centime a swig.]
This uneasily jocular repartee is succeeded by an unexpected haiku:
XIV
Quedem de sobte
molt xops de la vessada
sang del capvespre.
(OC, II, 181)
[We are suddenly soaked to the skin by the blood shed at twilight]
This image of bloodshed at dusk recalls the opening of ‘Omnis fortasse
moriar’, one of the most emotive poems in Les hores: ‘El vespre és ple de
sang’ [The dusk is full of blood] (OC, I, 244). The interpolation of a politicohistorical detail – again an allusion to the Civil War – serves to introduce a
more serious element that is reflected in subsequent direct-speech musings. In
keeping with the source – artistic and biblical – these touch upon religious
topics, though such concise whimsy can hardly be termed ‘topics’:
XVIII
– Déu m’és feixuga,
constant, immensa falta
d’ortografia.
[For me, God is a ponderous, constant, vast lack of orthogrpahy.]
XXI
– Amb eterns límits
topa l’afany inútil
de la formiga.
(OC, II, 182)
[With eternal limits he (sc. man) comes across the useless toil of the
ant.]
These verbal jottings have the effect of creating a mood of increasing
bleakness and solemnity. In this way, Espriu’s work reflects Brueghel’s
THE LATER POETRY
177
painting: the general impression of a cruelly comic scene of confusion and,
on closer examination, a sense of individual suffering. The shapes are ugly
and ungainly but there is pathos in the fearful and desperate faces. Such
depths of emotion are rendered in several haikus from the later part of the
work:
XXVIII
Vident, ajuda’ns
al combat amb l’oculta
cremor de l’alba.
XXIX
D’un pou a l’altre
de la nit, som profunda
set de font clara.
(OC, II, 183)
[Sighted one, help us in the struggle with the hidden heat of dawn. From
one well of night to another, we are the deep thirst of a clear fountain.]
The conclusion provides a fine example of how poetry inspired by the visual
arts cannot duplicate the effect of the other medium. Whereas we absorb
(though of course not necessarily fully appreciate) the impact of a painting
more or less immediately, poetry operates in a linear fashion – a movement in
time rather than time frozen. When we look at Brueghel’s painting the eye
focuses immediately upon the fall of the two beggars at the front of the
procession, yet we sense, almost instantly, that their momentum will cause the
others to suffer a similar plight. Espriu communicates this sense of inevitable
disaster by ascribing to the beggars a premonition of what will happen to them:
XXXVIII
Sentíem pròxim
aquell corrent tan ràpid,
on hem de caure.
(OC, II, 185)
[We sense the nearness of that fast-flowing stream into which we will
fall.]
In the final haiku we are reminded of the key notion of the blind man – he
who was described as the blindest of all at the start – as an unsuitable leader.
In this way the point of the parable is emphasized:
XL
Amb tots nosaltres,
al fons del glaç de l’aigua,
el qui ens guiava.
(OC, II, 185)
[With all of us, into the depths of icy water, he who was leading us.]
178
D. GARETH WALTERS
*
In 1975–Espriu published another collection of 40 poems inspired by art:
a series of short poems, including tankas and haikus, entitled Formes i
paraules [Forms and Words], written in the period of a week in the autumn of
1974, and intended as an ‘approach’ to the work of the Catalan sculptor,
Apel⭈les Fenosa (1899–1988). As with Per al llibre, these poems are not
particularly pictorial in emphasis. Occasionally the sculptures themselves
address the reader, as in the fifth poem: ‘Mira’m i digues/ si no sóc acabada’
[Look at me and say if I am not finished] (OC, II, 190). The relationship
between the visual and the verbal is once more established, as in the opening
poems, a haiku follwed by a tanka:
I
Varen pensar-me
uns savis dits la forma
que sóc i guardo.
II
Ben endinsada
en fang, en bronze, pujo,
claror d’idea,
per les arrels més fosques
al gran esclat del somni.
(OC, II, 189)
[Wise fingers envisaged the form that I have and keep.]
[Steeped in mud, in bronze, I emerge, brightness of idea, through the
darkest roots to the great flash of the dream.]
Apart from the conception of Fenosa’s art in abstract terms (thought, idea),
there is the attribution of cerebral powers to the skilful hands that worked the
materials into shape. His creative faculties are seen to be identical to those of
the poet.44 Indeed in a later poem the description of his activity recalls the
way in which Espriu had referred to his own art in Cementiri de Sinera. The
poet puts words into the sculptor’s mouth when he says ‘ordeno/ vastituds de
misteris’ [I order vastnesses of mysteries] (OC, II, 194), while he had envisaged
himself in similar terms as ‘Ordenador de rengles/ de xiprers i silenci’
[Arranger of rows of cypress trees and silences] (OC, I, 182), endowed with
an analogous capacity to confer ‘autoritat de màgics/ ceptres a mans augustes’
[authority of magical sceptres to august hands].
Espriu also endeavours occasionally to catch in his description the idea of
suspended animation to which the sculptor’s art frequently aspires, as in the
44 Núria Santamaria suggests that Espriu’s understanding of the work of Josep
Subirachs epitomizes his recognition of the reciprocal relationship between the plastic arts
and literature. ‘Salvador Espriu i les arts’, Nexus, 31 (2003), 38–47 (at p. 42).
THE LATER POETRY
179
little group of poems whose hedonistic air does not preclude a recollection of
the landscape near Arenys:
X
Estiu. La dansa
de joves dones nues
parada dintre
la quietud que vinclen,
pontant al sol, rams d’arços.
XI
El prat, les herbes
s’oferien a l’ample
repòs de nues
formes de dones joves
al bat del sol esteses.
XII
L’acant escolta
ecos de llunyania.
Eternitzades,
altres fulles tremoles
als sons apagadíssims.
(OC, II, 192)
[Summer. The dance of naked young women halted within the calm
that the branches of saddle trees curve as they bridge the sun.]
[The meadow, the grass offered themselves to the broad repose of
naked forms of young women stretched out in the sunlight.]
[The acanthus listens to the echoes from afar. You stir, in the muted
sounds, other leaves, immortalized.]
Such realizations are reminiscent of Jorge Guillén’s attempt to capture the
essence of the statue of a horse in motion:
Permanece el trote aquí,
Entre su arranque y mi mano.
Bien ceñida queda así
Su intención de ser lejano.45
[His trotting remains here, between his impulse and my hand. In this
way his intention to be far away fits well.]
In other poems the emphasis is rather on the fluidity of the sculpture as a
consequence of its being the object of perception, something that changes in
accord with the eye that sees:
45
Jorge Guillén, Cántico (Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1984), p. 224.
180
D. GARETH WALTERS
VI
Mai no preguntis
qui ets. A cada
moment canviaries
dins el mirall.
Defuig els ulls que saben.
(OC, II, 190)
[Never ask who you are. All the time you would be changing in the
mirror. Flee from the eyes that know.]
In later poems of the collection, the descriptive priority yields on occasion
to other matters. In the opening poems we learnt that the sculptor’s materials
come from the land, but it is land in the sense of homeland that is celebrated
in the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth poems:
XXV
T’estimo, dura
terra meva que llences,
sollats, a trossos,
amors que només volen
molt humilment servir-te.
XXVI
Vull que t’adonis
com has vist unes formes
de perfecta bellesa.
Són la vida d’un home
que parlarà per sempre
a tots, des de la terra
aspra, traïda, seva.
Tan nostra i seva.
(OC, II, 197)
[I love you, hard land of mine that throws out, dirty, in chunks, bits
of love that only want to serve you with great humility.]
[I want you to be aware of how you have seen some forms of
perfect beauty. They are the life of a man who will always speak to
everyone, from the harsh, betrayed, land that is his. So much ours
and his.]
For the moment the poet’s preoccupation is less aesthetic than political. This
shift is precisely inscribed in the second of these poems, in the way in which
the message displaces the medium: an awarness of the beauty of form gives
way to the appreciation of what the forms imply. It is not only shapes that
issue from the earth but words. These lines evoke the complex of feelings
prompted by thoughts of Catalonia, much as we have witnessed over the
whole of Espriu’s poetry: an attachment that is tantamount to recruitment in
the cause of the nation’s plight and a recognition that such devotion is both
THE LATER POETRY
181
necessary and unavailing. Appropriately, the following poems touch on the
subjects of language and freedom, although the notion of artistic expression
is also restored:
XXVIII
Llibertat, signe
d’eterns rigors, de lluites
mai no compreses.
Al fons del pou sotjàvem
brillants nombres immòbils.
(OC, II, 198)
[Freedom, sign of eternal rigours, of struggles never understood. In
the depths of the well we watched the brilliant immobile numbers.]
The closing poems are dominated by the image of the ship and the notion
of the journey, suggestive of the myth of Ulysses.46 With this figure in mind,
the poet ponders on his own return – to a past that is beyond recollection:
XXXVIII
De totes bandes
d’on vinc me n’estranyaven.
Ara me’n torno
també, per la mar lliure,
a l’oblit que vaig perdre.
(OC, II, 201)
[From all sides from where I come they surprised me. Now I also
return, on the free sea, to the oblivion that I lost.]
Yet such a sober reflection is not the last word as the poet meditates on the
shapes that have been his subject ‘des de profundes/ deus d’un serè silenci’
[from the deep springs of a serene silence] (OC, II, 202). Not for the first
time, a work of Espriu’s concludes with an invocation of silence.
*
Espriu’s last book of poetry Per a la bona gent was published in 1984, the
year before his death, although many of the poems were written some time
before that. Each of the four sections – ‘D’una vella i encerclada terra’ [‘From
an Ancient and Encircled Land’], ‘Intencions’ [‘Intentions’], ‘Aproximació a
l’obra d’alguns artistes’ [‘Approach to the Work of Some Artists’], and ‘Les
paraules calmoses’ [‘The Calming Words’] – possesses a distinctive character
although they are unconnected to each other. Indeed, there is a random element
about the construction of the book. The overall title figured as a sub-section
in a miscellaneous grouping entitled Fragments. Versots. Intencions. Matisos
46
See Miralles, ‘Salvador Espriu’, p. 428.
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D. GARETH WALTERS
[Fragments. Verses. Intentions. Nuances] from an earlier edition of Espriu’s
poetry; other poems from this group were subsequently included in the
definitive edition of Les cançons d’Ariadna; while two of its sections – ‘Si
visitaves honestament Montserrat’ [‘If You Visited Montserrat Honestly’] and
‘País basc’ [‘Basque Country’] – were retained with the same leftover
function in a book with the same title as the previous miscellaneous grouping.47
Although not all of the poems that appear in Per a la bona gent comprise
Espriu’s last poems, the book has the air of a swansong. On the one hand there
is the sense of a poet taking stock. He revisits ideas and preoccupations –
notably about his homeland – that had exercised him throughout his work,
although the tone is now mellower. He also looks outward a lot more than
previously, hence the preponderance of occasional poetry; the works
dedicated to friends and acquiantances include poems inspired by births,
marriages and deaths, while, for the first time, there are poems about other
poets. There is a continuing interest in art: the third section, ‘Aproximació a
l’obra d’alguns artistes’, is reminiscent of the attempt to translate the plastic
arts into literature in Formes i paraules.
Most of the artists celebrated in this section are Catalan. The principal
concern is aesthetic, as in a tanka dedicated to the Swedish artist and sculptor
Owe Pellsjö (1937–), who belonged to a group of Barcelona-based painters,
which also included Amèlia Riera, the subject of another poem from this
section (OC, II, 250). For an aesthetic objective the tanka is ideal, and the
poem to Pellsjö contains no main verbs:
Dits: un lentíssim
coneixement d’abismes.
Després, captiva,
l’estesa mar, la fràgil
solitud caminada.
(OC, II, 247)
[Fingers: a slow knowledge of abysses. Afterwards, captive, the
extended sea, the fragile solitude that has been travelled.]
After the initial invocation of the artists’s physical tool – his fingers – there is
an attempt to capture visual essence through meditation – an act that is a
blend of seeing and thinking, hence the incorporation of such a word as
‘coneixement’ [knowledge].
Nonetheless, what could be termed the ethico-political dimension is never
far away, and it comes to the fore in the poem dedicated to the most famous
of the artists appearing in this section, Antoni Miró:
47 See Castellet, Iniciació a la poesia de Salvador Espriu, pp. 65–66; Miralles,
‘Salvador Espriu’, p. 428.
THE LATER POETRY
183
Molt a migjorn del nostre país rar,
aguaita nit un solitari far.
El bleix del sofriment el va sotjant,
ones endins, a l’hora del foscant.
Ell em segueix en l’aspre desconhort
de vanament lluitar contra la mort.
– Les mans amb gruix de cordes m’han lligat,
quan als senyors demano llibertat.
– No puc fer res per ajudar ningú,
perquè jo sóc tan desvalgut com tu.
Però sense descans, amb viu clamor,
em serviran la forma i el color. . . .
– I sentiràs com l’ala de l’ocell
t’uneix, al blau, al nom d’un poble vell.
(OC, II, 259)
[Exactly at midday in our strange country, a solitary lighthouse
watches for night. The deep breaths of suffering are observing it,
within the waves, at nightfall. It follows me in the bitter despair of my
vain struggle against death. “Hands have bound me with the thickness
of rope, when I ask the masters for freedom.” “I cannot do anything
to help anyone, because I am as helpless as you. But unremittingly,
and with lively clamour, form and colour will be of use to
me.” . . . “And you will feel how the bird’s wing joins you, to the
blue, to the name of an ancient people.”]
The artist is here a combatant – like the poet in earlier books – struggling and
eventually prevailing in adversity. The poem opens and closes with specific
allusions to nationhood, which serves as the frame for conflict and aspiration.
Yet the battle is, as ever in Espriu, not merely a local and political matter. The
symbolic thrust of the opening couplets suggests a perennial conflict; indeed
there is a Romantic tinge about the image of the lighthouse in the dark night
and in the suggestion of the artist as the epitome of the liberated spirit,
enabled by the grace of his technique: ‘em serviran la forma i el color’ [form
and colour will be of use to me]. The bird’s wing at the end could be both a
detail from many of Miró’s canvasses and a symbol of the freedom that the
painter covets and attains, while the notion of the artist in this instance could
include the creator as well as the subject of the poem.
Espriu’s last book also contains homages to poets, notably to two major
Spanish poets of the twentieth century, Antonio Machado and Jorge Guillén.
That he should give prominence to Spanish rather than Catalan poets
indicates both a cultural open-mindedness and a personal preference. Espriu
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D. GARETH WALTERS
does not seem to have been overly impressed by his Catalan contemporaries,
yet he would have had reason to commemorate both these Spanish poets.
Guillén’s appeal, as we have seen, may have partly resided in the way in
which he conceives of his work as a macrotext underpinned by a structural
and numerological precision. The Spanish poet’s fondness for concise and
luminous evocations of objects and the natural world also finds an echo in
Espriu. The poem dedicated to Guillén – ‘Salutació a Jorge Guillén, abans de
la seva mort’ [‘Greeting to Jorge Guillén before His Death’] (OC, II, 279) –
accordingly contains such formulations as ‘la resplandor de l’alba/ del vinent
dia’ [the splendour of the dawn of the coming day]; ‘el serè càntic/ que vol
alliberar-me’ [the serene song that wishes to liberate me]; and, as a conclusion, ‘l’alta llum d’uns versos/ que tant estimo’ [the lofty light of verses
that I love so much].
If the poem to Guillén is couched in the form of a tribute prior to his death,
then the poem in homage to Machado imagines him at the point of death, in
exile in France towards the end of the Civil War, one among the vast numbers
of refugees who had escaped ahead of the arrival of Franco’s troops in
Catalonia. Espriu’s vision of Machado – a modest and self-effacing man – is
in keeping with his own conception of the beleaguered poet answerable to his
people, as seen in his earlier books. There is here the same sense of a difficult
responsibility, of the assumption of a poetic mantle, and of resignation:
Jo, l’home bo, senzill, contemplatiu,
enmig de gent somric amb ulls petits.
Em llencen, en captar, paraules vils:
les torno cançons d’or de poble trist.
Després de tant d’esforç, què vols de mi?
Sóc dalt del bot sense rems ni proís.
Anem-nos-en avui ones endins,
alliberats de carn i d’esperit.
(OC, II, 280)
[I, the good, simple, contemplative man, smile with my little eyes
among the people. When I beg, they hurl vile words at me: I turn
them into golden songs of a poor people. After so much effort, what
do you want of me? I am upon a boat with neither oars nor mooring.
Let us go off today into the waves, free from flesh and spirit.]
Another exile from Franco’s Spain, celebrated in another section of Per a
la bona gent, is the cellist Pau Casals. Espriu’s poem to the great musician is,
moreover, directly inspired by a sculpture by Fenosa. The imagery of the
early part of the poem is of a kind much used for nationalistic poems: the
fallen tree, the shipwreck, an impenetrable wall. In the second part of
the poem there is that same note of heady survival such as we saw in a poem
THE LATER POETRY
185
like ‘Inici de càntic en el temple’ [‘Beginning of a Canticle in the Temple’]
(OC, I, 146). The passage is prefaced by a felicitous image – the hands, we
may imagine, belong both to the sculptor and the cellist – while the concluding
allusions to toil and patience bring to mind the poet’s creative vigil:
Però mans que coneixen
tot el repòs del bronze
enlairaran per sempre
en flama l’harmonia,
els fràgils sons atesos
pel treball nobilíssim
de lents esguards molt savis:
la forta disciplina
del temps i del silenci,
llargues arrels dels somnis
d’un gran cor immortal.
(OC, II, 273)
[But hands that know the whole repose of the bronze will always lift
up, in a flame of harmony, the fragile sounds achieved by the noblest
labours of the slow, wise gaze: the strong discipline of time and
silence, long roots of the dreams of a great immortal heart.]
A piece made famous by Casals was his arrangement of a Catalan folk song
about the songs of birds, which he frequently performed as an encore. In the
first section of Per a la bona gent, there is a poem entitled ‘Un nou «Cant dels
ocells»’ [‘A New “Song of the Birds” ’], which aims to provide a gloss on the
famous song. It follows a poem that likewise purports to be an update of
another song with emotional overtones for Catalans – ‘Un nou «Cant dels
segadors»’ [‘A New “Song of the Reapers” ’], alluding to the anthem that was
sung in defiance of Franco when he attended the Palau de la Mùsica in 1960.
The section from which both these poems come, as its title ‘D’una vella i
encerclada terra’ [‘From an Ancient and Encircled Land’] implies, is
principally concerned with Catalonia. It is a homage to the poet’s homeland.
There are poems about places – Girona (OC, II, 210) and Sitges (OC, II, 212) –
and one celebrating the distinctively Catalan tradition of the ‘castellers’, the
practice of forming human castles whereby people stand on each other’s
shoulders to form tiers (OC, II, 213). There are, also, two poems, of differing
styles, on nationhood. The first, ‘M’han demanat que parli de la meva
Europa’ [‘They have Asked me to Speak of My Europe’] is one of Espriu’s
longest and, arguably, poorest poems. The epigraph invites us to read it ‘with
a grain of salt’, yet it is difficult to see the joke. The opening section is
promising enough. It is an extended geographical description and it packs a
rhetorical punch in its neat semantico-syntactical contrasts:
Jo sóc d’una petita terra
sense rius de debò, sovint assedegada de pluja,
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D. GARETH WALTERS
pobra d’arbres, gairebé privada de boscos,
escassa de planures, excessiva de muntanyes,
estesa per llevant al llarg de la vella mar
que atansa el difícil i sangonós diàleg
de tres continents.
(OC, II, 219)
[I am from a little country without real rivers, often thirsty for rain,
poor in trees, almost lacking in forests, scarce in plains, overendowed with mountains, stretched out in the east along the old sea
that broaches the difficult and bloody dialogue of three continents.]
After continuing in this vein for some time Espriu goes on to speak of the
misfortunes that have befallen his little country: how, in particular, it has
suffered in recent times from civil conflict. The final part of the poem ends
with an expression of hope for the future, but the lines in which this aspiration
is expressed are prosaic and inflated – unrecognizable from the numerous
noble and eloquent enunciations of the idea in previous works. When the
notion of the equality of man is introduced as an ancillary issue it is
platitudinous:
Quan arribi el dia, haurem fet el primer
i inesborrable pas vers la suprema
unió i igualtat entre tots els homes.
I potser aleshores ens serà permès de començar,
sense classes socials, ni odis religiosos,
ni diferències cruels i injustes pel color de la pell,
la nostra peregrinació a través de l’espai,
cap a la pensada llum . . .
(OC, II, 220)
[When that day comes, we will have taken the first and uneradicable step towards the supreme union and equality of all men. And
perhaps now we will be allowed to initiate, without class divisions,
nor religious hatred, nor cruel and unjust discrimination of the colour of skin, our pilgrimage across space, towards the envisaged
light . . .]
Normal service is resumed with the second poem, ‘L’onze de setembre de
1714’ [‘September the Eleventh 1714’], a celebration of the ‘Diada’, the
National Day of Catalonia:
Almenys ens han deixat
l’honor de caure sols.
En la desesperança,
acceptem la foscor.
Demà retornarem
al treball, a l’esforç.
THE LATER POETRY
187
Dreçats, hem de cavar
als brancals de la por.
Aprofundim rars pous
als orbs ulls de la mort.
Enllà d’aigües llotoses,
terra bona, llavor.
(OC, II, 221)
[At least they have allowed us the honour of falling alone. In despair
we accept the darkness. Tomorrow we will return to our work, to our
labours. Upright, we must dig in the jambs of fear. We make deeper
the strange wells in the blind eyes of death. Beyond the muddy
waters, there is good land, seed.]
It may not compare with some of the more celebrated nationalistic pieces –
we might not imagine it being performed by one of the singers of the ‘Nova
cançó’ – but it is a dignified utterance that manages to make sense of the
paradox inherent in the many patriotic songs or anthems that celebrate defeat.
Such a poem also makes an impact because it is code-like in its detail:
confronted by its stoical posture – the acceptance of hardship and the virtue
of toil – we recall the characteristic imagery and the sober ideology of a
number of earlier compositions.
Finally, among the small group of poems dedicated to significant events in
the lives of friends is a poem that stands out because of its remarkable
description of the natural world, a feature that the poem’s title ‘Possible
introducció a un epitalami’ [‘Possible Introduction to an Epithalamium’] does
not really prepare us:
Durant el llarg estiu hem vist cremar molts boscos
al nostre vell país tan desarbrat.
Quan tramuntava el sol, de l’incendi del vespre
s’alçaven focs que lentament obrien
les amples portes de la desolació de la nit.
Ronden garbí o migjorn: sempre, sempre
el sec alè del vent damunt els camps . . .
Però segueix, tristesa enllà, el designi de vida,
car hem après que l’amor venç la mort.
Ara un home i una dona joves resolien casar-se,
i nosaltres acollim somrients el coratge
dels qui confien que hi haurà demà.
(OC, II, 263)
[During the long summer we have seen many forests burnt in our old
land so devoid of trees. When the sun was setting, in the blaze of dusk
there arose fires that slowly opened the broad gates of night’s
desolation. Whether springing from the south or the west: always,
always the dry breath of the wind upon the fields . . . But, beyond
sadness, there continues the design of life, for we have learned that
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D. GARETH WALTERS
love overcomes death. Now a young man and a young woman resolve
to get married, and we welcome with our smiles the courage of those
who trust that there will be a tomorrow.]
It would be hard to find a more energetic and committed evocation than
this. There is a rare relish in the long lines, as though the very metre wished
to be as grand as the landscape. There are no qualms about proliferating
adjectives nor about indulging in vertiginous changes of rhythm, for example,
between the intoxicating beat of the opening line and the edgy syncopation of
the fifth. The picture of the fire that ravages the parched lands invites a
matching impetuosity in the working of the poem, and the syntactical
irregularity proves especially adequate for this purpose: the hiatus in the sixth
line, enhanced by the repetition of ‘sempre’, is thunderous in effect. Espriu is
seldom as uninhibited as he is in this exciting piece, which seemingly gives
the lie to the title of the section of which it is the first poem, ‘Les paraules
calmoses’ [‘The Calming Words’]. Yet this is not ultimately about nature.
Indeed, without the title we would never have imagined that it would
conclude in such a downbeat manner with a greeting to a couple about to wed.
It would be cynical perhaps to see the fourth last line with its allusion to love
overcoming death as a cheeky idea – a cliché about romantic love from a
committed bachelor – but it seems disconcertingly bland after the symphonic
splendours of the landscape description. A more charitable and perhaps fairer
explanation is that in this poem, as in many others from the last years of his
life, Espriu writes like a man released from the urgent responsibility of a
cause, albeit a cause of his own devising rather than one imposed upon him,
for he was never bidden to anyone. The poems of Per a la bona gent are
redolent of a relaxed spirit, of one who has lived his life in his work, and who
has at the end seen that the job has been done. Although a rationalist and a
sceptic, in his last book, Espriu too, like his friends on their wedding day,
appears resolved to acknowledge the viability of a tomorrow.
Part 4
Summation and Conclusion
Les cançons d’Ariadna
In 1949, exactly midway between the appearance of Cementiri de Sinera and
Les hores, Espriu published the first edition of Les cançons d’Ariadna, a
collection of 33 poems that bore as indicative dates of composition March
1944 to January 1946. In the definitive edition of the poetry, however, this
collection had grown to 100 poems, dated 1934–1980. The stages of growth
dated mainly from the last decade of Espriu’s life: the second edition (1973)
contained 68 poems, the third (1977), 88, the fourth (1979), 89, and the fifth
and final edition 100 (1981). Yet it was not merely a matter of accumulation:
some poems that had appeared in earlier editions were not included in later
ones, as was the case with the poem entitled ‘L’onze de setembre de 1714’
(OC, II, 221), which was eventually included in the first section of Per a la
bona gent.
Delor has suggested that the date of each revision of Les cançons d’Ariadna
is historically significant, although her conclusions are not entirely convincing.
For example, she postulates that the dates relating to the composition of the
poems that formed the first edition (March 1944 to January 1946) correspond
to the end of the Second World War, yet this is a period of nearly two years that
begins before D-Day, and extends to nearly six months beyond the Japanese
surrender. Again, it is a moot point whether the event that is supposed to trigger
the fourth edition of 1979 – the publication of an article on the Catalan
language and questions of nationality in Els Marges and the discussion that it
provoked – is of a comparable historical significance.1
The collection is not a coherent one in the same way as is each of the eight
books beginning with Cementiri de Sinera and ending with Setmana Santa.
Yet, it would be unusual for Espriu to create a work that did not possess some
kind of structural or numerological rationale and, as Miralles has demonstrated, this is also the case with Les cançons d’Ariadna. He suggests a
tripartite distribution, mainly by theme or topic, into as near an equal
allocation as the equation could permit: 33, 33 and 34.2 If, as seems likely, this
1 Delor i Muns, ‘Significació de la càbala en Espriu’, Nexus, no. 37, Barcelona (2003),
p. 19.
2 ‘Salvador Espriu’, p. 407.
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D. GARETH WALTERS
is what Espriu intended, then it constitutes another allusion or homage to
Dante, as the three parts of his Divine Comedy have a nearly identical
structure.3 Yet the character of Espriu’s book is not unitary but diverse, a
collection that in his own judgement served as a summation – ‘a manera
d’índex temàtic’ – of his whole work. On two grounds such a view seems
correct: the chronological span of nearly half a century, and the variety of the
subject-matter. In two other ways, however, it is not typical of his poetry as a
whole. Even though there are small groupings of poems on a similar theme,
the lack of a connecting thread between individual pieces means that there is
not the same enlargement of the lyric moment or of the sole poetic occasion
such as we find in the bulk of his work. Secondly, Castellet has calculated that
rather more than half of the poems of Les cançons d’Ariadna are satirical
or grotesque in character.4 No other collection comes near to achieving this
proportion of such compositions, not even the frequently sardonic Mrs. Death.
The work does, however, provide the most appropriate basis for an
appraisal of Espriu’s achievement. By its very nature it is a showcase of his
art: the focus on the micro-unit – the individual poem – is expressively less
inhibiting. It permits a wider range of topic and enables a diversification of
mood. It is not surprising then that Les cançons d’Ariadna should contain
some of his most arresting and brilliant pieces, ranging from the luridly
disturbing to the stirringly nationalistic. We have already seen examples of the
latter type in Part 1, in the group comprising ‘Indesinenter’ [‘Indesinenter’],
‘Inici de càntic en el temple’ [‘Beginning of the Canticle in the Temple’] and
‘El meu poble i jo’ [‘My People and I’] (OC, I, 144–48). Other groups bear
witness to Espriu’s erudition: in the first section there is a cluster on biblical
subjects followed by poems about Christmas (OC, I, 27–39); and in the same
section a pair of poems appears that derive from the poet’s knowledge of
ancient Egyptian culture (OC, I, 48–9).
The predominance of poems dedicated to musicians, artists and poets,
especially in the third section, invites comparison with Per a la bona gent.
Indeed there is some duplication, as with the homages to Subirachs (OC, I,
29, 31, 47), Machado (OC, I, 131), and Miró (OC, I, 137). Notable among the
poems dedicated to fellow-writers are those to the novelist Montserrat Roig
(1946–91) and, unsurprisingly, to Roselló-Pòrcel. The poem that has Roig as
its dedicatee is a bleak meditation on mortality, a ‘Christmas poem’ prompted
by a reading of the prophet Jeremiah. Its conclusion is as hauntingly desolate
as anything in Espriu, the last line limping painfully to a close:
Però ara sóc al carrer, a la dura ciutat,
sol entre la multitud que d’esma va dient
3 The division in the Divine Comedy is Inferno (34 cantos), Purgatorio (33 cantos),
Paradiso (33 cantos).
4 Iniciació a la poesia de Salvador Espriu, p. 47.
SUMMATION AND CONCLUSION
paraules allunyades d’una promesa pau,
i jo escolto i miro i cerco, i no hi ha pau enlloc.
191
(OC, I, 36)
[But now I am in the street, in the hard city, alone among the crowds
that instinctively utter distant words of a promised peace, and I listen
and look and seek, and there is no peace anywhere.]
Indeed, the sense of isolation and the notion of the futile quest could be
appropriate correlatives of the emotional world conveyed in the individual
and historical perspectives of Roig’s fiction.5
The third section contains a group of poems that links creative artists
associated with Majorca (OC, I, 125–30). The focal figure is a native of the
island: Rosselló-Pòrcel, the subject of the last two of the four poems that
make up this group. The first two are concerned with visitors: Chopin, who
was accompanied by his mistress George Sand, and the Nicaraguan poet,
Rubén Darío. The title of the poem to Chopin is inspired by one of his most
celebrated compositions, the so-called ‘Raindrop’ Prelude, written, so it is
claimed, as he heard the rain falling outside his cell in the Monastery of
Valldemosa in the dismal winter of 1838–39. The poem concludes with an
evocation of Chopin at his piano. The description of the sick musician turns
into a meditative doodling on mortality, a kind of musing about artist and
people that is characteristic of Espriu’s most profound moments:
Sec al piano
i escampo per les negres
ratlles el tenuíssim
do de la pluja.
En el claustre s’aturen
pampallugues de ciris.
Tusso, m’ofego.
Però no vull que rompi
ningú la feble
guia que m’acompanya
fins on els morts esperen.
Amb ells retorno,
enllà d’ors que tramunten,
al meu fosc poble.
(OC, I, 125)
[Withered at the piano, I scatter on black lines the most insubstantial
gift of the rain, and in the cloister the flickering of the candles is
5 For a study of the affinities between Roig and Espriu see D. Gareth Walters, ‘Silences
and voices: Salvador Espriu, Montserrat Roig and the experience of the Franco years’,
Tesserae (Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies), 6 (2000), 181–94.
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D. GARETH WALTERS
halted. I cough, I choke. But I don’t want anyone to break the feeble
guide that accompanies me to where the dead await me. With them I
return, beyond the gold that sinks below the mountains, to my dark
people.]
The first of the poems to Rosselló-Pòrcel is an impression of Palma (OC, I,
128), while the second, written thirty years after his death, recalls the deathbed vigil. A number of the poems of the opening section of Les hores had
been concerned with this event, though the later composition is more intense.
The tortuous syntax of the long final sentence of the poem is redolent of
helplessness – the adjectives qualifying ‘cercles de temps mort’ [circles of
dead time] are like precisely measured hammer-blows – yet there is an
attempt to transform the friend’s death into part of a larger scheme of things
by the allusion to the ‘no-thing’ of negative theology:
. . . Nosaltres
et miràvem encara,
dura sofrença closa
en el no-res, i et dúiem,
sota feixugues voltes
del desprès, enllá d’amples,
cruels, llarguíssims cercles
de temps mort, a l’estança
on ulls de fred et guarden.
(OC, I, 130)
[We looked at you still, bitter suffering enclosed in the no-thing, and
we took you, beneath heavy vaults of afterwards, beyond broad,
cruel, long circles of dead time, to the room where cold eyes watch
over you.]
One of the distinctive features of Les cançons d’Ariadna is a wider range
of subject-matter than we find in the integrated collections. A poem on the
Vietnam War provides evidence of how Espriu readily adapted on occasion to
a political agenda associated with the protest movements of the 1960s, yet
very much in his own way. He begins the poem disarmingly with the observation ‘Jo no sóc jove’ [I am not young] (OC, I, 84) as though to remind his
readers that he is of a different generation, and concludes with a characteristically pessimistic vision of humanity far removed from the utopian
simplicities of the Sixties’ rebels:
Ara algú ho ha comprès,
però aviat, de seguida,
tothom coneixerà
que som del tot perduts.
[Now someone has understood it, but soon, immediately, everyone
will know that we are utterly lost.]
193
In between, however, he strikes the appropriate radical notes. He notes the
deficiencies of his own country in a description reminiscent of ‘Assaig de
càntic en el temple’ [‘Rehearsal of the Canticle in the Temple’] (OC, I, 337) –
‘cansadíssim, cruel,/ corromput, molt covard’ [very weary, cruel, corrupt, most
cowardly] – and, noting too that ‘la resta del món/ no és pas millor’ [the rest
of the world is no better], turns on those who wield power: ‘contra el desdeny/
dels senyors del poder’ [against the contempt of the powerful masters].
A conflict from an earlier era prompts one of Espriu’s most charming
poems. Entitled ‘Veient Rosie a la fenestra’ [‘Seeing Rosie at the Window’],
it takes the form of a love song by a black American soldier who marches
through Harlem on his way to take part in the war against Japan. The repeated
reference to his sweetheart’s name and the simple emotional poignancy
suggest the mood of a type of song that might have been sung by Joan Baez:
Harlem desfila amb aire militar.
Tremola al cel el drap de la Unió.
Pel gran carrer, la força singular
d’una riuada d’homes de color.
Soldats a peu, en moto, en autocar,
van a la guerra sense cap passió,
units tan sols per un mateix dolor.
No tinc amb mi ni un rostre familiar,
però veig Rosie: de sobte, Rosie!
(OC, I, 88)
[Harlem parades with a military air. The Union flag shakes in the sky.
On the great street, the singular power of a flood of coloured men.
Soldiers on foot, on motorbikes, in cars, go off to war without any
passion, united only by a common sorrow. I do not have a single
familiar face with me, but I see Rosie: suddenly, Rosie!]
Such a capacity to catch the mood and rhythms of popular songs is only
sporadically displayed in the unified collections, the affecting ‘Petita cançó
de la teva mort’ [‘Little Song of your Death’] from Les hores (OC, I, 217)
comprising a rare example. In Les cançons d’Ariadna, however, there is a
greater indulgence in such poetic fancies. One of these is a sea shanty entitled
‘La cançó de Tipsy Jones’ [‘The Song of Tipsy Jones’], which purports to be
a transcription of a manuscript of 1781 belonging to a distant ancestor of the
poet, the sea captain Miquel Torres i Ferrer.6 In other places Espriu will cut a
rhythmic dash for a sardonic and disturbing end; here, however, it is
rollicking good fun:
6 He was Espriu’s paternal great-great-grandfather. He received his training at the
Escola Nàutica de Pilots in Arenys and was involved in trade with many countries,
including France, England and Russia. See Móra, Salvador Espriu i Sinera, p. 103.
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D. GARETH WALTERS
El cos branda a la corda,
tendra Joana,
avui, enllà dels núvols,
senyora jana.
En un mànec d’escombra
emprèn el vol.
Vailet, remou les brases,
aviva el foc.
Que ja ningú no surti
ni entri tampoc.
Ep, els bergants, silenci
a baix, al pont!
Tipsy Jones convida
a la cançó.
(OC, I, 92)
[My body rocks on the rope, sweet Joanna, today, beyond the clouds,
my lady lass. On the handle of a broom the flight begins. Come on,
lad, poke the coals, light the fire. Now nobody gets on or off. Hey,
rascals, silence below, get on deck! Tipsy Jones invites you to sing.]
This poem also epitomises Espriu’s fascination with the traditions and
history of Arenys. In this collection, more than in others, he gives full rein to
a celebration of the people of the town. The snatches of conversation remembered from childhood find a place in a poem like ‘Rars ecos pels tombants’
[‘Strange Echoes in the Turnings’] (OC, I, 25), which is a tribute to the
imaginative stimulus he received from his aunt, Maria Castelló. This poem
mimics the thematic trajectory of the fifth poem of Llibre de Sinera (OC, II,
85) where the picture of the child playing on the beach is converted into a
dark musing upon defeat. In like manner, the conclusion of the poem in Les
cançons d’Ariadna tells us that the paradise of childhood will be lost:
Però s’enllordava
el net cel d’estiu,
falcies de l’odi
movien brogit:
lleus focs cremarien
el nostre país.
(OC, I, 25)
[But the clean summer sky became dirty, the sickles of hatred made
a din: small fires would burn our country.]
Another poem that refers to Espriu’s childhood, albeit in a more oblique
way, is ‘Malalt’ [‘Invalid’] (OC, I, 54). It describes the symptoms of an illness,
which, we can assume, alludes, partly at least, to the one suffered by the poet
as a boy. It also describes some of the mental activities in which he would
have engaged to stave off boredom: memorising the names of Popes in order
195
of succession, learning the Latin terms for different kinds of beetle, and
studying legal texts – evidence of his intellectual precocity.
The vision of Arenys that emerges in this collection, however, is
intertextual as well as autobiographical. Espriu not only re-imagines the
Arenys of his boyhood but also recreates the Sinera of his imagination, as
with a poem such as ‘Boda de Laia’ [‘Laia’s Wedding’], which alludes to the
eponymous heroine of his early novel. Indeed, the descriptive manner of the
poem is, unusually, akin to that of prose writing.7 The details of the scenepainting and the character depictions are realistic rather than suggestive – a
rare instance of Espriu employing poetry for an almost photographic purpose:
El rector comença
a casar-los. Té
la color trencada,
llavis moradencs.
Adreça la parla
als nous contraents.
Amics i família
miren satisfets.
Vigilen que diguin
amb veu ferma el sí.
(OC, I, 20)
[The priest begins the marriage ceremony. His complexion is patchy
and his lips are purple. He addresses some words to the new couple.
Friends and family look on in satisfaction. They wait for them to say
yes with a clear voice.]
The collection also finds room for the more grotesque and frightening visions
of Espriu’s childhood, figures that are sometimes treated in the puppet-like or
‘esperpentic’ manner of one of his favourite Spanish writers, Ramón del
Valle-Inclán.8 One of the most striking of these poems is the imaginative
transformation of the sad fate of the drunken beggar woman, Esperançeta
Trinquis, who also figures prominently in Ronda de mort a Sinera.9 She lived
in a cave, and was invariably accompanied by dogs and her bottle of wine.
7 Laia’s wedding day is described in the eighth chapter (‘Noces’) [‘Wedding’] of the
novel. The poem has some details in common with the earlier work – the description of the
weather, the altar in the church – but on the whole it complements rather than duplicates
the material in the novel. See Laia (Barcelona: Edicions 62, 1976), pp. 39–41.
8 Espriu met Valle-Inclán while on his study visit of the Mediterranean in 1933. He also
figures as the subject of a poem from Les cançons d’Ariadna entitled ‘Potser cuinat amb
un eco de Valle-Inclán’ [‘Perhaps Cooked with an Echo of Valle-Inclán’] (OC, I, 120).
9 See Obres completes – Edició crítica, vol. 14. Ronda de mort a Sinera. Les veus del
carrer. D’una vella i encerclada terra, ed. Núria Santamaria (Barcelona: Edicions 62,
2000), pp. 20–32.
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D. GARETH WALTERS
One day she was found dead in a pile of snow near the railway line. The poem
– reproduced in the theatrical collage of Espriu’s works – is another of his
‘songs’, and it blends fact and fantasy as the unfortunate grotesque narrates
what happened to her:
Amb sis agulles
d’estendre roba em pengen
– el jutge ho ha manat –,
per eixugar-me al sol.
Quin pes, Mare de Déu!
(OC, I, 104)
[With six clothes pegs they hanged me – the judge decreed it – to dry
out in the sun. What a farce, Mother of God!]
Such descriptions steer a fine line between cruelty and comedy: a
dehumanization that never quite allows us to forget the human. The second
stanza narrates how the people of Arenys closed their doors when la Trinquis
tottered drunkenly up and down the streets and how children stopped playing
to throw stones at her. At the end, however, the note of unreality returns with
the observation that when the beggar woman’s body is lowered into the
ground cuckoos will sing beneath the stars.
According to Carles Móra, in creating the character of Esperançeta Trinquis,
Espriu had two purposes. He sprinkled her speech with gypsy slang and vulgar
colloquialisms, presumably to demonstrate the versatility of the Catalan language,
while she also served as a means for the poet to make ironic observations on the
human condition.10 Another poem, that also figured in Ronda de mort a Sinera,
has a more precise symbolic significance. It narrates a fight to the death
between two blind beggars. The stage direction that precedes the poem in the
dramatic representation specifies the use of a cyclorama, in front of which there
should be ‘un quadre, que evoca les cruels guerres entre germans’ [a picture,
that evokes the cruel wars between brothers].11 Despite its matter-of-fact tone,
very much in the style of a popular ballad, the poem is indeed conceived as an
account of some titanic conflict, of a conflict that is not only a matter of a petty
dispute but, as the stage-direction implies, a civil war. The violence, the product
of ‘aquell odi brutal’ [this brutal hatred], is thus envisaged on a grand scale;
Goya’s Colossus, evoked in ‘Omnis fortasse moriar’ (OC, I, 244), again comes
to mind:
S’escometen tots dos,
garrots enlaire:
10
11
Salvador Espriu i Sinera, p. 104.
Salvador Espriu i Sinera, 92.
ferocitat atroç
de brontosaures.
197
(OC, I, 23)
[The two of them attack each other, with their clubs held high:
atrocious ferocity of brontosauruses.]
Espriu is, as so often, unsparing in detailing cruelty. The ruthlessness of the
victor is conveyed by the way in which he follows the trail of blood that
comes from the body of his adversary to secure his booty.
The greater emphasis in Les cançons d’Ariadna on the individual poem, as
opposed to the larger unit, facilitates the creation of a range of such symbolic
scenes. One of the most famous poems is ‘El sotjador’ [‘The Watcher’], a
fantasy based on the legend of the Flying Dutchman, who is imagined as the
embodiment of hapless humanity at the mercy of a powerful and frightening
force (OC, I, 78). The subject is hardly a novel one, although perhaps not as
characteristic of Espriu’s metaphysics as commentators would have us believe;
his view of God is normally more oblique and subtle.12 Yet the poem is
immensely attractive and suggestive. It is cast in the form of a dramatic
monologue, and the utterances are terse and anxious, punctuated by questions
and exclamations, both concerned with and directed to the sinister ‘sotjador’.
The terror is not envisaged in the abstraction of the gaze but in the confrontation
with the face and the all-seeing eye:
Ai, alba, tan llunyana
cançó, inassolible
repòs, quan sempre sotja
el rostre d’ull innúmer,
únic, immens, parat, sense parpella!
Un rostre etern, un ull, només un rostre
en nit dintre tenebra.
[Ah, dawn, such a distant song, unattainable repose, when the face
with the numberless eye always watches, unique, immense, still,
without an eyelid! An eternal face, an eye, only a face at night within
darkness.]
A poem that is perhaps more characteristic of Espriu’s view of experience
is ‘Vols d’ànecs salvatges’ [‘Flights of Wild Geese’] (OC, I, 45). I use the
term ‘view’ advisedly, as I believe it is limiting to define his poetic vision in
12 Castellet (Iniciació a la poesia de Salvador Espriu, p. 46) suggests that the poem
provides ‘la clau per a l’estudi de la «visió tràgica» en Espriu’ [the key for the study of the
“tragic vision” in Espriu’]; for Miralles, ‘El sotjador’ and the poems that precede it ‘poden
constituir una introducció a la metafísica d’Espriu’ [could comprise an introduction to the
metaphysics of Espriu] (‘Salvador Espriu’, p. 407).
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D. GARETH WALTERS
terms of a philosophy. His speculations and his fears may indeed be infused
with metaphysical concerns but he is seldom a pure thinker: his meditations
accommodate the religious together with the political, the historical together
with the individual. In this poignant poem from Les cançons d’Ariadna, there
is this kind of amalgam, although the definition does scant justice to what is
poetically a single, albeit rich, intuition. The opening stanza is reminiscent of
T. S. Eliot’s understanding of how images can form a ‘poetic correlative’, and
it is indeed more than a little comparable to a poem like his Gerontion:
A l’últim esglaó
de l’escala corcada,
tot sol en el llindar
de la buida cabana,
l’ajaçat cansament
d’aquest cor centenari.
[On the top rung of the rotten stair, quite alone on the threshold of the
empty shack, the weariness of this age-old heart lies down.]
A poem that begins like this creates ripples of expectation. Such things as the
precision of detail – it is the top step of the stairs – in the picture of the
decaying and abandoned dwelling invites us to think of it as more than a mere
picture, and the allusion to the heart makes such an understanding more
likely. Moreover, it is an ancient heart, and the adjective points us towards a
past that may be not only individual but also collective. The perspective that
succeeds this suggestive opening, however, is that of the individual: the
remainder of the poem takes the form of another monologue. This decrepit
building was built with the speaker’s own hands; it was a place destined for
his parents, his wife and his future children, all of whom are now but ‘ombres/
allunyades de morts’ [distant shades of the dead]. The nature of this description,
however, invites a symbolic reading: the narrator is describing the loss of the
past, the present and the future of all that he holds dear. The following stanza
confirms this with the invocation of the dream as aspiration:
De tan breu, del llarg somni
no comprenc el sentit.
Però ja puc somriure,
sense desigs ni por.
[I do not understand the meaning of the long dream so soon. But I can
smile with neither desires nor fear.]
The definitive emotional shift is towards withdrawal, a trait evident in other
collections on occasion:
Pel cel baix de l’hivern
passen vols, cap al sud,
199
de blancs ànecs salvatges.
Amb ells me n’aniré,
a la fi deslliurat.
Quan sigui primavera,
unes mans piadoses
allisaran la pols
al desert del sorral.
[Through the low winter sky, towards the south, there pass flights of
white wild geese. With them I shall go away, released at last. When it
is Spring, pious hands will smooth the dust on the empty sands.]
Just as the poem opened with a vivid picture so it ends with an equally
haunting one, characteristic of Espriu’s capacity to discover strength in
silence and solitude. The impact of the beautiful image of the geese flying
south is such that the release from emotion appears here to be as heady as any
enthralment by emotion, while the unassuming act performed by the pious
hands implies unusually that compassion can be inevitable.
The penultimate composition of Les cançons d’Ariadna, ‘Petites cobles
d’entenebrats’ [‘Small Stanzas of the Darkened’] (OC, I, 163) is what we could
term an autobiographical fancy. Another way of putting it would be to say that
rather than the self-portrait of a poet it is a meditation on what it is to be a poet,
not least in a particular place and at a particular time. By turns comical and
bitter, it is above all an extravaganza – a showcase for Espriu’s imagery and
styles. In Ronda de mort a Sinera, the recitation of the poem is divided
between five characters representing the damned of the title. Yet, away from its
dramatic context it comes across as a poem whose many voices and discrete
subjects cohere in a single figure, a composite and intriguing persona. The
poem possesses an epigraph, like many in this book, that is both whimsical and
appropriate: ‘Fragments esotèrics en cadena, trobats en escrits de mal averany’
[Esoteric fragments in a chain, discovered in writings of ill omen]. The
opening lines confirm both the fragmentary and esoteric quality of what is to
come: the poet prey to a seemingly chaotic series of recollections that (by dint
of the image of the rattlesnake) threaten to be disturbing and menacing. The
following stanza, which begins by developing the image of the snake (it now
loses its skin), evokes humorously the pressures of being a poet in a society
governed by censorship. The poet must be careful about what he says of
himself, and wary lest he tread on toes:
Temo que perdré la pell
en la fosca d’un racó
o daurat al socarrim,
convicte i confés del crim
de ser catòlic, burgès,
proletari, descregut,
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D. GARETH WALTERS
monàrquic, republicà.
O perquè vaig trontollar
amb arrufades de nas
la moral d’un conegut.
M’enderroca un esternut,
i no goso ni piular.
[I fear that I will lose my skin in the darkness of a corner or be gilded
to scorching, convicted and guilty of the crime of being a Catholic,
bourgeois, proletarian, unbeliever, monarchist, republican. Or because
I undermined the confidence of an acquaintance by wrinkling my
nose. A sneeze destroys me, and I dare not speak a word.]
The bizarre note is sustained in the following stanza, where a widow speaks
of how her husband left her a generous income in his will only for her to
remain disappointed:
L’espòs difunt va deixar,
en assenyat testament,
paper de l’Ajuntament
i títols de capellà:
renda força sanejada,
segons càlculs trets abans
de la gran tamborinada.
Ara, pobreta de mi,
em trobo ben a l’escapça.
[My dead husband left in his prudent will, on town hall paper and a
churchman’s rubrics: a guaranteed income, according to estimates
from before the great storm. Now, poor me, I feel quite let down.]
No summary of the mere content of this passage, however, could do justice to the
exquisite blend and balance of detail: downbeat and bathetic in its mix of the
bureaucratic and querulous, and yet with a resonance of mystery. What is this
storm? It is tempting in the light of its symbolic function in the twenty-fifth poem
of Cementiri de Sinera (OC, I, 197) to interpret it as an image of the Civil War,
and an unexpected confirmation of such a reading comes from the poet himself.
In 1974, Espriu produced a Spanish version of Ronda de mort a Sinera, or,
more precisely a ‘recreation and translation’. The poem under discussion was
especially subject to such a treatment, the effect of which was simplification
and clarification, in the process much reducing its poetic value. In the Spanish
version the allusion to the storm is rendered as ‘Cuando la guerra civil/ nos
rondaba’ [When the Civil War was upon us].13 Following through the logic of
13 Ronda de mort a Sinera. Les veus del carrer. D’una vella i encerclada terra (OC,
Ediciò crítica, r. 14, 2000) p. 169.
201
the symbol is often a risky course of action because not all symbols have this
pseudo-allegorical function, but we might hazard the notion that the widow,
wealthy but disappointed, serves as a figure of the poet endowed with the
legacy of a people but reluctant to exercise his gift or what is described in the
following stanza as ‘el secret fil/ d’aquest meu destí, tan vil’ [the secret thread
of this, my so vile, destiny]. The description of the poet’s plight is couched in
familiar terms:
que faré la ballaruga
a l’extrem d’una samuga.
Avanço per carrers bruts,
entremig de multituds,
disputant ossos a cans
tinyosos, plens de brians.
[for I will cut a merry caper at the end of some rope. I walk along
dirty streets, among the crowd, fighting the mean and mangy dogs for
bones.]
Such imagery and terminology – the tightrope walker, the dirty streets, the
hunger, the dogs – bring to mind the poems of the first part of Mrs. Death. All
of these point to the negative conception of the poet’s lot in Catalonia in the
early years of the Franco regime and to Espriu’s grim understanding of what
it meant to try to be a creative artist in such times. There follows a brief
reference to what could be termed religious probing, again achieved by a
striking image: the poet searches through large piles of gloves ‘neguitós de
descobrir/ un dit de la má de Déu’ [anxious to discover a finger of the hand
of God].
The shifts of mood and subject in this poem are comparable to what
happens over groups of several poems in the integrated collections. After the
bleak vision of his vocation there appears a passage that alludes to the poet’s
capacity to nurture and to heal. We have seen elsewhere, often at key points,
expressions of wonder at the acts of making and transforming. It is no less so
here, in imagery that is appropriately lavish and imbued with a magical grace:
Mentre cauen cóps de neu,
rego testos de safrà,
jaborandi, romeguera.
Confio que brostarà
una rara flor d’encant
la vetlla de Sant Joan,
amb virtuts d’herba gatera.
[While snowflakes fall, I water pots of saffron, jaborandi and
blackberry. I trust that a rare enchanted flower will bloom on the eve
of Midsummer’s Day, with a catnip’s strength.]
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D. GARETH WALTERS
Yet the final words are sober and bleak. At the end of this kaleidoscopic
poem, Espriu in the guise of his alter ego Salom, characteristically cannot
bring himself to ride off into the sunset:
Em dic Salom, fill de Sinera.
Contemplo el buit, mirant enrera.
I, temps enllà, tan sols m’espera
desert, tristor d’hora darrera.
[My name is Salom, a son of Sinera. As I look back, I contemplate
the void. And, beyond time, only emptiness awaits me, the sadness of
the final hour.]
The void of the past, the emptiness of a future – how often have we encountered
these phrases. This self-proclamation, however, is defiant. There are names –
a person and a place – and the fact of progeny, a sense of continuity. Even the
verb employed for the appraisal of the world – contemplation – has an
assurance and a hint of arrogance about it. ‘I am a poet – their poet’ – says
Espriu in the single, challenging line. To be the poet Salom is to be like this
and to speak like this, and to be the poet of Sinera demands nothing less than
the entry into a world of darkness and difficulty.
Conclusion
At the beginning of this study I observed that Espriu had been regarded, even
revered, as the ‘poet of Catalonia’. After an examination of his complete poetic
output it is now possible to explore rather more fully and systematically those
factors that have made him not only a special writer for his fellow-countrymen
but a distinctive poet in a wider Hispanic and European context. The most
conspicuous sign of his distinctiveness is perhaps the language in which he
wrote. This fact, of itself, is of course inadequate as a reason: despite the
attempts to suppress Catalan culture during the period of the Franco regime,
poetry continued to be written. Espriu may have been ploughing a lonely
furrow, but others were engaged in similarly solitary activities as well, both
inside Catalonia and in exile. Yet, nobody brought such self-conscious and
single-minded intensity to this task as he. Even if we do not subscribe to
Delor i Muns’s view that the Catalan language represented the Torah in
Espriu’s supposed cabalistic conception of the world, it is evident that his
defence of the language constituted a constant vigil and a vocation.14 One
manifestation of such a preoccupation is linguistic energy: Espriu relishes
ransacking the lexicon. By contrast, his poetry can also achieve the most
14
‘Significació de la cabala en Espriu’, p. 22.
203
delicate pianissimo by the fastidious choice, if not the willed deprivation, of
vocabulary. Yet in neither mode do we sense an aesthetic priority.
A comparison with Carles Riba, a writer for whom Espriu had mixed
feelings, as we have seen, is illuminating. Espriu does not yield as readily as
the older poet to the splendours of nature or to the allurement of ancient
cultures – an interest common to both men. In his Bierville Elegies, written in
exile in the south of France in the early 1940s, Riba surrenders to the beauty
of the perceived landscape and the landscape that it further evokes, that of
Greece. In the second of these poems, he conjures up Sunion, the promontory
of Athens, a location rich in mythological and literary associations:
Súnion! T’evocaré de lluny amb un crit d’alegria,
tu i el teu sol lleial, rei de la mar i del vent:
pel teu record, que em dreça, feliç de sal exaltada,
amb el teu marbre absolut, noble i antic jo com ell.15
[Sunion! I shall evoke you from afar with a cry of joy, you and your
faithful sun, king of the sea and the wind: through the memory of
you, which raises me, with the happiness of exalted salt, with your
absolute marble, I, like he, noble and ancient.]
In the fourth of the set there is a description of a young woman removing her
tunic. In his idealization of the scene – a movement of limbs and clothing in
harmony with nature – Riba’s focus is on the poetry rather than the sensuality
of the human figure:
Pura en la solitud i en l’hora lenta, una dona
fa lliscà’, amb moviment d’arbre o de crit amorós,
al llarg dolç dels braços alçats, la túnica. Mentre
brilla ja el tors secret, resta captiva en el lli,
dalt, la testa . . .16
[Pure in the solitude and in the slow hour, a woman slips off her tunic,
with the movement of a tree or a cry of love, along the sweet length
of her raised arms. While the secret torso gleams, above, her head
remains captive in the linen.]
It is instructive to compare these radiant passages with poems of Espriu
inspired by Italy, and included in the third part of Les hores (OC, I, 239–42).
As we have seen, in ‘Oliverar, prop de S. Chiara’ [‘Olive Grove near Santa
Chiara’], the rejection of what is too beautiful – or merely aesthetic – is
15 Elegías de Bierville. Elegies de Bierville, ed. José Agustín Goytisolo, trans. by
Alfonso Costafreda (Barcelona: Edicions del Mall, 1985), p. 46.
16 Elegías de Bierville. Elegies de Bierville, 54.
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D. GARETH WALTERS
categorical. Espriu, on holiday, not in exile like Riba, cannot but heed ‘el gran
dolor de la terra que estimo’ [the great suffering of the land that I love] (OC,
I, 240). In her consideration of the poets’ differing intents and priorities,
Capmany has rightly pointed to how human affairs are of greater interest to
Espriu than ‘el laboratorio de ideas’ [the laboratory of ideas].17 Another
telling contrast emerges from the ninth of Riba’s Elegies. This is a poem
dedicated to Pompeu Fabra, a figure who had inspired some of Espriu’s most
memorable verse, and it broaches the subject of liberty, associated, according
to Riba, with Salamina. In his note on the poem he observes that this Greek
location was both a site of fundamental importance for the establishment of
freedom, a fundamental concept in European culture, and a place where he
witnessed one of the most beautiful dawns he had ever seen: ‘Glòria de
Salamina vermella en el mar a l’aurora!/ Adormits en el vent de Queronea,
xiprers!’ [Glory of Salamina, red upon the sea at dawn!/ Cypress trees,
sleeping in the wind of Queronea].18 Yet, when he comes to dwell on the
subject of liberty itself he is more ponderous. Lines such as these lack the
memorable sharpness and precision of Espriu’s passionate declarations, and
verge on the platitudinous:
Homes que vau mesurar i accomplir accions més que humanes
per merèixer l’orgull d’ésse’ i de dir-vos humans,
jo em reconec entre els fills de les vostres sembres d’illustres:
sé que no fórem fets per a un destí bestial.
[Men who attempted and accomplished deeds that were superhuman
to earn the pride of existence and of calling you human, I recognize
myself among the sons of the seed of your illustrious men: I know
that we were not meant for a bestial destiny.]
Such utterances lack the bracing, edgy quality that characterizes Espriu’s
poetry on ethical or political subjects. One need only consider the great
triptych of poems on the poet’s responsibility in a time of turmoil and unease,
again in the third part of Les hores (OC, I, 243–45), to savour the difference.19
Elegías de Bierville, p. 80.
19 A slightly different emphasis in the interpretation of Riba’s poetry in exile is
suggested by Castellet and Molas. According to them, in the Bierville Elegies, Riba comes
over as ‘un poeta enriquit en el dolor, que guarda, però, la serena contenció de l’humanista’
[a poet enriched by a sorrow, but who preserves, nonetheless, the serene restraint of a
humanist]. Poesia catalana del segle XX, p. 123. They also acknowledge, however, that
‘malgrat la guerra i l’exili, les elegies de Carles Riba es mantenen dins una tradició
culturalista evident’ [despite war and exile the elegies of Carles Riba remain within an
obvious culturalist tradition] (p. 187).
17
18
205
Espriu’s poetry, however, often provides an impression of pure poetry,
notably in Cementiri de Sinera, the first two sections of Les hores and Final
de laberint. Yet he always has an eye open for the exigencies of the here and
now; he is alert to peripheral concerns. For all its lyrical density the poetry is
prone to the disturbance of the satirical impulse. Castellet’s division of the
poetry into three types – the elegiac, the satirical and the didactic – is
somewhat misleading.20 These modes are less discrete than he makes them
appear: not only is there co-existence but also the potential for concurrence.
The reader can seldom relax safe in the knowledge that an established mood
will prevail. Espriu’s conception and realization of harmony is markedly
unlike that of pure poets of the pedigree of Riba or Jorge Guillén.
Yet his greater engagement with politico-historical concerns does not lead
him to the kind of rebellious gesture that we find in one of the better-known
Catalan poems of the 1950s, ‘Vacances pagades’ [‘Paid Holiday’] by Pere
Quart, the pseudonym of Joan Oliver. The poem is bracing and has an
attractive petulance:
He decidit d’anar-me’n per sempre.
Amen.
L’endemà tornaré
Perquè sóc vell
I tinc els peus molt consentits,
Amb inflors de poagre.
Però me’n tornaré demà passat,
Rejovenit pel fàstic.
Per sempre més. Amen.21
[I’ve decided to go away for ever. Amen. I’ll come back the next day
because I’m old and my feet are very willing, because they are
swollen with gout. But I’ll return the day after tomorrow, rejuvenated
by disgust. For ever more. Amen.]
This, however, is not the kind of stance or phraseology that we would
encounter in Espriu. If, on occasion, his defiance is no less muted, then it is
more measured. A satirist is at his best when his blood is cold. ‘Vacances
pagades’, is a gut-instinctive kind of poem, but Espriu prefers responses to
reactions: his indignation is glacial not incandescent.22 Not that his poetry
Pere Quart, Poemes escollits, 5th edn (Barcelona: Edicions 62, 1993), p. 81.
22 The character of Quart’s poetry, and of the collection Vacances pagades, to which
the poem of the same title belongs, is well summarized in Castellet and Molas, Poesia
catalana del segle XX, pp. 188–91.
20
21
206
D. GARETH WALTERS
cannot be, by turns, lurid, and violent. A characteristic that is largely absent
from his poetry, however, is turbulence. His social or civic poetry may betray
unease and agitation, but there is a control that is tantamount to serenity. It is,
perhaps, only when he dwells on his responsibilities as a poet, especially as a
poet for the people, that we sense that he could be derailed, that the material
could undermine the poetic foundation.
Such an equanimity also extends to those parts of the poetry where there
are meditations or musings of a religious nature. To label these ‘preoccupations’
would be misleading, as Espriu was not prone, in his poetry at least, to
religious agonising. We have already noted his irritation with those critics
who would ascribe a mystical or overly-subjective motive to poems of a
religious nature. There is a wide gulf between such poems of Espriu’s and
those of the Spanish poet, Blas de Otero, who settled in Barcelona in the
1950s. Although never complacent, Espriu is spiritually secure: the certainty
of truth and faith in a collection like Setmana Santa is not a subject for
individual questioning. This is not so with Otero, whose poetry is redolent of
fear and anguish, much in the manner of Unamuno’s religious verse. We need
only consider lines such as these from the sonnet ‘Hombre’ [‘Man’] to
appreciate that Otero inhabits a completely different spiritual world from that
of Espriu:
Luchando, cuerpo a cuerpo, con la muerte,
al borde del abismo, estoy clamando
a Dios. Y su silencio, retumbando,
ahoga mi voz en el vacío inerte.23
[Struggling, body against body, with death, on the edge of the abyss,
I am shouting to God. And his silence, echoing, drowns my voice in
the inert void.]
One could perhaps identify two reasons for the lack of religious turmoil in
Espriu. On the one hand, his agnosticism finds space to respect the devout
Catholicism of his mother and of other female relatives, such as his aunts,
Maria Castelló and Sor Isabel de la Creu. Setmana Santa is, arguably, the
work of a believer, albeit of a poet who is aware that the world in which he
lives and creates falls far short of the example provided by the life of Christ.
On the other hand, there is Espriu’s exceptional breadth of erudition. His
world-view is not grounded upon a single religion or doctrine but is informed
by a distinctive if not unique blend of cultures, by an integration of the ethos
and imagery of diverse civilizations: the Egyptian, the Jewish, the Greek and
the Roman.
23 Blas de Otero, Ángel fieramente humano. Redoble de conciencia, 2nd edn (Buenos
Aires: Losada, 1973), p. 41.
207
It is, then, not the easiest task to try to locate Espriu within a group, leave
alone a school or movement of poets. The concept of a ‘Generation of 36’ to
which Espriu has been allocated is a matter of political circumstance rather
than of artistic coherence. According to Joan Fuster the whole of Catalan
poetry ‘es tancava en ràpidament improvisada torre d’ivori’ [shut itself away
in a rapidly improvised ivory tower] after the Civil War.24 If this is so, then it
certainly did not apply to Espriu, who preferred silence to poetry for its own
sake. This apparent autism is, however, not entirely a matter of historical
chance: there is a tenacious self-containment about his person and poetry
alike. While acutely aware of his own responsibility as a Catalan writer,
he was a modest encourager rather than vociferous champion of his
contemporaries. Peter Cocozzella points to his ‘literary pan-Hispanism’, to a
receptiveness to the Castilian tradition, a tendency that he shared with his
predecessors rather than his contemporaries.25 Even when he might have
perceived – accurately or exaggeratedly – that the Catalan language was
in danger of extinction Espriu did not engage in token acts of literary
appreciation. Yet he will forever be associated with one name above all – that
of Rosselló-Pòrcel. Fate decreed that the Majorcan poet’s talent should not be
permitted to blossom; posterity, unsparing and sometimes unjust, has deemed
that he has emerged a lesser figure. Espriu himself, significantly, did not see
it this way. After Rosselló-Pòrcel’s early death he felt a need to bear the
mantle, in a sense to stand in for him, to be the poet he never was allowed to
be. The relationship between the two provides an unusual variation of Harold
Bloom’s theory of the anxiety of influence. The precursor with whom Espriu
wrestles is not real but hypothetical: the poetry with which he grapples is
potential rather than actual. Yet we perceive the same sensation of the
daunting but liberating challenge. Much has been written about Espriu’s
poetry in terms of its being a meditation upon death, and it may be that the
most profound of the dialogues with the dead is with a poet who disappeared
too soon, and whose work could, in the main, only be imagined – virtually
impalpable as a body of text but emotionally resonant.
In the last analysis, though, I suggest that the key to Espriu’s greatness as
a poet lies elsewhere: it is neither in his relative independence nor in his formidable erudition. Indeed he wears his learning lightly because it is assimilated
within the intimacy of lived, occasionally immediate, experiences. His energy
and eloquence derive in great part from his receptivity to local customs and
traditions – in a word, to the values of his own people.
Here we touch on the most radical source of his distinctive and enduring
appeal. The town of Arenys de Mar and the derived myth of Sinera provide
24 In his preface to the poetry of Joan Salvat-Papasseit, cited in Castellet and Molas
(1963), Poesia catalana del segle XX, pp. 135–36.
25 ‘Salvador Espriu i la seva «forma enciclopèdica»’, p. 39.
208
D. GARETH WALTERS
one of the most compelling and intense realizations of place in modern
literature. Espriu displays greater imagination in exploring the meaning of
location and identity – individual and collective – than do Antonio Machado
with Castile and Robert Frost with New England; indeed it is not unjustified
to regard his capacity for mythopoetic inventiveness as on a par with that of
Thomas Hardy and the Wessex of his mind and making. The power of
memory, nourished on the double deprivation of a childhood paradise lost
and a native land brought to its knees, yields a wealth of responses and
resolutions; seldom has the concept of home – of pàtria – been so vigorously
and sensitively explored in the poetry of recent times.26 This sense of
belonging is as complete as it is unsentimental. Nostalgia is an allurement to
be kept at arm’s length, not an emotion of first resort. The attachment to home
is consequently clear sighted, on occasion hard-headed, yet never other than
heartfelt. It is, in the last analysis, a comprehensive impulse, and, in simplest
terms, a life, located in a place, made into poetry. We recognize the span of
this commitment and vision in the surprising leap of perspective in the poem
‘L’ós Nicolau’ [‘Nicholas the Bear’] from Les cançons d’Ariadna. The child
who witnesses the performance of the dancing bear seemingly longs never to
leave the town. He wills continuation there in death:
Ha ballat l’os Nicolau
on vull que se m’enterri
a Sinera, prop del mar.
(OC, I, 53)
[Nicholas the bear has danced where I want them to bury me, in
Sinera, beside the sea.]
26 His understanding of the term ‘pàtria’ differs from what we conventionally imagine
it to be. In the essay on the history of the ancient world that he contributed to the threevolume work on world history in the early 1940s, Espriu reflected upon the significance
of the term and observed that for the inhabitant of the Mediterranean it represented ‘la
ciudad donde nacieron y murieron los antepasados, donde él nació y morirá algún día, y el
terreno circundante que el ojo abarca sin esfuerzo y comprende hasta en sus menores
detalles’ [the town where his ancestors were born and where they died, where he was born
and will die one day, and the surrounding land that the eye can absorb without effort and
which it understands even in its smallest detail]. Iniciación a la historia general, I: Tiempos
antiguos, ed. Alberto del Castillo (Barcelona: Apolo, 1943), p. 178.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
EDITIONS OF ESPRIU’S WORKS
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Robayna and Ramón Pinyol Balasch, Barcelona: Edicions de Mall, 1980.
Antología de Salvador Espriu, ed. Enrique Badosa, 2nd edn, Madrid: Plaza y
Janés, 1972.
Antología lírica, ed. José Batlló, 2nd edn, Madrid: Cátedra, 1978.
Evocació de Rosselló-Pòrcel i altres notes, Barcelona: Joaquim Horta, 1957.
Iniciación a la historia general, I: Tiempos antiguos, ed. Alberto del Castillo,
Barcelona: Apolo, 1943.
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Obra poètica, Barcelona: Albertí, 1963.
Obres completes. Anys d’aprenentatge. I Poesia, 1, edició a cura de Francesc
Vallverdú, Barcelona: Edicions 62, 1985.
Obres completes. Anys d’aprenentatge. II Poesia, 2, edició a cura de Francesc
Vallverdú, Barcelona: Edicions 62, 1987.
Obres completes – Ediciò crítica, vol. 14. Ronda de mort a Sinera. Les veus del
carrer. D’una vella i encerclada terra, ed. Núria Santamaria, Barcelona:
Edicions 62, 2000.
Primera història d’Esther. The Story of Esther, trans. by Philip Polack, The
Anglo-Catalan Society Occasional Publications, No. 6, Sheffield: Sheffield
Academic Press, 1989.
Primera història d’Esther, ed. Sebastià Bonet, Barcelona: Centre de
Documentaciò i Estudi Salvador Espriu, 1995.
Ronda de mort a Sinera, Barcelona: Empúries, 1985.
STUDIES ON ESPRIU’S WORKS
Badia i Margarit, Antoni. M., ‘Salvador Espriu, ordenador de mots en extensió i
profunditat’, in Homenatge a Salvador Espriu amb motiu d’ésser-li conferit el
grau de Doctor Honoris Causa, Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona, 1980,
pp. 33–125.
Batista, Antoni, Salvador Espriu: itinerari personal, Barcelona: Empúries, 1985.
Bensoussan, Mathilde, ‘Primera història d’Esther: la infantesa revisitada’, in
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homenatge als 10 anys de la seva mort, Barcelona: Centre de Documentació i
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49–54.
Bonet, Sebastià, ‘D’uns haikus espriuans inèdits’, Nexus. Revista semestral de
cultura, No. 31, Barcelona: Fundació Caixa Catalunya (2003), 28–37.
Boyer, Denise, ‘Lecture d’un poème d’Espriu’, Iberica. Cahiers Ibériques et
Ibero-Américains de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 1 (1977), 57–70.
——, ‘Les tankes espriuanes’, in Salvador Espriu: algunes cartes i estudis sobre
la seva obra, pp. 55–69.
Capmany, Maria Aurèlia, Salvador Espriu, Barcelona: Dopesa, 1971.
Castellet, Josep Maria, Iniciació a la poesia de Salvador Espriu, 3rd edn,
Edicions 62, 1984; 1st edn 1971.
Cocozzella, Peter, ‘Recollection and introspection in Salvador Espriu’s Cementiri
de Sinera’, Catalan Studies (Estudis sobre el català): Volume in Memory of
Josephine de Boer, ed. Josep Gulsoy and Josep M. Solá-Solé, Barcelona:
Hispam, 1977, pp. 259–65.
——, ‘Salvador Espriu’s idea of a theater: the Sotjador versus the demiurge’,
Modern Drama, 29 (1985), 472–89.
——, ‘Salvador Espriu i la seva «forma enciclopèdica»: aspectes d’un
sincretisme literari’, Catalan Review, 7 (1993), 37–49.
Cornado, M.-P., ‘La identificació entre Catalunya i Israel en l’obra de Salvador
Espriu’, Serra d’Or, XXXII, No. 365 (May 1990), 48–50.
Delor i Muns, Rosa M., ‘Mrs. Death o el llibre de la generació maleïda’, Els
Marges, 34 (1986), 37–60.
——, Salvador Espriu, els anys d’aprenentatge (1929–1943), Barcelona:
Edicions 62, 1993.
——, La mort com a intercanvi simbòlic. Bartomeu Rosselló-Pòrcel i Salvador
Espriu: diàleg intertextual (1934–1984), Barcelona: Publicacions de l’Abadia
de Montserrat, 1993.
——, ‘Significació de la cabala en Espriu: metafísica i compromís’, Nexus.
Revista semestral de cultura, No. 31, Barcelona: Fundació Caixa Catalunya
(2003), 14–27.
Espriu i Malagelada, Agustí, Salvador Espriu, Barcelona: Columna, 1996.
Espriu, Agustí, Núria Nogueras and María Assumpció de Pons, Aproximació
històrica al mite de Sinera, Barcelona: Curial, 1983.
Ferraté, Joan, ‘Salvador Espriu entre els lectors i els crítics’, Serra d’Or, X, No. 110
(November 1968), 77–79.
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salvació, Barcelona: Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat, 2003.
Grau i Colell, Josep, ‘Itineraris del jo líric en Final del laberint’, in Salvador
Espriu: algunes cartes i estudis sobre la seva obra. Edició en homenatge als
10 anys de la seva mort, Barcelona: Centre de Documentació i Estudi Salvador
Espriu / Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat, 1995, pp. 107–35.
Kulin, Katalin, ‘Anàlisi de Final del laberint’, Revista Canadiense de Estudios
Hispànicos, 13 (1988), 253–70.
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Memòria de Salvador Espriu, Arenys de Mar: Centre de Documentació i Estudi
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Miralles, Carles, ‘El món classic en l’obra de Salvador Espriu’, Els Marges, 16
(1979), 29–48.
——, ‘Salvador Espriu’, in Riquer, Martín de, Antoni Comas and Joaquim Molas,
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Paba, Antonina, ‘Per una definizione della “parola” nell’opera poetica di Salvador
Espriu’, Rassegna Iberistica, 34 (1989), 17–28.
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INDEX
Antígona 6–7, 34
Arenys de Mar 3–4, 6, 44, 82, 89, 97, 101,
116, 144, 148, 151, 179, 194,
195–6, 207
Argenté i Arigal, Joan 31
Ariel 17, 51
Assisi 69
Cusa, Nicholas de 114
Badosa, Enrique 49
Baez, Joan 193
Barthes, Roland 20
Bloom, Harold 207
Brueghel, Pieter 78, 156, 174, 176–7
Eckehart, Meister 114
Eco, Umberto 132
Egyptian culture 67, 80, 108, 112–13,
206
El caminant i el mur 19, 23, 31–2, 42,
95–111, 115, 122, 131, 145, 148
El Dr. Rip 4
Eliot, T.S. 84, 94, 114, 198
Espiná, Josep Maria 13
Espriu i Malagelada, Agustí 143–4, 157
Espriu i Torres, Francesc de Paula (poet’s
father) 2, 4, 77
Cabbala 21–3, 28, 30, 77
Capmany, Maria Aurèlia 9, 32, 50, 204
Carr, Raymond 6
Casals, Pau 184–5
Castellet, Josep Maria 20–1, 30, 33, 35–6,
46, 49, 53, 76–7, 82, 92, 95n,
106n, 108n, 111, 113–5, 122, 135,
137, 144, 151, 156, 158n, 190,
197n, 204n, 205
Castelló, Maria (poet’s aunt) 158, 194,
206
Castelló i Molas, Escolàstica (poet’s
mother) 2, 52, 63, 67, 158, 206
Catholic Monarchs 126
Cementiri de Sinera 7, 17, 32–3, 34–51,
56, 62, 64, 66–7, 69, 74, 77, 81,
85, 92–3, 101, 123, 129, 136,
143–4, 146, 148, 151–4, 171, 178,
189, 200, 205
Chaplin, Charlie 82
Chopin, Frederic 191
Civil War, The Spanish 6–7, 32, 47n, 52,
64, 103, 128–9, 176, 184, 200, 207
Cocozzella, Peter 39, 207
Corella, Rois de 163
Cornado, Maria-Pau 21
Creu, Sor Isabel de la (poet’s aunt) 158,
163, 206
Dante Alighieri 20, 77, 80, 92, 190n
Delor i Muns 5, 21–8, 30, 33, 53–6, 78,
85, 91–2, 117, 189, 202
Donne, John 114
Durand, Gilbert 21
Fabra, Pompeu 11–12, 204
Fenosa, Apel⭈les 174, 178, 184
Ferraté, Joan 129, 138
Final del laberint 19, 24, 30, 32, 111–125,
129, 135, 152, 156, 205
Fish, Stanley 36n
Formes y paraules 174, 178, 182
Fragments. Versots. Intencions. Matisos
181
Franco, Francisco 6–8, 10, 13, 19, 34,
126–8, 184–5, 202
Frost, Robert 208
Frye, Northop 20
Fuster, Joan 207
García Lorca, Federico 84, 164, 173
Gassol i Bellet, Olívia 129, 132–4, 138, 140
Generation of ‘36’ 207
Goya, Francisco 72, 196
Grau i Colell, Josep 112, 120
Gual Ubach, Antonio 9, 32, 79, 81
INDEX
215
Guillén, Jorge 31–2, 179, 183–4, 205
Numerology 21, 41, 77, 95
Haiku 21, 35, 110, 156, 173–8, 181
Hardy, Thomas 17, 208
Heaney, Seamus 17–19, 50, 71, 129
Hitler, Adolf 8n, 82
Obra poética 18
Old Testament 25, 103
Oliver, Joan 205
Otero, Blas de 206
Iniciación a la historia universal 33,
208n
Israel 4, 9, 131
Palau de la Mùsica Catalana 126–7, 185
Palau i Fabré, Josep 35
Pellsjö, Owe 182
Per a la bona gent 181–188, 189, 190
Per al llibre de salms d’aquests vells cecs
35, 156, 173–5, 178
Philip IV 7
Philip V 7
Picasso, Pablo 79, 130
Pijoan i Picas, Maria Isabel 21, 24, 111,
113, 124–5
Pla, Josep 134
Poesia 51
Primera história d’Esther 4, 10, 32, 50,
81, 91, 126, 143, 158, 167, 175
Primo de Rivera, José Antonio 7
Prometheus 55, 71–3
Proust, Marcel 20
Psalms 120
Pujol, Jordi 1, 126–7
Janés, Josep 51
Jews 76, 104, 107, 126, 134n, 138, 143,
157, 168, 206
Joyce, James 20
Kulin, Katalin 25, 113
Laia 4, 22
La pell de brau 14, 18–20, 23–4, 29, 37,
111, 125, 126–142, 143, 153, 156
La Vanguardia 10
Les cançons d’Ariadna 11–2, 15, 23, 32,
34, 51, 75, 156, 182, 189–202, 208
Les hores 5–6, 14, 19, 25, 30–2, 51–76,
77, 81, 89, 95–6, 103, 118, 122,
132, 154, 156, 176, 189, 192–3,
203–5
Lévi-Strauss, Claude 20
Llibre de Sinera 142–56, 158, 161, 174–5,
194
Llacuna, Joan 8
Lowell, Robert 50
Luria, Isaac 22, 168
Machado, Antonio 41n, 183–4, 190, 208
Mandelstam, Osip 16
Miralles, Carles 21, 58, 95, 112, 114, 189,
197n
Miró, Antoni 79, 182–3, 190
Molas, Joaquim 33, 49, 204n
Monzó, Quim 13
Móra, Carles 196
Mrs. Death 21, 31–2, 43, 51, 76–94, 96,
101, 104–5, 107–8, 110–11, 119,
122, 134, 137, 139, 147, 150, 153,
159, 172, 175, 190, 201
Neruda, Pablo 86
New Testament 25, 113, 157, 165
‘Nova Cançó’ 11, 13, 127, 187
Nova Planta 7
Quart, Pere 205
Qüestions de Vida Cristiana 173
Quevedo, Francisco de 86
Raimon 11–12, 99, 151
Riba, Carles 5n, 20, 34, 129, 203–5
Riera, Amèlia 182
Rilke, Rainer Maria 41n, 60
Roca-Puig, Ramón 158n
Roig, Montserrat 190–1
Romeu, Josep 17
Ronda de mort a Sinera 143, 151, 195–6,
199–200
Rosselló-Pòrcel, Bartomeu 5–6, 13, 23,
34, 51–3, 58, 61, 63, 190–2, 207
Saint George 96
Salom 52–3, 56, 68, 71, 103, 110, 202
Salvat, Ricard 142, 151
Santamaria, Núria 178n
Sardana 7
Second Republic 4, 7
Sepharad 126–8, 130, 132, 135, 138–9,
140, 142, 141, 165–6
216
INDEX
Setmana Santa 156–173, 174, 189, 206
Shakespeare, William 93
Sinera 3, 38, 42, 46, 89, 91, 137, 144n,
195, 202, 207
Sisyphus 116
Sontag, Susan 28, 94
Spanish Succession, War of 7
Stalin, Joseph 16
Strabo 126, 130
Subirachs, Josep 178n, 190
Tanka 21, 35, 57, 60–1, 63, 67, 95–8, 178,
182
Terry, Arthur 18–9, 124, 129, 133, 135, 138
Torres y Ferrer, Miquel 193
Torah 91, 138, 202
Triadú, Joan 35
Ulysses 181
Valle-Inclán, Ramón del 5, 82, 195
Valls, Manuel 99
Vázquez Montalbán, Manuel 1, 8n
Venice 132
Verdaguer 8n
Victimae paschali laudes 83, 85,
172
Vidal, Joan 9, 34
Viladrau 97
Vilanova, Antoni 33
Zimzum, doctrine of 168

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