Salvador Espriu i Castelló (; 10 July 1913 – 22 February 1985) was a Catalan poet.
Biography
Espriu was born in
Santa Coloma de Farners
Santa Coloma de Farners () is a spa town and capital of the ''comarca'' of the Selva, in
Catalonia, Spain, and of the judicial district of Santa Coloma.
It is situated on the edge of the Selva Depression and of the Guilleries. The local economy ...
,
Catalonia
Catalonia (; ca, Catalunya ; Aranese Occitan: ''Catalonha'' ; es, Cataluña ) is an autonomous community of Spain, designated as a ''nationality'' by its Statute of Autonomy.
Most of the territory (except the Val d'Aran) lies on the north ...
,
Spain
, image_flag = Bandera de España.svg
, image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg
, national_motto = ''Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond")
, national_anthem = (English: "Royal March")
, i ...
. He was the son of an attorney. He spent his childhood between his home town,
Barcelona
Barcelona ( , , ) is a city on the coast of northeastern Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within ci ...
, and
Arenys de Mar
Arenys de Mar (, ''arenys'' being Catalan for "sands (of a seasonal creek)", and ''de mar'' for "by the sea" as opposed to Arenys de Munt, "sands up hill") is one of the main municipalities of the comarca of Maresme, Barcelona Province, Catalonia ...
, a village on the
Maresme
Maresme () is a '' comarca'' (county) located along the Catalan Mediterranean coast in Spain, between the ''comarques'' of Barcelonès (at the Southwest) and Selva (at the Northeast), and also bordering with Vallès Oriental (at the west).
It ...
coast. At the age of sixteen, he published his first book, ''Israel'', written in
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
. In 1930 he entered the
University of Barcelona
The University of Barcelona ( ca, Universitat de Barcelona, UB; ; es, link=no, Universidad de Barcelona) is a public university located in the city of Barcelona, Catalonia, in Spain. With 63,000 students, it is one of the biggest universities i ...
, where he studied law and ancient history. While traveling (1933) to
Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...
,
Greece
Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders with ...
and
Palestine
__NOTOC__
Palestine may refer to:
* State of Palestine, a state in Western Asia
* Palestine (region), a geographic region in Western Asia
* Palestinian territories, territories occupied by Israel since 1967, namely the West Bank (including East ...
, he became acquainted with the countries that originated the great classical myths, and which would be so influential in his work.
During the
Spanish civil war
The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebelión, lin ...
he was mobilised and served in military accounting.
Translated into several languages, Espriu's work has obtained international recognition, most notably the ''Montaigne prize'' (1971). He was also given the ''Award of Honour of Catalan Letters'' (1972), the ''Ignasi Iglesias prize'' (1980), the ''City of Barcelona Prize'' (1982) and the ''Gold Medal of the
Generalitat de Catalunya
The Generalitat de Catalunya (; oc, label=Aranese, Generalitat de Catalonha; es, Generalidad de Cataluña), or the Government of Catalonia, is the institutional system by which Catalonia politically organizes its self-government. It is formed b ...
'' (1982). He was awarded honorary doctor's degrees by the universities of
Toulouse
Toulouse ( , ; oc, Tolosa ) is the prefecture of the French department of Haute-Garonne and of the larger region of Occitania. The city is on the banks of the River Garonne, from the Mediterranean Sea, from the Atlantic Ocean and from Par ...
and
Barcelona
Barcelona ( , , ) is a city on the coast of northeastern Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within ci ...
.
He died in Barcelona in 1985, and was buried in the Arenys de Mar cemetery, which gives name to his poem ''Cementiri de Sinera''.
Work
First works
In 1931 he published ''El doctor Rip'', and the following year, ''Laia'', novels that move away from the then-fashionable theoretical formulas of the aesthetics of the Catalan
Noucentisme
Noucentisme in Catalonia (, ''noucentista'' being its adjective) was a Catalan cultural movement of the early 20th century that originated largely as a reaction against Modernisme, both in art and ideology, and was, simultaneously, a perception ...
movement.
The publication of ''Aspectes'' (1934), ''Ariadna al laberint grotesc''(1935) and ''Miratge a Citera'' (1935), established him as the most original narrator of his generation. In these books, Espriu's prose alternately shifts from grotesque distortion to an aestheticising lyricism, probably under the influence of Spanish-language modernists
Valle-Inclán and
Gabriel Miró
Gabriel Miró Ferrer (; Alicante, 28 July 1879 – Madrid, 24 May 1930), known as Gabriel Miró, was a Spanish modernist writer. In 1900 he finished his studies in law at the University of Granada and the University of Valencia. He focused mainly ...
). He elaborated a synthetic realism under the linguistic tutelage of certain Catalan writers, such as
VÃctor CatalÃ
Caterina Albert i ParadÃs (L'Escala, Spain, 11 September 1869 — 27 January 1966), better known by her pen name VÃctor Català , was a Catalan writer in Catalan and Spanish who participated in the Modernisme movement and was the author of on ...
and
Joaquim Ruyra
Joaquim Ruyra i Oms (Catalan pronunciation: ’uəˈkim ruˈi.ɾə 27 September 1858 – 15 May 1939) was a Catalan short-story writer, poet and translator, considered a key figure in modern Catalan literature and one of the great narrators o ...
.
The civil war
In 1937, during the Civil War, he published ''Letizia i altres proses''. In 1939, in occupied Barcelona and before the military conflict ended, he wrote a play, ''AntÃgona'' (published in 1955 and opened in 1958), on the subject of fratricidal war and compassion for the losers.
Poetry
Espriu, who had begun to write poetry before the war, did not publish his first volume of poems until 1946: ''Cementiri de Sinera'', an elegy with a great formal sobriety. With this book and with the play ''Primera història d'Esther'' (published in 1948 and opened in 1957) —linguistically creative and original— began his post-war popularity, which grew as the rest of his work, essentially poetical, was published.
In ''Les cançons d'Ariadna'' (1949) he collected a series of poems from various periods that contrasted satire and distortion with elegy and lyricism and in which the mythological subjects can be found that were to appear in subsequent works.
The four books of poems that followed —''Les hores and Mrs. Death'' (1952), ''El caminant i el mur'' (1954) and ''Final del laberint'' (1955)—compose, together with ''Cementiri de Sinera'', a specific formal unity, on the one hand, given the symmetrical number of poems included in each volume and, on the other, the strict development of a very complex spiritual process that culminates in a mystical experience in the last book of the cycle. The musicality of Espriu's poetry has been stressed by
Andreas Dorschel.
[Andreas Dorschel, ''Lieder der Ariadne. Der große katalanische Lyriker Salvador Espriu.'' In: ''Süddeutsche Zeitung'', 15 October 2007. Aspects of Dorschel's text have been discussed by Ramon Farrés in ''Fritz Vogelgsang: Salvador Esprius Übersetzer ins Deutsche.'' In: ''Zeitschrift für Katalanistik'' 23 (2010), pp. 39–52.]
Popular success
The tremendous public success of ''La pell de brau'' (1960) signified the popular recognition of Espriu: the author posed the historical drama of ''Sepharad'' (poet's nickname for
Spain
, image_flag = Bandera de España.svg
, image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg
, national_motto = ''Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond")
, national_anthem = (English: "Royal March")
, i ...
after
the Jewish usage) in poems with a high spiritual, moral and political resonance.
''Llibre de Sinera'' (1963), one of his most hermetic books, ties in with subjects from the two previous works and again circumscribes the civil ambit of his poetry to the "homeland" mythicized in ''Sinera'', a word phonetically formed by spelling backwards
Arenys. In ''Setmana Santa'' (1971), through the images of the ritual procession, the author presents the myth of the Catholic Passion from a metaphysical perspective.
The bibliography of Espriu contains two more poems, included in the first volume of his Complete works (1968) (''Per al llibre de salms d'aquests vells cecs'' and ''Fragments. Versots. Intencions. Matisos''), and a selection of critical works, ''Evocació de Rosselló-Pòrcel i altres notes'' (1957).
Beginning in 1968, with the publication of his Complete works I. Poetry, he dedicated himself to a minute revision of his entire work. In narrative, the novels ''El doctor Rip'' (1931) and ''Laia'' (1932) were practically re-written when they were again published (1979 and 1968, respectively). The same occurred with his collection of narrations ''Aspectes'' (1934) and ''Ariadna al laberint grotesc'' (1935), published again in 1981 and 1975, respectively.
The last examples of his production were, with respect to theatre, ''Una altra Fedra si us plau ...'' (1978), the prose volume ''Les roques i el mar, el blau'' (1981) and, in poetry, the poem ''D'una vella i encerclada terra'' (1979) and the collection ''Per a la bona gent'' (1984).
Several theatral stagings of this work were made by
Ricard Salvat Ricard is a surname, as well as a Catalan name. Notable people with the surname include:
* Étienne Pierre Sylvestre Ricard (1771–1843), French general under Napoleon
* Hámilton Ricard (born 1974), Colombian footballer
*Jean-François Ricard (bo ...
, who also composed, based on texts by Espriu from various origins, ''Ronda de mort a Sinera'' (1966), a work with a broad theatrical audience.
The Valencian songwriter and singer
Raimon
Ramon Pelegero Sanchis, who takes the stage name of Raimon (), is a Spanish singer. He performs in the musical style of Nova Cançó, and in the Catalan language.
Biography
Youth
Raimon was born in XÃ tiva in the province of Valencia, Spain o ...
has set to music Espriu's poems including ''Les cançons de la roda del temps'' (Songs on the Passing of Time), ''Inici de cà ntic en el temple'' (Beginning of the Canticle in the Temple) and ''Indesinenter''.
A meditation on death
The author generically described his work as a "meditation on death", but this term is too restrictive to comprehend its complexity and cultural point of view. Actually, Espriu proposes to assume the literary tradition of humanity in a personal re-creation situated in a specific geographical and historical context,
Catalonia
Catalonia (; ca, Catalunya ; Aranese Occitan: ''Catalonha'' ; es, Cataluña ) is an autonomous community of Spain, designated as a ''nationality'' by its Statute of Autonomy.
Most of the territory (except the Val d'Aran) lies on the north ...
after the defeat of the Spanish Republic in the Spanish civil war, of which he sings its failings and hope.
Perhaps the most important virtue and originality of Espriu has been his capacity to reconcile, in the same unitary work, the spiritual problems of man, with metaphysical resonances, with his fate as a member of a group subjected to social and political tensions, while posing the great questions of justice and liberty.
International Acclaim
During his acceptance of the
International Catalonia prize, renowned literary critic
Harold Bloom
Harold Bloom (July 11, 1930 – October 14, 2019) was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. In 2017, Bloom was described as "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking wor ...
called Espriu 'an extraordinary poet by any international standard', and later said 'The
Nobel committee is guilty of many errors, and one of those was not to have given the prize to Salvador Espriu. I believe he deserved it'.
See also
*
Catalan literature
Catalan literature is the name conventionally used to refer to literature written in the Catalan language. The focus of this article is not just the literature of Catalonia, but literature written in Catalan from anywhere, so that it includes writ ...
References
External links
Salvador Espriu at the Association of Catalan Language Writers. In ,
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
** Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ge ...
and
Catalan Poetry Selection at Lletra, espai virtual de literatura catalanaSome poems with English translation.
*
*
ttp://www.doc6.es/espriu/ Centre de documentació i estudi Salvador Espriu Salvador Espriu Salvador Espriu recorded at the Library of Congress for the Hispanic Division’s audio literary archive on June 22, 1984
{{DEFAULTSORT:Espriu, Salvador
1913 births
1985 deaths
People from Selva
Catalan-language poets
Catalan-language writers
Premi d'Honor de les Lletres Catalanes winners
Poets from Catalonia
20th-century Spanish poets
Catalan dramatists and playwrights