Part 1 - DEFINITIONS AND INTERPRETATIONS

Summary

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]. 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]. 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. 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]. 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.

[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.]

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.