The Romantic Verdaguer

THE ROMANTIC VERDAGUER

ANTONI GAUD~.VERDAGUER DOLS. 4 DRAGON OF CATEDRAGAUD~. BARCELONP.

PLUS ULTRA,AL CEL PLUS ULTRA, FROM AL CEL L'univers és infinit, The universe is infinite, pertot acaba i comenca, its end and its beginning are everywhere, i en@, enll2, amunt i aval1 and here, there, above and below la immensitat és oberta. the immensity is open. Jacint Verdaguer

RICARD TORRENTS DIRECTOR OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIC AND PRESIDENT OF THE ASSOCIACIÓ VERDAGUER LITERATURE

hile the different foundries, I triumphant humility in the poet who aesthetic and otherwise, of Ro- Verdaguer's life, which can be summed had come from the lesser ranks and who manticism were crackling al1 up in its three accepted periods: rise knew how to interpret their intimate over Europe, the ancient dormant na- (1845-1877), fullness (1877-1893) and feelings of faith and country, landscape tion of Catalonia was stimng with the decline (1893-1 902), contains elements and tradition, love and longing, as well movement of the Renaixenqa, the "Re- that seem made to become symbols. as stupefaction at geological cataclysms, birth". Catalan awareness was being re- When the twenty-year-old poet walked the deeds of mythical heroes or of the vived by the tide of romanticism and a into Barcelona City Hall's Saló de Cent figures from national history. When he move began to reinstate the language, dressed in mountain clothes, he was fe11 from grace and rebeíied, modernist giving it a literature in Catalan on a welcomed by the public with Rousseau- circles saw in Verdaguer an artist mis- leve1 with the national literatures of Eu- nian enthusiasm as the embodiment of understood and rejected, while the peo- rope. This programme, which was Catalan virtues, the emblem of the ple made him a victim of the powerful adopted by important writers such as Renaixenqa. When, under the impact and welcomed him like a returning the poet Jacint Verdaguer, the play- of the Revolution of 1868, he was or- hero. Verdaguer once more bore the wright Angel Guimeri and the novelist dained as a priest and sang mass in 1878 weight of symbolic representation in Narcis Oller, and which found between a dolmen and an altar, his 1945, the centenary of his birth. Catalo- sympathy with the critics and support sympathizers rushed to take up the life nia then was stifled by the Franco re- amongst the bourgeois and working- of poet-priests, presided by the lyre and gime. The Catalans in exile made Ver- class public, gave rise to modern Cata- the chalice. When, in 1877, consecrated daguer a symbol of unity and hope. lonia's first cultural symbols. One of by the success of LAtlantida, the pro- Meanwhile, in Catalonia, the poet's lan- them was the poet and priest Jacint tection of the Marquis of Comillas guage could not be entirely smothered, Verdaguer, "mosdn Cinto", one of the raised him higher on the social ladder, because thanks to his verses the censor most effective and lasting. the public took pride and admired the could not forbid a retum to publishing JQSEP UIMONA. MONUMENT TO DR. ROBERT. PLACA DE TETUAN, BARCELONA. IN THE KIREGROUND, MRDAGUER SURROUNDED BY THE COMMON PEOPLE

in Catalan. In 1952, the fiftieth anniver- But it is Verdaguer's work as a whole schools, aesthetic tastes and ideological sary of his death, not only did the clan- which through its functional value is preferences, has its classic -paradoxical destine Institut d'Estudis Catalans pay invested with symbolism. Verdaguer in though it may seem- in the Romantic homage to him, but the poet's works fact was the founder of the modem Cat- Verdaguer. and biographies appeared in the book- dan literary movement in the same To place Verdaguer, it is essential to shops while popular celebrations in his way that in the thirteenth and four- remember that the literature of the Ro- honour broke out in demands for free- teenth centuries Ramon Llull had foun- mantic writers emerged with the object dom for the Catalan language. ded ancient literary Catalan, a language of communicating with the infinitude which after a premature yet brilliant of the universe whose "end and [whose] 11 Renaissance with authors like Bernat beginning are everywhere" as interpre- Verdaguer's literary work, more than Metge, Ausias Marc and Joanot Marto- ted in the Volksgeist of each country. forty books of verse, prose and transla- rell was eclipsed during the Baroque From Holderlin to Keats, from Byron tions, is charged with images that are and the Enlightenment by its Spanish, to Espronceda, from Manzoni to Push- symbolic to the Catalans. The moun- Italian and French neighbours. It was kin, from Lamartine to Verdaguer, the tains of Montserrat, the Montseny, the not until Verdaguer that Catalan re- romantic writers formed a species Pyrenees; historical people and places, gained the heights of art and functiona- which arose in the eighteenth century, especially King James 1, the city of Bar- lity of the modem languages of culture. multiplied in the nineteenth century celona, the monastery of Ripoll; the These had not suffered the same inter- and, so far as one can see, has not died Catalan-language area, with the Balearic ruption; literary Catalan, on the other out in the twentieth century. Albert Ca- Isles, the País Valencia, the Roussillon; hand, reached the century of Romanti- mus, says the novelist Michel Butor, is popular traditions, such as the sardana cism with no great writers and no pub- the great French romantic writer of our or the human towers of the castellers; lic, without critics or reliable imme- century. the plant-life, the legends, place-names, diate referents. Verdaguer's great virtue When Verdaguer was a young writer in saints, all have a constant, vibrant pre- was that he gathered the language from the 1860s, the romantic school domina- sence in the poetry of Verdaguer. In the the lips of the common people, and af- ted catalan literature under the critica1 accounts of his travels, his points of ter injecting it with classical models, direction of Manuel Mila i Fontanals reference are Catalan, like on his visit wrote in a credible language, as though (1 8 18-1884), a student of the literatures to Russia in 1844 when he remarks that Catalan had never undergone the ordeal of Europe. It was he who guided Verda- the rivers Llobregat and Ter are mere of decadence. There is therefore a be- guer in composing LAtlhntida, an im- "jets from a porró" (a Catalan wine-jug) fore and after to literary Catalan, which pressive poetic construction that goes beside the massive Russian rivers, and hinges on Verdaguer in much the same on from the sinking of the mythical yet no sooner are the former bom than way that the before and after of literary Atlantic continent to te11 the story of the they move turbines, while the latter German hinges on Luther's brilliant origins of Europe and the "completion" bleed into the sea without giving life to translation of the Bible. Modern Cata- of the creation of the world's continents a single factory. lan, therefore, over and above literary with the discovery of America. Mila i LITERATURE

PEN AND INK DRAWING. CANIG~,NBLISHED 1886

Fontanals also wrote the prologue for calendars. You can find him in school- Politicians quote him in their speeches Verdaguer's first book of poems, Idilelis books and bibliophile editions. His ef- and the ordinary people worship him as i cants rnistics, full of lyricism and figy has circulated on Spanish bank- a saint. Verdaguer has two literary mu- mystic passion. The literary work that notes and stamps, on medals and pos- seums, one on Folgueroles where he was emerged from the young poet Verda- ters, picture wds and pennants. In bron- born and the other in Vallvidrera where guer and the old critic Mila delighted ze or stone, on canvas or in marble, you he died. From his life and works have the Catalans and earned the acknowl- can see Verdaguer honoured in the cap- come records, recitals, stage plays, nov- edgement of neighbouring literatures. ital, at the crossroads of Passeig de Sant els, auques, radio scripts, films and vid- Poetry in Catalan rejoined an illustrious Joan and Diagonal (monument by Peri- eos. No other Catalan author has been family: Virgii's Aeneid, Milton's Para- cas-Borre11 Nicolau) and of Passeig de translated into as many languages. dise Lost, Klopstock's Der Messias, Ca- Sant Joan and Avinguda de les Corts From Maragall to Riba, Carner to Pla, moes's Os Lusiadas, Tasso's Gerusalem- Catalanes (sculptural group by Lli- the great Catalan writers of the twen- me Liberata, but also the family of mona) and in the galíery of illustrious tieth century have professed their admi- Francis of Assissi's I Fioretti, Fray Luís Catalans. You can see him on the ration for him. Just as Llull and Cer- de León's Odas, the Bible's Song of Pica d'Estats, the highest peak in the Cat- vantes have each given rise to their Songs, Llull's Libre d'arnic e Arnat or dan Pyrenees, and in Blanes, on the respective "isms", Verdaguer has two: Lamartine's La chute d'un unge and Costa Brava; in gardens of private one which is study and research, and Chateaubriand's Le génie du christianis- homes and in public parks. No other one which is a cult and a popular fol- me. Romantic by nature, Verdaguer's Catalan figure has as many monuments lowing. For sure, if each people has its poetry allowed later Catalan poets to as he has and no other Catalan has poet, the Catalan people has its poet in take the path of Western post-romantic so many streets, avenues and squares Verdaguer. poetry leading to the aesthetic adven- named after him. Even in America In 1995, in an end-of-century climate tures of Symbolism. The perception of the the colonies of Catalan émigrés re- many see as neo-romantic, we Catalans "open immensity" had struck a roman- member him. shall remember that 150 years ago Ja- tic note in Verdaguer and inspired the If everyone knows a few verses in their cint Verdaguer was born. The interest grandiloquent and intimist poems that own language, the verses every Catalan of scholars and writers in this classic so moved his contemporaries. Even to- knows are the ones they learnt to the romantic, far from fading, has surfaced day, they still move anyone who is open tune of the Virolai from Montserrat, of once more in monographs and critical to the immensity. the song of homesickness L'ernigrant or editions. His popularity also lives on of the cradle song Lo noi de la rnare. amongst those levels of Catalan society 111 His poetry has inspired opera in Ma- that made him their symbol, a society Today you can find Verdaguer not only nuel de Falla and songs by popular that has changed profoundly during the in university departments, where he is composers. His creations have taken twentieth century but that is still driven the subject of courses and doctoral the- shape in the hands of Antoni Gaudi or by new and ancient aspirations for ses, but in kitchens, on the pages of under the pens of anonymous writers. rebirth.