The starry night of verse

The canonical works of Joan Margarit (Sanaüja, 1938-Sant Just Desvern, 2021) have just been reissued in an improved hardcover edition, illustrated with a painting by Paula Rego ( The Dance , 1988). That is, all the poems saved by the author, the lyrical corpus that makes up his legacy. The first books were subjected to a very rigorous pruning and are summarized in the factitious work, with such a significant and polysemic title, Restes d'aquell naufragi (1975-1986). Only after Llum de pluja (1986) did the author consider his distinctive voice untouchable.

And it is thus, read from cover to cover (or reread, for many of us), that the author's poetry acquires its full depth, its transcendence. From it emerges the image of a passionate creator, never wavering, very sure of his aesthetic (and ethical) principles. The poem in "Misteriosament feliç" (2008), which he dedicated to Paul Celan, "Llegir poesia" (Reading poetry ) (perhaps one of the most controversial of his published works), is, in this sense, a clear example of his emphatic force: as if, upon finishing a book by Celan, the self speaking to us (the author) admits not knowing what his poetry is about, concluding that "els poetes hermètics tenen por" (hermetic poets tend). A brave and reckless statement!

The fact is that his poetry perfectly reflects the man who writes it: it is, in reality, a prodigious moral self-portrait. From one of the three compositions titled Poètica that we can read in this volume—a piece from Els motius del llop , from 1993—I extract the final verses, which perfectly summarize the author's aesthetic (and, therefore, ethical) program: “For dead children, for love without more, / for more that threatens like a weapon, / for so much evil that is not news. / For all this poetry was written.” These four themes have substantiated Margarit's lyricism.

Beyond what has been said, we must thank Margarita's work for the clarity that José-Carlos Mainer already emphasized in his 2014 prologue, deriving it from the "demand for a useful and sweet art." This formal quality is not at all at odds, of course, with the depth of what was once called the message. Aside from this, and the wise construction I will analyze below, we owe to the author's verses all those atmospheres so often drenched in rain, and the settings, among many others, of the sea, which, in all their depth and distance, seem prone to loneliness, a certain melancholy, even moral devastation. We also owe him the admiring memory of Greece, or the insistence on the symbolic value of construction, which founded the author's other great vocation: architecture. Margarit's poetry is also the proclamation of the myth of Rachel, the beloved woman, and the elusive vision of the blue-eyed girl who appears in a few of her verses, here and there. And the preeminence of geography over history: that's why she considered love to be a place.

“I grow up, the one who passes in the night / starry with a verse,” he asserts in the final two verses of Dona de primavera (Spring Woman), from Edat roja (1991). Given the proud confidence he indicated—that of a creator who knows he is the standard-bearer of an aesthetic—the fiery proclamation of the two verses quoted always seemed to me more in keeping with the candor of youth. Margarit is a solid poet, and this volume clearly reflects this. He knew how to construct his poems very well (let's leave aside whether his language has the gift of singing or not, which it doesn't). I will give three examples that seem especially inspired to me. The poem Primer amor (First Love) from Els motius del llop (The Motive of the Llop) , el de la navaja (The Knife's Motive). The pretext serves the theme with great precision and effectiveness: the advent of death. Something similar happens with L'oracle by Aiguaforts (1995): the theme is the same, but the anecdote has to do with the jet of blood that flows from the neck of a sacrificed goat, interpreted forty years later, “mentre pixes sang”. The third example, the delicate poem entitled Perdiu jove by Càlcul d'estructures (2005): the pretext of the wounded bird brings back the memory of the dead daughter, “A fragile being / who plows also is throwing a stone”.

Joan Margarit Tots els poems (1975-2021) Proa. 842 pages. 28.90 euros