Josep Maria de Sagarra
(Josep Maria de Sagarra i Castellarnau; Barcelona, 1894-1961) Spanish poet, playwright and storyteller in the Catalan language who was the most popular author on the Catalan scene during the decades of 1920 and 1930.Son of a linajuda native family of the region of La Segarra, his father, Ferran de Sagarra i de Siscar, was a notable historian and archaeologist specialized in stealth.Sagarra's literary vocation was manifested from his childhood: at the age of eight he wrote verses and performed comedies at home.
Josep Maria de Sagarra
He was educated with the Jesuits of Barcelona; one of his teachers, Father Moreu, encouraged him in his penchant for poetry.At the age of twelve he saw his first verses published, and in 1914 his first book appeared: Primer llibre de poemes .He studied Law at the University of Barcelona: among his friends and classmates were the poets Josep Maria López-Picó and Carles Riba.It was presented to Joan Maragall, who guessed in it a great poet in heaven.His admiration and friendship for the author of "La vaca cega" and for Josep Carner and for the Mallorcan Joan Alcover and Miquel Costa i Llobera undoubtedly strengthened his vocation, to which the impressions received on his first trip to Italy in 1912 also contributed..
After finishing his university studies, he moved to Madrid in order to prepare himself for entering the diplomatic career.His stay in the capital of Spain allowed him to meet and deal with some of the most outstanding figures of letters, arts and politics of the moment.Around 1917, having abandoned his attempt to enter diplomacy, he decided to devote himself to literature and journalism.
Commissioned by El Sol , from Madrid, from the correspondent in Berlin, he went to Germany, where he lived for a long time.Again in Catalonia he gave himself up to a full civic life and tireless literary and journalistic activity, all of a clearly indigenous sign.He collaborated in the main Catalan-language newspapers and magazines in Barcelona, particularly in the newspapers La Veu de Catalunya and La Publicitat , and later in the weekly Mirador , in which he accredited his signature Aperitius , flying comments to all sorts of current events, in an acid and picturesque tone; at the same time he embarked on a theatrical adventure and frequented literary gatherings in which he imposed his early and lively sense of satire.
In the Floral Games of 1931 he was proclaimed "mestre en gai saber".Along this path, Sagarra became one of the best known and most relevant figures in Barcelona society.His caustic phrases, his verses of circumstances, scathing and goliardesque, ran from mouth to mouth in cafes and salons: some of his couplets, little masterpieces of the genre, appeared in the satirical weekly El be negre .
He attended all premieres, concerts, exhibitions and solemnities of all kinds; He killed hours in the peñas, the newsrooms, the dressing rooms, he traveled, at times he did politics, he was an inveterate customer of good restaurants and nightclubs, and people wondered how much time he could have left to write his long runs of verses, his numerous articles, his periodical comedies, his translations.The gossipers, often driven by envy, preyed on their private lives, and the "parents" were scandalized by certain false rumors.The truth is that few lived with such intensity the restless, tight, carefree period, full of good and bad omens of interwar Barcelona.
Weeks after the outbreak of the civil war (1936), Sagarra went to France, where he married a Catalan; from Paris he undertook a journey of eight or nine months to the South Seas.The result of this excursion were the books Entre l'Equador i els tròpics (poems) and El camino azul (prose, 1940), the latter written in Catalan, but published in Spanish.After the civil war, Josep Maria de Sagarra returned to Barcelona; Then he had to live some difficult and dark years, which he dedicated to finishing the version of the Divine Comedy , to the composition of a vast poem on Montserrat and to the translation of Shakespeare.
Around 1946 he resumed his activity as a playwright and long after that of journalist, this time in Spanish, especially in Destino and La Vanguardia .At that time the turn to the right was accentuated in the poet, already begun in the years that preceded the civil war; his skeptical and free attitude was apparently corrected by a progressive approach to traditional and conservative ideas.Also noteworthy in recent times are his contacts with the conformist and official intelligentsia of Madrid, and his efforts to impose his theater in Castilian versions.When he died, he left a comedy unpublished, the only one he wrote in Spanish.
The poetry of Sagarra
His poetic work, already so promising in the aforementioned Primer llibre de poemes , continued with El mal caçador (1916), legendary theme that announces his Comte Arnau and with Cançons d'abril i de novembre (1918).These first three collections revealed a precocious poet, very gifted, pure and instinctive, who marvels at the spectacle of Nature and immerses himself in it.The language is bright, with a popular flavor, and the themes are descriptive: the countryside, the mountains, the sea, childhood at home, a happy love without folds or concerns.
In 1922 he published the volume Cançons de taverna i d'oblit , whose composition began in Berlin, in which a change of direction in the vital and aesthetic attitude of the poet is outlined.Idealism ceases and a bitter, torn skepticism and an "enfant terrible" eroticism appear.They follow in the same tone Cançons de rem i de vela (1923) and Cançons de totes les hores (1925); in this last book a return to the ballad and the popular of the first collections is observed.
Count Arnau (1928), in several thousand hendecasyllables, is based on the famous popular song, which had already been glossed by Ángel Guimerà, Jacint Verdaguer and Joan Maragall.It is a long-winded poem, with many blurry and inert passages and some moments of achieved expressive vigor; perhaps its greatest value lies in the wealth and property of the lexicon that the author displays in the descriptions of the forest and the mountain.It was followed by Poema de Nadal (1931), written in a few days, spontaneous and fresh evocation of the Christmas mystery, simple, folkloric, emotional, of notable plastic values.
His last three poetic books ( La rosa de cristall , 1933; Àncores i estrellas , 1936 and the aforementioned Entre l'Equador i els tròpics , 1941) accentuate the skeptical and crude tone, and constitute an unhappy attempt to approach new trends.There remains the extensive Poema de Montserrat , a dedicated hymn to the religious, legendary, historical and natural values of the sacred mountain of Catalonia; The results do not correspond, in general terms, to the great and noble purpose.
His dramatic work
It seems that Ignasi IGLESIAS and Pere Coromines encouraged Sagarra to write for the scene.His first premiere in 1918 was: Rondalla d'esparvers , a romantic drama with echoes of Gabriele D'Annunzio and the starting point of a long and almost uninterrupted theatrical work that will last for more than forty years.during which Sagarra's production-which comprises nearly fifty premiered works, not counting translations-largely filled the Catalan stage life of Barcelona and the whole of Catalonia.
Dramas and comedies of popular or patriotic inspiration, farces in the manner of Molière, rural and city scenes, almost always located in the eight hundred-massies, taverns, inns, Elizabethan salons-, sentimental stories, presided over by often by a figure of a woman, between romantic and realistic, expressed in a language that regurgitates metaphors of vague popular inspiration, and in easy, sonorous, resounding verses, strong to the point of tears or tender to the idyll, with true arias-including the calderón-, by the first lady or the gallant, in which the heart of the episode or the feelings that dominate the character are focused, and with which the admired attention and applause of a person is requested, and almost always obtained.simple and well-disposed public, still attached to the tradition of Serafí Pitarra and Ángel Guimerà; here is, in short, the most characteristic of this anachronistic and carefree drama, but bright, lively, full of color.
After the civil war, Sagarra, who arrived from Paris, tried to bring his theater up to date and wrote two dramatic comedies, La fortuna de Silvia and Galatea , in which men and women of our time speak in prose and debate between contemporary problems.Unfortunately, our author did not persevere in the new direction and relapsed in the old ways, which were what gave him his great popular successes.Lately he triumphed with a work with a current theme, La ferida lluminosa (1955), with a coarse plot and melodramatic effects; this drama was also applauded in Madrid, translated by José María Pemán, and then went on to the screen.
Subsequent productions reveal a certain weariness or are simple adaptations (of Avaro by Molière, in Senor Perramon , and of The marriage by Gogol, in The Prosecutor Requesens ).From Sagarra's extensive stage work, we would perhaps highlight La filla del Carmesí , among the popularly inspired comedies, and La plaga de Sant Joan or another similar one, among the farces of Molieresque ancestry.
Work in prose
As a narrator his most considerable work are the Memòries (1954, Spanish edition in 1957), in those that the author collects family and personal memories, included within the first quarter of this century.Of his three novels, Paulina Buxareu (1919), Ajo y salobre (1929) and Private life (1930), only the second, erotic , realistic, with a marine atmosphere, it is saved from oblivion. Private life , which is by far the most publicized, was at the time a stone of scandal for the daring in exposing the "unspeakable" sexual practices of its protagonists, descendants of the old rural nobility and members of the new Barcelona bourgeoisie.He also collected in three volumes ( Café, copa i puro, Aperitius and Cola de gallo ) chronicles and journalistic works.
Your work as a translator is important.The rhymed version of the Divina Comèdia occupied him for many years; It is extremely meticulous, a circumstance worth highlighting in a writer like Sagarra, fast and expeditious, little given to the slow elaboration and the patient revisions.On the other hand, his translation of thirty works of Shakespeare is uneven and in many passages very questionable; Too often the translator has lent to English the diffuse and inordinate metaphorical language, with more sonority and color than fiber, of an original theater.
The set of Sagarrian production impresses by its volume, by the "fluvial" course, which never wanes, and by the popular projection that it has reached.Sagarra was an effective disseminator of poetry with his lyrical and epic compositions and especially with his theater.The notoriety of the poet was extraordinary, singularly until 1936.A writer turned back to the past, profuse, with great verbal encouragement, his work constitutes an exception in the times when poetry tends to curdle into short and concise pieces and when drama poses problems of pulsing topicality or presents figures of the new philosophy in anti-rhetorical and rather schematic forms.Sagarra died in full activity, although somewhat distanced from the genuine reality of his country and his time; However, until the last moment, he preserved the gleaming aureole of a popular poet-the most popular in Catalonia after Verdaguer-to which perhaps the suggestion of an almost legendary life as a tall bohemian and a born aristocrat did not stop contributing.
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