Catalan Modernism: Literary Movement and Aesthetic Renewal
Catalan Modernism: A Cultural Renaissance
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Catalan literature recovered its quality and volume of works and authors, thanks to figures like Verdaguer, Oller, and Lieder, who elevated it to the level of European literature.
Core Ideals and Conflict
The modernists realized that Catalan culture in general, and literature in particular, could not recover lost originality while the decline continued under Spanish cultural models, which were often backward compared to Europe. They also rebelled against the culture of the Renaixença, rejecting ideas considered stale and conservative.
The main objective was to achieve a stylistic movement that would transform and modernize society, Europeanizing it from its past anchors. The way to achieve this was to change the artistic tastes of the middle class, from which the modernists originated. This led to clashes and tensions.
Two Major Trends
Modernism was divided into two trends:
- Aesthetic Regeneration (Regeneració-Art): This trend believed that art liberated individuals from materialism and gave them the capacity to transform society. Art, therefore, must serve the education of society.
- Aestheticists (Beauticians): This group believed that art had no purpose beyond ensuring aesthetic pleasure as a way of escape from unpleasant everyday reality and routine. They championed elegant, refined, and minority literature.
Modernism was not limited to literature but encompassed all artistic manifestations, including language, which they sought to modernize and refine.
Stages of Modernism
Symptoms of the modernist artistic and literary movement, characterized by European unification and renewal, were first found in the magazine L’Avenç.
Key Phases
Modernism developed in two stages:
- Stage of Conflict: The modernists introduced their ideas through modernist festivals and collaborations in the press.
- Stage of Consolidation: The movement gained popularity with novels, drama, visual arts, and architecture in particular.
The movement is generally considered finished with the death of Joan Maragall.
Characteristics of Modernist Prose
The modernist narrative movement was characterized by:
- The Hero: A marginalized and misunderstood hero facing social or natural adversity, struggling against adversity to improve society.
- Subjective Narration: The narrator provides a subjective view of the conflicts experienced by the characters.
- Subjective Description: Descriptions of characters, environments, and situations are subjective and depend on the mood of the characters.
- Symbolism: Use of symbolic elements such as character names and landscape features.
- Linguistic Style: A specific style given to the language of the stories, often rural or vernacular, characterized by specific phrasing.
Joan Maragall (Barcelona, 1860–1911)
A great poet, son of a textile businessman. He refused to continue the family business. He studied music and law and worked as a journalist. His influential articles made him the ideologist of modernist regeneracionisme (regenerationism).
Major Works and Poetic Theory
Poetry is the most significant aspect of Maragall’s modernist output.
Poetic Collections
Poesies (Poetry), Visions and Sequences, and Songs are the most important collections. Of special mention is Count Arnau, a long narrative poem published across three collections that occupied him for a long time. Inspired by the legend, the medieval hero is used as a symbol. The Spiritual Song, included within Sequences, is considered one of the best poems on religious themes.
Prose and Poetic Spontaneity
His known prose essays include Praise of the Word and Praise of Poetry, where he exposes his ideas based on poetic spontaneity (espontaneisme), summarized in his “theory of the living word”:
- Poetry is an activity of the mind and reveals a true reality hidden behind the apparent reality.
- The poet is a “seer,” a guide for men because he has a greater capacity for perception.
- The word must be “alive,” generated by the poet’s emotion in response to reality, often lacking rhetorical resources.
Maragall’s Thematic Categories
Maragall’s poetry can be categorized thematically:
- Decadent Poetry: Characterized by melancholy and sadness, the glorification of death, and finding beauty in negative aspects.
- Vitalist Poetry: Optimistic poetry that encourages living life fully, also because death is the ultimate life experience.
- Nature Poetry: The landscape serves as a pretext to suggest feelings and emotions.
- Nationalist Poetry: Reworks Catalan myths and legends.