Catalan Literature from Renaissance to Modernism
Renaissance (1833-1877)
Historic Context
The bourgeoisie became the driving force behind the revival. Industry fueled economic growth and was closely tied to the bourgeoisie. As the bourgeoisie gained wealth, they advocated for a liberal regime that favored their interests. They also took a keen interest in the identity of the Catalan people.
Characteristics
The Renaissance, spanning from 1833 to 1877, revitalized literary production in Catalan. Its main goals were to retrieve and refine the Catalan language, raise awareness about the connection between language and nation, encourage new writers, and promote the role of institutions and the creation of new entities. Political and economic changes in the 18th and 19th centuries contributed to this movement.
Romanticism
Artists were viewed as superior beings. There was a sense of dissatisfaction with reality and a fascination with the distant past, particularly the Middle Ages and exotic locales. Key themes included melancholy, loneliness, and escapism, with death (often suicide) as a recurring motif.
Floral Games
Three prizes were awarded: “Natural Flower” (best love poem), “Viola” (best religious poem), and “The Englantina” (best patriotic poem). These awards encouraged aspiring writers.
Style
The style was characterized by rural and archaic elements. The language drew inspiration from the countryside, moving away from French and Castilian models. Notable features included exclamations, hyperbolic Romantic imagery, extensive use of hyperbaton, a grandiloquent and emphatic tone, and a balance and sobriety when imitating folk poetry and traditions.
Modernist Poetry (1880-1911)
Historical Context
Significant historical events during this period included a general economic crisis, the anarchist movement of workers and laborers, the founding of the CNT (National Confederation of Labor), and the social revolt known as the “Tragic Week” (July 26 to August 2, 1909), triggered by a popular uprising due to the mobilization of army reservists, primarily Catalans.
Characteristics
Modernism can be understood in two ways: as an attitude and as a process. The attitude refers to those who embraced all things modern, contrasting with the prevailing Catalan intellectual sentiment that favored renewal through borrowing from external models and ideas. Modernism as a process can be defined as the transformation of Catalan culture at the turn of the 19th century from a regional and traditionalist culture into a modern one.
Novel of the Twentieth Century
The crisis of the modernist narrative, influenced by the decadent and symbolist French tradition, was addressed by emphasizing emotion. Novels reflected social reality through a different understanding of the creative act, where the artwork resulted from the clash between the artist’s subjectivity and the external world. A central theme was the struggle between the individual and nature, humanity and the world.
Victor Català (Caterina Albert)
Caterina Albert, who wrote under the pseudonym Victor Català, was a self-taught writer known for her rural narratives.
Features
Her works presented a chaotic and unknowable vision of the world, suggesting that the individual’s relationship with the surrounding world could only be harmonious if humans merged with all-encompassing nature. The artist attempted to control nature by subjecting it to the superiority of spirit and art. The individual often opposed the crowd in an act of personal affirmation and rebellion, leading to marginalization.
Stages
- Rural dramas, dark, raw stories
- Novels
- Collections of stories and plays
- Novels and life stories
Solitude (1905)
Theme: The internal conflict of a single woman fighting against an oppressive social and physical environment to overcome her dissatisfaction with life and achieve personal fulfillment through the pursuit of love and freedom.
Characters:
- Mila: Represents evil
- Pastor Gaietà: Represents purity
- Alma
Language: Difficult to understand symbolic language, many dialectisms, neologisms.
Joan Maragall (1860-1911)
Life
Born in Barcelona in 1860, Joan Maragall’s family owned a small textile business that provided them with financial stability. He pursued his passion for writing through journalism. Due to a lack of work, he became involved in various aspects of Barcelona’s cultural life, including the Ateneo Barcelona, where he served as president, and the writing section of the Advancement Society. He gained recognition as an intellectual among the Barcelona bourgeoisie and among artists and writers of his generation and the next.
Literary Production
Initially, he wrote articles for various journals on political and revolutionary events, including the Tragic Week, but these were censored. As a poet, he published his first poems in magazines, such as “The Ode Infinite” (1888) and “The Blind Cow” (1891), later collected in a book titled “Poems” (1895). “The Ode Infinite” stands out for its metaphysical tone, presenting poetry as a tool for knowledge. His most productive period was the 1890s. Public recognition came with the publication of the poetry collections “Visions and Songs” (1900) and “Beyond” (1906). He also published “Scattered” in 1904. His final poetry collection, “Sequence,” was published in 1911 shortly before his death.
Customs
This genre focused on the discovery of reality and the description of everyday life scenes (particularly rural ones) and typical characters. “Novels of Customs” (Costumbrismo) were short pieces with minimal plot or action that reflected the reality of daily life.
Realism (1850)
Realism emerged in the mid-19th century, rejecting Romantic features such as subjectivism, idealism, and the need to escape reality. It embraced contemporary reality with objectivism and provided accurate descriptions of this reality. Novels often depicted the struggles of the working class. Prominent figures included Stendhal, Balzac, Flaubert, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Dickens, Galdós, and Clarín.
Naturalism (1870)
Pioneered by Émile Zola, Naturalism aimed to study human behavior scientifically. It viewed society as the central axis of human behavior. Two key naturalist theories were:
- Positivism: Developed by Auguste Comte, it advocated for an experimental method based on a worldview derived from the direct experimentation of reality.
- Determinism: Hippolyte Taine argued that human behavior was determined by three factors: race, environment, and historical movement.
Zola combined these theories to create the experimental novel, which examined all aspects of society (both positive and negative) to improve social conditions and human behavior.
Realism and Naturalism in Catalonia
After “Tirant lo Blanc,” no significant works were published in Catalan for a considerable period. The literary renewal context saw a resurgence of this genre. In the first third of the 19th century, there was a readership for novels, and novelists emerged. Translations of foreign Romantic novels, such as “War and Peace” and “The Red and the Black,” became popular. This led to the beginning of original novel production in Catalan. In 1862, Antoni Bofarull published the first Catalan novel, “L’Orfeneta de Menargues.” This novel highlighted several challenges hindering the development of the novelistic genre.
Novel
The novel was the last genre to become established in Catalan literature.
Causes
- Lack of standardization: The literary language was not fixed because Castilian held the prestige.
- Lack of prestige of the novel: When Catalan literary production resumed, authors favored the historical novel and pamphlets, which had didactic and moralizing aims, far from the realistic goals.
Narcis Oller’s “La Papallona” is considered the first modern Catalan novel. Critics highlight two perspectives on naturalism. The main proponents of Catalan naturalism, albeit with limitations, were Sardà and Yxart.
Narcis Oller (1846-1930)
Born in Valls in 1846 and died in Barcelona in 1930, Narcis Oller studied law and balanced his professional life with his literary vocation. He initially wrote in Spanish for prestige, but his works eventually transitioned to Catalan. His cousin, Yxart, and his friendship with Sardà encouraged Oller to follow the dominant literary models in Europe. Although his work comprises six novels, Oller is considered the most important Catalan novelist. “La Bogeria” is a naturalistic novel and the only purely naturalistic one he wrote, as it describes the process of a character’s madness from three different viewpoints.
Romantic Poetry
Poetry was the favored genre of Romanticism, serving as an outlet for emotions. Main themes included the glorification of the nation, with its myths, history, and landscapes, and religion. Romanticism entered Catalonia during the first third of the 19th century. Writers, lacking confidence in Catalan, used Spanish. It was unveiled in magazines written in Spanish. Several factors contributed to the restoration of Catalan, including the freedom of expression. Art became the expression of the intimate “I.”
Topics
Key topics included the revaluation of the Middle Ages, figures of past heroes, the idealization of medieval Catalonia, and the use of songbooks, which represented traditional Catalan literature.
Chronology of Modernism
First Period (1892-1900)
- This period was combative, with an anarchic tone and a radical social perspective.
- The magazine “L’Avenç” was first published in 1881.
- In 1893, the Third Modernist “Sirga” Party was organized to unite all modernist tendencies.
- The autumn of 1893 was marked by a series of anarchist bombings in Barcelona, the most significant being at the Liceu Opera House. This sparked demonstrations and distrust of the extremist nature of the modernist movement among the bourgeoisie.
- In February 1898, the magazine “Catalonia” appeared and continued the work of cohesion. It had a less radical and more literary approach than “L’Avenç.” It introduced authors such as Goethe, Nietzsche, and Baudelaire.
- The most prominent artistic magazines were “Els Quatre Gats” and “Pèl & Ploma.”
- A relevant attitude of this first stage of the movement was a response to Nietzsche’s vitalism, individualism, and the concept of the artist as a messianic guide.
Second Period (1900-1911)
- This period saw a decrease in the aggressiveness that characterized the first period.
- There was a significant amount of literary production.
- The bourgeoisie accepted and assimilated the movement, especially aesthetically.
- The representative magazine of this period was “Joventut” (1900-1906).
- During the final years of the modernist movement, it coexisted with Noucentisme.
- Joan Maragall died in 1911.