Quim Monzó and Postwar Catalan Poetry: A Deep Dive
Quim Monzó: A Reflection of Contemporary Society
Quim Monzó (Barcelona, 1952) is one of the most important contemporary Catalan fiction authors. His stories reflect contemporary society, focusing on emotional conflicts. The main features that characterize his narrative world and the literary resources he uses are:
- An abstract urban atmosphere with its exasperated life: loneliness, despair, boredom.
- Schematic and anonymous personalities characterized by obsessions that disable them from leading a normal existence and communicating with others. They lack psychological depth and present a single idea or attitude.
- Humor and irony as a resource.
- The absurdity of habits and behaviors or false myths and clichés about the modern world.
- Absurd and fantastic elements to demystify and deform reality, helping us to see it with new eyes.
Monzó is a writer who mixes lyrical realism with the fantastic and grotesque. Most of his stories are characterized by a short absence of rhetoric and a style without flourishes. We can include in his brief narrative an allegorical tendency that refers to a metaphor of the urban values that characterize our times. It is a pessimistic allegory of modern society, devoid of meaning and coherence.
In Self-Service (1979), he portrays consumerist mythology. In Uf, va dir ell (1978), Olivetti, Moulinex, Chaffoteaux et Maury (1980), and L’illa de Maians (1985), tales emerge from an idea that can lead to an absurd and irreverent situation. It reflects opposition. In El perquè de tot plegat (1993), the uncertainty of the human being appears. In Guadalajara (1996), the characters fight against fate. In El millor dels mons (2001), death and suffering are present. In Mil cretins (2007), the difficult balance between life and human misery dominates, but love is also present.
Postwar Catalan Poetry: Exile and Renewal
During the postwar period, poetry became representative of national essences. Exile was the most important, dynamic, and creative aspect of Catalan literature. The two most important books of poems after the war were Nabi by Josep Carner and Elegies de Bierville by Carles Riba. Both perpetuated the post-symbolist code inherited from the 20th century.
Parallel to this line, another environment emerged around Josep Vicent Foix, who advocated for the breakdown of formal and linguistic experimentalism of the avant-garde. Some poets were influenced by Jean-Paul Sartre and Parisian existentialism, a nonconformist philosophical and literary movement that prioritized issues arising from the relationship of the human person and reflected the anxiety of living in an absurd world.
Symbolist and Existentialist Poets of the 1950s
Symbolist and existentialist poets in the 1950s tried to suggest reality through symbolic evocation. Some symbolists were Xavier Casp, Joan Valls Jordà, and Matilde Llora. They first appeared in the early postwar years and in the first postwar literary magazines in Valencia.
Realist Aesthetics of the 1960s
However, young poets in the early 1960s adhered to realist aesthetics. The realist poetry of the 1960s had the following characteristics:
- Social attitude of the poet: The poet was regarded as an ordinary person, in solidarity with the rest.
- The poetic experience: The act of writing became a shared experience with readers and the wider society.
- Method of inspiration: The poet’s reflection emerged from real experience.
- A new language: Lively and even colloquial.
- The protagonist of the poem: An everyday person, immersed in anonymity.
- The objective of poetry: To enrich the human person and free them from all kinds of oppression.
- The recipient: Any reader.
The “Generació del Setanta”
Starting in the 1970s, the so-called “Generació del Setanta” shifted the emphasis from the social to the individual. Influenced by symbolism and surrealism, they explored the expressive possibilities of language to give life to their unease.