Salvador Espriu’s Poetic Exile: Themes and Analysis
Salvador Espriu: A Poem of Exile and Loyalty
Author: Salvador Espriu
Date: 1954, more than twelve years after the end of the Civil War and more than six years after the Second World War.
Theme: This poem begins by discussing the desire to leave one’s homeland, to emigrate northward, because the speaker believes the land is cowardly, savage, and old, while the place to go is cultured, noble, and clean. The poem also explains that if this dream were to come true, citizens, whom they call brothers, would be ashamed of him, while he would be far away and laughing. However, the protagonist experiences a feeling of opposition, because although he wants to emigrate to that wonderful place, he also loves his homeland. Ultimately, we find two ways of understanding the poet’s perspective. One is the idea that he truly wants to go northward and abandon his land because love is nothing but holding on, and that staying is cowardice and fear of the unknown. The other way to understand what the poet is expressing is that although his country is old, savage, and cowardly, he loves it because it is the place where he was born and where he has lived.
Poem Analysis
We can clearly see the internal contradiction of the lyrical subject in relation to the situation in his country, which is subject to enslavement under a dictatorship.
The issue of internal exile is clear, understanding exile as the experience of people who ran the country and lived through long repression under the Franco regime. This symbolic exile clearly reflects the tensions between Espriu and his country.
He complains bitterly about his land, describing it as cowardly, as Catalonia cannot unfairly rebel against the subjects. Moreover, he also complains that it is far from the ideal civilization that the young generation of ’36, to which he belongs and defended the Republic, dreamed of.
Throughout the poem, twenty adjectives are carefully distributed. These adjectives contain all the tension and effectiveness of the poem. Also, this poem is strongly influenced by the Bible, which the author constantly read.
Content and Structure
The structure is indivisible, because if you remove any part of the poem, it loses its meaning.
Three Stanzas
The poem consists of three stanzas, which represent the three parts of the poem:
- Stanza 1 (verses 1-7): Reflects the author’s desire to flee his country. The poetic voice laments the situation of people who have lost their freedom and says he wants to go north beyond sen (to Europe, where democracy has won). There are many adjectives, some negative (cowardly, old, wild) related to Catalonia, and a few others positive (clean, noble, educated, wealthy, free, and happy) referred to the inhabitants of the rest of Europe.
- Stanza 2 (verses 8-13): Shows the social censorship that would be imposed if he definitively decided to leave. The inhabitants of the country disapprove of the action while he would laugh. The word “congregation” that appears in this part identifies the idea of the concept of a nation group met in the environment of a religious law. A finger also appears literally (as the bird leaving the nest, so that sen lhome was his place) that reflects the people’s disapproval. In the last verse of the second part, the author writes “arid village.” Here, Espriu plays with the concept of desert (arid) (exile of Israelites in the desert) and the aridity of Catalonia under the military dictatorship, with no freedom even to express their culture.
- Stanza 3 (verses 14 to the end): Affirmation of loyalty to the country. The poetic voice never says that he will leave Catalonia because it is also considered cowardly and savage, and expresses desperate love for their homeland.
The poem consists of 20 verses with an irregular meter, written in free verse as it has no rhyme.
Rhetorical Figures
- Comparison: Line 9, which says: “Like the bird leaving the nest.”
- Enumerations:
- Line 6, where it says: “noble, educated, wealthy, free and happy.”
- Line 19, where it says: “poor, dirty, sad, unhappy home.”