Babasset (Esteli, Gumera, March)

A few days ago, the Year of Joan Salvat Babasset was introduced, which marks the centenary of the death of a book authorA poem of roses on the lipsIt is proposed to celebrate, publish and study his works and personality. It coincides with the year of Vicente Andrés Estéles, which commemorates the centenary of his birth, and with the year of Ángel Guimeira, who, like Babaset, left this world a hundred years ago. There is no downside to these coincidences, on the contrary: celebrations of great authors, when done well, feed off each other. This was recently demonstrated by the parallel celebration of the years dedicated to Joan Foster and Gabriel Ferrater, sponsored by Enrique Soria and Jordi Cornodella, respectively.

These are, in all cases, institutional programs that include activities of all kinds aimed at promoting knowledge of these Catalan letter-referenced names, at different levels and areas of society, from schools to universities, via popular music, the media and whatever you want. You want to imagine. It is certain that the curators responsible for coordinating these programs (Ferrán Issa for the Year of the Babasit, Angels Gregory for the Year of Estelí, Ramon Bacardet for the Year of Guimera) will know how to work not only to collect or develop the best proposals for each of them. authors, but also to put them in dialogue. After all, literature is a system, and authors and works make more sense in it the more closely they are researched and their interrelationships are observed. First of all, Guimira, Babasset and Estelle share the backbone of the Catalan language, to which each of them has devoted all his effort, in more or less difficult or uncertain (I would say more) moments than in the present. To begin with, the Babassite Year already offers us a great double gain: the author's complete poetic work in two editions, the Goodall edition with Le Diable Gros, and the 62nd edition.

Another commonality between the poets Papaset and Estelle and the playwright Guemera (who was also a poet, although we know him mainly for his theatre) is vitality. papacy, As described by Ignasi AragaiHe is a poet of exciting, sensual optimism. Perhaps more bitterly, but also as a motor nerve, erotic force functions as a vital symbol in the verses and drama of Estelles and Gemera. And still more: this same force is also the subject and the creative motive, at the same time, of much of the poetry of the father of them all, Osias March: Only last weekend was celebrated, in his native Gandia, the third feast of March, a festival which has reached its version The fifth consists of three days dedicated to enjoying and praising one of the greatest European poets of his time.

Liveliness and liveliness. The poets of the 15th and 20th centuries who carry Catalan literature into the 21st century as a fully living European literature are, as you would like, an irony in a country that amuses itself by fantasizing about its disappearance.