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La Pell De Brau
Escribí este libro hace unos diez años (1958). Desde entonces, han pasado muchas cosas, algunas muy malas, las otras peores. Estamos viviendo días de una total confusión, y es indecente, creo, fingir ninguna clase de optimismo. Dicen que se aproximan hechos y pruebas apocalípticos: es muy posible y, desde luego, será más bien desagradable el haberlo de soportar. En esta concreta circunstancia, aparece de nuevo mi libro en edición bilingüe. Ello es un indicio -una señal pequeña, claro está- de que aún hay quien adopta valientemente una esperanzada actitud. Deseo que muchos la quieran compartir, mientras leen cómo un hombre de la periferia ibérica intentó comprender, tiempo atrás, el complejo enigma peninsular
- GenresPoetry20th Century
167 pages, Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 1960
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
January 23, 2025
A collection that both expresses and connects the Catalan and Jewish experience, the struggle of cultivating an identity, language, and community while simultaneously in constant resistance against outside forces that fashion one as an exile in one’s birthplace – the sense of having a home without a homeland.
The bull’s hide of the title is Spain itself, “a rag baked hard by the gold / sun … our prayer / and also our blasphemy / victim and executioner, both at once.” The poems here emerge from the traumas of the Spanish Civil War and the Holocaust, and so brim with images of confinement, death, and martyrdom. To make this connection stronger, Espriu uses the word “Sfarad” (which translator Burton Raffel leaves as is), the Hebrew word for Spain, but also the old word for Sephardic Jews.
The one tension in the collection is the desire for nationhood without nationalism. The specter of Franco haunts these lines, although the sentiment is a universal one:
“Sometimes
One man must die for a people,
But never a people
For one man:
Always remember this, Sfarad.”
The bull’s hide of the title is Spain itself, “a rag baked hard by the gold / sun … our prayer / and also our blasphemy / victim and executioner, both at once.” The poems here emerge from the traumas of the Spanish Civil War and the Holocaust, and so brim with images of confinement, death, and martyrdom. To make this connection stronger, Espriu uses the word “Sfarad” (which translator Burton Raffel leaves as is), the Hebrew word for Spain, but also the old word for Sephardic Jews.
The one tension in the collection is the desire for nationhood without nationalism. The specter of Franco haunts these lines, although the sentiment is a universal one:
“Sometimes
One man must die for a people,
But never a people
For one man:
Always remember this, Sfarad.”
July 30, 2019
Sepharad.
April 22, 2021
Intenso y reflexivo
Read
May 18, 2022pel cole obvi
July 8, 2024
“Sometimes / One man must die for a people, / But never a people / For one man: / Always remember this, Sfarad.”
December 13, 2024
Molt ben connectats els poemes entre si, m’agrada molt com juga amb la mètrica.
December 28, 2024
Manual de país.
August 10, 2022
Crec que he entés un vers de tot el poemari.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews