La pell de brau

by Salvador Espriu, Burton Raffel (Translation)

La pell de brau has been called the most important book to appear in Spain in the 1960s. Grappling with themes of national, racial, and cultural identity, its frankness exhilarated and inspired the younger generation of artists to speak out on social and political issues. The Oxford Companion to Spanish Literature said of Burton Raffel's "He has created an Espriu equally valid in English, a monument to a Catalan writer of world stature."

Genres: Poetry, 20th Century

79 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1960

Reviews

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.”

[Bianca Delmenico · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sepharad.

[Lluis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Intenso y reflexivo

[salomé]

pel cole obvi

[Tyler · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Sometimes / One man must die for a people, / But never a people / For one man: / Always remember this, Sfarad.”

[Eva · Rating 4 out of 5]

Molt ben connectats els poemes entre si, m’agrada molt com juga amb la mètrica.

[Marc Margarit · Rating 5 out of 5]

Manual de país.

[Mireia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Crec que he entés un vers de tot el poemari.