The critic and the essayist

(…) I had undergone a certain personal crisis regarding the literary theories set forth in some of my books; that is to say, the literary-critical analysis I had advocated, more or less, from 1960 (Veinte años de poesía española) to 1965 (Poesia, realisme, història) began to feel inadequate and impoverished. In a rather schematic and frivolous manner, I have explained in private conversations that it was two ladies—alas!—who caused me to abandon the dogmatic stance inherent in my formulation of historical realism (not socialist realism, that ill-famed concept I never preached), aided, certainly, by my friendship with Roland Barthes and the reading of his books. Those two ladies, both North American, were Mary McCarthy and Susan Sontag. Since the subject is neither particularly exciting nor urgent, the reader of these lines is spared an explanation that would be more theoretical than anecdotal.

The fact is that, between 1965 and 1967, I devoted myself more to reading than to writing. In 1968, I published the first study signalling a methodological shift in my critical writings: the prologue to Poesia completa de Salvador Espriu, which would pave the way, in 1971, for Iniciació a la poesia de Salvador Espriu, a book that had won the 1970 Taurus Essay Prize. (…) That same year, I published Nueve novísimos poetas españoles, an anthology of Spanish-language poets; it caused quite a stir, but I found compiling it highly entertaining. The previous year, in the wake of the events of May ’68, I had written, in a single go, Lectura de Marcuse —published simultaneously in Catalan and Spanish—which became the only significant bestseller among my books. We had also completed and published a poetry anthology in collaboration with Joaquim Molas: the bilingual Ocho siglos de poesía catalana, released in Alianza Editorial’s paperback series.

Amidst all this, I had been changing; I felt more à l’aise with the new, intellectually rich currents than with the heavy burden of the “realism” I had helped to establish. That said, I had acquired a certain way of understanding literature from Sartre and Lukács, among others, and I neither can nor ever will disown them. On the latter’s Diari 1910-1911 I have just written a few pages intended as a tribute. What I owe Sartre remains to be written, but it is a debt I do not forget.