Life of a young man 'thirsty for the absolute'

It feels like we're reading an entertaining novel, with a young character, in his twenties, and without a penny in his pocket, who goes around with his nose in the air and doesn't stop walking (especially, for lack of money): what has always been called a coming-of-age novel or apprenticeship novel. In reality, however, it is an ambitious chronicle, with some episodes with a lot of spice, starring this passionate pilgrim (godless) who decided to risk everything on the gamble of becoming a poet-writer. An admirer of Fyodor M. Dostoevsky and Friedrich Nietzsche, from whom he draws much inspiration, and of William Shakespeare and François Villon. Born in La Selva del Camp in 1882, an illegitimate son, repudiated by his father (which would mark him deeply), self-taught, often belittled for his lack of academic culture. Of a timid disposition (“The old timidity of the Ferreters in his blood”). That is why, despite loving books madly, the protagonist – the author himself, Puig i Ferreter, without any additions – advocates, convinced, for lived culture rather than learned culture: “This is how I have always used reality to turn it into art. Not by hunting for documents with a notepad in hand, but by taking advantage of the ‘things’ I have lived or that have deeply impressed me and have remained within me with all their colors, in that depth of human experience that, transposed by imagination and fantasy, is the vital treasure of the artist”.

In this work, the author does not resort to fiction, as he did, for example, in the not entirely successful Vida interior d’un escriptor (1928) or in the memorable La farsa i la quimera (1936). Here he explains, describes, thread by thread, a significant part of his childhood and youth: the years in the village, the stay in Barcelona, where he will live with uncles and his mother, and the French adventure, with the diverse Occitan experience and the horizon of reaching Paris. (Marseille, at first, does not enthuse him – on the second day everything is stolen from him –; Lyon, on the other hand, amazes him.) Puig i Ferreter seems like a free verse of Modernism, born and working in the years when Noucentisme was already making waves: “The influence of some fin-de-siècle ideological and poetic currents, which were like the last emanations of the great sentimental putrefaction with which romanticism was ending, was profoundly felt in my spirit”. Epigonus of Modernism or not, the man from Selva is a romantic of heart and spirit who never stops fighting against the muse: “The imbalance between the strength I felt within me and the lack of skill to express myself produced in me a longing, a constant unease”. This is not true: in many of his works, particularly in this one, he expressed himself clearly and even brilliantly; despite the tiresome song of failures due to his autodidact condition, which he himself is the first to exaggerate, now and then. Furthermore, in the cited passage he reproaches some of his companions that “today they imitated Maragall, tomorrow Verdaguer or Guimerà”. Puig i Ferreter aspires to be himself: a poet – in those youthful years – of carved stone, singular and unique.

The will to build a great work

Everything, in our author, is excessive: “Then it was like this: either I got bogged down, up to my knees, or I lived sublime literary sensations”. This is his charm, however. He is a sensualist who tempers himself, a Dionysian who tries to bridle desire (at twenty, women drive him crazy). The will to build a great work, however, saves him from all despair. And he dedicates himself to it body and soul. What a temperament! What a vocation, this man’s! Despite the hardships he had to endure, nothing ever broke him. He visits Frederic Mistral, and leaves us magnificent pages about the poet for whom he expresses true adoration. He makes the journey accompanied by a villanoví older than him, more expert, who has been hanging around France for years. Josep, his name is. They maintain an ambiguous relationship, which leads David Vilaseca to reflect, in an article in Els Marges, on his “latent homosexuality”: “Among the characters who are completely lost regarding their sexuality, I think Puig i Ferreter would take the prize”. The protagonist very often confesses that he loves his companion. And in a daydream he has before arriving in Lyon, he says: “I will miss you, I will think of you; you will rot in a corner of France, but you will never die completely, because I had given you a spirit”. The abuses suffered as a child by a former seminarian teacher must have influenced this sexual confusion of young Puig. He describes all this, however, without any bloodshed. Like a journalist signing a news brief. He visits Frederic Mistral, and leaves us magnificent pages about the poet for whom he expresses true adoration. He makes the journey accompanied by a villanoví older than him, more expert, who has been hanging around France for years. Josep, his name is. They maintain an ambiguous relationship, which leads David Vilaseca, in an article in Els Marges, on his “latent homosexuality”: “Among the characters who are completely lost regarding their sexuality, I think Puig i Ferreter would take the prize”. The protagonist very often confesses that he loves his companion. And in a daydream he has before arriving in Lyon, he says: “I will miss you, I will think of you; you will rot in a corner of France, but you will never die completely, because I had given you a spirit”. The abuses suffered as a child by a former seminarian teacher must have influenced this sexual confusion of young Puig. He describes all this, however, without any bloodshed. Like a journalist signing a news brief.