The loves, desires, and dreams of Feliu Formosa at 90 years old
The veteran poet, diarist and translator publishes new book, 'Vincles'
- Feliu FormosaCafè Central 94 pages / 15 euros
This book —which takes its title from a poem by Joan Vinyoli, a friend of Feliu Formosa— discreetly, yet profoundly, celebrates life. Although it reflects on death and absence, on loss and pain, life weighs more heavily. The poet manages the emotion with which he presents each of the pretexts used to elucidate the theme very well. “Love, desire and dream”, begins poem XXIV, which deals with a love affair. At ninety years old, existence becomes more peremptory than ever, but, as many verses demonstrate, also fully in love. “I never know if I say everything”: one never finishes saying everything, but here Formosa says many things (and, when he doesn't, he suggests them). Memories, desires, impressions. And he inventories many ideas. A very suggestive one is that “to live is to translate / and to translate is to live”.
What I was pointing out, however, about emotion: poem VI, for instance, introduces us to a “black bird / with a yellow beak” that, in the garden of the residence where the poet is staying, “goes / pecking at the grass, / looking for food / that it cannot find”. The lyrical self mirrors itself in it, because “I go / pecking everywhere: / verses, stories, tales”. The search of the bird and that of the man are similar: that of the latter is —we read— “for new motives / to survive”. To survive means ‘to remain alive after the death of another, after any event’, although, in the case of the man from Sabadell, we sometimes have the impression that it could mean living even more intensely. That is why I maintain that this work —in essence, elegiac— manifests, at the same time, an almost youthful urge to make the most of time. The blackbird seeks food. The poet also seeks nourishment, albeit of another order (and he finds it, and the reader is made a participant of it).
Written in hexameters, like Llibre de les meditacions (1973), Vincles alternates references to the past (the course taken in Heidelberg by the author, between 1959 and 1960) with the recent present; it brings together eminent figures of European literature (Kafka, Pavese, Brecht) with relevant poets from Spanish or Catalan literature (Machado, Hernández, Espriu, Ferrater, Andrés Estellés or friend Maribel.
Say things with your eyesCristina Cervià or the friend Maribel.
Saying things with a look
The poetry dedicated to Mari expresses a regret: that of not having known “to share with you / the pain you were living”, instead of “encouraging you / with such insistence”. Wise reflection! As is the one addressed to Sandra, who suffered a severe disability: “in the time it took / from accepting you to loving you —the poet affirms— the enigma / of your existence persists: / If we think in words / and you have no words, / why do you tell me so many things / with your gaze?”. It is in verses like the ones reproduced that the beautiful task of poetry is concentrated: the one that has to do with truth, with the revelation of a deep emotion.
The image of the poet that emerges from the book is that of someone who, “eschewing as much as I can / contact with those who / have stopped expecting / anything from life” (his companions in the residence), has not stopped believing in the aforementioned triad: love, desire, and dream, in order to “give meaning / to the time that still remains for me”.
