The enigmatic great poet without work
Joaquim Pibernat read more than he wrote. He listened more than he spoke. He was an enigmatic figure on the Barcelona cultural scene. Hieratic, serious, seductive. He went to the pictorial and literary varnishes, he acted as a voyeur. He died in 2022 in the midst of a resounding silence. His friends –Manel Guerrero, Claret Serrahima, Vicenç Altaió, Antoni Llena...–, who knew him as far as he let himself be known, miss him and have recovered him with the edition of a tribute box-book that includes The hell of pants, a nihilistic litany of 894 unpublished aphorisms, a kind of posthumous self-portrait accompanied by drawings by Antoni Llena. Aphorisms by someone who did not consider himself good enough to commit suicide. Here is a synthetic selection.
About himself. "Perhaps the best trace is to leave no trace." "If it weren't for the fact that I don't believe in anything, I would believe in nothing." "It's difficult to go against the current and adrift at the same time. But I'm about to get there." "I'm a stranger to myself." "I'm an intermittent suicide and rather lazy." "To refuse. In both senses." "I'm slow but insecure." "Passion is blind, reason is born, belief is idiotic."Sustine and abstain (Epictetus). Endure and renounce." "I hate opinions and flee from convictions. For hygiene I shower every morning with doubt." "Any certainties? One and very firm. In doubt!" "I have lost the thread and swallowed the bait." "Being secular has saved me from falling into nationalism, this sick drift of religion, its metastasis." "Life is a cogitus interruptus". "I have Mediterranean landscapes in my eyes and a decidedly dark, Nordic, Wagnerian way of thinking." "Others are so disappointing! And they look so much like us." "I don't write so that you understand me. Nor do I write to understand the world. I write to misunderstand."
About ideologies. "Marxism is the headless lizard tail of the doctrinal body of Christianity. Misery and company..." "Another way of calling post-capitalism? Morbid obesity. Or planned obsolescence." "This docility of the transgressors is what characterizes our time." "The opposite of thought is ideology." "For some years now we have been moving from a neoliberal society to its totally totalitarian enthronement, which with its name anarcho-capitalism "It invades everything." "Principles: to have few and no one in agreement. That there exists a certain dialectic. And, above all, that they are not immutable." "I am only centrist with regard to the siesta."
About Catalonia. "Badar and hablar are two words that cannot be translated into any other language. The strong core of the Catalan soul." "Catalans are sensible anarchists. This combination, you see, leads to disaster. Always." "I am a Catalanist, not a nationalist. I am a separatist, not an independentist." "Footnote in Catalan problem. The Spanish believe that everyone is like them". "Manllevant Cambó: «Right? Left? Ideas!!!»" "Escaña, take your elbow off me!!!"
About art, literature, culture. "Nothing is more wonderful than custom. Nothing is more abominable than costumbrismo." "Pixar out of text." "Nothing pleases me as much as old-fashioned modernity." "Diogenes, the first performer". "The avant-garde is the embryo of the academy." "The avant-garde is a contortionist of tradition." "He died stoned under the weight of the prizes." "If everyone is an artist, there are no artists." "Postmodernism: together with the counter-reformation. They need too many footnotes." "Philosophy is the sweat of history."
About the world and life. "A diagnosis of our times? Too much of nothing." "No hope. Too much curiosity..." "Fools! There is no peace. Only post-wars." "I don't even share your resentment!" "My God! My God! Because you haven't abandoned us!" "A lot of lies don't make the truth. A lot of truths don't either." "Being illiterate isn't a necessity to succeed in life. But it helps..." "Man is the measure of all the things that have disappeared under the weight of the virtual." "We need monuments to unknown deserters! (no flames, please)". "Privacy and dinosaurs are two extinct things. What a pity about the old days of clandestinity." "To say goodbye. To leave room for new mistakes."