Raül Garrigasait: "With people who keep a happy look, you would go to the end of the world."

BarcelonaRaül Garrigasait (Solsona, 1979) has dedicated The rock and the air (Fragmenta, 2025), his latest essay, explores art and religion, two concepts that have shaped civilization for millennia. Through seven totemic yet radical figures.Ramon Llull, Ausiàs March, Isabel de Villena, Joan Maragall, Josep Carner, Frederic Mompou and Antoni Tàpies—, Garrigasait traces a path that connects past and present: in his hands, rereading cultural heritage ends up being an optimal way to give it continuity.

This latest book is just over 100 pages long, but it packs a wealth of incredibly interesting ideas that I fear could spur this conversation in many directions. In the first chapter we read: "Writing is doing two jobs at once: that of guardian of tradition and that of architect of difference." Have you felt closer to the guardian than to the architect of difference, while working?

— First of all, The rock and the air It's a rereading of tradition; therefore, it seems that the idea of tradition weighs more than that of the architect of difference. Rethinking tradition is, for me, something that forces you to distance yourself from the present and from today's prejudices, from what we're expected to write. Furthermore, in each author I look at in the book, I try to find a gesture of difference. Each of those featured is representative of their time and, at the same time, unique, because what they contribute is truly singular.

I thought I saw, through the analysis of the Nabi of Josep Carner or the music of Frederic Mompou, a defense of impersonality in artistic creation. This is contrasted with the exploration of subjectivity—and the uniqueness of the creative genius—that has more or less prevailed since Romanticism and that reaches paroxysmal levels in some current trends.

— Writing is immersing yourself in the vastness of language and the world, but it's also stepping outside yourself. This, in my case, applies to fiction, but also to essays. Unbelievable.

Is this keeping your ego in check a path you've been gradually practicing? You debuted with The tender hand of each root (Vienna, 2005), a book of poems, a genre apparently more narcissistic than the essay.

— There is a part of the poetic tradition that is very anti-subjective and anti-romantic. Among those who defend it most are T.S. Eliot and Iorgos Seferis. In their poems, they propose to extinguish the self, so that what resonates and shines in a different way is tradition. Lately, I have been devoting myself to Iris MurdochShe's an author who has fascinated me for a long time. Murdoch talks a lot about the extinction of the self. Freedom, art, and virtue are found in recognizing that others exist.

Do you write anything about Murdoch?

— Yes, a prologue to a selection of philosophical texts to be published by Edicions 62 in the La Blanca collection. It was translated by Maria Arboç-Terrades. Several of Murdoch's novels have been published in Catalan, but as a philosopher, she is still unpublished.

In The rock and the air You write that "subjectivity is the freedom and condemnation of moderns." Why?

— It seems that the only source of meaning is subjectivity; everything is built around it. On the one hand, it's liberating, because it makes us more aware of the need to oppose impositions and resist certain things, but it's also a condemnation, because subjectivity makes a lot of noise and can drown out and erode everything.

Ausiàs March In the middle of the 15th century, it introduced "the emergence of the self" into Catalan poetry, you recall, quoting the philologist Marie-Claire Zimmermann. Romanticism accentuated this at the end of the 18th century. In our society, it goes beyond the realm of creation and potentially turns us all into slaves to a self that projects itself onto social media, that builds itself from increasingly singular diets, that seeks a new spirituality without religion...

— The current obsession with the self and subjectivity is somewhat different from the Romantic one. The Romantics were open to the mystery of the self, but now we place the self at the center as an accumulation of attributes. The extreme is a dating site like Tinder, which classifies people based on a series of characteristics: to connect with another person, you have to share everything else with them. The self has become a display of visibility markers, a collection of signals we send out into the world... This need for classification exhausts me. So does the desire to become a brand.

Even some people, young or old, who have practiced disconnecting from social media and living outside of virtual reality seem to be looking for a way to distinguish themselves.

— Today's world makes it difficult for us to maintain our innocence. It all seems like a strategy for social distinction. Losing our naiveté is all well and good, but innocence helps us see the world with joy.

The rock and the air It addresses this joyful view through the wonder expressed by authors such as Llull and Maragall.

— It's a very great virtue. You'd go to the ends of the earth with people who maintain a cheerful outlook.

To achieve this, Llull renounces his family life. He leaves his wife and children. He abandons his property. Through the contemplative life, he is able to reconnect with the universe. It is not his family that allows him to do so, but his devotion to God.

— For Llull, the ideal is the hermit. The hermit is greater than the Pope. Being a hermit allows him to withdraw from the world and see God in everything. A hermit, when he looks at the forest, the fountain, and the flowers, is able to see the trace of God. By withdrawing from the world, he truly connects.

Llull seeks virtues such as love, wisdom, kindness, temperance...

— His philosophy is entirely projected outward, toward looking at the world, the light of creation, the structure of beings. The self is simply the place from which you view the world. Contemplate, understand and love These are three key words in Llull.

For years, in addition to publishing books, you've translated and edited. You also teach literature at the university. Is literature what allows you to retain your wonder for the world?

— Auden has a quote that says: "The danger of art is that we mistake it for magic." Deep down, we all would like literature to bring about some kind of operation in the world, as magic does, and therefore to be an instrument of power, allowing us to transform the world. When we begin to write in adolescence, we would like love poems to be spells or incantations. Later, we come to understand that literature is not a magical operation, and that perhaps this is what makes it useful to us. Literature is very important in my life, but it's not essential. There are more important things. Literature is a training of attention, says Iris Murdoch. By paying attention to a book, you learn to pay attention to people and the world.

It teaches you to pay attention even to murderous protagonists like Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment, right? I say this in reference to a novel you published in the La Casa de los Clásicos collection.

— There are many ways of looking at literature, and for me, it's also a specific form of knowledge. There are things you learn from literature that you don't learn from philosophy or science. This is something that guides me. If I didn't consider literature to be this, I don't know if I would be writing.

For some time now, we've heard many speeches attacking the foundations of the humanities. Their detractors say the humanities are useless and aren't useful for earning a living. Is dedicating yourself professionally to them a way of going against the grain of today's world?

— It may seem that the contemporary capitalist and digital world is against the humanities and that dedicating oneself to them is resistance. I don't particularly like seeing it that way. There are many problems in our world: I have a very strong feeling that today's politics are destructive, that schools are struggling to transmit a cultural heritage, starting with Catalan, that cities like Barcelona have become grotesque showcases... All of this is happening at once, and it's worrying. When I write, more than a sense of resistance, I experience the joy of connecting things and making sense of it. I prefer to think that it's others who are resisting.

It is well seen.

— Those who resist literature and the humanities resist the power of books. They resist because they are a true force. Reading a book that shocks and upsets you is something very profound. Those of us who know this know that reading is no joke, it's real.

We don't feel it too much outside the literary world.

— The problem is that power is in the hands of people who don't care about literature. They miss out.

Your book addresses the dichotomy between faith and religion. According to Protestant theologian Karl Barth, any human organization is a godless affair. Structure perverts belief.

— The rock and the air It is written from within the Christian tradition, which is the one we have behind us. At the core of Christianity is a struggle between an initial impulse that is almost anti-establishment and what happens next: the construction of an institutional theological structure by Catholicism.

The message of Jesus is transformed.

— Jesus says: to the cheek, love others as yourself, I do not come to bring peace but the sword, I come to separate children from parents... In a way he is saying that he comes to destroy the family.

He comes to destroy the family with a message of love.

— Exactly: any institution that doesn't allow love must be destroyed. Jesus completely changes what existed. The Church, on the other hand, is a super-solid institution based on the indissolubility of earthly ties, on things that are cold and rigid, the opposite of the initial fire. Every time there has been a reform in Christianity, there has been an attempt to escape rigidity and the dominating and oppressive institution.

Except for what happened with Calvin...

— You can end up building something else oppressive, yes. It's a very clear human dialectic. You marry someone because you love them very much, and after ten years the situation may be different. Marriage is a constant tension between love and structure. Karl Barth distinguishes between religion and faith because we cannot confuse any human organization with God or His revelation.

That is why Llull's defense of God is authentic or provocative, because he almost never quotes the Holy Scriptures.

— For Llull, the trace of God can be seen in the things before us. It should not pass through the Bible or the authority of the priest. In fact, there is a dialogue of the Book of friend and beloved which says: "And who is your master?" And the answer is: "My master is the likenesses that creatures give of their beloved." This means that the master is not the Bible or the Church, but rather the master is nature. It gives an erotic vision of nature, as if it were filled with love for the Creator. And this, therefore, is an anti-institutional way of explaining faith.

Llull seeks to find the light in all things, and from there derive wisdom. Soon after, Llull became involved with alchemy, which sought to discover the philosopher's stone without divulging its secrets.

— The alchemists insist, thinking of original sin, that the world has degraded and nature is deficient. It is necessary to find a philosopher's stone that aspires to transform nature and metals, to transform a body into immortality. Llull's combinatorial art serves to contemplate the world. Alchemy seeks to transform it. In this sense, it is a precedent for modern technology. The dreams of alchemists and those of modern science are very similar. We have Salvador Macip and many other scientists investigating how to extend life...

Between alchemy and the present, we have a revolutionary character like Faust, someone who always wants more, the first predator, who wants to exhaust all resources.

— Faust is eternally dissatisfied. He must consume, consume, and consume because he feels that no moment is sufficient in itself. He can't rest. That's why I joke that Faust is the cause of climate change. And I accompany him with two more dissatisfied figures of modernity, Don Juan and Don Quixote.

Don Juan is not content to love one body; he wants to try them all.

— He's a sexually dissatisfied man. And Don Quixote is a dissatisfied dreamer. Don Quixote dreams without transforming the world.

Of the three, Fausto is the one that interests you the most.

— Faust is no longer content with the world. He needs to multiply his life. There's a moment in a book by Bauman where he quotes Andrzej Stasiuk, who says: the contemporary form of redemption is to change one's life.

Near the end of the book you define the sacred: "Today, perhaps, that which cannot be sold."

— We're in a time when it seems everything can be sold. This idea of the sacred, which is something that can somehow be connected to faith, if it's true, can't be commodified.