One day, it should be the year 1982 or 1983, Albert Rossich, an expert on Francesc Vicenç Garcia, the Rector of Vallfogona, picked up the phone, and he couldn’t have been more surprised: he was introduced to a young man named Enric Casasses (then Casassas). , who told him that he wrote verses and asked him if he wanted to meet him to talk about the baroque poet. So they did. It was not usual for a writer to be interested in a poet who at that time was more of a myth than anything else.
And it is that despite the importance he had, the great poet of the Catalan baroque, who was called “Catalan Virgil”, “the phoenix of Catalonia” or “a gift from the muses” had not been properly published until now, when Rossich has presented the first volume of his complete works, Poesia completa. Sonets i dècimes (Barcino), and which incorporates three unpublished sonnets as well as several poems that only appeared in a few anthologies. The second volume, with the rest of the metrical forms, is scheduled for next year, while the third and final, which will include the drama, prose, and perhaps attributed poems, is not yet known when it will be published. It must also be taken into account that it is the first time since 1845 that a complete edition has been made, although some anthologies had appeared.
The edition is part of the celebration of the 400th anniversary of the writer’s death, which, in addition to various shows and outreach events, has also included the publication of the biography written by Enric Querol, Francesc Vicent Garcia, baroque poet. Vida i misteris del Rector de Vallfogona (Rafael Dalmau Editor), a true source to travel the trajectory between the myth and the real character.
In the words of the editor of Barcino, Oriol Magrinyà , in an act this Wednesday at the Acadèmia de les Bones Lletres, with the publication of the complete work, the great historical anomaly that readers could not read such an important classic is put to an end. Magrinyà does not hesitate to describe it as a “historic edition, which marks a before and after,” and ensures that without renouncing the academic reader it is “accessible to all readers, who will find tools to understand and enjoy it.”
As Rossich recalls, Garcia is “the central poet between Ausià s Marc and Jacint Verdaguer” and a modernizer of Catalan poetry. But the character of his poetry, above all satirical and burlesque –a typical trait of the Baroque, just like Góngora y Quevedo in Spanish– contributed at the same time to despise it, a fact that was even more so when it became so popular that it was spread everywhere. they told anecdotes that often had nothing to do with their lives. Some confusions that have reached the point that until a few years ago the date and place of his birth was not known (January 22, 1579 in Zaragoza). After the brilliant success, however, first a certain Renaissance and then Noucentisme made his figure blur, not to mention the fact that many of the editions that have been made up to now are full of censored poems – often by consider them erotic or immoral – just as many poems were apocryphal, they were attributed to him but he had not written them.
Thus, one of Rossich’s first difficulties has been to establish which poems had guaranteed authorship, but although “it is possible that there is a poem that is not his or that some other poem written by him has not been included, this is a rigorous proposal made after much reflection and workâ€.
Catalan version, here
