J.V. Foix

The poetry of J. V. Foix is, in his own words, that of "a researcher into poetry". His verse, as a consequence, is highly experimental. His work is a subtle combination of ancient and modern values, from both conceptual and formal perspectives. Thus, he ends one of his best-known poems with the words, "I'm enthralled by the new and am in love with the old". From this fusion arises his metaphysical poetry with its avant-garde elements. His verse stands solidly within the Mediterranean tradition, but at the same time is permeated with magical and dream-like moments, and with contrasts and paradoxes.

Exiled in Ancestral Territory

J.V. Foix (Barcelona 1893-1987), decided to remain in Catalonia after the Civil War and to take over the family cake-shop business in Sarrià. Once an old town, but by then absorbed into Barcelona, the Sarrià district, where the poet was born and would spend the rest of his life, is, like Pessoa's Lisbon, or Borges' Buenos Aires, the mythical setting of many of his poems. Foix, exiled in his ancestral territory - as he would state in the first poem of Les irreals omegues (The Unreal Omegas, 1949) - had been a well-known journalist and, from 1922 to 1936, head of the culture section in the newspaper La Publicitat. Now faced with the impossibility of working as a journalist in Catalan, he put his energies into a particular internal exile in which he rewrote and published his work. As one familiar with the avant-garde tradition, true to his Catalan nationalist convictions, and wishing to contribute towards his country's cultural recovery, he wrote for the most prestigious reviews of the immediate post-war period: Poesia, Ariel and Dau al Set. For the new more inquiring and original groups of young poets such as Josep Palau i Fabre, Joan Brossa and Joan Perucho, and also for the emerging artists who most represented a rupture with the more conventional forms of art, for example Joan Ponç and Antoni Tàpies, J.V. Foix, like Joan Miró, would become an essential reference in the 1940s and 1950s. And he would continue to be so for generations to come, until the very end of his life.

Investigator in Poetry

After publishing Gertrudis (1927) and KRTU (1932), poetic essays in prose influenced by futurism, cubism, Dadaism and surrealism, Foix, the prestigious intellectual and journalist of the Second Republic, moved towards an aesthetic position that would distance him from avant-garde orthodoxy although without abandoning his commitment to the investigative spirit of modernity. Even before the Civil War, in an article entitled "En versos ben tallats i arrodonida estrofa..." (In Well-sculpted Lines and Rounded Stanzas...), which was published in Quaderns de poesia (Number 6, January 1936), Foix, adopting a somewhat eclectic literary position, stated, "I cannot hide the fact that, in poetry, I love all the tendencies. Perhaps it is by inclination, but for years I have been regarding literary schools not as such but rather as genres. [...]. A poet can, without being abominated by anyone, transcribe or describe in classical, academic, naturalist, realist and "cubist", or whatever style." And he declared, "It is very true that, as much as anyone else, I employ free verse in automatic rhythm. But it is also true, because I confessed some time ago, and maybe always, that I write my poems without hiding the fact that I do so as an investigator. (Which has nothing to do with Maragall's spontaneity!) I am not satisfied to call myself a poet, but prefer investigator in poetry."

In 1972, demonstrating the validity throughout his work of these essential ideas that are embodied in his poetry, J.V. Foix once again printed this text, with some variations, as the prologue to his book of poetic prose Tocant a mà (At Hand). Until the very end of his long literary career, J.V. Foix, in a singular gesture, and using a term that is more common in the world of science than the literary world, defined himself not as a poet but as an investigator in poetry. Continue reading...