Vicent Andrés Estellés

Vicent Andrés Estellés was born in Burjassot in 1924. The poetic production of Estellés is prolific and original. His importance derives from -among other elements- his having been able to create an extremely high-quality poetic opus. He is a vital and impassioned poet who offers admirable depictions of everyday existence. His subjects, consequently, are those of life itself: love, death, sex, fear, the city, the country, womanhood, and so on. As Joan Fuster very lucidly expressed it, "The subjects of Vicent Andrés Estellés, when reduced to their very essence, have the elemental nakedness of everyday life: hunger, sex and death".

The Poetic Phenomenon of Estellés in Historical Context

Of the same generation as Josep Maria Llompart, Blai Bonet and Gabriel Ferrater, Vicent Andrés Estellés (Burjassot, 1924 - Valencia, 1993) began to write his poetry after the Civil War. This he did from the literary periphery that Valencia was at the time and as part of the group of literati that included Xavier Casp, Joan Fuster and other members of the incipient Valencian Catalan nationalist movement of the years of the post-war revival. He was a young journalist with a poet's vocation, indefatigably writing verse after verse and sometimes seeing them published. For example Ciutat a cau d'orella (City in My Ear), published in Valencia in 1953, was the first of four collections of poems that appeared in the 1950s and 1960s.

However, it was not until the start of the 1970s that his work irrupted on to the scene, to become a symbol of the region of Valencia, which was starting to wake up shortly after the cries of protest that had resounded in the songs of Raimon. The able support of Joan Fuster and the talent of the publisher Eliseu Climent were behind the major event of the publication of his poetry.

Then came the best sellers, especially the Llibre de meravelles (Book of Wonders, 1971), prizes such as the Catalan Letters Prize and then, little by little, the ten volumes of the complete works. Valencian literature had a popular and exportable poet at last. The event was a success in civic terms as well, at this dawning moment of the transition to democracy. And it was also a success in the general sphere of Catalan literature where Estellés was read and appreciated, putting to rest any doubts that Fuster had expressed in his Prologue to Recomane tenebres (I Would Recommend the Dark, 1972), the first volume of the Obra Completa (Complete Works), about the difficulties of interpreting the poet's nuances of dialect beyond the local or regional framework. In fact, the local roots of Estellés' verse - from his use of dialect to the reiterated appearance of toponyms - were factors that contributed to the effectiveness of his poetry.

The Poet's Civic Commitment

Estellés was a standard bearer of a collective civic sentiment, presenting himself as an interpreter of the words of the tribe and of the demands of his people. The poem "La rosa de paper" (The Paper Rose) is highly representative in this regard, telling the story of a nameless woman who leaves behind the symbol of a paper rose - and on the piece of paper is poetic writing - which is her legacy to her people as a call for resistance and transformation. The poet appears as "one among many", as the "voice of a people" on the move, while, as a specific individual, he is also experiencing in his own personal circumstances, the collective drama of the years that followed the Civil War, in a country that was condemned to crossing the desert.

In the varied tonal and thematic range of his poetry, one of its most irrefutable merits is his achievement of this image of personal and civic dignity. In this, he is clearly indebted to Carles Riba and, in particular, to the Riba of the Elegies de Bierville (Bierville Elegies), for Estellés, too, is writing from exile, from an internal, national and class exile. From these coordinates of its origins, his writing creates the bitter dignity of a column cast out from the temple. There are considerable differences between the two poets, to be sure. For example, Estellés is much less selective, less refined with his anecdotes. His poetic mesh lets through all kinds of descriptive details, the typical characters of a period set piece and many everyday episodes. The elegy thus becomes a social chronicle. And the journalist - witness to the micro-history - appears on the scene. Faced with the post-war spectacle, the poverty and repression of all kinds, Estellés reveals his nature as an impassioned chronicler who is not too worried about stylising, and he creates an inventory of the events and personalities that constitute his world. Continue reading...