Agustí Bartra

[...] It might also be deduced from the aforementioned stylistic coincidences that Bartra was one of the offspring of Noucentisme, and that would be even more mistaken: neither the points of coincidence with Carner (in the idiomatic sphere and in his choice of certain themes) nor the more surprising ones with a post-Noucentist poet like Riba (both of them fascinated by Homer and Greece, while Barta also followed Riba's teachings on classical metrics) justifies this conclusion. The "Agonal" philosophy proposed by Barta is a far cry from the playful, aristocratic classicism of Noucentism: if, in the latter, there is sceptical idealism and a metaphysical view of life, in Bartra we find Epicurean materialism and an existential stance. After all, for Noucentism, the struggle was a Kulturkampf while, for Bartra, the "struggle for culture" was inseparable from a commitment to the men of his times on their way to liberation. In brief, if Noucentism was Apollonian -in contrast with Modernism and Maragall, who were mainly Dionysian- we find in Bartra an attempt at synthesis: simultaneous fidelity to Apollonian artistocratism and the Dionysian revolt. [...]

Francesc Vallverdú, "Introducció a la poesia d'Agustí Bartra" (Introduction to the Poetry of Agustí Bartra), a prologue to Agustí Bartra, Obra poètica completa I: 1938-1972. (Barcelona, Edicions 62, 1971)

[...] Agustí Bartra is one of those poets of a type that our literary tradition has produced only with remarkable stinginess. He is an openly romantic type of poet, bound by an inescapable tie of ethical origins to the suffering humanity of which he is a member, a type that Joan Fuster accurately dubbed humanist, in the most modern and least academic sense of the word. Bartra, without any kind of histrionics, felt himself brother to each and every man: of the particular man of his times. In 1955, Fuster wrote, in an especially perspicacious attempt to analyse Bartra's way of being and doing things, "This particular man -as all today's humanists know- is a man who has suffered, a suffering man, situated between hatred and fear, and he is here with and within ourselves. Bartra is at his side and, even more, feels that he is that man himself. He accepts this man's wounded condition, as do other anguished humanists with whom he shares this tragic drive". In order to substantiate the correctness of these words, one only needs to go back, for example, to the following confession of Bartra himself: "Before the war, I didn't exist as a poet. I was born with the war, in an extreme situation. My first poems came out of the tragedy that surrounded me and of which I was part." The poet Agustí Bartra emerged with the war because he was a man who was born for flames and not for games, or to use the words that Fuster borrowed from André Rousseaux, a man destined for the literature of salvation rather than for the literature of jubilation. [?]

Miquel Desclot, "Introducció: Una guia de lectura" (Introduction: A Guide to Reading), Prologue to Agustí Bartra, Obra poètica completa II: 1972-1982. (Barcelona, Edicions 62, 1983)

[...] The Bartra phenomenon in the realm of aesthetics is parallel to that, straddling Uruguay and Barcelona, of Joaquim Torres-Garcia, a splendid theoretician of art, a painter of the Noucentist, movement but also of the avant-garde, who felt the need to reinvent painting as a whole. Torres-Garcia and Bartra reinvent their expressive languages both for their country of origin and that which takes them in. Bartra's generosity towards the great country that opened its doors to him has him devoting, in a great act of love, some of his best contributions in explaining it to himself but also explaining it to the people of Mexico. [?] Continue reading...