Josep Palau i Fabre

Josep Palau i Fabre is one of the last representatives of a generation that includes such writers as Joan Brossa and Joan Perucho. Poetry is at the core of Palau's work although he moves beyond it as a writer and cultural activist. He fought with the Republicans in the Civil War and would later become deeply involved with the reviews Poesia and Ariel. After this he lived in Paris for sixteen years during which time he was in frequent contact with Antonin Artaud, Octavio Paz and Pablo Picasso. Besides his work as a translator and essayist, Palau has also written theatre. He is considered to be one of the world's leading experts on Picasso.

Josep Palau i Fabre was born in Barcelona in 1917 into a family that moved in the art milieu (his father was a painter and decorator). Besides being a poet, playwright, short-story writer and essayist, he has written a great deal about painting and, in particular about Pablo Picasso with more than fifteen books analysing and commenting on the painter's work (some translated into more than ten languages). Notable among them are Doble assaig sobre Picasso (Double Essay on Picasso - 1964), El Guernika de Picasso (Picasso's Guernica - 1979) and Picasso cubisme (Picasso Cubism: 1907 - 1917 - 1990).

It was towards the end of the nineteen thirties that Palau i Fabre began his literary career by writing poetry. During the difficult years of the Civil War he felt the need to consolidate, through writing, an inner space that would be capable of providing composure, understanding and protection against the events of the outside world. He studied Arts in the early 1940s and was a committed activist in the recovery of literary and cultural activities under the Franco regime. He was director of the clandestine review Poesia (1944-45) and was the driving force behind the publishing house "La sirena", which brought out, among other works, books by Salvador Espriu. He was subsequently one of the founders of the literary review Ariel (1946-1951). In 1945 a French Government scholarship enabled Palau i Fabre to move to Paris. The stay, which was to have been for two years, extended until the 1960s. Once the scholarship period had expired, he voluntarily gave up his Spanish citizenship in order to be classified as a political refugee. Paris would become the true university of the poet-alchemist and there he would be in contact with a wide range of artists and writers, from Artaud to Octavio Paz and from Camus to Picasso.

Publication of his poetry began in 1943 with Balades amargues (Bitter Ballads) and, one year later, under a false imprint, L'aprenent de poeta (The Poet's Apprentice). These two books would be followed by Imitació de Rosselló-Pòrcel (Imitation of Rosselló-Porcel - 1945) and Càncer (Cancer - 1946). In a reworked form and with the addition of other unpublished texts, all of these works would later be brought together in the volume Poemes de l'Alquimista (Poems of the Alchemist - 1952). In its subsequent editions this book would have an Introduction and some final comments at the end where Palau i Fabre elaborates on the texts, explaining their origins and discussing the particularities of their literary stimuli. The final result is a remarkable, singular book, fruit of an integration of poems with their particular exegeses along with prose passages that are decidedly poetic.

After the poetry came the plays: La tragèdia de Don Joan (The Tragedy of Don Juan - 1951), Don Joan als inferns (Don Juan in Hell ` 1952), Esquelet de Don Joan (Don Juan's Skeleton - 1954) are some of the titles of the "Don Juan" cycle. Through this literary character, Palau i Fabre airs his rejoinder to a puritanical and repressive society while also dealing directly with amorous matters. With titles such as Mots de ritual per a Electra (Ritual Words for Electra - 1958), La caverna (The Cave - 1969), Homenatge a Picasso (In Homage to Picasso - 1971) -all of them published in one volume, Teatre (Theatre - 1976)- he continued writing for the theatre, completing the array of plays with Avui Romeo i Julieta (Today, Romeo and Juliet - 1986) and L'Alfa Romeo i Julieta i altres obres (Alfa Romeo and Juliet and Other Works - 1991). Palau i Fabre also wrote books of theoretical reflections on the theatre: La tragèdia o el llenguatge de la llibertat (Tragedy or the Language of Freedom - 1961) and El mirall embruixat (The Enchanted Mirror - 1962), two small studies of the genre in which he reveals his preference for modern theatre and especially a dramatic tempo that is marked by synthesis and brevity ("spasm-theatre"). Some years later he published Antonin Artaud i la revolta del teatre modern (Antonin Artaud and the Revolt of Modern Theatre - 1976), an approximation to one of the key figures among his intellectual and artistic references. Continue reading...