The poet reading himself: Josep Carner
The author of these lines* has made an intriguing discovery: for each and every poem
Josep Carner has created a counterpart, a revised double. An alert and patient reader
might easily be able to verify that in the collection of the complete poems. Given this
finding, it might be interesting to look at Carner’s self-portraits as they appear in the two
(and only two) poems about a tailor trying to thread his needle. The sastre can be found in
El llibre dels poetes, Carner’s very first publication (1904), and again in El tomb de l’any
(1966), Carner’s last book before the second edition of the Obres completes (1968). To the
hasty reader, the second poem seems nothing more than a revised version of the first one.
But it soon becomes clear that, using the same character and setting, the poet leaves us a
kind of signature at the beginning and the end of his work, as though to tell us what he
himself thought he was, and what changes he underwent. The two poems illustrate the
poet’s adherence to, and then distancing himself from, the Noucentist precepts of writing.
CAPVESPRE
En l’antiga placeta vilatana
amb dos arbres malalts i un que es revifa,
a l’un cantó la porta de la església
que té un sant sense cap i un sense cames,
i enfront mateix, la porta de l’hospici,
viu el sastre, velleja que velleja.
Porta ulleres i cus. – Com un miracle
mostregen tot el cel fulles de rosa;
s’ha calat foc vora del sol, i brillen
en els carrers les cares dels que avancen
victoriosament cap a la posta.
Però l’esguard del sastre no s’hi gira.
Perdut en si mateix, igual li dolen
postes, dies i nits. I si redreça
el cap, serà per a enfilar l’agulla.
EL SASTRE
En aquell poble,
al fons de la placeta, ja velleta,
que adornen vuit acàcies indecises,
hi ha, com vetllant en abatut silenci,
quatre sants a les portes de l’elgésia.
I no pas lluny, en una cantonada,
un sastre, tot sovint arran de porta,
ha tombat els seixanta i va de negre.
Porta ulleres i cus.
El sol davalla
cap a un jaç de violes i de roses.
Algun ocell es mostra, i ja s’albiren
ulls de gat i lluernes per la terra.
Ixen els nois d’estudi; fent tabola
van a la font per a combat d’esquitxos.
Esma el sastre no té d’exstasiar-se
davant el màgic comiat del dia.
I va cosint, cosint. Si el cap enlaira,
serà només per a enfilar l’agulla.
The title of the first piece is Capvespre (evening). It is a composition completely based on
visuality. There are no auditive elements. In fifteen endecasillabi the miracle of a sundown
is set off against the total absorption of the tailer in this work. „Perdut en si mateix“ he
lives, an ageing man in an unchangeable frame: the church with the mutilated statues of
saints, the partly sick trees. The tailor, who is wearing glases to sew, remains like a fixture
within the plane of description. And he sits, so to speak, in the middle of the quasi sonnet,
breaking it into two halves. (Without him, there would be exactly fourteen lines.) We see
him in front of the asylum door. The sky conforms to his professional vision („mostregen tot
el cel fulles de rosa“) autoritatively assumed by the poet. The sun is not mentioned for
itself: It is the reflection that counts. People’s faces move “victoriously”(„avancen
victoriosament“) only because of the sun. Their passage is enhanced. Day and night might
not affect the taylor as he goes on working, lifting his head in order to thread a needle –
not to greet the Lord, who might have assigned him this sort of end-less task (or confined
him to the asylum here.)
The second (three-stanza) poem offers a stripped and aired version. The tailor appears in
the title already: El Sastre. Within the poem, he is not el sastre anymore, only un sastre.
The presentation is diminutive and more deictic. The number of trees is given, their names
also („acàcies“). There are four statues of saints, waking in a silence of affliction. The tailor
is not located centrally, nor is the asylum mentioned. Back on that little square he sits, not
too far away, in a corner, near the door. He is a liitle over sixty. He wears black. He sews
wearing his glasses: „Porta ulleres i cus“ is the only unrevised phrase. It stands like a shred
form the earlier text. Distanced from him, the sun goes down indifferently, descending on a
bed of roses and violets. Animals appear - birds, a cat, and the lightening bugs.
The poet has released his authoritarian vision. His glance is detached. It admits other
glances. Children storm out of the study room, make noise, splash in the water of the
fountain. Their freshness contrasts with the tailor’s fatigue. He himself will not grow
ecstatic over the sunset, which has acquired a deceptively simple meaning: end of the day,
in spite of it’s “magic” (cited more than felt). It speaks a last word, a familiar one: „comiat“
(farewell). The tailor still goes on sewing. His head up in the air to put the thread through
the eye of the needle.
The earlier fixed image comes closer to a narrative sequence now. (Note the conjugated
verbs in the first part of El Sastre.) Time is allowed in. The arrest of the earlier composition
is transformed into steps perfectly represented by the line breaks. (Pavese and Saba stand
behind these lines.) A tender resignation breathes through them, not depression. The poet
has found the elements again. They are all there: Fire (sol), earth, water (font) air
(„enlaire“ instead of „redreça“). The poet seems resigned to live. If he has not become
more optimistic, he has, however, regained touch as well as detachment, even though an
air of predestined melancholy remains.
*s. Rolf Leemann: „On hi ha ta veu“, Josep Carner’s Elegiac Tendency, talk given at Yale, 1979, published in:
Actes del segon Col.loqui d’estudis catalans a NordAmerica,
Yale , 1979 (published 1982), This extract is slightly revised.
Please note that online Rolf Leemann can be found under Rolf A. Leemann
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