Carlos Barral

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Carlos Barral y Agesta , (born June 2, 1928 in Barcelona ; died December 12, 1989 there ) was a Spanish poet , publisher and memorialist. He belonged to the generation of the 50s and in it to the group of poets of Barcelona ( Escuela de Barcelona ), in which he formed the leading triumvirate with Jaime Gil de Biedma and José Agustín Goytisolo . As head of the Barcelona publishing house Seix y Barral , he made a decisive contribution to the revival of the Spanish literary scene in the 50s and 60s and to the cultural and political upheaval of the Transición after Franco's death (1975). “Barral taught us to read, and then how to choose what to read,” wrote Rafael Conte.

Life

Childhood, youth, studies (1928–1950)

Carlos Barral grew up in a middle-class conservative family in Barcelona. His father was a co-owner of the Seix y Barral publishing house , his mother came from the Basque Country and had spent her childhood in Argentina. Barral was still a child when his father died of heart failure when the civil war broke out in the summer of 1936, worried about the fate of his family and his business. After the war, which he experienced in his own words as a “hortus libertatis” - a garden of freedom - he went to school with the Jesuits. There he learned Latin and discovered his interest in literature. But it was not until the University of Barcelona, ​​where he studied law from 1945 to 1950, that his interest turned into a passion that he shared with like-minded people such as the budding poets Jaime Gil de Biedma, Alfredo Costafreda and Gabriel Ferrater. In long conversations with them and other more politically conscious friends, including the later critic Josep Maria Castellet and the Marxist philosopher Manuel Sacristán, his political awareness also awoke. After completing his studies, Barral traveled abroad for the first time to Germany and France with students from the University of Barcelona in the summer of 1950. In Heidelberg, the enthusiastic reader Rilkes improved the German he had learned during his school years and hitchhiked around far in the still ruins of West Germany. On the way back to Barcelona, ​​the Mallarmé trailer stopped in Strasbourg and Avignon to compare his vision of France with reality.

Seix y Barral publishing house (1950–1969)

Barral joined his father's business in the fall of 1950. In agreement with the second, almost same age company owner, Victor Seix, he set about bringing the solid but clumsy publisher, which is focused on school and children's books, educational works, and popular scientific brochures, on a clearly fiction course. This took a few years, during which Barral married Yvonne Hortet (1954) and worked on his poems, but then the transformation took place suddenly. The Premio Biblioteca Breve , awarded for the first time in 1957 , put the Seix y Barral publishing house at the forefront of literary life in Spain. In the same year Barral's epoch-making volume of poetry Metropolitano came out. The Biblioteca Breve launched the younger representatives of social realism of the 1950s, including Luis Goytisolo , Juan García Hortelano and Juan Marsé . He also put outsiders like Juan Benet in the spotlight and brought the South American literature that flourished in the 1960s - the so-called South American boom - to Spain and Europe. The Prix ​​Formentor for literature, founded in 1959 together with publishers such as Rowohlt , Gallimard , Einaudi and Weidenfeld , gave Barral an international reputation. However, this led to mounting tensions with the ever vigilant Franco regime , which saw in Barral an exponent of the intellectual opposition. He then had to temporarily resign from the management of the publishing house and move outside the country. After his return from Mexico he was aware of his responsibility as a “publisher of the left” and his position in danger, and he became more cautious. Nevertheless, the situation escalated, not least because of the political atmosphere in Spain at the end of the 1960s. The death of loyal business partner Victor Seix, who fell victim to a tram accident during the Frankfurt Book Fair in 1967 , delivered Barral to attacks by other company owners who rejected the politicization of the publisher and feared for the business to continue. The inevitable rupture occurred in 1969 through the judiciary and in an irreconcilable manner.

The publisher Barral Editores and the 70-80s

Left on their own, Barral built a new publishing house with old employees who had stood by him: Barral Editores , which started in 1970 with an anthology La centena by the Mexican poet Octavio Paz . “The beginnings were good,” wrote Barral in the third volume of his memoirs. In fact, the publishing house put together a considerable catalog in a short time, awarded a new literary prize, the Premio Barral , which was no less attractive than the Premio Biblioteca Breve , and made an active contribution to the cultural and political upheaval of the outgoing dictatorship. In the years after Franco's death (1975), however, Barral's health collapsed. He had to undergo various operations from which he did not fully recover. In addition, there were financial problems that finally led to the loss of the small publisher after a long struggle. Barral, who had belonged to the Catalan wing of the Spanish socialist party PSOE since 1977 , threw himself into the political arena of the incipient Spanish democracy despite his precarious health and took part in the parliamentary elections of 1982 as a candidate for Tarragona . He was elected to the Senate, where he headed the Comisión de Educación y cultura , in which he campaigned, among other things, for a modern, long-overdue copyright law. From 1984 to 1987 he was also a member of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, where he represented the PSOE. In addition to this activity, he wrote the third volume of his memoirs Cuando las horas veloces and a volume of poetry Extravíos , which he did not complete. Barral died on December 12, 1989 of a ruptured artery.

Yvonne Hortet, Barral's widow, looked after her husband's literary estate and campaigned for the publication of his diaries, which were published posthumously in 1993. She died on August 10, 2015 at the age of 83 in Barcelona.

Fonts

Poems

  • Las aguas reiteradas (1952)
  • Metropolitano , Cantalapiedra, Santander 1957
  • Diecinueve figuras de mi historia civil , Seix Barral, Barcelona 1961
  • Usuras (1965)
  • Usuras y figuraciones , Ediciones Inventarios provisionales, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria 1973
  • Metropolitano (1975)
  • Usuras y figuraciones , Lumen, Barcelona 1979
  • Lecciones de cosas. 20 poemas para el nieto Malcolm , Peninsula, Edicions 62, Barcelona 1986
  • Antología poética, Carlos Barral , Alianza, Madrid 1989
  • Poesía , Ed. Carme Riera, Cátedra, Madrid 1991
  • Poesía completa , Lumen, Barcelona 1998

Memories, diaries

  • Años de penitencia , Alianza, Madrid 1975
  • Los años sin excusa , Barral Editores, Barcelona 1978
  • Cuando las horas veloces , Tusquets, Barcelona 1988
  • Los diarios 1957-1989 , Anaya-Mario Muchnik, Madrid 1993

prose

  • Penúltimos castigos (novel), Seix Barral, Barcelona 1983
  • Catalunya des del mar - pel car de fora , with photographs by Xavier Miserachs . Travel reports , Ed. 62, Barcelona 1982, ISBN 84-297-1917-2 .
  • Catalunya a vol d'ocell , Edicions 62, Barcelona 1985

Translations

  • Sonetos a Orfeo (Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets an Orpheus ), Ediciones Rialp, Madrid 1954.
  • El Tercer Reich y los judíos (Leon Poliakov and Josef Wulf, The Third Reich and its Jews ), Seix Barral, Barcelona 1960.
  • La vida del Rey Eduardo II de Inglaterra (Marlowe / Brecht, Leben Eduards II ), Centro Dramático Nacional, Madrid 1983 (in collaboration with Jaime Gil de Biedma)
  • You came, bird, heart, in flight: Spanish poetry of the present (poems 1950–2000) , Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2004.
  • El parque (Marguerite Duras, Le square ), Menoscuarto, Palencia 2014

bibliography

  • Juan García Hortelano, El grupo poético de los años 50 , Taurus, Madrid 1978
  • Carme Riera, La Escuela de Barcelona , Anagrama, Barcelona 1988
  • Carme Riera La obra poética de Carlos Barral , Peninsula, Barcelona 1990
  • Carlos Barral y Jaime Gil de Biedma: poesías, cartas y otros inéditos , in Revista de Occidente , nos. 110–111, Madrid 1990

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Carme Riera, "La Escuela de Barcelona", Anagrama, Barcelona 1988, p. 37
  2. ↑ Rafael Conte, "Faetón ardiente", in "El País" of December 13, 1989
  3. ^ Carlos Barral, "Años de penitencia", Alianza, Madrid 1975 pp. 35-55
  4. ↑ Carlos Barral, "Los años sin excusa", Barral, Barcelona 1977 pp. 153-161
  5. ^ Barral, "Años de penitencia", p. 200
  6. ^ Barral, "Años de penitencia," pp. 180-181
  7. ^ Barral, "Los años sin excusa," pp. 11-35
  8. ^ Carlos Barral, "Cuando las horas veloces", Tusquets, Barcelona 1988 p. 88
  9. ^ Barral, "Cuando las horas veloces", p. 164
  10. ^ Barral, "Cuando las horas veloces", pp. 237-238
  11. ↑ El País, Madrid August 11, 2015
personal data
SURNAME Barral, Carlos
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Barral y Agesta, Carlos (full name); Barral i Agesta, Carlos (Catalan spelling)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Spanish poet, publisher and politician, MEP
DATE OF BIRTH June 2, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH Barcelona
DATE OF DEATH December 12, 1989
Place of death Barcelona