The poet and writer Xavier Amorós has caressed the century of life. Born in Reus in 1923, just one year after Gabriel Ferrater and one before his brother, Joan Ferraté, he leaves this world discreetly, but with full lucidity. As if he had guessed that a hundred years was too round a figure, pompous even, to conclude his existence, he who had written poetry that was – needless to say – the antithesis of all that is bombastic.
From the counter of Las Américas, the family store on Calle Llovera, he had soaked up all sorts of anecdotes from post-war Reus. He held gatherings there with other celebrities in the city. He also convened at the Reading Center, very close to his house. One of his friends and colleagues was the translator Bonaventura Vallespinosa, a radiologist. Recently, Xavier Filella, who presided over this historic institution, reminded me that Vallespinosa and Amorós founded the Teatre de Cambra del Center de Lectura, which served to attract high-level performances, first, to the Teatre Bartrina and, later, to the Teatre Fortuny.
During the 1960s and 1970s, Amorós did not lavish himself too much. He reappears with force in the eighties. El camí dels morts (1996) and Temps estranys (2000-2002) are late texts, which include the chiaroscuro of his well-stocked memory. In the theatrical adaptation he made of the second Dolors Juanpere, the author confesses that he would have loved it if the actor Joan Capri, whom he admired, had lent voice and presence to his theatrical monologue Història sentimental (premiered in 1960). L'agulla en un paller (1985) are memoirs presented as a historical novel. To these titles, it is worth adding the volumes that collect his most constant literary practice, that of the journalistic article: Cafè París (1989), Botigues de mar (1993), De Reus estant (1995) and Tomb de ravals (1998). A key figure in the Reus resistance, with the arrival of democracy he was a socialist senator for the Tarragona constituency between 1986 and 1993.
Amorós published very little poetry, but notable. As his son, also a poet Xavier Amorós Corbella, indicated in his Anthology of poetry (1940-1964), he began under the influence of Noucentisme. Rosa Cabré has studied her lyrical beginnings, in the early forties. As time went on, Amorós gradually forged his own voice, far removed from arbitrary aesthetics and identified with historical realism. Nothing should be embellished, but everything should be presented as it is: this seems to be the motto of Guardeu-me la paraula (1962). A moral thirst, not physical, is one of the symbolic constants of some verses that deal with humble people in the postwar period. Qui de enganya, for , Carles Riba 1964 award, does not appear until 1968. The poet gives an account of the fear, of the abjection of the time... but, more than that, of a lively voice, without embellishments or drama: that of “ the meva mortgaged, / sad figure d'home”. Prior to these two, Enyoro la terra (1960) constitutes, perhaps, his lyrical peak. In it he evokes his paternal roots in Pradell, the Priorat town where his father assigned him when the war broke out. The poet Antoni Nomen affirms that it is "the work with which he found a form of authenticity that was the key to success in all his subsequent production". Twelve beautiful poems that reflect on the lost paradise: “Sóc al Pradell de les cinc del matí, / a la deu mateixa de l’aigua”.
A very dear man, since 2003 the Central Library of Reus bears his name. In 1998 the city had already awarded him the title of Illustrious Son and the Reading Center recognized him as an Honorary Member. In 2013 the Pradell de la Teixeta City Council named him Adoptive Son. Xavier Amorós, poet, returns, now forever, to the same source of water to quench all thirst.
