In 1983, the poet, translator and critic Francesc Parcerisas (Begues, 1944) was thirty-nine years old and had a fairly solid lyrical work behind him made up of six titles (one of which, Variations on a Romantic Theme: Shadow and Light, written jointly with Antoni Marí). Men who bathe, published in 1970, had received the Carles Riba award in 1966. At the time, the poet was only twenty-two years old! It was, therefore, a case of remarkable precocity.
Between Variations... (1978), the last title of that group of six, and L'edat d'or (1983), the one that inaugurates the new turning point, five years have passed. But there is one decisive fact: Jaume Vallcorba becomes, from 1983, the editor of Parcerisas. The only exception is the collection of complete works Triomf del present (Poetic works 1965-1983), published by Columna in 1991. Quaderns Crema has published, to date, six books of poetry (including the one that, finally, it ended up being titled Shadow and Light Variations on a Romantic Theme (1977-1978)) and three diaries.
L'edat d'or, the first book entrusted to Jaume Vallcorba, is a milestone in Catalan poetry of the last decades of the 20th century, and its influence reaches to the present day. The author emphasizes the hinge function of the book. After some works in which he showed affection for the -aesthetic- signs of the times (a certain proclivity for textualism, let's say for example), this one we are discussing deepens a poetry that we could call moral and that has often been identified, a little equivocally, with the poetry of experience. "The title - remembers Parcerisas - was enthusiastically chosen by Joan Margarit and Toni Marí, among some that I proposed to them, one day when we were having dinner at Les délices de France, a restaurant at the top of Carrer Muntaner (forty years later, it is still there), very close to where, some time later, Quaderns Crema would be installed".
The poet Vicent Alonso, who in 1983 published his first book, Vel de claredats, acknowledges that Parcerisas's book dazzled him. “I've always had a handful of the verses it contains in my head. The last six of the set [those of the poem Portrait of the Poet] could have been written by myself if, at the beginning of my poetic journey, I had had the art of a great poet like Parcerisas at my disposal. Veil, darkness, clarity, light...".
For his part, the critic Pere Ballart considers that L'edat d'or is a book that "arrived at the right time to teach the country that realism could also shine with an august varnish, and that the poetry of experience didn't have to be just that routine record of life invented by so many functionaries of the verse without imagination". The poem Afaitat stands out: "How can you not think about it every time you stand in front of the mirror, ready to put on the daily mask, a little more sure than the eve that the alliance with the body has begun to dissolve..."
Susanna Rafart, poet and narrator, also acknowledges her duty of gratitude to this work: "It was a breath of life in a time still very much indebted to hopelessness. A book that reminds me – as Horace's odes do – of the unpredictable gift of the present; that Iannis Ritsos discovers to me and the invulnerable jewel that we should all know how to give ourselves for existing. Although I consider Triumph of the Present to be canonical, there is another poem that explains the whole book to me, and it is Magnolia in Hammersmith, a generous journey towards enjoyment among ruins. A book that does not exhaust the capacity of the being to fight against death and that expands life on our path of temporality”.
The mention of Ritsos by the author of Pou de glaç leads us to highlight one of the characteristics of the work: the incorporation of three other pieces (according to three and a half), which, integrated into the book, They make them indestructible: the two poems by Ritsos, translated by Parcerisas from the English, and another by Josep Elias. The first piece in the book is a variation on a poem by Lawrence Durrell. The author explains this practice: "The translations came naturally. Partly because I had used copious quotations in Two Suites and because it translated a lot and there were things I really liked. Josep Elias' poem was a tribute to our friendship when we were studying. She had died in 1982 and was a wreck. The two poems of Ritsos, I translated them on the beach, at the campsite of Epidaurus, in Greece, on August 15, 1976, on a trip I made there, by car, with Bernadette Serrahima and her brother, the designer Claret Serrahima, and Anna Solà, his partner. Along with these two by the Greek poet, the oldest poem is Matí al bar. Durrell's, I already wrote it in Barcelona, in the early eighties; he has always been a writer I have admired, and, together with Marcy Rudo and Beth Kuhnlein, I was able to interview him for El País, in Sommières, in the south of France, in 1988”.
The Extremadura poet Álvaro Valverde read two poems from it in the anthology La nueva poesía catalana (1984). Five years later he acquired the book in the bilingual edition of the Valencian publishing house Mestral: “What a brilliant discovery! In there, youth, the sea, bodies, summer. A light (solar and Mediterranean) and a tone (of a timeless, cultured and elegant classicism). And, first of all, a state of mind". Every good book demands, at the end of time, a re-reading. Valverde is clear: "It remains intact. I keep the final verses, the ones that close Portrait of the poet and this masterpiece”.
Txema Martínez Inglès, poet and translator, also considers the work, and, in terms of influence, puts it side by side with other titles from those years, such as Passeig d'anniversari, by Joan Vinyoli. "I find that L'edat d'or contains everything Parcerisas: the lyrical realism, the transcendence of the everyday through the seemingly insignificant details, the time as it is linked by layers verse by verse, the moral double in everything, the desire, the such concrete carnality of the things that make us mourn we don't know what, unexpectedly, the music of the lexicon, the tone... A certain narrative sense that reminds me of the tradition I recognize most. A message, by way of conclusion, that stretches me and fills the void that is proclaimed... The song to live and to feel, so Mediterranean”. Beyond this 1983 title, the Lleida native highlights another work by Parcerisas, Natura morta amb nens: “I think it is one of the last masterpieces that Catalan poetry has produced”.
The Asturian poet and prose writer Xuan Bello knew the Golden Age already in the nineties: "It transformed, from a periphery, an avant-garde: the newest Castilian poetry. More truly, with all the voices igniting the sense of fashion, the verses of L'edat d'or are an x-ray of the Iberian poetic root: here is Ferrater in his accent and also - I seem to warn - Valente and Blas de Otero".
Àngels Marzo, poet twice awarded this year, discovered the book at the age of seventeen, and acknowledges that "it was fundamental to connect with Catalan poetry on an essential level, as I had done before with the poetry of Antonio Machado in framework of Spanish literature. Parcerisas' poetic voice, clear and powerful, seduced me from the first reading. I think that in the book I found a way of doing and saying that linked directly to the type of poetry I wanted to write". Despite the years that have passed, Marzo confesses that "I can still recite from memory poems such as Penèlope's despair, Matí al bar, Epistle for a wedding or Als forty years, which also celebrates forty!"
Parcerisas' life after that 1983 has been industrious, intellectually and culturally: he worked as a professor at the UAB between 1986 and 2015 and chaired the Catalan Letters Institute between 1998 and 2004. On the other hand, he has continued translating, criticizing, delving into the essayistic side of his work... An extensive task, which has been recognized with the National Culture Awards (2015) and Jaume Fuster (2018). His figure, his work, are inseparable from the Catalan cultural life of the last fifty years.
The covers of the initial poetry collection of Quaderns Crema lived up to the adjective name, much less yellow than the current ones. So elegant, they showed Jaume Vallcorba's good taste for design and typography. Forty years ago, offset had not yet taken hold in book publishing. The golden age is printed in lead, in an indelible ink. The conditions of the edition have just made lasting the substance of a very influential work, which inaugurated a new turning point in the author's poetry. Quaderns Crema has announced, for the winter of 2024, coinciding with the author's eightieth birthday, the re-edition of Triomf del present, which, as noted above, collects the work that is forty years old this year the six that preceded it and other scattered poems.
