Clementina Arderiu

Quatre

Language: catalan

Translations: spanish (Cuatro), dutch (Vier)

Quatre

Profunditat de pensament:
angoixa.
Món abrandat, mortal!
Demà la casa serà coixa
de mi. I l'ànima?
Immortal?

Extremarem d'amor el joc.
Esposa
fèrtil d'enginy gosat
seré. L'amor com una rosa
sola. Per àrbitre,
llibertat.

Reconcilies mon instint,
revolta,
amb la raó que escau,
i mare sóc de cop i volta.
Infant, tu reies, i
quina pau!

Secularment dona i destí
caminen:
les Parques van filant.
Un lloc al món, el meu, i finen
retrets. Els somnis no
valen tant.

Clementina Arderiu

photo © Carles Riba

* 06.07.1889, Barcelona, Spain
† 17.02.1976, Barcelona, Spain

Clementina Arderiu was a Catalan poetess. Daughter of a family of silversmiths, she learned the family trade, and combined it with studies of languages, musical theory and piano. In 1911 she published her first poem, and in 1916 her first book: Cançons i Elegies. That same year, she married the writer Carles Riba. From then on Arderiu took a very active part in Catalan literary life. She visited (or stayed) in Italy, France, Germany or Greece, and she published the books L'alta llibertat (1920) and Cant i paraules (within the volume Poemes, 1936, that contained her complete works to the date). In 1938 she won the Joaquim Folguera Prize with Sempre i ara (1946), and the following year she went into exile in France. She first established herself in Avignon; later in Bierville and at Isle-Adam, and after the German invasion she moved to Bordeaux and, then, Montpellier. In 1943 she returned to Barcelona and soon joined the silent literary life of those years.

photo © Carles Riba

She attended the poetry congresses in Segovia (1952), Salamanca (1953) and Santiago (1954); in 1955 she made two long trips around Federal Germany and Great Britain, and in 1959 participated in the conversations about poetry held in Formentor. In 1952 she collected her complete poetry works in one volume Poesies completes. Six years later she was awarded the Óssa Menor Prize for És a dir, and in 1960, the Lletra d'Or Prize (Golden letter) for the same collection. In the meantime, Carles Riba had died, and Clementina Arderiu had retired to private life. L'esperança encara (1968) is the result of this latter stage.

Half way between instinct and culture, Clementina Arderiu converted her personal experience as a woman into poetry from Noucentist to post-symbolist style, after Jacint Verdaguer or Joan Maragall. Thus, she translated her elegiac restlessness into almost narrative terms, condensed her metaphysical or historic revolt into other ones and, in general, adopted the song form and, between the popular style and the more cultured one of Josep Carner or the vanguard, she achieves moments of notable originality. In any case, her poems offer a perfect balance of passion and serenity, tending towards a light idealization of daily life and place all the emphasis on musicality, schematics and insinuation.

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