Gabriel Ferrater

Gabriel Ferrater (1922-1972) is the author of a poetic oeuvre composed in a very tight span of time (1958-1963) and soon gathered into one volume: Les dones i els dies (Women and Days ; 1968). Below you'll find two of his poems, which appear in translation in Pen Català's journal, Catalan Writing, along with some words on him by other authors. Happy reading!

"If Robert Frost had grown up during a civil war he might have written like this. (...) Like Wordsworth, Ferrater endeavours to keep his reader in the presence of flesh and blood. But like other exemplary artists of his own century, he keeps his gaze steady and his faith in the staying of art, unyielding even when flesh and blood have to quail and fall." (Seamus HEANEY)

The reader

Among the objects of the world, among the few

objects I have clung to, there is a paperknife:

a short ivory blade,

naked to my hand, which turns brown or pale

according to the light of days and places.

After twenty years I come across it in my pocket

and don't remember who it was who gave me it.

Its edge is jagged, many a time I've picked it

off the floor in some room of mine or between feet

after paying for a night in a bar.

It has cut thousands of pages: memories, lies

of other men (though hardly any women).

And I don't remember who it was who gave me it.

I cannot fabricate another memory, someone's hand.

Gabriel FERRATER, Women and Days, Arc Publications, 2004. Translated by Arthur Terry. Introduction by Seamus Heaney.

"The poems of Les dones i els dies still speak with a deliberately colloquial tone, still attract the reader's attention to what we could call the moral life of an ordinary man, and still know how to transform lucid observation into genuine artistic experience. Any subject is likely to serve as impetus for a good poem. Such is the case of this one, translated into English by Ferrater himself, who explained: «This was suggested by a reading of Huckleberry Finn — Twain's mad running after the body's memories»." (Jordi CORNUDELLA)

Contrariwise

I will say it contrariwise. I will say the frantic

rain in August, a boy's feet

curling on the edge of a diving-plank,

the acute foxhound-jump the scent of lilacs

makes in April, the patience

of the spider writing down its hunger,

the four-legged two-headed body

in an evening-gray vacant lot, the fish

slippery like a violin-bow,

the blue-and-gold of girls biking,

the dog's dramatical thirst, the cutting-through

of lorries' lights into the putrid

dawn of the market-hall, the smooth arms.

I will say what goes from me. I will say nothing

about me.

Gabriel FERRATER, Women and Days. Translated by the Author.