Ausias March: The Pioneer of Catalan Poetry

The Life of Ausias March

Ausias March holds the same importance for Catalan poetry as Ramon Llull does for prose. While Llull belongs to the 13th century (XII), March belongs to the 15th century (XV). Poetry appeared two centuries later than prose because, until the fifteenth century, poetry in the Catalan territories was written in Provençal.

Ausias March is the first author who was educated to write Catalan poetry without Provençalisms. Apart from the abundant production of existing popular poetry, he was the first to break with tradition. The son of the soldier and poet Pere March, Ausias was born in Gandia in 1397.

Military Career and Personal Life

Armed as a knight while still young, he participated in several military campaigns, including the Italian raids of Alfonso the Magnanimous against pirates in the seas of Sicily and North Africa. He married twice: first to Isabel Martorell, who died within a few years, and second to Joana Escorna. Ausias died in Valencia in 1459.

The Literary Work of Ausias March

His work consists of 128 poems, totaling some 10,000 verses, divided into:

• Love songs
• Songs of death
• Moral songs
• Spiritual songs

A Break from Courtly Love

Regarding his love songs, it must be noted that these famous poems signified a break with both courtly love and the dolce stil nuovo, which had spread through various Romance-speaking territories. While courtly love was based on an adult's love for a noble lady from a specific social group, the dolce stil nuovo broke with this classist spirit, basing itself on the nobility of the heart while still idealizing love.

Realism and Complexity

Ausias took a step further. Although he defined himself as "the more extreme lover," he saw love as an unhealthy obsession because it leads to a false idolatry toward the beloved woman, resulting in the condemnation of the soul. Thus, March rejected the idealization that previous poets maintained, understanding love as something absolute.

This shift led to high degrees of realism. His poems feature domestic images, such as "bullirà la mar com la cassola en forn" (the sea will boil like the pan in the oven) or "Give me a crust of your bread, from which I take the bitterness." This does not mean he is an easy poet; the influence of scholasticism (medieval Christian philosophy) and the use of classic moralities make him an author of considerable complexity.