Catalan Modernism and Noucentisme: A Literary History

Linguistic Classifications

• Impersonal: Phenomenon and weather.
• Copulative: Be, seem, seem to be.
• Transitive: Direct objects.
• Intransitive: Indirect objects or verbs.
• Pronoun: There, go, etc.
• Unselfish: Desinteressat.

Modernism: The Desire for Modernity

A desire for modernity emerged in the Catalan intellectual world. Artists, writers, and thinkers realized the country was lagging behind Europe, moving away from the influence of Madrid to look toward France, Germany, and England. The aim of modernization was to open Catalan culture to new European currents. Modernism represented one of its best periods in all fields: literary and artistic.

Periods of Modernism

• First Period: The Avance magazine launched a campaign to promote the Catalan language.
• Second Period: The movement consolidated in 1911, the year Joan Maragall died. Modernism was born from clashes between the artist and society, seeking to raise the spiritual and cultural level above material concerns.

Key Figures

The children of the bourgeoisie were able to dedicate themselves to professional creation: Poetry and Novels: Víctor Català; Playwrights: Santiago Rusiñol.

Joan Maragall (1860–1911)

Born in Barcelona to a bourgeois textile family, Maragall studied law before turning to journalism and poetry at age 30. In 1890, he joined Diari de Barcelona and collaborated with Avance. He introduced the ideas of the German philosopher Nietzsche, translated Goethe, and acted as a cultural leader.

Major Works

• Poems (1895)
• Visions & Songs (1900)
• Beyond (1906)
• Count Arnau (1911)
• Sequences (1911)
• Nausicaa (1913)

Poetic Styles

• Espontaneista: Celebrates individual creativity and contemplation of the world.
• Regenerationist: Developed a nationalist mythology to display the collective character of the Catalan people.

Noucentisme (1906–1923)

Noucentisme began in 1906 and ended in 1923, though its ideas persisted long after. Noucentists believed that without political power, building a normal culture was impossible, so they participated in politics and institutions. The primary ideologue was Eugeni d'Ors, and the key figure in language reform was Pompeu Fabra.

Avant-Garde Movements

Literary and artistic movements such as Futurism, Dadaism, and Surrealism emerged in the early 20th century to break with the past, driven by technical progress and the impact of World War I.

Traits of Avant-Garde Poetry

• Linguistic Collage: Incorporating foreign words.
• Iconic Collage: Using various fonts, removing punctuation and capitalization, utilizing white space, and creating calligrams.