Hi Peter, yes these things are weird aren't they. I've come across
references to Ferrater with regard to what some people call the
naturalised Spanish surrealism, but I've never read him - my O'level
Spanish long lapsed. Quite surprising that he should be an influence
on Heaney but of course anything can happen in translation.
Cheers
Tim A.
On 13 Sep 2011, at 20:53, Peter Riley wrote:
> I've come across a strange thread which starts from the Catalan poet
> Gabriel Ferrater (1922-1972). It is that at Queens University
> Belfast in the 1960s, the then Professor of Spanish Arthur Terry was
> translating Ferrater, and Seamus Heaney and others took a great
> interest in the results and possibly they, and Terry himself, were
> important factors in establishing the direction of those Northern
> Irish poets who became so successful. Terry's translations of
> Raymond Queneau are also said to come into this. The point would be
> some kind of breaking away from modernistic poeticism into a
> plainer, unloaded manner and direct delineation of personal
> experience, within traditional formalities. Ferrater declared
> himself opposed to "obscurantism".
>
> Has anyone else come across this story? The trouble with it seems to
> me to be that whatever Ferrater is like Queneau's way of writing is
> several thousand miles away from Heaney's.
>
> The only other poet I've noticed heavily influenced by Ferrater is
> the Belgian William Cliff, whose earlier work (all I know) I found
> very readable. He is several thousand miles away from Heaney in
> another direction.
>
> There are a few Ferrater poems readable on-line which seem engaging,
> and in no way plain-speaking but with a lot of the symbolistic and
> image-laden writing you expect in the Hispanic world. There is a
> book translated by Terry published by Arc, (introduction by Heaney)
> which I don't think includes the texts in Catalan, making me
> reluctant to purchase it.
>
> PR
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