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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