Daybook 1918

""Daybook 1918: Early Fragments" presents a substantial selection from the work of the major Catalan poet, J.V. Foix (1893-1987). Deeply committed to the European avant-gardes, Foix enlisted their experimental practices in the cause of Catalan nationalism as Catalonia itself experimented with autonomous government before the advent of Franco's dictatorship in 1939. Foix was particularly attracted to the revolutionary energy of French surrealism as a means of releasing the poetic resources of the unconscious while invigorating the Catalan language and its literary traditions. Lawrence Venuti focuses on the diaristic prose poems, where Foix endows Catalan customs and geography with an oneiric quality and depicts his male persona in unsettling encounters with the femme fatale, Gertrudis. To immerse the reader in Foix's moment, Venuti gathers a range of work--poetry, prose fiction, and various forms of nonfiction--creating a multi-faceted context that evokes the heady cultural ferment of early twentieth-century Catalonia. And in translations that are at once fluid and resonant, Venuti plumbs the expressive capabilities of English. Making available many texts for the first time, "Daybook 1918: Early Fragments" establishes Foix as a key figure in international modernism and challenges the century of neglect that has greeted his writing in anglophone cultures"--Provided by publisher.