The strength of a voice exiled among the boats

Lluís Servera Sitjar is not only one of the best people you can be lucky enough to meet, but he is also an active man who has championed special projects such as the translation magazine Superna, a poet who undoubtedly must be taken into account for the quality of his verses full of wisdom, a translator of absolute reference who has provided us with exceptional works, a true cultural ambassador between the Catalan Countries and Italy. His latest beautiful task has been to translate into our language La barca, the very first book by the magnificent poet Mario Luzi, for the emblematic collection Jardins de Samarcanda of Cafè Central. It is not the first time we have enjoyed Luzi in Catalan – since Servera Sitjar himself translated La Passió. Via Crucis al Colosseu for La Fosca of Lleonard Muntaner, Editor – but the appearance of La barca is an excellent excuse to revisit it: the best readings are rereads. As the title itself indicates, La barca is an essentially maritime book, but let no one expect that what this delicious volume proposes is explicit, typical, or cliché: it is considered that with this work the first currents of the literary movement known as 'Italian hermeticism' were unleashed, that is, a writing with a tendency towards crypticness, concentrated languages, highly metaphorical expressiveness, admirable musicality, and a consubstantial use of each word. Such a will to write differently was quite voluntary: it was an intellectual, stylistic, and political reaction against the grandiloquent triumphalism of the fascist rhetorics of the time, but it was also an invitation to active participation during the reading process, and thanks to such a gesture the poem became a space open to multiple and rich interpretations. Therefore, what Mario Luzi powerfully achieves with these aquatic pages is to give us a series of delicious images, of scenes imbued with serenades and nocturnal songs in which fatal lovers cradle themselves amidst trembles of all kinds. La barca is the foundational miracle of a new poetry that changed the way of doing things in the 20th century with a brutal capacity for influence, and the magnificent work of Lluís Servera Sitjar transports all this to our linguistic code and our literary system with a fruitfulness that confirms, once again, the ties that bind us in the same framework: the Mediterranean. The boat, by Mario Luzi –with translation by Lluís Servera Sitjar in Jardins de Samarcanda by Cafè Central– is a beautiful, refreshing, moving book, a perfect classic for this summer but also for any season, and it is that the best poetry and the best translations have no expiration date. Enjoy these days, despite the heat, and we will read each other again in September. Good wishes!