Series | Library of Rassegna iberistica
Volume 28 | Monograph | The Poet-Architect
The Poet-Architect
Spaces, Languages and Languages in Joan Margarit’s ‘Works’
open access | peer reviewed- Marisa Martínez Pérsico - Università degli Studi di Udine, Italia - email
Abstract
This volume studies the original communion between architecture and poetry in the work of the bilingual Catalan-Spanish writer Joan Margarit (1938-2021) through a comparative analysis of poems, essays on creation, technical writings on the calculation of structures, press releases on projects where he worked as an architect in Catalonia and private exchanges around the poetry-architecture axis. Through a historical-critical methodology that combines contributions from the spatial turn, geocriticism, transmediality, topoanalysis and the calculation of lexical frequency, some analogies are illuminated between the forms of architectural intervention – construction, restoration, reinforcement, demolition of houses or neighbourhoods – and the sentimental experiences, moral dilemmas and linguistic choices of his poetic characters. Margarite’s lyrical-architectural imagination proposes a pioneering ecological vision, linked to the defence of building recycling that is valid, in its metaphorical dimension, also for human relations. The deep imbrication of literature and architecture impacts the poetic idiolect, which is characterised by the prolific contamination of practices, knowledge and discourses coming from the different subjects of architecture and urbanism, to the point of constituting, in Margarit, a stylema. However, this contamination of practices and discourses never produces in Margarit a rupture of aesthetic homogeneity, a clash of styles. There are no gratuitous technicalities or dissonances due to the insertion of technolects or obscure references to a non-expert reader. However, there is a contamination of discursive isotopies: the architectural and literary discourses. The analysis of the lexical frequency of topoi reveals that the spaces that are most mentioned in Margarit’s poetry are houses (generally private homes, with gardens) as well as cemeteries, hospitals, hospices, orphanages and high school buildings.
Keywords Spatial Turn • Catalan poetry • Spanish poetry • Architecture • Joan Margarit • Bilingualism
Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/978-88-6969-691-6 | e-ISBN 978-88-6969-691-6 | ISBN (PRINT) 978-88-6969-692-3 | Published March 20, 2023 | Accepted Oct. 7, 2022 | Submitted Sept. 6, 2022 | Language es
Copyright © 2023 Marisa Martínez Pérsico. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
