{"id":1040,"date":"2015-03-04T09:21:21","date_gmt":"2015-03-04T09:21:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/proves\/?p=1040"},"modified":"2015-03-13T07:47:17","modified_gmt":"2015-03-13T07:47:17","slug":"poem-of-the-week-first-love-by-joan-margarit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/es\/poem-of-the-week-first-love-by-joan-margarit\/","title":{"rendered":"Poem of the week: First Love by Joan Margarit (The guardian)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>The Catalan poet explores brutality, love and death in a lifelong journey that begins with the secret purchase of a knife as a child<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Carol Rumens<br \/>\nMonday 16 February 2015 15.58 GMT<\/p>\n<div class=\"column\">\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>First Love<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In the dreary Girona of my seven-year-old self, where postwar shop-windows<br \/>\nwore the greyish hue of scarcity,<br \/>\nthe knife-shop was a glitter<br \/>\nof light in small steel mirrors.<br \/>\n<span style=\"line-height: 1.5;\">Pressing my forehead against the glass,<br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"line-height: 1.5;\">I gazed at a long, slender clasp-knife,<br \/>\n<\/span>beautiful as a marble statue.<br \/>\nSince no one at home approved of weapons,<br \/>\n<span style=\"line-height: 1.5;\">I bought it secretly, and, as I walked along,<br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"line-height: 1.5;\">I felt the heavy weight of it, inside my pocket. From time to time I would open it slowly,<br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"line-height: 1.5;\">and the blade would spring out, slim and straight, with the convent chill that a weapon has.<br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"line-height: 1.5;\">Hushed presence of danger:<br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"line-height: 1.5;\">I hid it, the first thirty years,<br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"line-height: 1.5;\">behind books of poetry and, later,<br \/>\n<\/span>inside a drawer, in amongst your knickers and amongst your stockings.<br \/>\n<span style=\"line-height: 1.5;\">Now, almost fifty-four,<br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"line-height: 1.5;\">I look at it again, lying open in my palm, just as dangerous as when I was a child. Sensual, cold. Nearer my neck.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div class=\"column\">\n<p>First Love (Primer Amor) first appeared in English in the 2006 Bloodaxe edition of Joan Margarit\u2019s poems, Tugs in the Fog: Selected Poems, translated from Catalan by Anna Crowe. It was originally published in Els Motius del llop (The Motives of the Wolf) in 1993. A subsequent collection of Margarit\u2019s translated work, Strangely Happy, appeared in 2011.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Joan Margarit was born in Catalonia in 1938, towards the end of the Spanish civil war. The fascist dictatorship banned his native language, and all education took place in Castilian. \u201cI had no culture in any other language,\u201d he writes in the prologue to Tugs in the Fog. \u201cYears later, I moved over to writing in Catalan, searching for that which goes deeper in all of us than literary culture &#8230; I gain access to the poem in Catalan, but I immediately begin to handle the Castilian version as well &#8230; I make all the modifications in both Catalan and Castilian at one and the same time.\u201d All Margarit\u2019s books have been published in both Catalan and Castilian, and First Love can be read in its original versions.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>In the English translation, the Germanic phonemes, often abrupt and harsh compared to those of the more mellifluous Romance languages, work in the poem\u2019s favour: \u201cpostwar\u201d, \u201cknife-shop\u201d, \u201cclasp-knife\u201d. Although the knife is the one beautiful, glittering object in a \u201cdreary Girona\u201d identified with the protagonist\u2019s very self, and becomes the boy\u2019s first, and instantaneous, love, this narrative is no sweet nostalgia trip. Crowe refers, in her translator\u2019s note, to an effort to \u201cremain faithful to what he\u201d (the poet) \u201ccalled \u2018an almost excessive brutality.\u2019\u201d This brutality is often simply the pitiless emotional directness of Margarit\u2019s poems. Here, the most piercing thrust is reserved until the end, but there is considerable tension throughout \u2013 an ebb and flow of menace sustained as memory cuts effortlessly through the swathe of years.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>At the start, the protagonist is seven years old, considered in Catholic teaching to be the age of reason, the point at which the child has acquired sufficient knowledge and judgment to be ready for confirmation. The child in the poem enters time with the secret purchase of the knife, aware that his purchase infringes family rules. The weapon, a guilty pleasure, is a weight in the pocket with a near magical life of its own: \u201cFrom time to time I would open it slowly \/ and the blade would spring out, slim and straight.\u201d It is replete with symbolic potential, but also vividly real, and the narrative potency of the knife is ever-present, like that of Chekhov\u2019s proverbial gun. \u201cIf in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don\u2019t put it there\u201d (Gurlyand\u2019s Reminiscences of AP Chekhov). Conventional adjectives \u2013 \u201clong\u201d, \u201cslender\u201d, \u201cslim\u201d, \u201cstraight\u201d \u2013 evoke the phallic (and also feminine) beauty that will later degenerate to become \u201csensual, cold\u201d. The earlier descriptions, while effective, hardly prepare us for the shock of the adjective-noun juxtaposition in line 14, where the knife is felt to possess \u201cthe convent chill that a weapon has \/ Hushed presence of danger &#8230;\u201d Catholicism may be merged\u00a0here with political dictatorship.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div class=\"section\">\n<div class=\"layoutArea\">\n<div class=\"column\">\n<p>Smuggled safely into adulthood, the clasp-knife is anaesthetised, almost literally, by the poet\u2019s vocation. Later, its phallic potential is both evoked and suppressed when it appears, in obscene intimacy with the underwear of the woman whom the poem turns out, surprisingly, to address. Again, the translator\u2019s ear is acute: a rustling, nestling contact is suggested by the repetition of \u201camongst\u201d. So the secret becomes domesticated, tenderly shared with a wife or partner, and nothing terrible has occurred after all. But if we imagine the weapon to have been tamed, we\u2019re in for a shock. In the last line the blade seems to spring out again, this time with truly lethal intent, the inescapable violation that time inflicts on everybody: death.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn spite of everything the past ends up being \/ a brotherhood of wolves, melancholy \/ for a landscape skewed by time,\u201d Margarit observes in another poem, Self Portrait. His work is time-haunted and death-haunted, but the poems also have a wonderful, clear, intelligent light in them. Margarit is perhaps firstly a love poet, and, readers can be assured, his loves are more often flesh and blood than steel.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Descarga el PDF<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/proves\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Poem-of-the-week_-First-Love-by-Joan-Margarit-_-Books-_-The-Guardian.pdf\">Poem of the week_ First Love by Joan Margarit _ Books _ The Guardian<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Ir a la not\u00edcia<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/books\/2015\/feb\/16\/poem-of-the-week-first-love-joan-margarit#img-1\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/books\/2015\/feb\/16\/poem-of-the-week-first-love-joan-margarit#img-1<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><span style=\"line-height: 1.5;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Catalan poet explores brutality, love and death in a&#8230;<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/es\/poem-of-the-week-first-love-by-joan-margarit\/\">Leer m\u00e1s<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1043,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[86],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Poem of the week: First Love by Joan Margarit (The guardian) - Joan Margarit<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/es\/poem-of-the-week-first-love-by-joan-margarit\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"es_ES\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Poem of the week: First Love by Joan Margarit (The guardian) - Joan Margarit\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Catalan poet explores brutality, love and death in a...Leer m\u00e1s\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/es\/poem-of-the-week-first-love-by-joan-margarit\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Joan Margarit\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2015-03-04T09:21:21+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2015-03-13T07:47:17+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Clasp-knife-009.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1920\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1152\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"jomaco\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Escrito por\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"jomaco\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Tiempo de lectura\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutos\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/es\/poem-of-the-week-first-love-by-joan-margarit\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/es\/poem-of-the-week-first-love-by-joan-margarit\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"jomaco\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/en\/#\/schema\/person\/77f5b51d3d8c4fe5ffc1bd7ebdd5ff89\"},\"headline\":\"Poem of the week: First Love by Joan Margarit (The guardian)\",\"datePublished\":\"2015-03-04T09:21:21+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2015-03-13T07:47:17+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/es\/poem-of-the-week-first-love-by-joan-margarit\/\"},\"wordCount\":957,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/en\/#organization\"},\"articleSection\":[\"Noticias\"],\"inLanguage\":\"es\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/es\/poem-of-the-week-first-love-by-joan-margarit\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/es\/poem-of-the-week-first-love-by-joan-margarit\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/es\/poem-of-the-week-first-love-by-joan-margarit\/\",\"name\":\"Poem of the week: First Love by Joan Margarit (The guardian) - Joan Margarit\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/en\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2015-03-04T09:21:21+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2015-03-13T07:47:17+00:00\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/es\/poem-of-the-week-first-love-by-joan-margarit\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"es\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/es\/poem-of-the-week-first-love-by-joan-margarit\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/es\/poem-of-the-week-first-love-by-joan-margarit\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Inici\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/es\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Poem of the week: First Love by Joan Margarit (The guardian)\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/en\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/en\/\",\"name\":\"Joan Margarit\",\"description\":\"\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/en\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/en\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"es\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/en\/#organization\",\"name\":\"Joan Margarit\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/en\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"es\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/en\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/Captura-1.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/Captura-1.jpg\",\"width\":565,\"height\":549,\"caption\":\"Joan Margarit\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/en\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"}},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/en\/#\/schema\/person\/77f5b51d3d8c4fe5ffc1bd7ebdd5ff89\",\"name\":\"jomaco\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"es\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/en\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/04e8b686ab557ef333f900572f4e915f?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/04e8b686ab557ef333f900572f4e915f?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"jomaco\"}}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Poem of the week: First Love by Joan Margarit (The guardian) - Joan Margarit","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/es\/poem-of-the-week-first-love-by-joan-margarit\/","og_locale":"es_ES","og_type":"article","og_title":"Poem of the week: First Love by Joan Margarit (The guardian) - Joan Margarit","og_description":"The Catalan poet explores brutality, love and death in a...Leer m\u00e1s","og_url":"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/es\/poem-of-the-week-first-love-by-joan-margarit\/","og_site_name":"Joan Margarit","article_published_time":"2015-03-04T09:21:21+00:00","article_modified_time":"2015-03-13T07:47:17+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1920,"height":1152,"url":"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Clasp-knife-009.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"jomaco","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Escrito por":"jomaco","Tiempo de lectura":"5 minutos"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/es\/poem-of-the-week-first-love-by-joan-margarit\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/es\/poem-of-the-week-first-love-by-joan-margarit\/"},"author":{"name":"jomaco","@id":"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/en\/#\/schema\/person\/77f5b51d3d8c4fe5ffc1bd7ebdd5ff89"},"headline":"Poem of the week: First Love by Joan Margarit (The guardian)","datePublished":"2015-03-04T09:21:21+00:00","dateModified":"2015-03-13T07:47:17+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/es\/poem-of-the-week-first-love-by-joan-margarit\/"},"wordCount":957,"commentCount":0,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/en\/#organization"},"articleSection":["Noticias"],"inLanguage":"es","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/es\/poem-of-the-week-first-love-by-joan-margarit\/#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/es\/poem-of-the-week-first-love-by-joan-margarit\/","url":"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/es\/poem-of-the-week-first-love-by-joan-margarit\/","name":"Poem of the week: First Love by Joan Margarit (The guardian) - Joan Margarit","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/en\/#website"},"datePublished":"2015-03-04T09:21:21+00:00","dateModified":"2015-03-13T07:47:17+00:00","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/es\/poem-of-the-week-first-love-by-joan-margarit\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"es","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/es\/poem-of-the-week-first-love-by-joan-margarit\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/es\/poem-of-the-week-first-love-by-joan-margarit\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Inici","item":"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/es\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Poem of the week: First Love by Joan Margarit (The guardian)"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/en\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/en\/","name":"Joan Margarit","description":"","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/en\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/en\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"es"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/en\/#organization","name":"Joan Margarit","url":"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/en\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"es","@id":"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/en\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/Captura-1.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/Captura-1.jpg","width":565,"height":549,"caption":"Joan Margarit"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/en\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"}},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/en\/#\/schema\/person\/77f5b51d3d8c4fe5ffc1bd7ebdd5ff89","name":"jomaco","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"es","@id":"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/en\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/04e8b686ab557ef333f900572f4e915f?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/04e8b686ab557ef333f900572f4e915f?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"jomaco"}}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1040"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1040\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joanmargarit.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}