Contrast and confluence in Verdaguer’s and Maragall’s poetic peopling of Barcelona

This intertextual analysis juxtaposes and examines in detail the texts and contexts of Verdaguer’s “To Barcelona” (“A Barcelona,” 1883) and Maragall’s “New Ode to Barcelona” (“Oda nova a Barcelona,” 1909), with particular attention to, in the latter case, Maragall’s three seminal Setmana Tragica articles in connection with his poem, as well as Maragall’s debt to, and break with, Verdaguer; and in the former case, Verdaguer’s debt to, and break with, Rubio i Ors’ earlier poetic vision of the city (“Barcelona,” 1840). In Verdaguer’s foundational vision of Barcelona, and, by extension, Catalonia, Christian faith underpins an unmistakably patriotic faith in country, where Christendom and pagan antiquity blend in tandem to ensure the dynamic city’s, and country’s, future. In Maragall’s re-foundational palimpsest, the poet calls for the renewal of a faith that has degenerated into static or class-inscribed ritual, and for spiritual and social regeneration spotlighted by the shift in symbolic focus from Barcelon...