Un poeta hispánico se asoma a la lírica norteamericana: An Inedit Lecture by Agustí Bartra at the Wesleyan University

Abstract

This article reviews the gestation process, between December 1947 and May 1950, of Una antologia de la lírica nord-americana, by Agustí Bartra. The article devotes special attention to the role played by Joan Roura-Parella (Tortellà, 1897 – Middletown, 1983), a philosopher and pedagogue exiled to the United States and since 1946 established at the Wesleyan University (Connecticut), in this process. The analysis of the unpublished correspondence between Bartra and Roura-Parella suggests that the philosopher was who provided to the poet the idea of the translation project. The article is completed with the transcription of a valuable unpublished lecture delivered by Agustí Bartra at Wesleyan University in May 1950, which is the first text of literary criticism that Bartra dedicates to four American poets: Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost and Carl Sandburg.