Scripta Mediterranea (E-Journal)

Pérez, Elizabeth

Robinson, Cynthia

Saussy, Haun

Mallette, Karla

English

Four Response to Maria Rosa Menocal

Pellitteri, Antonio

reflections on the Study of Muslim Sicily: History, Politics, and Nineteenth-Century Sicilian Historiography

Skyrme, Raymond

"Mi corazón y el mar": Machado in Dallapiccola

Dendle, Brian John

An Anatomy of Love: Naguib Mahfouz's Cairo Trilogy

Melgar-Foraster, Shaudin

Reviews 99 
Tagrera. Antoni Clapes. Col. Balbec, 2. Barcelona: Cafe Central. 1997. 
59pp. 
The latest book by Catalan poet Antoni Clapes, Tagrera, mantains the elegant and 
suggestive style of Materia d'ombres, the previous collection of poems by Clapes. 
The title "Tagrera" alludes to a place inside the Sahara desert where Clapes 
stayed in 1992, and its obvious connection with his poems lies in its solitary na-
ture. 
The first part of the text contains a series of brief poems that are a variation 
upon the basic theme of writing as a materiality of silence, a theme already 
explored by Clapes in his previous book. Tagrera's second part focuses on two 
works by painter Caspar David Friedrich. It is a long poem depicting two land-
scapes of absolute solitude. 
Clapes' poems escape from worldly crowds to a realm imbued with nature; 
settings devoid of any human being but a poetic voice searching for meanings. This 
voice, in first person, carries the reader through the worlds of solitude expressed 
in the second part of the text, whereas in the first part, a more ambiguous voice ob-
sessively questions silence and the significance of written discourse. Although the 
second part of Tagrera breaks away from the word "silence" (constantly inter-
wined in the first part), it embraces the contemplation of the solitary scenery 
where silence is nevertheless felt throughout the whole poem. In the poems con-
tained in Tagrera solitude becomes a supreme enigma, which the poetic voice con-
templates and attempts to conceptualize. Either while gazing on a still night or 
standing at the top of a high mountain, the voice moves incessantly between con-
templation and conceptualization. 
Antoni Clapes' use of the Catalan language reaches a level of command and 
beauty only possible through the mastery of the language itself. His lavish lexicon 
and his ability to shape the language into the visions and concepts he is reflecting 
upon, enables him to create poems that are powerful in their evocative images and 
interesting in thought. Clapes's obsessive repetition of the word "silence" and the 
similar obsession with solitary environments become a singular contrast with the 
purity of his style which is, otherwise, free of neglectful repetitions. 
The only possible weakness in Tagrera would be its lack of flexibility re-
garding the subject matter of its poems. In spite of Clapes' talent for abstracting in-
triguing perceptions from the solitary atmospheres he envisions, his poems never 
venture into other topics. Tagrera experiments by awakening sensations through 
intimate reflections of the moment, yet the intensity of its topic -intimate, absorb-
ing, obsessive- does not allow any deviation towards a broader array of percep-
tions. Nonetheless, Tagrera's evocative force is a towering achievement difficult to 
surpass. 
Shaudin Melgar-Foraster 
University of Toronto 


Tagrera. Antoni Clapés. Col. Balbec, 2. Barcelona: Cafè Central. 1997. 59 pp.

Gimelfarb, Norberto

Rafael Alberti et María Teresa Léon, traducteurs des Paul Eluard

Ruiz, Pedro Guerrero

Percival, Anthony

Picasso (Shaudin Melgar-Foraster)

Pittarello, Elide

Image upon Image: Alberti and Van Gogh

Pontrelli, Geni

Carlism in Valle-Inclán's Jardín umbrío (The Shaded Garden)

Galeote, Manuel

Concerning the poets of the River Genil and Rafael Alberti (Improvised poetry from the geographical centre of Andalusía)

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