Dietaris i memòries d’exili

2002. Edició a cura de M. Àngels Bosch, 285 pp.

Josep Pous i Pagès (Figueres 1873 – Barcelona 1952). Writer from Empurdà, started to be knonwn with the plays ‘Sol ixent’ and ‘El mestre nou’, a genre in which he excelled with the ‘Rocabruna, el bandoler’, Senyora àvia, vol marit’, L’endemà de bodes’, ‘Papallones’ and ‘Rei i senyor’. The most remarkable works of his narrative production are: ‘Quan es fa nosa, ‘Per la vida’, the narrative selection ‘Empordaneses’, the book of poetic prose ‘De la pau I el combat’ and above all his most famous work: ‘La vida I la mort d’en Jordi Franginals’. As a journalist, he was a collaborator in ‘Catalunya artística’ and in ‘El Poble Català’, where in 1909 he published an article that got him to be imprisoned. His time in prison inspired ‘De l’ergàstula’, he also wrote ‘De la Pau i del combat’, ‘Tota la saviesa d’aquest món’ and ‘Pere Coromines i l seu temps’. In 1937 he was chosen as the president of the Institució de les lletres catalanes. In January 1939 he went to France in exile, where he started writing ‘Dietari de l’exili I de la guerra’, which reveals the biological anguish of the man’s solitude and he identifies it with a castaway, with the homeless, with the tragic feeling of life. In the journals there is an ongoing overlapping with the apparent calmness of the Parisian Boulevards, or the landscape in Olliergues, where he had found refuge, and the echoes of the coming World War II. In 1944, when he went back from exile, he founded and presided the Cosell Nacional de la Democràcia Catalna, which, except the communists, united the political parties in opposition to the fascism.