Joan Vinyoli

Who was Joan Vinyoli?

Joan Vinyoli i Pladevall was a Catalan poet, born in Barcelona, Spain.

Vinyoli first became familiar with poetry by reading the works of Rainer Maria Rilke and at the beginning of his career was heavily influenced by the work of other German poets such as Goethe and Hölderlin. His talent was first noticed by Carles Riba, and then Rosselló-Pòrcel, Teixidor among others. He published his first collection, Primer desenllaç in 1937. In the 1970s, after a decade of relative silence, his work changed to a more realistic style. During this period he received widespread public recognition and was awarded the Generalitat of Catalonia Prize, City of Barcelona Prize and the National Prize for Literature. He also published translations of Rilke into Catalan.

The work of Vinyoli is that of a self-taught writer. Initially very much influenced by the poetic language of German symbolism, he afterwards leaned more and more towards the sort of realism that is capable of using everyday language to offer a distinctive vision of the human condition. The recurrent subjects of his poetry are love, the fleetingness of time and memory. His meditation is not so much on death -and in this he differs from Espriu- as on mutability: the way in which all things pass away, are lost, and become part of memory.