Naturally, we addressed him with the utmost respect. My sister Ília and I would arrive at his house with our stomachs full of butterflies. Nervously, we would climb the narrow stairs of his Sarrià flat, both of us aware that a wise man would be seeing us and amused because everything was amusing. She studied literature at Barcelona University and I was still studying without a care. For days ahead of our visit, we would read and re-read his poetry and prose. Sometimes it hit us like a lightning bolt, and I thought I understood it.
I remember the poet's hat and coat on the rack in his hall. He liked the yellow roses that we used to bring him, and would thank us with a rare smile. He autographed books for us with an unsteady hand, writing dedications that I can still remember: "When you tell me your name you make me happy", "I looked at her out of the corner of my eye and she smiled at me". He was already very old, slim, impeccable. Serious.
We would read out loud to him a few passages of his choosing. Only small details hinted at the rage that he felt for having lost his eyesight to the point of almost being unable to read. When we left, happy for the brief moments that would become a treasured memory, we used to compare him to the deaf Beethoven, and talked of the impotence of being isolated from the sources of knowledge. Of the life he had chosen.
I was so impressed that I didn't dare move from the living room chair, dying of curiosity about a library that I didn't dare touch, and which today I would attack without a second's hesitation.
We used to talk about what we had read and we loved it. He had an air somewhere between friendly and distant, as if he often didn't deal with people, of relationships he had handpicked with the exquisite care of a pastry chef. My feeling today is that, even at his age, he was an independent man. Worthy of being called a free spirit.
He would tell us that, when he was a young boy, Sarrià was separated from Barcelona by fields and vineyards. That there were carts for those who went there for their summer vacation, and that he walked for hours every day.
I spoke little and tried to be precise, showing that I was worthy of the time he had dedicated to the daughters of the carpenter from the pastry shop. His vocabulary was exuberant and ancient, such as when he referred to the quiet woman who had received us as "my servant”, much to our astonishment. We knew that every word had meaning. He was a man of order, but also, as he said, a "researcher of poetry". Mr. Foix and the poet Foix.
Later I understood that in those hours of conversation he invited us to consider the higher themes. To leave behind the anecdote, the vulgarity of feeling young and important, and to write as if we thought ourselves as the center of the world and custodians of more important things than the human condition. Presumably he succeeded, because I feel uncomfortable talking about Foix through my memories of him. I only do so out of gratitude. A reminder to people that when you are young, one day you are shown a path where you won't end up chasing shadows.
Foix would tell us about the importance that readings at Barcelona’s Ateneu had had for his training. He used to walk down there from Sarrià, and found foreign newspapers and magazines and new books there. We read together and talked of music. Of the classical classics: Schubert, Schumann, Mozart, Bach.
On our last day he made a useful summary. A guide that I have never forgotten. Mr. Foix, what are we supposed to do? "Read, read, read. Work, work, work. Walk, walk, walk."
ARA and J.V. Foix
Today we commemorate the anniversary of the death of J.V. Foix by dedicating our Sunday supplement to him. Read it. He'll be explained to you by Narcís Comadira, Pere Gimferrer, Enric Casasses, Francesc Parcerisas, Maria Cabrera, Vicenç Altaió, and Jordi Nopca, among others. Comadira goes over some personal memories, and everyone paints a picture of what J.V. Foix means to them.
We will also publish the book Catalan Revolution, with its eighteen points to meditate over, a collection of texts published between 1921 and 1923 in the magazine Monitor. As so often happens with the articles re-collected daily by Josep Maria Casasús for ARA, the writings by J.V. Foix are also still relevant today. "If by a plebiscite it were possible to grant Catalonia the right to segregate itself territorially from the continent and to convert itself into a paradise floating in the Mediterranean, we are convinced that an overwhelming majority would vote in favor"-- so wrote a patriot of the language.
On Saturday, the CUP agreed to vote in favour of the Generalitat's 2017 budget, which had been a hurdle. The future over the coming months is unclear. But the possibility of an independence referendum is closer than it has ever been. One way or another, the future of Catalans will be determined at the ballots and in the ability to convince the majority that we can build, or try to, that "paradise floating in the Mediterranean" that the poet spoke of.
