Costa y Llobera, Miquel

COSTA Y LLOBERA, MIQUEL. - Priest, one of the most representative contemporary Catalan poets, b. at Pollensa (Balearic Islands) on 10 March 1854, d. at Palma on 16 Oct. 1922.

His first Poesies (Palma 1885) respond to a still Romantic milieu; among them stands out Lo pi de Formentor, a symbol of his ascetic and poetic elevation, translated into almost every European language, while with the Oda a Horaci (1879) C. places himself among the foremost followers of Carducci in Spain. Having interrupted his legal studies in his homeland, he studied theology at the Gregorian and in 1888 was ordained a priest in Rome, where he lived for five years (1885-90), drawing inspiration from a profound sense of Romanity and Christianity, which seals his most significant works. To the Roman period belong his most inspired Spanish poems (Rouas, En las catacumbas de Roma, Adiós a Italia), later collected in one volume (Líricas, Palma 1899). But in modern Catalan literature they have earned him a place no less than that of Verdaguer: La deixa del geni grec (Barcelona 1900), Poesies (1907), Visions de la Palestina (1908), and above all the Horacianes (1906), poems composed with Carduccian technique, yet pervaded by a high spirituality and profoundly human.

In the last decade of his life he wrote almost only the poetic version of the Himnes de Prudenci, devoting himself rather to the spiritual ministries proper to his canonry, and to the interior life, profound and edifying in a man who had attained such literary glory.

Michele Battlori