VERDAGUER I SANTALÒ, JACINT. - Catalan priest and poet, b. at Folgaroles on 17 May 1845, d. at Vallvidriera on 10 June 1902.
Of his many journeys in Europe and Africa as chaplain of the Barcelona Transatlantic Company, he left his impressions as an attentive observer in the vol. Excursions i viatges (1884); but already in 1877 the publication of the poem L'Atlàntida had revealed him as an exceptional poet: another poem, Canigó, a Pyrenean legend from the period of the reconquest (1886), earned him the crown of “poet of Catalonia.”
A pious and zealous priest and a lyric poet by instinct, he entrusted his mystical ardour and his patriotic feeling to verse: Idita i cants mistichs, Cántics, Cansons de Montserrat, Caritat, El somni de san Joan, Jesús Infant, Nazaret, S. Francesc, Flors de Maria, Patria, the famous Oda a Barcellona, etc. More than 1,200 lyrics by V. were set to music and sung by crowds. Suspended a divinis in 1895 because of slanderous rumours, he portrayed his inner suffering in the poetic collections Roser de tot l'any and Flors del Calvari; but readmitted to celebration in 1898, he was entrusted with a benefice in the church of Betlem, in Barcelona. He possessed vigour and sincerity of inspiration, a lively imagination, and nobility of form not averse to popular modulations. V. is one of the foremost representatives of the Catalan revival.
BIBLI: ed.: Opere complete in 30 voll., Barcelona 1914 ff.; Studies: A. Masiera, V. poeta mistich, ibid. 1902; I. Palp y Plana, M. V., ibid. 1902; Conde de Güell, El poeta V., apuntes y recuerdos, ibid. 1927; V. Serra Boldò, V., ibid. 1932; anon., s. V. ENOCH. Eur. Am., LXVII, pp. 1415-27. Enzo Navarra