CATALANMODERNISME, MESSIANISM AND NATIONALIST MYTHS

Abstract

During the course of research into Catalan Modernisme it became apparent to me that the major works on the subject and other works on the period 1880–1911 in Catalonia neglected a lot of primary sources and consciously or otherwise underplayed certain aspects of the period. I refer mainly to an ideology which in different contexts has been called ‘Messianism’, ‘Hero-worship’ and other similar names. This way of thinking inspired a considerable volume of political, journalistic and creative writing during the period embraced by Catalan Modernism and early Noucentisme. The material concerned might, by most modern critics, be considered second-rate and by anyone who has the patience to read it outrageous, irrational and sometimes absurd! These are surely not sufficient reasons for ignoring it altogether. It was certainly not dismissed in its day. Its exponents commanded the front pages of such key journals as L'Avenç and Joventut and books written under its influence were published and lauded in contemporary reviews. By discounting this material, perhaps because of its poor philosophical or critical merit, critics have missed an opportunity to penetrate the Catalan middle-class intellectual mentality of that time as expressed by some of its well-known apologists and to understand more fully the Catalan attitude to Peninsular historical events. In this article I shall simply refer to material that is fairly accessible and offer as an example one writer and his attitudes, a writer who, although extreme, was the epitome of this particular direction of Modernism: Pompeu Gener (1848–1919). The article is by no means exhaustive and the whole subject of the relationship between Modernist ideas and the growth of Nationalism is still to be thoroughly explored.