In exile. Echoes of St Augustine in the Elegies de Bierville

Abstract

Immersed in the traumatic experience of exile, Carles Riba resorted to numerous literary influences to compose the Elegies de Bierville. Within the hitherto scarcely explored ideological framework of Christianity, this article proposes a reading of the Elegies in the light of St. Augustine’s postulates of time. Starting from an analysis of some hundred time references in the dozen elegies and Riba’s own notes for readers, we will firstly show the two levels of time that the lyrical ego moves between when facing its ontological position in the present time in exile, which is opposed to the luminous past. Secondly, there is the idea of the simultaneity of the moments lived through, which are reordered in the mind. The article includes an annex containing all the time references in the Elegies.