Obscure Intransigent Herd: Julia Otxoa in Search of the Light

Abstract

Júlia Otxoa (San Sebastián, 1953) is a poet who, from the late 1970s, has shown a constant concern at human barbarity: it is the experience of the 20th century (the symbol of which is World War II) and it is the experience of the Basque Country from the Civil War, all through the repression of Franco’s regime, to the democracy darkened by terrorism. Otxoa’s poetry begins denouncing the destruction of love in a language of irrationalist leanings which goes from Composición entre la luz y la sombra (1978) to Centauro (1989). Yet, in her latest books, from La edad de los bárbaros (1997) to La lentitud de la luz (2008), the committed humanism of her voice opens to an essentialist reflection centered on the feeling of estrangement, foreignness as homeland and destiny, the communion with nature and the rooting in childhood, and the necessity to (re)invent a language of silence with which to escape official talk and the commerce of lies.