Shared Visions: Joaquim Ruyra and Edgar Allan Poe

Abstract

The Spanish novelist, poet and traductor Joaquim Ruyra i Oms (1858-1939) is considered one of the great modern short story writers of the end of the 19th and early 20th century and one of the most representative authors of the Catalan renaissance, noted especially for the syntatic innovation of his crafted prose style, that reproduces the language and culture from the oral tradition of the people of the coastal region of Blanes, his hometown. Ruyra portrayed customs, folklore, landscapes, traditions, architectural, labor and linguistics aspects of the rural province of Girona. He wrote essays and tales that shows a genuine admiration for Edgar Allan Poe’s work, developing in brief stories a creative and original synthesis of the Romantic, Symbolist and Realistic legacies. In spite of the fact that Ruyra is remembered as a master of short story form in Spain, his writtings still practically unknown in Brazil. The aim of this study is to indentity characteristics of the short story “Visión agorera” related to Poe’s fiction and poetry. The analysis indicates that Ruyra was a disciple of Poe’s descriptive precision and exposes affinities with his greatest themes: death, mourning, melancholy, oneiric visions and solitude. The considerations of this study on Ruyra’s biography and work are based on works of Lluïsa Julià i Capdevila (1992), Josep Pla (2001), Carles Miralles (2005) and Jordi Pàmias (2015), among others.