On our Blindness: Pieter Bruegel the Elder and Salvador Espriu’s Per al llibre de salms d’aquests vells cecs (1967)

Abstract

This article starts recounting the circumstances in which Salvador Espriu’s Per al llibre de salms d’aquests vells cecs (1967) was created; then it focuses on the relationship between Espriu’s haiku collection and Bruegel’s painting The Parable of the Blind (1568); and it concludes by drawing a meta-hermeneutical comparison between the representation of the blind in Per al llibre de salms d’aquests vells cecs and the poem “Prec de Nadal”, included in the collection El caminant i el mur (1954). All in all, it hopes to act as a vindication of a book that, in the author’s opinion, should be regarded as the quintessence of Espriu’s poetical work.