The lost Ithaca: traces and motives of Homer's Odyssey in the Elegies of Bierville, by Carles Riba

This paper will expose the reasons and models in Homer's Odyssey that the Catalan poet Carles Riba reflects in one of his main books: Bierville Elegies. The subject will be approached from two perspectives: first, from the importance that the Homeric text had for Riba, as one of its most eminent translators. Second, indicating how the journey of Odysseus becomes the essential reason for the poetry of an exiled as Riba. The authentic journey to the lost homeland -Ithaca for the first one and Catalonia for the other-is transformed into a return to the soul. The origin's loss of the exiled -embodied by methaphysical death- becomes the need to travel to itself, an indoubtely Homeric motif.