Marià Aguiló (Palma, Mallorca, 1825 - Barcelona, 1897), a poet, folklorist, philologist and bibliographer, was one of the most outstanding personalities of the nineteenth-century Catalan cultural revival movement, the Renaixença.

Love, native land and death are the outstanding themes in his poetry, which is best exemplified in the two volumes El llibre de la mort (The Book of Death, 1898) and Focs follets (Will-o’-the-wisps, 1909). Poesies completes (Complete Poetic Works) was published posthumously in 1925.

Inspired by popular poetry of the oral tradition, in particular the Mallorcan ballad (glosa), he collected songs and stories from all over the Catalan-speaking territories, thus leaving a major legacy. As part of his activities in recovering Catalan language and literature, he was one of the people who worked to restore the Jocs Florals literary competition in Barcelona, and was also awarded some of its prizes.

He worked as a librarian in Valencia and, in 1871, was nominated director of the Barcelona Library, where he continued his work of researching into Catalan manuscripts, which he had previously begun in Madrid and Valencia. Meanwhile, he edited a number of medieval Catalan classics and collected a great quantity of lexicographic material for a dictionary, which was eventually published in 1914 with the title Diccionari Aguiló, and revised and systematised by Pompeu Fabra and Manuel de Montoliu.


Web page: Francesc Viñas for AELC.
Photograph: ©Fototeca.cat
Translation: Julie Wark.