«Gaudim sense metàfores» Llenguatge, gaudi i subjectivitat en la poesia de Joan Vinyoli

This chapter proposes a meditation on the nature of poetic activity in the work of Joan Vinyoli, based on an enigmatic line from the poem “Damunt la sorra”, from the book Cercles: “Gaudim sense metàfores”. From the standpoint of a psychoanalytic and affect theory framework, the paper explores the dialectic established in Vinyoli’s poetry between sexual enjoyment and poetic sublimation, and the relationship of this dialectic to language. Indeed, Vinyoli’s poetry expresses a desire for communion with the desired other and with the objects of the world: this is an experience of contact that transcends and shatters the limits of the subject, and that language is incapable of expressing in its entirety. On the other hand, the lyrical subject constructed through language in Vinyoli’s poetry is not a stable, coherent self, but appears as a medium that channels an unconscious, impersonal force. By means of poetic activity (the sublimation of the sexual drive), the poet in Vinyoli’s work approaches an inner void and through the use of metaphors takes on the risk of the fragmentation of the subject in order to access a dimension of impersonal otherness inside himself. In this chapter I propose to redefine this dialectic by analysing various poems.