The Bean and the Garbanzo: Up on the Chair

Enric Casasses opens the new edition of the series The Chairs of Tàpies with a talk-lecture-action-recital-event on how the chair, however small it might be, FILLS the stage. Casasses recurs to the vision of how a poem transforms itself over the rift of time (months, years, decades). The first version of the poem is from the 1980s; the second, from the first decade of the 21st century; and the third will appear, if it does at all, during this session. Meanwhile, we will see how the chair appears and disappears in different moments in the 20th century. We still know nothing about the 21st century: we are watching it live.

The poem in question is called “The Bean and the Garbanzo”, which in its earliest version was included in an unpublished volume featuring early Casasses poems, entitled Ànsia vella [Old Craving].

Enric Casasses. Born in Barcelona with roots in the coastal town of L’Escala, he has lived a relatively nomadic life and won various awards. Casasses has written verse (small poems, big poems, songs and also poetic essays), prose (poetic and philosophical, especially works of philosophical fiction) and a few plays. He is the author of Calç, Uh, Do’m, El nus la flor, la policia irà de bòlit and other works.