Ocnos o l’esglai d’una imatge

© 2017 Albert-Ludwigs-Universitat. All right reserved. Ocnos has a recurring presence in Salvador Espriu’s late works. Although the ambivalent meaning of this mythical figure has been little discussed in modernity, a number of distinguished critics have taken keen interest since Goethe took it up again in his commentary on Pausanies. In fact, the late Espriu portrays, in the stupid uselessness of Ocnos’s work, the failure and the emptiness of the poet and of the human being likewise. Nevertheless, this enigmatic figure holds other meanings which lead us to fear, to paralysing fear, to the so called “parat esglai”. Espriu brings this character in Hades to Sinera and he becomes the axis around which he builds his singular poetics.