Josep Pla and Lytton Strachey: parallel portraits

Abstract

Lytton Strachey and Josep Pla are authors with distinct creative personalities, but also with important points of contact. Pla felt a great admiration for the English writer, founder of the so-called New Biography. Strachey renewed the genre thanks to his critical eye and his literary instinct, attentive to detail, to synthesis, to irony. The narrative effectiveness of his texts and their psychological penetration shortened the distances between biography and novel. All these qualities are also present in the work of Josep Pla. When Pla read Strachey's work and that of the other New Biography authors, he was a young writer who had already decided the direction that his work should take: the memoirs. In his desire to leave a record of his time, biographies had already begun to play an important role, which would grow in relevance throughout his writing career. It seems reasonable to think that the reading of Strachey's work and that of the other New Biography authors could offer Pla confirmation in his chosen literary option as well as encouragement throughout his years of dedication to the biographical genre.