Joan Maragall i Gorina (Barcelona 1860 – Barcelona 1911) was reluctant to take over the family’s textile business and studied law from 1879 until 1884 in his native Barcelona. As a student, he took a great interest in Catalan and Spanish literature, and was impressed with Goethe’s Werther. In 1890 he began work for the Diario de Barcelona and in 1891 settled into married life (he and his wife were to have 13 children). In 1894 his poem La sardana won an award at the Floral Games; a volume of poetry appeared the following year. Evincing some fin-de-siècle characteristics, the Poesies signal the advent of Modernisme, which the author was subsequently to reject in favour of an optimistic vitalism. Anorther Floral Games award was given in 1896 for his El mal caçador. A sought-after journalist, he also saw his translation of Goethe’s Iphigenia in Tauris published (1898) and performed.

Maragall, who took an active part in the social and political events of the age, wrote an Oda a Espany following the loss of the colonies in 1898. In the first years of the 20th century, nationalism began to take shape as a conservative, Catholic and traditionalist force: after some inner debate, Maragall became an adherent. In 1900, the first fragment of El comte Arnau was published, as was his volume of Visions i Cants, in which he provided myths and hymns for the new nationalist movement. He also expounded his ideas in a controversial article, La Patria Nueva (in the Diario de Barcelona, 1902), for which he was taken to court. Having left the Diario de Barcelona because of political differences with the management, Maragall was elected president of the Arts and Sciences Association of Barcelona (the Ateneu) and in his presidential opening address that September read his Elogi de la paraula in praise of language, and poetical language in particular, as a transcendent spiritual condition. In 1905 he briefly renewed his working relationship with the Diario de Barcelona while continuing to work on translations of the German Romantic Novalis. He refused the suggestion of a career in politics.

Literary work continued in 1906 (the poetry collection Enllà, including a revised re-working of the myth of Count Arnau), followed by his speech “En pro de les varietats dialectals” at the Congress of Catalan Language. Personal crises from 1907 onwards, and brought to a head by the violent events of July 1909, led first to a series of articles in La Veu de Catalunya and subsequently to a withdrawal into literature. In 1911, the last year of his life, he published Seqüències, which contained the third and final version of the Count Arnau myth, as well as an Oda nova a Barcelona.