Academic year 1870-1871: A platonic love

For academic year 1870-1871, both brothers moved to a new address in Barcelona: street of l'Espaseria, 10. Anton was registered in the Faculty of Sciences of the three subjects that were lacking to him: "Cálculo diferencial e integral y principios del de variaciones", "Geometría descriptiva" and "Mecánica racional", acting of surety his brother. However, Anton, always delicate of health, he took long to come back to Barcelona, city where the epidemic of yellow fever was leaving 1.600 deaths. Thus, on the 26th November of 1870, he wrote from Reus to Toda, who lived in Madrid, becoming interested for Ribera and so that his participation in the project of restoration of Poblet for had been cooled. In the letter, he comments on the political movements of Reus and asks him that he brief him of the arguments that had played the university students of Madrid -Toda studied there Laws- on the occasion of the approval, on 16 November of 1870, of the candidature of Amadeus of Savoy as a king of Spain, proposed by the general Joan Prim. In the ordinary exams of June of 1871, Anton approved of "Calculation" and "Descriptive geometry" and suspended "Rational Mechanics". About 1871, Gaudí, towards 19 years of age, he fell in love with a French girl that he treated during some fifteen days at home of a friendly family, where she was in passing. Many years afterwards, in 1904, he remembered it like this: "I captivated a lot those days, and was going to see her as much as he could; and she seemed that she noticed and spoke in a very kind way to me, a lot, a lot...; as much that I was inebriated; but she was engaged, in her country, and came on the day that she turned back there, and I did not have heart of going to give her farewell, and at the time that she went I was at home like death. Afterwards I did not know anything more, but she had married in her small city." It was a platonic love, which Anton Gaudí always remembered. During the first years, as he explained, “I could not forget her”, and "always seemed to have her in front".

Josep Maria Tarragona, April 7, 2007
COMMENTS



©2013 antonigaudi.org
All rights reserved

Last update: 06/05/2016