1. FERRATER, Gabriel, Closing note to Da nuces pueris now in Vers i prosa (Barcelona: Eds. 62, 1998) p. 99.

2. FERRATER, Gabriel, La poesia de Carles Riba (Barcelona: Eds. 62, 1983) p. 9.

3. As I argued in the paper "To Knowledge Through Love in Carles Riba's Poetry", presented to the 51st annual Foreign Language Conference, Kentucky, April 1998. Despite Riba's acknowledgement of the pertinence of Hume's directive on passion, unlike Ferrater, he was unable to subscribe fully to its intensity, falling back finally on a less problematically canonical reaffirmation of the spiritual zeal of Neoplatonism.

4. See Poem 22 from Estances, II: "Amor, m'és dolç el teu cos, quan és sol / en el seu goig i en el seu riure ardent.", Obra Completa, I, (Barcelona: Eds. 62,1984) p. 114.

5. IZQUIERDO, Lluís, "L'erotisme, tret decisiu a la poesia de Ferrater", El Món, 3-ix, 1982. MACIÀ, Xavier i PERPINYÀ, Núria, "L'erotisme: un assaig d'estructuració", in La poesia de Gabriel Ferrater (Barcelona, Eds. 62, 1986) pp. 117-18. According to Izquierdo, the poems were divided into those in which eroticism worked: a) as an exploration and witnessing of the transformations undergone by one's feelings; b) as a "didactic" experience which followed the ups and downs in the attitude and mood of both the observer and the observed who acted respectively as the pretext for and response to the poem; and c) the eroticism of the "text", that is the transformation by means of the poetic exercise, of a specific experience into a general theory which went beyond the physical. According to Macià and Perpinyà, a) would correspond with love poems which show a direct link with the passing of time; b) would be made up by those didactic poems in which the erotic experience was the starting point for moral and poetic reflection; and c) would not really be a classification but rather "la relació entre escriptura-lectura, entesa com un coit amorós".

6. FERRATER, Gabriel, Closing note to Da nuces pueris, in Vers i prosa. All three quotations, p. 99.

7. TRIADÚ, Joan, La poesia catalana de postguerra (Barcelona: Eds. 62, 1985) p. 146.

8. CASTELLET, Josep Maria, Qüestions de literatura política i societat (Barcelona: Eds. 62, 1975) p. 193.

9. TERRY, Arthur, Quatre poetes catalans: Ferrater, Brossa, Gimferrer, Xirau (Barcelona: Eds. 62, 1991) pp. 34 & 40.

10. Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality and Other Works. (Harmondsworth, Penguin) 1977.

11. FERRATER, Gabriel, La poesia de Carles Riba, p. 121.

12. MACIÀ, Xavier i PERPINYÀ, Núria, La poesia de Gabriel Ferrater, pp. 118 & 119. The quotation reads: "Des ensembles de nombres particulièrment importants, l'ensemble des nombres rationnels, celui des nombres réels, celui des nombres complexes sont des corps. Du point de vue algébrique, la définition de ces ensembles de nombres consiste justement à construire un corps satisfaisant à certaines conditions; cette construction se présente comme un problème typique d'immersion, que nous traiterons ultérieurment. Paul DUBREIL, Algèbre."

13. BATAILLE, Georges, Eroticism, (London: Marion Boyars, 1962) . For a brief and clear summary of Bataille's theory, see McNAY, Lois, "Bataille, transgression and eroticism", in Foucault: A Critical Introduction (Polity Press: 1994), pp. 40- 45.

14. BATAILLE, Georges, p. 15.

15. BATAILLE, Georges, p.18 "Eroticism always entails a breaking down of established patterns, the patterns ... of the regulated social order basic to our discontinuous mode of existence as defined and separate individuals." The subsequent sentences cited are from pp. 22 and 11.

16. FERRATER, Gabriel, La poesia de Carles Riba, pp. 98, 101 & 123.

17. Poem quoted by MARCO, Joaquim, in "Etica, medievalismo, erotismo o la poesía de Gabriel Ferrater", Destino, n. 529, Sept. 1966, p. 36. "Su poesía, en Teoria des cossos, confirma aquel poema que pone fin a Menja't una cama".

18. BATAILLE, Georges, p.104. "The essential characteristic of eroticism is a feeling of crisis of the self and of identity brought on by the sensation of plethora; this is to say the superabundance and excesses of the senses - the 'plethoric life of the body' - that overturns the mind's resistance in the erotic act. Personality dies during love-making, ordered, parsimonious and shuttered reality is shaken by plethoric order".

19. McNAY, Lois, pp. 40, 41 & 42.

20. FERRATER, Gabriel, La poesia de Carles Riba, p. 13.

21. FOUCAULT, Michel, The History of Sexuality (London: Allen Lane, 1988); and "Preface to transgression" , McNAY, Lois, Foucault..., p. 42.

22. FERRATER, Gabriel, Cartes a l'Helena (Barcelona: Empúries, 1995) p. 111.

23. This idea was, of course, elaborated fully in Beyond a Pleasure Principle. Group Psychology and Other Works. (London: Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-analysis, 1962).

24. See the wish for forbidden things in "Matèries", lines 17 - 20: "Fruits prohibits, tancades/ matèries del món./ I el teu cos: l'obstinada/ penetrant acció". See also the desire to stop time in "Cambra de tardor" and in "Poema inacabat" lines 57 -64 & 68 -75: ... No estic trist quan escric,/ sinó que ric, i l'envellir no m'ha donat encara el trauma/ que, pel que es veu, a tots ens guarda./ Cert que el cos perd el seu encant,/ però a mi el que m'ha encantat/ sempre han estat els altres cossos/ i no em veig més la carn que els ossos./ [...]/ No vull recordar que una sang/ jove, va omplir un dia la dona que avui he vist netejar anxoves/ eixancarrada a un carretó/ i m'ha calgut vetllar que no/ li trepitgés tripa de cames.

25. In the poem "L'oncle", for instance, the tone is made more sinister by the remembrance of the perverse activities performed by the uncle in life than by the fact that he is now dead. An English translation "Tres llimoners" is available online in Arthur Terry, "Six Poems by Gabriel Ferrater" Journal of Catalan Studies, 1999, www.uoc.es/jocs and www.fitz.cam.ac.uk.

26. MCNAY, Lois, p. 45.

27. FERRATER, Gabriel, La poesia de Carles Riba, p. 44.

28. FERRATER, Gabriel, closing note to Da nuces pueris, in Vers i prosa, pp. 99 - 100.

29. McNAY, Lois, p. 45.

30. As he stated in "Maîtresse de poëte", lines 7 - 8.

31. OLLER, Dolors, "Gabriel Ferrater: L'inefable el va temptar", Serra d'Or, March 1984, p. 40. This is the same idea as in "On Mating", which in turn coincides in approach with Foucault and Bataille.

32. BATAILLE, p. 275.

33. SERVIÀ, Josep Miquel, Gabriel Ferrater, reportatge en el record (Barcelona: Pòrtic, 1978) pp. 71-72.

34. BATAILLE, p. 25.