author
Miquel Costa i Llobera
1854–1922
A Majorcan poet and priest, he became one of the best-known voices of modern Catalan literature, blending classical learning with a deep feeling for landscape. His most famous poem, El pi de Formentor, helped turn the scenery of Mallorca into literary memory.
1 Audiobook
Horacianes : Poesies
by Miquel Costa i Llobera
About the author
Born in Pollença, Mallorca, on March 10, 1854, Miquel Costa i Llobera grew up in a landowning family and developed an early bond with the island’s landscape, especially the Formentor area that would inspire some of his best-loved writing. He studied in Barcelona and Madrid before eventually entering the priesthood, and he wrote mainly in Catalan, though he also translated from classical languages and wrote in Spanish.
Costa i Llobera is widely regarded as a major figure in Catalan poetry and is often linked with the cultural renewal known as the Renaixença. His work moved from early romantic tendencies toward a more disciplined, classical style shaped by his admiration for Horace and other ancient authors. That balance of emotional depth, formal control, and vivid natural imagery gave his poems a lasting place in the canon.
Readers still return to him for poems such as El pi de Formentor, where the Mallorcan landscape becomes both real and symbolic. He died in Palma on October 16, 1922, but his writing remains an important part of the literary identity of Mallorca and Catalan literature more broadly.