"El pi de Formentor" is an emblematic poem by Miquel Costa y Llobera where the poet metamorphoses into a tree resistant to the onslaught of life.

My heart loves a tree! Older than the olive

More powerful than the oak, greener than the orange tree,

It keeps in its leaves spring eternally

And fights against the gusts that beat the coast,

And tire the trodden earth. Flowers of love do not peek between its leaves;

Its shadows do not go to the fountain to kiss;

But God anointed its sacred head with a scent

And as ground He gave it the rough mountains,

And as a fountain, the immense sea.

[...]

Onwards, be strong! Get through the mists

And lay roots in the heights, like the cliff-top tree.

You will see the sea of the ireful world fall at your feet,

And your gentle songs will carry on the wind

Like birds in a storm.

«El pi de Formentor» Poesies, 1885

Translated by Richard Mansell.

(Pollença, 1854 – Palma, 1922). Miquel Costa i Llobera was a poet, prose writer and translator. Born into a family of rich farmers who owned, among other properties, the Formentor peninsula, Costa was always devoted to the development of literature. In 1885 he published the collection Poesies (Poems), influenced by French and Spanish romantics. That is the period when he wrote his most famous poem “El pi de Formentor” (The Formentor pine, 1875), which displays a romantic reaction to the landscape. He later developed his own poetic knowledge by reading Lamartine, Leopardi and Manzoni, and from them became concerned with artistic form. He travelled to Rome, where he studied theology and was ordained, and this gave him direct contact with the classical world, a theme that runs through his work. His works include De l’agre de la terra (On love for the land, 1897), Tradicions i fantasies (Traditions and fantasies, 1903) which includes the narrative poem “La deixa del geni grec” and Horacianes (Horatian odes, 1906). He was more appreciated by young “noucentistes” in the early 20th century than by his contemporaries engaged in the modernist movement. Along with Joan Alcover he had a strong and long-lasting influence on Majorcan poets from his time, both his contemporaries and younger generations.

“El pi de Formentor” is a landmark poem, in which the writer metamorphoses into a pine tree that resists the gusty winds of life. The text is full of powerful images, exuding the Romanticism of his early writing.

In this house on plaça Vella lived the maternal family of the poet Miquel Costa i Llobera. The Costas lived in an ancestral home on carrer Major. They were considered some of the most important rural landowners on Majorca. Over the summer they spent long periods at Formentor, where they would go by boat from Port de Pollença, and this is where Costa discovered the landscape and idealised it as a subject for his poetry. "El pi de Formentor" (The pine of Formentor) surely contributed to the myth of the tree as a symbol of the Majorcan landscape, especially since Majorca has been considered as an international tourist destination. This would possibly surprise the poet who made us of the tree, for some one tree in particular, to define his plan of action for literature and for life.