Carles Riba lived in exile in France for more than four years, from April 1939 to August 1942, in extremely precarious conditions, fleeing first from a civil war and then from a world war. This experience lies at the heart of Bierville Elegies, as he himself said in the preface to the second edition (1949): “In emigration, in effect, and within the feeling of exile, these elegies took shape.”

It is the shared experience of exile that makes the series of 12 separate elegies making up the book into a unitary poem, written in Bierville (I-V), L’Isle-Adam (VI and VII), Bordeaux (XI) and Montpellier (VIII-X and XII). Although each elegy is in itself a finished, complete poem, the series clearly sketches a life story, offered by the poet as an example to the community, to the genuine homeland that shares the same circumstances with him.