Foreword: On Catalan Literature: Behind Merc Rodoredas Secret World

According to a well-known definition by Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guattari (1975), a minor
literature always operates under three constraints: a high degree of language dterritorialisation;
corruption of every aspect of literary activity by economic issues, business, law; and, finally,
politicization of everything, admixing personal and collective expression, since literature has to
fulfill a mission of collective definition. Merc Rodoreda has done much to challenge the
minority status of Catalan literature, and this bibliography illustrates with great detail the different
ways her work has been read in her native language and in translation.
Merc Rodoreda (19081983) is now considered one of the most original European writers of
the twentieth century. Her best-known novel, La plaa del Diamant (1962) [Time of the Doves],
has been translated into more than twenty languages and has been praised by writers such as
Gabriel Garca Mrquez as one of the best and freshest novels to be published in Spain after the
civil war. Critical recognition was a late achievement in Rodoredas life, since her literary career
was not always an easy one. A writer of exquisite prose constructing an enigmatic world, she
occupies a distinguished position in the small but extremely active world of Catalan literature.
She followed a long and winding road to success, which came only in the last twenty years of her
life, marked by solitude and originality. One could say that her life and development as a writer
followed a parallel path to her own liberation as a human being. She started to write in 1933,
during a brief time of political freedom in her native Catalonia, under Spains Second Republic.
After a dismal start with novels, which she later rejected (and refused to have ever published
again), Rodoreda started to write with new strength while in exile in Nazi-occupied France.
Working as a seamstress to support herself and her lifetime companion, Armand Obiols (literary
pseudonym of Joan Prats), she used her writing as an obvious way to fight personal and national
destiny and humiliation (Casals 1991). Most of the short stories she wrote at the time re-create
some of her experiences in France with an innovative prose, filled with shadows and silences,
with a striking ability to portray womens inner life that later became her trademark.
When she had to go into exile after the Second Republics defeat by the Fascist troops of
General Franco, her situation as a writer did not improve much. Long neglected as a minor figure
among her fellow exiles, she began to acquire a reputation of her own after a notorious literary
scandal when her novel La plaa del Diamant did not win the prestigious Sant Jordi award in
1962. Submitted under the title Colometa, it won little attention from the jury. Only two literary
critics who were members of that jury, Joan Fuster from Valencia and Joan Triad from
Barcelona, were so struck by the novel that they recommended it immediately for publication to
the publisher Joan Sales. The novel became an instant success, one of the first Catalan best-sellers
after the civil war, and changed Rodoredas status in literary society overnight. She was able to
publish her short stories and novels and became a coveted literary prima donna. After a long exile
spent in Paris and Geneva, she returned to her native Catalonia in the 1970s and divided her time
between Barcelona and the Girona countryside in Romany de la Selva until her death in 1983.
Rodoreda was an intense reader of Katherine Mansfields short stories. In a 1946 letter she
wrote, El meu amor en aquest gnere s la meravellosa K. Mansfield (Rodoreda 1991, 71).
[My love in this genre is the wonderful K. Mansfield.] A few of Rodoredas characters are
modeled upon Mansfields. Like Mansfield, Rodoreda became a masterful chronicler of situations
of disaster striking daily life, displaying an acute instinct for presenting human beings in extreme
solitude or the desperation of women in the modern world, which she treated without any traces
of sentimentalism. Rodoredas imitation of Mansfield is a good example of the way that Catalan
authors used foreign literary models together with more traditional ones from medieval and
romantic literature. This mixture of contemporary literary models with traditional sources
contributed to a revitalization of Catalan language and culture. Intellectuals, writers, and
politicians are responsible for a remarkable level of development attained by the time the Spanish
civil war ended. In the 1920s and 1930s, a time when Catalans culture and literary production
were at a similar level to that of its neighbors (mainly France and Italy), a program of cultural

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modernization was almost completed, and generated a vibrant Catalan cultural world. Artists such
as Joan Mir and Salvador Dal ruled Paris from their Catalan roots, paralleling a similar moment
of splendor in the literary field, with writers such as the poet J. V. Foix and the journalist Josep
Pla introducing many European innovations, from surrealism to literary essay, into Catalan
literature (Molas 1983).
Catalonias defeat at the end of the Spanish civil war was a particularly excruciating one.
Francos army and regime took special care to destroy any traces of the Catalan political and
cultural revival experienced since the turn of the century. Publishing in Catalan was not allowed
until the late 1940s, and at first the Fascist authorities only permitted the publication of classical
Catalan authors from the nineteenth century. Literary society was desolate since most of the
intelligentsia had gone into exile in Europe and the Americas. In the 1950s, young writers began
imitating European models new realistic portrayal of society. During this time of renewed
interest in social realism, used as a tool to denounce the political situation, Rodoredas writing
attracted little if any attention. This bibliography illustrates in great detail the ups and downs of
Merc Rodoredas literary fame. Rodoredas literary contributions are crucial to understanding
the new Catalan cultural revival that began in the 1970s. Her generation bore the responsibility of
keeping the dream of a normal country alive.
There is a sharp contrast between Rodoredas departure from Catalonia after political defeat,
barely a writer in the making, and her triumphal return as one of the best-known writers in the
land. Although in her native country she was considered a writer who had a unique ability to
express a womans excruciating experience during the civil war and exile (Resina 1987), things
looked quite different abroad. Merc Rodoredas powerful writing has taken on a life of its own,
especially in the English-speaking world, where readers have preferred a feminist reading of her
work (Bergmann 1987, Carbonell 1994, Rhodes 1994). Rodoreda nevertheless belongs to a larger
community of writers, a community that has endured the hardships of civil war, exile, and
political repression. Hers is an innovative voice, influenced by some of the events surrounding
her coming of age, and after many years of exile and oblivion she has become one of the most
influential voices in twentieth-century Catalan literature. It would be too easy to portray the
author as one who always had a bizarre but original approach to literature for personal reasons.
That would imply that Merc Rodoredas entire work represents a search for maturity. It could be
seen then as a refuge from the difficulties of her younger life. Biographers do indeed posit that
personal circumstances (she was supposedly married against her will to an uncle when she was
only twenty years old), as well as political turmoilthe Spanish civil warprohibited her free
self-expression until she was over sixty years old (Casals 1991).1 Rodoreda also endured
repression of her creativity in the four different varieties of exile she underwent after the end of
the Spanish civil war: political, because to a certain extent she had been a supporter of the Second
Republic; geographic, since she lived in France and Switzerland from 1939 until 1973; linguistic,
because she was a native Catalan and so went through a double exile amid the already exiled
Spanish population; and personal, for she separated from her husband and son the moment she
left Spain. Hers is undoubtedly a difficult situation, but one shared by a large number of women
and men writing in Catalan (or trying to do so) during the twentieth century. What follows are
clues to the simple question, What is Merc Rodoredas place among Catalan writers?
Senses, Sensibility, and Writing: From Medieval Splendor to a Version of Baroque
Colman Andrewss 1987 cookbook stated on the front cover that Catalan cuisine was
Europes last great culinary secret. A few years later, using the 1992 Barcelona Summer
Olympic games to his advantage, Robert Hughes (1992) wrote a book (and starred in a PBS
television show) in which he depicts the work of a startling architect, Antoni Gaud, and drew a
portrait of the city of Barcelona as the showcase of Catalan society at the turn of the century. In
the opening chapter, Hughes describes in detail how he fell in love in 1966 with the Catalan
cuisine available in popular seafood restaurants in the Barceloneta neighborhood and how he was
enchanted with modernista architecture. These two authors are a good example of a growing

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interest in Catalan culture throughout the world in general and in the United States in particular.
One must, however, recognize that this interest has much to do with works of art that people who
do not speak the language can easily grasp or with foods that provide a new insight into the
ubiquitous Mediterranean diet. In part this is due to the fact that anyone who travels for the first
time to Catalonia or its capital, Barcelona, has the sensation of entering a unique civilization. A
strong appeal to the senses awaits the avid visitor at every street corner. In fact through sensory
experience alone one can easily capture the essence of Catalan culture, since the food, art, and
architecture provide a distinct flavor of a different world. But the sensory delights afforded by
Catalonia notwithstanding, a more complete sense of Catalan identity can be attained with the
help of its literature.
Literature has played a significant role in the creation of a nationalistic Catalan ideology and
has helped to create a certain idea of a group, an imagined community, with a common past,
present, and future. The close relationship between food and architecture and its sublimation by
literature reminds us of what Stephen Greenblatt (1990) has said about writers: The works they
create are structures for the accumulation, transformation, representation, and communication of
social energies and practices (230). Musicians such as Enric Granados and Frederic Mompou,
architects like Antoni Gaud and Josep-Llus Sert, or painters like Joan Mir and Antoni Tpies
are all Catalan artistic figures who have excelled in various fields and are quite well known
around the world. That they express themselves by nonlinguistic means has been crucial to
promoting their international diffusion. Writers in all minority cultures have always had a harder
time getting their message across. Paraphrasing Colman Andrews expression, one might speak of
Catalan literature as Europes last great literary secret.
Catalan literature is somewhat known by a small minority in English-speaking countries. This
minority includes mostly scholars and students in departments of Romance languages and
literatures and medieval historians, who are all well aware of the existence of medieval Catalan
literature. Among the handful of excellent medievalists who have made crucial contributions to
Catalan studies are Thomas Bisson at Harvard who has studied in great detail the history of the
crown of Aragon; John Dagenais at Illinois and Arseni Pacheco at the University of British
Columbia, who work on medieval Catalan literature; and Anthony Bonner, who edited and
translated selected works by Ramon Llull for Princeton University Press. Manuel Duran at Yale
University and Geoffrey Ribbans at Brown University have worked on contemporary literature.
Among the younger generations, Josep M. Sobrer (1992) at Indiana University has made critical
contributions both in medieval and contemporary literature.2 Under the auspices of the University
of Illinois and the leadership of Jaume Mart-Olivella, the North American Catalan Society
(NACS) was founded in 1978 and has celebrated colloquis (conferences) every three years while
sustaining a scholarly journal in English, the Catalan Review.3
Catalonias rich medieval tradition, which starts with significant contributions to the
Provenal troubadour movement, continues into the sixteenth century with outstanding authors
such as Ramon Llull, Ausis March, Joanot Martorell, and Isabel de Villena. What traditionally is
considered the first text written in Catalan is a collection of sermons, Homilies dOrgany, from
the late twelfth or early thirteenth century. After a few other examples of legal texts which were
translated into Catalan (Forum Iudicum) came activities of a more literary nature. Catalan authors
contributed to the troubadour tradition with spectacular poems written according to the trobar leu
(Guillem de Bergued) or trobar ric (Cerver de Girona) conventions. At a time when Catalonia
was very active in Mediterranean politics and imperial wars of domination during the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries, military and religious writing predominated. The medieval crniques
(chronicles) were extremely detailed accounts of Catalan kings military adventures. In some
cases they were written by the monarchs themselves or with the help of a small team of court
writers, as is the case of the kings Jaume el Conqueridor (James the Conqueror) and Pere el
Cerimonis (Peter the Ceremonious). High-ranking court officials such as Bernat Desclot and
Ramon Muntaner wrote other chronicles. These texts depict medieval life and military activities

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in rich detail and elaborate literary style.

At the same time, writers such as Arnau de Vilanova and Ramon Llull dealt with the diffusion
of the Christian faith, writing many books that are remarkable not only for their propagandistic
aspects but also for the quality of their prose. Ramon Llull is considered to be the founding father
of Catalan literary prose. His novel Blanquerna is of great interest because its main character is
not a knight but a member of the bourgeoisie and the action takes place in an urban setting. In his
other works, which include scientific encyclopedias, theological treatises, and mystical prose
poems, Llull tries to build an explanation of the universe according to Christian doctrine.
In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries a very sophisticated literary milieu bloomed, adopting
the aesthetics of the European Renaissance. Anselm Turmeda, Bernat Metge, Antoni Canals, and
Joan Ros de Corella translated, imitated, and adapted such authors as Petrarch, Cicero, and Ovid.
Bernat Metges Lo somni is considered to be the most outstanding work of the period. After many
years of writing troubadour poetry Jordi de Sant Jordi found his own voice to express his sorrow
while in captivity, Andreu Febrer translated Dantes Commedia into Catalan, and Ausis March
attained an all-time high in the expression of the many doubts that human beings experience
when confronting love and death.
One of the best-known Catalan literary works of all time is Joanot Martorells Tirant lo
Blanc, a book that has had a life of its own outside the Catalan world, with a little help from
Miguel de Cervantes. Dmaso Alonso, quoting Don Quixote, observes, Tirant lo Blanc is the
best European novel of the fifteenth century. In one of the first chapters of Cervantess novel
there is a hilarious scrutiny of the knights library by the priest and the barber. The barber is
carrying eight books and one falls on the floor:
Curious to know whose it was, he [the priest] picked it up and found it to read, History of
the Famous Knight, Tirante the White. God bless me! said the priest with a shout,
Tirante the White here! Hand it over, friend, for in it I have found a treasury of
enjoyment and a mine of recreation. Here is Don Quirieleison of Montalbn, and the
knight Fonseca, with the battle the bold Tirante fought with the mastiff, and the witticism
of the damsel Plaerdemavida, and the loves and wiles of the widow Reposada, and the
empress in love with the squire Hiplito. In truth, my friend, by right of its style it is the
best book in the world. Here knights eat and sleep, and die in their beds, and make their
wills before dying, and a great deal more of which there is nothing in all other books.
(Cervantes 1981, 5152)
Don Quixote, whose first part was published in 1605, single-handedly built the reputation of
Catalan literature. Only 715 copies of Tirant were issued at its first printing in 1490, and a second
edition did not appear until 1497; an abridged translation into Spanish was produced in 1511, and
no further Spanish editions appeared until the twentieth century. It was also translated into Italian
in the sixteenth century, into French in the seventeenth century, and finally into English in 1986
by David Rosenthal, with remarkable success. He also translated Rodoredas La plaa del
Diamant and La meva Cristina i altres contes [My Christina and Other Stories].
Tirant is a modern novel with many realistic touches, but it is deeply rooted in
fifteenth-century Catalonia. It is filled with quotations from previous literature, as
Joseph Vaeth points out: Within this work may be found religious and philosophical
discourses, speeches and disputations . . . ; formal debates . . . ; documents and papers . . . ;
formal challenges and replies . . . ; dramatic lamentations; long and fervent prayers; and allusions
to classical Latin authors, to biblical characters and to figures prominent in medieval literature.
(Symposion Tirant 1993, 175)
In 1969 Mario Vargas Llosa corrected neglect of this novel when he wrote Carta de
batalla por Tirant lo Blanc. Imitating medieval models, and in a way parodying Joanot
Martorells own obsession with lletras de batalla (a sort of declaration of duel) to solve his
personal problems, Vargas Llosa wrote a moving vindication of this book as the lost and

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forgotten link in the chain of European realism.

Pointing to the modernity of Martorells novel, Vargas Llosa notes that Tirant was the
first novel to create an effect of total realitya literary principle he has also studied in Garca
Mrquez and Flaubert and whose operating principle governs his own fictionaccording to
which the novelist is a supplanter of God. Vargas Llosa considers Martorell to belong to a family
of realist writers who built entire worlds: Fielding, Balzac, Dickens, Flaubert, Tolstoy, Joyce, and
Faulkner.
Yet, although Tirant lo Blanc was a remarkable novel, a century after its publication Catalan
literature experienced the beginning of a long and devastating period of neglect, directly related
to the political misfortunes of the crown of Catalonia and Aragon, subdued under a new
politically unified Spain. Catalonia lost two wars with Castile (1640 and 1714), and most of the
nobility moved to central Spain. Baroque writing is well represented by authors such as Vicen
Garcia, Francesc Fontanella and Josep Romaguera, and neoclassicism inspired the work of Joan
Ramis. Bar de Mald wrote an extensive diary from 1769 until 1816 that includes both attitudes
reflective of novels of manners and modern autobiographical writing,
Ways into Modernity
Catalan literature experienced a significant revival during the nineteenth century and has had
considerable success in spite of major political upheavals in Spain during much of the twentieth
century. At the risk of being schematic, one could say that modern Catalan culture has had two
main concerns: language and modernization. These topics are in turn related to a third one: the
position of Catalonia in a unified Spain, from a political, economical, cultural perspective. The
issue of language confronts thorny questions, such as, which language should a writer use in
literature? should people use a light version of Catalan or the more traditional language? and is
bilingualism acceptable? One of the main cultural events of the twentieth century was Pompeu
Fabras grammatical reform of 1913, which gave Catalan people in general and writers in
particular a very powerful and modern tool to develop, as they did, a modern and rich literature.
The second, modernization, has to do with the special position that Catalonia holds inside
Spain. Centuries of self-rule came to an abrupt conclusion after a resounding military defeat in
1714, at the end of the Spanish War of Succession. Catalan political institutions such as the
Generalitat were suppressed overnight, and the use of Catalan language vanished from public life
and education.4 During the nineteenth century, under the auspices of the industrial revolution and
romantic ideology, Catalonia found a new voice to claim its different status inside Spain. Long
considered, together with the Basque country, Spains industrial powerhouse, it nevertheless
carried little if any political weight in Spanish politics after 1714. Modernization became the
buzzword and a way of demanding a different political and economic status. And the idea had its
translation into literature under different aesthetic flags (romanticism, modernism). Early essays
such as Bonaventura Carles Aribaus A la patria (To the Motherland) have long been
considered the starting point of this renewal movement. Recovery of Catalan literature began with
the Renaixena (Rebirth), a literary movement organized after 1859 around the Jocs Florals. This
poetic competition, celebrated the first Sunday of every May, started a new and widespread
interest in Catalan literature. The Solidaritat Catalana alliance of 1906 showed a unified
political position against Spanish centralism. These are good examples of cultural and political
enterprises that brought together a nation and gave some credibility to its cry for political freedom
and independence. Spain, a country that has lived through much of the last 150 years under one
kind of totalitarian regime or another (absolutist monarchy, dictatorships by Primo de Rivera and
Franco), faced the Catalan question in different but never too positive ways. During briefs
periods (1868, 19311939) Spain embraced Catalonias democratic and autonomist ideals. In
fact, Catalonia has always had to combine its fight for autonomy with one for its own
modernization and that of the entire country. Even in the early twenty-first century, this is one of
Spains main political problems: how to balance Spanish national unity with respect for its
different nationalities (Basque, Galician, Catalan) under a political regime that will allow the

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expression of cultural differences.

Merc Rodoredas generation was extremely active in the cultural revival of the last hundred
years. This period in Catalan culture may be distinguished by three basic moments. The climax of
the Renaixena movement took place at the turn of the century, 18901939. In harmony with
major European aesthetic trends, cultural movements flowered, such as modernisme (a version of
flamboyant art nouveau style) and noucentisme (a neoclassical revival modeled on French
literature). In the 1920s and 1930s there were strong signs of a very active modernity (avantgarde, psychological novel, etc.), a moment of great splendor, truncated in a violent manner when
the civil war began. This period is dominated by the idea of modernization, whose attainment was
interpreted by two very different approaches: those who supported a model of bourgeois culture
on the one hand, and the supporters of a proletarian culture on the other. On many occasions this
difference of opinion became extremely violent, reaching a peak during the civil war (1936
1939). The moment of near normality that had been attained in the years previous to the civil war
contrasts sharply with the period of the Franco dictatorship.
The second broad historical and cultural period of Rodoredas generation is 19391966, a
time of desolation under Francos regime. The Catalan language was forbidden at all levels of
public life: on the streets, at school, in the publishing industry. This was basically a time of
penury, which was saved by the good will, perseverance, and courage of a few lletraferits,
patriots obsessed with keeping the memories of the past alive, especially memories of the
splendor preceding the civil war.
Finally, from the mid -1960s until the present, a remarkable recovery began, initiated during
the last years of Francos dictatorship. One of the most significant shifts in Catalan culture has
been the debunking of traditional values such as the kind of near religious respect for the past,
which had characterized Catalan cultural life since the middle of the nineteenth century. This was
provoked by the arrival of a new iconoclastic generation and by the equivalence of Catalan
writers with their European peers. In the 1960s, three different groups came arose, groups divided
by their age, literary interests, and sense of Catalan identity. The oldest were those who had
returned from exile, most of whom complained bitterly about the destitution they encountered,
destitution created by the dictatorship (Carles Riba, Pere Quart, Pere Calders). Another group was
made up of writers of the interior, most of whom had started to publish in the 1950s. They were
obsessed with a revival at any cost of a Catalan culture based on old values, and they tried to
establish a connection with the splendor of the 1920s and 1930s. The youngest group was the
iconoclasts, in 1968 terms, authors born after the civil war, who began to write around or after
1966. They worried little about the past and were overtly irreverent toward the traditional topics
of language and local literary models. These young writers, such as Baltasar Porcel, Terenci
Moix, Pere Gimferrer, and Montserrat Roig, were more interested in the cultural scenes of Paris,
London, or Mexico than in what had happened in 1932 in Barcelona.
This generational conflict explains in part why Rodoreda is as pivotal as she is in Catalan
contemporary literature. A product of the Second Republic and the exile, she managed to stay in
touch with the interior and was widely read in the 1960s. Together with some of her fellow exiles
(such as Josep Carner) or other major figures inside Catalonia, such as Salvador Espriu, Pere
Quart, Pere Calders, and Majorcan author Lloren Villalonga, she kept alive a rich version of the
Catalan literary tradition that was able to engage following generations.
Catalan Writing at the End of the Millennium
Nowadays Catalan literature faces a situation very similar to that of other minor Western
literatures, where prose (novels, short stories, autobiographical writings) has replaced poetry as
the most desirable literary activity. But it is important to realize how abnormal Catalan literature
was for several decades because of external political constraints. One of the most significant
phenomena was poetrys domination over other genres. Why did it happen this way?
In the long run, the predominance of poetry over other genres proved to be both useful and
disturbing. Useful because it was a major force that helped the survival not only of Catalan

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literature but also of Catalan culture and politics. Poetry kept the idea of Catalonia alive, and with
time it proved to be a very successful endeavor. However, this predominance created an anomaly:
an imbalanced literary tradition devoted to the sacred mission of promoting national survival,
which paid little attention to more specific artistic matters. This was a unique conflict between
ideological objectives and artistic realization. All this can only be explained by the harsh
circumstances that Catalan culture has had to endure since 1714. On one hand, the lack of a
modern literary Catalan language ready available to express all the intricacies of daily life in an
industrialized society made the writing of realistic prose texts more difficult. On the other hand,
romanticism pushed for a revival of medieval poetry, which came about under the leadership of
Manuel Mil i Fontanals and Jordi Rubi i Ors.
For centuries, Catalan literature relied on medieval strongholds, such as the troubadours,
Ausis March, and Jordi de Sant Jordi, and nineteenth-century writers who managed to establish
the Renaixena, a Catalan version of late romanticism. This movement attained the level of
European romanticism although it was constrained by strong religious and patriotic influences:
Fe, Ptria, Amor. These were the mottoes of the period and the topics that inspired most
nineteenth-century Catalan literature. The medieval literary festival, the Jocs Florals was revived
in an attempt to keep alive a repressed culture. In a reaction to this, in the late late-nineteenth
century a modernista movement achieved a much more aggressive modernization of Catalan
culture.
The special situation of Catalan literature at the end of the nineteenth century can be
illustrated by its major literary figure, Jacint Verdaguer. He was a priest from a small town near
Vic (Folgueroles, in interior Catalonia) who wrote two epic poems, interpreting Spanish and
Catalan history in light of mythological and religious references in the style of Lamartine. In the
Atlntida, Verdaguer deals with the disappearance of a world, legendary Atlantis and concludes
with an interpretation of Spains discovery of the New World. In Canig he exploits legends
related to the birth of Catalonia. Those two epic poems became landmarks in Catalan literature
for their creation of useful linguistic models. Verdaguer was also the author of spicy travelogues
about his journeys to central Europe and Palestine. Verdaguer uses a spotless language in his
poetry and prose, and his work has long been considered the foundation of modern Catalan
literary language. The next generation continued to model itself after Verdaguer, and Merc
Rodoredas grandfather built a monument in his memory in the garden of his Sant Gervasi
residence in Barcelona.
Other writers from the nineteenth century include ngel Guimer and Narcs Oller. Guimer
was a poet and playwright of considerable success. He started his career writing historical
tragedies and became very successful with realistic dramas, such as Maria Rosa and Terra baixa.
Wallace Gillpatrick translated this last one into English in 1915, and it was published in New
York with the title Marta of the Lowlands. Hollywood filmmakers adapted both plays. In 1913
Edward S. Porter adapted Marta of the Lowlands. And two years later, in 1915, Cecil B. de Mille
filmed Maria-Rosa. Narcs Oller is the author of a series of realistic and naturalistic novels
written under the theoretical auspices of literary critics Joan Sard and Josep Yxart. He depicted
Barcelonas industrial revolution and the activities of the bourgeoisie. His novel La pamplona
was known in Europe because the French translation had an introduction by mile Zola himself.
His best novel is La febre dor, an account of high finances in 1880s Catalonia.
Turn-of-the-century Barcelona was a city booming with industrial activity. It had become a
vibrant city with daily episodes of class struggle. Industrialization had introduced many changes
in its daily life, bringing hordes of immigrants from nearby and remote mountain towns, and the
city would soon be known as one of the most conflictive in Europe, ruled by the clash between
groups of anarchists and a very religious and conservative bourgeoisie. If the bourgeoisie was
happy with the kind of literature developed by Verdaguer and other Renaixena writers such as
Rubi i Ors and Mil i Fontanals, soon a more popular and revolutionary trend developed. Under
the auspices of the so-called modernista movement a new generation of writers took Catalan

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culture by storm, radicalizing their texts as well as their political positions. At the time when
Antoni Gaud was building his renowned architectural masterpieces such as the Sagrada Famlia
(Holy Family) and Casa Mil, also known as La Pedrera (stone quarry), Santiago Rusiol, Joan
Maragall, Vctor Catal (a male pseudonym for a powerful female writer), and Ignasi Iglesias
introduced dramatic changes in the literary landscape. They are responsible for the introduction in
the Iberian Peninsula of Nietzsches ideas. Many radical poetic experiments were made, such as
the ones by Santiago Rusiol, the first in the peninsula to cultivate the prose poem in his
Oracions (1893); Vctor Catal constructed a powerful version of late naturalism in his novel
Solitud (1906); and decadentism became dominant in poetry. Joan Maragalls influential writings
in Diario de Barcelona and his poetry gave him the stature of a revered public figure. He
masterfully epitomized feelings and obsessions of the time in poems (Oda nova a Barcelona,
Oda a Espanya, Cant espiritual) and articles (Lesglsia cremada). Maragall was one the
best-known writers in all of Spain, and he was able to evoke vividly his personal experiences of a
rough period (fight for political identity, class struggle, etc.) giving them a public interpretation.
He witnessed the bombing of Barcelonas opera house, the Liceu, in 1893, and he wrote a moving
poem, Paternal. His Oda nova a Barcelona (1909) is considered an accurate portrait of the
citys state of mind at the beginning of the twentieth century. This poem is divided into two parts.
In the first Maragall dialogues with the city and with a previous poem, Oda a Barcelona by
Jacint Verdaguer. In the second part the revolutionary events of July 1909, the Tragic Week,
pervade the poem. What was a placid dialogue written in alexandrine quatrains becomes an
admonition to the city of Barcelona written in free verse, in which the poet tries to elucidate
virtues and failings associated with the city, concluding: Tal com ets, tal te vull, ciutat mala:/ s
com un mal donat, de tu sexhala:/ que ets vana i coquina i tradora i grollera,/ que ens fa abaixa
el rostre/ Barcelona! i amb tos pecats, nostra nostra/ Barcelona nostra! la gran encisera!
(Maragall 1988) [Such as you are, I love you, evil city:/ it's like an evil eye that you exhale:/ for
you are vain and stingy and traitorous and gross,/ and you have us all ashamed./ Our Barcelona,
with all your sins!/ Our Barcelona, the great sorceress!].
After a period of modernista dominance, a more conservative cultural movement,
noucentisme, took over. In the early twentieth century, aesthetic decisions by the so-called
noucentistes (Eugeni dOrs, Josep Carner, Guerau de Liost, Josep M. Lpez-Pic and others)
helped instill the trend of poetical domination over prose. Noucentistes favored poetry over other
literary genres for reasons of purity, following the example of French writers such as Moras.
Consequently, the more revolutionary options, such as the ones represented by modernisme, were
cast aside as authors such as Eugeni dOrs masterminded the suppression of any liberal or
revolutionary aesthetic and political thinking. Nietzsche and Schopenhauer were rejected on
ideological grounds and were replaced by more conservative thinkers such as Bishop Josep
Torras i Bages. There are internal reasons to explain this: since the eighteenth-century, the
Catalan language had not been used in any official role (administration, education, etc.) and the
language needed a grammatical revision. Pompeu Fabras linguistic reform was not in place until
1913; reality, with all of its social upheavals, was not reflecting the idealized noucentista version
of Catalonia. Therefore, poetry was considered to be the only literary genre that could be used to
express the noucentista dream. Eugeni dOrss prose writings, published in a daily, La Veu de
Catalunya, under the general title of Glosari, were very influential in the formation of a
European-oriented, sophisticated literary taste. Josep Carners and Guerau de Liosts elaborate
poetry portrayed an ideal vision of reality.
There was a period in the 1920s and 1930s when other genres matured. For a brief period,
Catalan literature had all the ingredients of a modern literary system: innovative novelists such as
Carles Soldevila and Miquel Llor; moving dramatists such as Josep M. de Sagarra; and excellent
poets (Josep Carner, Carles Riba, J. V. Foix, Clementina Arderiu, and others). Josep Pla
renovated literary journalism with an original prose. His books on travel, around Europe before
the civil war and mostly inside Catalonia after it, are memorable examples of keen

foreword

autobiographical writing. Carles Soldevila authored plays such as Civilitzats tanmateix which
interested Italian avant-garde author Luigi Pirandello. By the 1930s, the renewed interest in prose
was picking up with a younger group of writers such as Salvador Espriu, Merc Rodoreda, and
Pere Calders. Lloren Villalongas appropriation of the human experience in Proustian terms
gives a measure of the renewal. The civil war and the long dictatorship that followed stopped the
trend toward normalization for many more years. Catalan literature was forced to go
underground. During this period of censorship, poetrythe best genre to express double
meaningwas the literary genre that helped keep alive the idea of Catalonia and its rich cultural
heritage. With its ease of distribution, its inherent abstractness, and its genuine ability to stick to
the message, poetry outpaced long prose books and became once more the Catalan literary genre
par excellence.
Catalan literary history is littered with poets whose considerable prose talents were swept
away by the cultural and political exigencies under which they wrote. For example, Salvador
Espriu, with La pell de brau became a revered figure all over Spain in the 1960s. At that time the
book was read as a political statement against the dictatorship. When he became a candidate for
the Nobel Prize, hardly anyone remembered that he had been a precocious and excellent prose
writer. Espriu decided to abandon the rich prose style he had developed in the 1930s in early
works, such as the stories of Aspectes (1934) and the novel Laia (1932). Esprius case epitomizes
the problem that Catalan literature was facing by the end of Francos dictatorship: it had not
regained the level it had attained in the 1920s and 1930s. In the 1960s poetry was the main
literary genre, and it was written in a transparent language whose strong militant undertone
betrayed Catalanist or social concerns.
For many years the Catalan language vanished from public life. Francos regime did not
allow the publication of any texts in Catalan until the late 1940s. And when authorization arrived,
it was a very disruptive move, as the authorities allowed only the publication of authors from the
nineteenth century such as Verdaguer, and using only the pre-Fabra orthographic rules. Not until
the 1950s were new contemporary authors allowed to publish. Theirs was a very difficult task.
Literary value was in some cases subordinated to political purposes. Authors such as Jordi
Sarsanedas, Maria Aurlia Capmany, and Joan Perucho are just a few of the most outstanding.
Others, such as Josep Palau i Fabre and Joan Brossa, kept alive a fidelity to the previous success
of avant-garde aesthetics in Catalan literature. Merc Rodoreda, Lloren Villalonga, and Pere
Calders were the main living examples in the revival of Catalan prose, which began to be
developed by young writers who were born after the war.
Toward the End of Modernity?
By all accounts, the best-known twentieth-century Catalan writer is Merc Rodoreda. In light
of what I have discussed earlier, it is even more remarkable that she is a novelist and not a poet,
but hers is an exceptional case. La plaa del Diamant won her international fame and has been
translated into more then twenty languages. It is an excellent portrait of Barcelona during the dire
times of the midtwentieth century (19301950). Hers has not been only a succs destime, which
is what writers from a small linguistic community usually attain, but a great success. Feminist
readings of her work have undoubtedly bolstered her readership, but her books offer many
satisfactions. Rodoredas died in 1983. In the years since her death literary change has been
enormous, a change that had been in the making since the mid-1960s.
The death in the early 1980s of major literary figures who had some connections with the
splendid period from before the civil war (Pla, Rodoreda, Espriu) has accelerated in recent years a
renewal of literary generations. Since the early 1980s many of the well-known literary figures
have disappeared. In this period authors who survived a period of cultural and linguistic
repression are being succeeded by authors now in their forties and fifties who inherited the
consequences of Rodoredas generation.
Conditions for the revival that began before Francos death provided a space in which new
voices were heard loudly for the first time in the mid-1960s. Those voices opened the door to a

foreword

new sensibility, meaning the reevaluation of their own history (distinct from the official
version promoted by the dictatorship) and the direct vindication of differences (sexual,
linguistic). The introduction of powerful new media (cinema, radio, television, video, computer)
achieved a very effective uniformity in all the countries under the economic, military, and cultural
shadow of North American dominance. This produced dramatic changes in taste, literary fashion,
and sexual habits. A common way of facing life emerged from San Francisco to Prague, a way
that included rock music and jazz, American movies from the 1950s and French nouvelle vague,
camp attitudes, and reinvention of the avant-garde. One of the most significant changes
occurred when some legendary figures became role models for the young generations: movie
stars (Marilyn Monroe and Humphrey Bogart), politicians (Che Guevara), sports personalities
(Helenio Herrera). The impact of media could also be noticed in linguistic terms: many writers
began to imitate the language of cinema. All these changes can be summarized under what critics
such as Patricia Waugh (1992) have called postmodernism, using this word in a sense that
encompasses aesthetic practices involving playful irony, parody, parataxis, self-consciousness,
and fragmentation.
All this provoked a major breakthrough in Catalan exploration of topics related to identity
and memory, in the use of innovative literary techniques, and in the increasingly cosmopolitan
nature of the cultural and literary landscape. Baltasar Porcel started reinterpreting (with the help
first of Camilo Jos Celas tremendismo and later of Latin Americas magic realism) Majorcas
past, beginning with one of the islands favorite activities before the spread of tourism,
smuggling, as portrayed in Els argonautes (1968). In another volume, Difunts sota els ametllers
en flor (1972), Porcel presented a reevaluation of the problems related to immigration in Majorca.
Terenci Moix, who lived in Paris and London, pictured in his powerful novel El dia que va morir
Marilyn (1969) an urban underworld of passion and deceit that looked too real and threatening for
the establishment. His gay agenda has been a key aspect in most of his other novels, especially in
Mn mascle (1971).
Poets and novelists who focus on the loss of paradises provide a mellower look. Narcs
Comadiras lbum de famlia (1980) and Jess Moncadas Cam de sirga (1988), a book of
poems and a novel, represent intense inquiries into the authors past with the help of sophisticated
techniques. Comadira reconstructs pictures of his family album. Through a joint process of
ekfrasis and evocation he is able to pass moral judgment upon the time when the picture was
taken. He reconstructs fragments of his autobiography and criticizes politics of the time.
Moncadas novel is also a good example of the recent triumph of the historical novel. As in other
cases, a postmodern perspective looks for critical analysis of the past or its imaginative
recreation. Dialogue with the past is realized through oral history and collective memory. Jess
Moncada has succeeded in re-creating a lost paradise in his novel Cam de sirga, a saga of the
history of the town of Mequinensa before it disappeared underwater when a new dam was -built
to jump-start an industrial revolution.
Other authors have conducted much more formal historical inquiries. Baltasar Porcel and
Carme Riera have explored Majorcas history in Cavalls cap a la fosca (1975) and Dins el darrer
blau (1995). Jaume Cabr has reconstructed eighteenth-century politics in his novel Senyoria
(1990). Montserrat Roig planned a very acute inquiry into a banned past. She explored the
activities of Catalans in Nazi concentration camps and uncovered whole forbidden worlds in her
book-length interview with Rafael Vidiella, a former Communist leader living in exile. All of her
novels and short stories have a historical, rather political (feminist and socialist) subtext with the
intention of reconstructing a negated past.
In the late 1970s Gimferrers Dietaris (19801982) and the short stories of Quim Monz in
Uf, va dir ell (1979) gave two differentif not oppositeassessments of reality. Gimferrer
presents a sophisticated and rather hyperliterary account of his view of the world under the form
of a fake diary: through extensive use of intertextuality he allows himself to express harsh
judgments of newborn politicians and the decay of contemporary culture or just play games with

10 foreword

the happy few about literary events. His is a fragmented memoir of the 1960s, which he
considers his time of formation and celebration. Using classical writers, musicians, and film
directors as partners, he establishes an imaginary dialogue in an unnamed time and place.
Gimferrer appeared on the public scene with other young poets in the anthology Nueve novsimos
(1970). Of the poets in the anthology, Zavala (1986) says, They all have in common a practice of
parody, a demystification of sexual, moral, and historical standards, the incorporation of mass
media culture (primarily film), camp irony, pop and beat generation influences, reduplication of
the self, and an inclination towards the grotesque and kitsch (104). Monz in turn portrays a
world turned upside down, defying rationality and incorporating American traditions and trends,
from surrealistic Cortzar to the fond playfulness with words and literary traditions, which is one
of Robert Coovers emblems. Monzs is a remarkable look at the inconsistencies and absurdities
of a reality more and more regulated by high-tech obscurities. His Olivetti, Chautofeaux, Maury
(1980) exemplifies ironic rebellion against the contradictions of the modern world. In recent years
he has attained celebrity status thanks to his contributions to a famous TV show, Persones
humanes.
There is also a sense of playfulness with words and concepts, following the steps of the
Oulipo movement in France (which is very influential among the youngest writers). The 1960s
marked the rupture by fiction writers with the naturalist model in prose as well. There was an
opening up to the experimental sphere at the end of the decade that led Biel Mesquida into the
realm of the symbolic revolution fostered by Tel Quels neo-avant-gardism. In his Figures de
calidoscopi (1989), Ramon Solsona narrates the intervention of chance in the seven possible lives
of a single character. Every chapter constitutes a tour de force take on the naturalist model,
devoted to parody of specific dialects. The one devoted to Esquerra de lEixample is a monument
of refined sociolinguistic complexity.
Conclusion
And what happened to poetry? Some poets of the midcentury generation went beyond
expectations based on nonproblematic and transparent language. The poem stopped being an
immutable repository of meanings to emphasize the text as part of discovery by both writer
and reader. This change is visible in the criticism of poetry as communication by authors such as
Gabriel Ferrater (1986), who has had a strong influence on new generations of poets by teaching
them to be less self-serving and more aware of, and self -critical and ironic about, the literary
tradition, pushing for a poetry based on strong control of rhetorical procedures. As Dolors Oller
has said, poets such as Narcs Comadira and Pere Gimferrer, among others, insist on a rupture
with the historical avant-garde and on a rehumanization that has the will to write the chronicle
from emotion to solidarity(Oller 1986, 7884).
In 1953 Gabriel Ferrater wrote a very polemical article on the future of Catalan literature
entitled Madame se meurt, Madame is still very much alive, and there is much evidence of
prodigious endurance in traditional media (books) and innovative ones (the Internet). Our world
is undergoing a fundamental shift. As Patricia Waugh (1992) puts it, modernity may be coming
to an end, strangled by its own logic, or rendered exhausted by economic changes which have
propelled us into a new age of information technology, consumerism and global economics which
erode the stability of concepts such as nation, state or essential human nature (5).
Simultaneously, Catalan literature with its well-defined minority status should have a bright
future in the new European order, which resists strong political divisions and accepts dissension
and difference. Indeed Catalan literature, a minor literature in Deleuze-Guattaris terms, may be
the cure for the overglobalized, too universalized and standardized reading public of the new
millennium. Prodigious and coming from an old tradition, Catalan literature provides evidence of
the small and unique that endures the seemingly impossible, and for that reason it may be the
perfect antidote to the postmodern described by Waugh. Merc Rodoreda, needless to say, is one
of the most valuable authors of Europes last great literary secret and holds many keys to her
secretnational and personalliterary world.4

11 foreword

Enric Bou
Brown University
Notes
1. Montserrat Casals i Couturier, El Rosebud de Merc Rodoreda, Catalan Review 2, no.
2 (1987): 3233. See also her biography of Rodoreda for a more detailed explanation of the
circumstances of the authors marriage: Merc Rodoreda: contra la vida, la literatura: biografia
(Barcelona: Edicions 62, 1991), esp. chaps. 2 and 3.
2. See, e.g., Anthony Bonner, ed., Selected works of Ramn Llull (12321316) (Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985); Arthur Terry, ed., Ausis March: Selected Poems,
Edinburgh Bilingual Library 12 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1976); Robert Archer, ed.,
Ausis March: A Key Anthology (Anglo Catalan Society, 1992), available online at
www.kent.ac.uk/acsop/; Kathleen McNerney, Tirant lo Blanc Revisited: A Critical Study.
(Detroit: Michigan Consortium for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 1983); Joanot Martorell,
Tirant lo Blanc, trans. David H. Rosenthal (New York: Schocken Books, 1984).
3. For an extensive account of Catalan-related scholarship in the United States, see Bover
1992.
4. See, e.g., Balcells 1996. For a more specific account of the history of Catalan literature, see
Mart de Riquer, Antoni Comas, and Joaquim Molas, Histria de la literatura catalana, 11 vols.
(Barcelona: Editorial Ariel, 19641988).
5. I explored some of the ideas in this foreword in talks given at several U.S. universities. I
would like to thank especially Professor Teresa Vilars from Duke University and Professor
Angel Loureiro from the University of Massachusetts for thoughtful discussions developed after
my presentations.
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