First period
His name may not ring a bell on this side of the Pyrenees, but Ramon Lull was one of the most important writers of the Middle Ages, and he is still praised today if only for his contribution to the Catalan language. He was born in Palma around 1232, when Mallorca, three years earlier, had witnessed the victory of James I of Aragon over the Moors who had occupied it, and it was time for the Reconquista. At the crossroads of civilizations and languages, his native island undoubtedly had a great influence on Ramon Lull, who, a scholar with a rare intelligence, quickly became the infant's tutor. After a joyful life, he decided to convert to Catholicism in 1265, but he did not abandon letters for all that; he simply switched from writing love songs in Occitan to writing a monumental Book of Contemplation of God. A polyglot, he set about learning Arabic in order to pursue his personal crusades, his works - numerous! There are more than 200 of them - are in his image, eclectic, philosophical and sometimes a little excessive. But apart from his all-round talent - he wrote theological works, novels and scientific encyclopaedias - Ramon Lull is above all considered to be one of the fathers of the written Catalan language. His experiments in terms of syntax and vocabulary helped to set its standards and to differentiate it definitively from Occitan. It is Catalan, once again, that is given pride of place in one of the most remarkable historiographical texts of the Middle Ages, The Four Great Chronicles, of which Ramon Muntaner, who was not born in the Balearic Islands but breathed his last in Ibiza in 1336, wrote the longest. In this chronicle, which bears his name, he writes about the period from the birth of James I (1207) to the coronation of Alfonso IV (1328). However, it was said that the autonomous Kingdom of Mallorca would eventually be attached to the crown of Aragon, which was the case in 1348 following long dissensions. The great story then gave way to the small, reality to fiction, and Guillem de Torroella, about whom little is known except that he was born in the mid-fourteenth century in a Mallorcan family from the Empordà, wrote a tale strongly inspired by French chivalry novels. In La Faula he explains how he was brought by a whale to a mysterious island, which some people equate with Sicily, where King Arthur had resided since the Battle of Salisbury. Depressed by the disinterest of his time in chivalric and courtly principles, the Breton sovereign, then in the throes of a serious depression, is said to have invited Guillem to tell the Mallorcans about his journey so that they might, in spite of everything, find hope. Pure work of imagination or allegory of an era, the French translation of this Catalan text is published by Classiques Garnier and allows everyone to make their own opinion.
The revival
It was in poetry that Balearic literature was revived at the end of the 19th century, particularly in the work of Miquel Costa i Llobera. Born in Pollença in 1854 and dying in Palma in 1922, he followed his religious vocation by becoming a priest, but it was to the sacredness of nature that he dedicated his most beautiful odes. A winner of the Floral Games, the poetic jousts in Catalan that were popular in Spain at the time, he made a name for himself with Lo pi de Formentor, published in 1875, a poem dedicated to a tree in his native land that influenced the painter Joan Miró, among others. His most important work, Horiacianes (1906), made him an important member of the so-called Mallorcan School, which also included Maria Antònia Salvà (1869-1958) and Llorenç Riber (1881-1958), Emília Sureda (1865-1904), Miquel dels Sants (1864-1920) and, above all, Joan Alcover (1854-1926), who liked to hold salons and whose poem, La Balanguera, became the island's official anthem after being set to music by Amadeu Vives.
The time also lends itself to defining an identity of its own, as shown by the various works of Antoni Maria Alcover, born in Manacor in 1862. In addition to his ecclesiastical activities, he began to transcribe local legends, which he published under a pseudonym, first in the magazine La Ignorancia
and later in the form of a collection. He was also interested in linguistics, and in 1900 he began to collect vocabulary in the local dialect, Majorcan, and the following year he launched the first philological journal in Spain. This project would become the Catalan-Valencian-Balearic dictionary, to which he actively contributed and which he edited before the Minorcan Francesc de Borja Moll took over from him when he died in 1932. The first volume of this colossal work, which would later number ten, was published in 1926, and the last in 1962, as Franco's dictatorship had put a stop to this type of initiative. The 20th century was studded with names that marked the history of Balearic literature. Thus, Llorenç Villalonga (1897-1980) published in 1931 what is considered the first novel in the archipelago, Mort de dama, whose satirical and clearly mocking nature did not make it easy to receive. Surprisingly, another of the writer's titles, Un este à Majorca (Summer in Mallorca), which is intended as a response to George Sand's famous Un hiver à Majorca (Presses Universitaires de Clermont-Ferrand), is more readily available in French. Marià Villangómez (1913-2002) and Jaume Vidal Alcover (1923-1991) will explore the possibilities offered by the theatre, while the journalist Baltasar Porcel, born in Andratx in 1937 and who died in Barcelona in 2009, will try his hand at all styles, moving happily from travelogues to novels, short stories to political essays, and in the process winning several major literary prizes. Some of his work has been translated by Actes Sud. Finally, it is impossible not to mention Carme Riera, born in 1948 in Palma, who has also won prestigious awards, including the National Prize for Spanish Literature in 2015, and whose Half of the Soul, to be discovered at Points, gives an insight into her talent, and her fellow countryman José Carlos Llop, a prolific and protean author, whom Jacqueline Chambon Editions has been faithfully following since 2005. In 2018 was translated Kingsof Alexandria, which awakens memories of the 70s in Mallorca and the 18 years of the author, between pop music, politics and drugs of all kinds.
