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Catalan literature

If everything is political, language is no exception. Spanish city, the streets of Barcelona resonate in Spanish, but capital of Catalonia, it is to the sound of Catalan that its heart vibrates. This is why it is impossible to mention the history of his literature without mentioning Ramon LLull, who was born in Palma de Mallorca at the beginning of the 13th century. Page became the King's son's tutor, man began his life in good health, without asking himself the slightest existential question. At the dawn of his 30th birthday, God's Call was so strong that he abandoned his family and property to go and preach, which he did in Arabic, which he learned for the occasion, but also in Catalan, which he was the first to transcribe into writing in a literary way. An illustrious figure of the Middle Ages, Ramon LLull left to posterity his famous machine of thought, many theological and scientific writings, but also two philosophical novels written in his favourite idiom, Blaquerne and Félix ou les merveilles du monde. In the following century, the poet Ausiàs March made the transition to the Renaissance, evoking love and in turn using Catalan. He was also Joanot Martorell's brother-in-law, author of the phenomenal Tirant le Blanc, which was only published posthumously in 1490, but was so admired by Miguel de Cervantes that he is mentioned in his Don Quixote, a cult work that also includes a Barcelona episode and offers an interesting vision of the city's development in the early 17th century

Catalan, as a literary language, experienced a certain decline until Renaixença in the 19th century. Close to European romanticism, this important cultural movement is particularly represented by the one who was nicknamed in turn The Prince of Poets or the Dante of Catalonia, Jacint Verdaguer. Born in the beautiful month of May 1845 in Folgueroles, from a family of modest means, it is for an ecclesiastical career that he was destined to enter Vic's seminary from a very early age. Coming into contact with classical, Greek, Latin and Spanish authors, a new vocation soon emerged, and it would become literary. His verses were first of all of a religious nature, then in 1865 and 1866 he won the first prizes at the Barcelona Floral Games, poetic games in Catalan that were all the rage. For health reasons, he had to go into exile, and it was on the boat that brought him back from Cuba in 1876 that he completed his masterpiece, L'Atlantide, to be discovered in its French version published by the BNF. This poem of ten songs tells the story of Christopher Columbus' shipwreck and his encounter with a hermit who reveals all the secrets of the sunken island to him. Special prize of the Floral Games of 1877, this epic will earn its author the consecration.

Almost at the same time, on 10 October 1860, another poet, Joan Maragall, was born in Barcelona. The beautiful gardens that bear his name, nestled in the heart of the Montjuïc hillside, show all the tenderness that Barcelonians feel for this tutelary figure of Catalan Modernism. Coming from a wealthy family, having studied law, he turned to journalism in his thirties, after having tasted the pleasure of translating such illustrious authors as Goethe or Nietzsche. Bourgeois, but bohemian, committed, but refusing to enter politics, believer, but close to nature, his multiple facets push him to want to restore the "paraula viva", the living word, the one found among the people and that the poet must put in shape. Joan Maragall is the author of a rich and innovative work, but also of the Cant de la Senyera (Song of the Flag) which, set to music, will become one of the main Catalan national anthems.

Innovators Josep Pla (1897-1981), Salvador Espriu (1913-1985) and Josep Maria de Sagarra (1894-1961) were also innovators. Between the three of them, they have continued this genuine renewal of Catalan literature and testified to the historical reality of the emerging 20th century. The first one confided in Le Cahier gris, which Jacqueline Chambon Publishing offered for translation in 1992, the second produced a remarkable work including La Peau du taureau and Le Cimetière de Sinera. Josep Maria de Sagarra, for his part, published what is considered to be one of the greatest novels about his city, Barcelona. Written in just two months, the imposing Vies privées was censored when it was published in 1932 and was only available in French in 2015, at the initiative of the Bourgois publishing house. An uncompromising painting of Catalan high society in the dark years preceding Franco's takeover, the writer Juan Marsé, winner of the 2008 Cervantes Prize, described this book as an "obligatory reference".

The beginning of the century was favourable to the expansion of Catalan culture and Modernism gave way to Noucentisme. Aesthetically, this movement quickly became political and asserted itself in the victory of the Catalan Solidaritat party in 1907. The collective is required, all of them converging towards a single objective, the creation of a common culture that will be part of eternity. In poetry, Josep Carner draws inspiration from Catalan masters Jacint Verdaguer and Joan Maragall, but also from European influences to develop his art. His collection Els fruits saborosos propels him as the leader of Noucentisme, like Eugeni d'Ors whose Glosses, literary notes that he publishes in the daily press, highlight "the palpitations of time". The First World War did not succeed in extinguishing this cultural militancy, but unfortunately the coup d'état orchestrated by Miguel Promo de Rivera in 1923 did not.

The contemporary era

The Generation of 14 is followed by the Generation of 50, that of the "children of war". Like Juan Goytisolo who lost his mother during the Francoist bombings of 1938, these writers experienced civil war and then dictatorship, this is reflected in their writing that tends towards social realism and a real political critique of Spain. After his clandestine involvement alongside the Communist Party, Juan Goytisolo chose exile to France where he joined Gallimard Publishing, first as a reader and then as editorial director of Spanish-language literature, before leaving the parent company, in which he would continue to publish, to sail to new shores. Although he has travelled extensively, his native country will remain his main source of inspiration, blending his sharp point of view with a certain irony, for example in Mourning in Heaven or Identity Documents. He was awarded many prizes, including the National Prize for Spanish Literature in 2008, and died just 10 years later in Marrakech. Jaime Gil de Biedma (1929-1990) also left the country for a while, but eventually returned to Barcelona, where he was born. This did not prevent him from publishing Compañeros de viaje in 1959, which, like Moralities in 1966, evokes the oppression of the people by the regime in power, bringing them into line with social poets. In his diary, published in 1974 under the title Diaro del artista seriamente enfermo, he offers an interesting panorama of this generation of 50 to which Juan Marsé, whose novel Adieu la vie, adieu l'amour could only appear in Mexico, suffering from Franco's censorship in the 1970s, is related by far. To discover as a bonus his opus Teresa l'après-midi, published in French by Editions Bourgois in 1993, which intelligently combines stories of love and politics, Castilian and Catalan

Another name has become familiar to us, although it is generally unknown that Eduardo Mendoza was born in Barcelona in 1943. Son of a magistrate, he studied law and then sociology. Nevertheless, he left his legal profession to join New York where he worked as a translator for the United Nations. His first novel appeared in the year of Franco's death and was awarded the Prix de la Critique. In La Vérité sur l'affaire Savolta, available in Points' pocket, it is a Catalonia in the grip of workers' strikes and anarchist attacks that is described, under the guise of a police investigation. While Mendoza uses a more classic form than his predecessors, he also knows how to show humour, as he demonstrates in The Mystery of the Bewitched Crypt in 1979. But it was with La Ville des prodiges (1986) that he took a step forward, and established himself - during his lifetime - as an already classic author. Its hero, or anti-hero, Onofre Bouvilla, struggles to find his place in the bubbling Barcelona that is about to host the 1887 Universal Exhibition, his comical, but precarious destiny has seduced many readers. A rich and explosive work full of international awards, including the Franz Kafka in 2015 and the Cervantes the following year.

His contemporary and compatriot Jaume Cabré also seduced the French public, although it took him eight years to write a monument of Catalan literature: Confiteor. Published in 2013 by Actes Sud, the success is immediate, to such an extent that some people swear only by this imposing novel of more than 800 pages. To summarize it is an impossible mission, it is about a little boy, Adrià, who does not seem to be born in the right family, but also about a violin and an upset love, a disease that eats away at memory and precipitates writing, philosophy and erudition. Out of the ordinary, this work unfailingly supports multiple rereads and seems perfect to accompany the traveller on a sneaky trip. In the same vein, the trilogy The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, whose first volume, The Shade of the Wind, was translated by Grasset in 2004, made Carlos Ruiz Zafón one of the best-selling authors in the world. A best-seller with millions of copies sold, this historical fresco that takes place in post-war Barcelona tells the story of Daniel Sempere's desperate quest for a mysterious and unknown writer, Julián Carax. For police fanatics, it is impossible to ignore Victor del Árbol, his Sadness of the Samurai, published by Actes Sud Noir in 2011, earned him immediate notoriety.