Joan Fuster Was Catalonia’S Most Eminent Man of Letters Until His Death in 1992

Dictionary Cover 10-2005.qxp 05/05/2006 10:02 Page 1 Historian, critic, journalist, intellectual, Dictionary philologist, academic — Joan Fuster was Catalonia’s most eminent man of letters until his death in 1992. This present volume allows Dictionary Fuster to expound his philosophy on topics as diverse as freedom, silence, xenophobia, novels, avarice, clocks and watches, time and for the Idle order. The attitudes and events described for theIdle may relate to the early 1960s, but his critical examination of individual and ethnic rights, Joan Fuster war, justice, sexuality and nationality are still of contemporary relevance. His intellectual precision is tempered at all times with a basic human warmth. “An Accomplice is In his native Valencia, Fuster was considered anyone who helps you be as not so much an author as a phenomenon, and this volume can be read with equal benefit by Catalan specialists and those who Joan Fuster you are.” are merely curious. “Who, except for a person of immeasurable imagination, Five would be capable of imagining Leaves £9.95 the idea of Zero?” Five Leaves A CO-EDITION WITH Dictionary prelims 10-2005.qxp 05/05/2006 09:54 Page 1 Dictionary for the Idle Dictionary prelims 10-2005.qxp 05/05/2006 09:54 Page 3 Dictionary for the Idle Joan Fuster (Translated from the Catalan by Dominic Keown, Sally Anne Kitts, Joan-Pau Rubiés, Max Wheeler, Judith Willis and Alan Yates) Five Leaves Publications www.fiveleaves.co.uk Anglo-Catalan Society Occasional Publications – New Series Dictionary prelims 10-2005.qxp 05/05/2006 09:54 Page 4 Dictionary for the Idle This edition published in 2006 by Five Leaves Publications, PO Box 8786, Nottingham NG1 9AW [email protected], www.fiveleaves.co.uk in association with the Anglo-Catalan Society We would like to thank the Institut Ramon Llull, Generalitat de Catalunya, the Càtedra Joan Fuster, University of Valencia, Grup 62, and the heirs of Joan Fuster for their support of this project. ©The Estate of Joan Fuster Translation ©Dominic Keown, Sally Anne Kitts, John-Pau Rubiés, Max Wheeler, Judith Willis and Alan Yates Introduction ©Dominic Keown ISBN: 1905512066 Five Leaves acknowledges financial support from Arts Council England Dictionary prelims 10-2005.qxp 05/05/2006 09:54 Page 5 Contents Introduction by Dominic Keown 1 Foreword by Joan Fuster 13 Dictionary for the Idle by Joan Fuster 15 Joan Fuster: a short biography 189 Translators’ Notes 191 Dictionary main 10-2005.qxp 05/05/2006 09:56 Page 1 Introduction A Question of Format Perhaps the most surprising feature of this apparently innocuous volume is the title whose banality is both unusual and intriguing. There are few publications which could offer less inducement to be read than a wordbook; and an assumed indolence on the part of the reader hardly implies, in turn, engagement with issues of interest or moment. The explanation for such anomalous self- deprecation is best understood, of course, in the historical context of a repressive dictatorship. An important func- tion of Franco’s censorship was to impose a single national unity by proscribing all vestiges of language and culture which might challenge Castilian, the officially imposed idiom. In this way, though written in Catalan and thereby illegal, the subservience implicit in the title suggests that this opuscule should be taken as no threat to the cultural hegemony of Spanish or the moral authority of the regime. If anything its presence would merely serve to confirm the status quo — that is, the subsidiary irrelevance of the ver- nacular — and could thereby be tolerated. There can be little doubt that Fuster belittled the importance of his work precisely for this reason. After all, as far as the censor was concerned, it would be absurd to imagine that a dictionary for those with nothing better to do could constitute any threat to the rigidly imposed sta- bility of Franco’s regime and the enforced pre-eminence of its official language. There is, however, a much weightier dimension which belies the putative superficiality of this project. Fuster was an inveterate Gallophile and it is not difficult to discern in his dictionary the guiding influence of the Enlightenment and, in particular, the encyclopedic movement. Indeed, the similarity is not only evident in the adoption of the model 1 Dictionary main 10-2005.qxp 05/05/2006 09:56 Page 2 of a lexicon as a basis for intellectual speculation but the struggle of the philosophes against the censorship and obscurantism of an absolute monarchy and regressive church had also much in common with the Catalan resistance to the similarly reactionary mindset of this most fanatically religious of dictatorships. As such, it is by no means difficult to see Voltaire’s acutely incisive Dictionnaire Philosophique as the inspira- tion for the project. Fundamental to the stylistics of the original enterprise is a tension in the discourse whose mix- ture of ironic flippancy and erudition sought to sharpen the critical instinct in the reader as regards the correct inter- pretation of the information provided. And Fuster’s extra- ordinary book, devised in a configuration largely unknown in contemporary literatures, exploits the same strange com- bination of aphoristic frivolity and irony, on the one hand, and serious deliberation on the other. The application of wit and humour to scupper the presumptuous and pious values of the Establishment is a commitment shared by both authors. The devilment implicit in the exercise in the debunking of official values, for example, is evident in the format itself where the ‘fortuitous’ arrangement of alpha- betical order will compromise the sanctity of key elements of the social fabric. In this way, a concept of the magnitude of majesty may be deflated through the locating of its mea- gre definition next to a comparatively voluminous explica- tion of, say, mayonnaise! As such, the hybridity of the dictionary encourages the reader to separate the intellectual wheat from the chaff as the genial satirist’s intent resounds throughout as evident in his favoured device: “Les livres les plus utiles sont ceux dont les lecteurs font eux-memes la moitié”.1 The tension between seriousness of purpose and super- fluous flourish involves a flexibility of thought shared by author and reader which will act in itself as a counter to the blind acceptance of the pedestrian dogmatism imposed by the regime. As a consequence, the capacity to read between the lines becomes essential for the correct 2 Dictionary main 10-2005.qxp 05/05/2006 09:56 Page 3 assimilation of the enterprise, as is made apparent from the very start with tongue very much in cheek. From the very first line I want to disabuse you, the reader, as to the scope of the title of the book you have in your hands. It was not my intention — need I explain? — to compile a dictionary. As on other occasions, I am merely gathering in one volume an incoherent series of writings, diverse in theme and unequal in length, which may be cat- egorized within the modest yet elastic genre of the essay. Despite the author’s protestations to the contrary, the transparent flippancy of much of the discourse belies a critical intent to which the reader must become attuned. These are no “diverse” and “incoherent” jottings but a carefully disguised ideological attack on the closed and repressive mindset of Francoism. Indeed, the terseness of the sophistication becomes evident in one of the central narrative strategies. To avoid the undesired involvement of the censor, the locus of the meditation is necessarily fixed somewhere removed in the fields of history, litera- ture, science or international current affairs. However, it is the reader’s responsibility to recognise how the thrust of the argument returns inevitably to the despicable system controlling Spain. Paradoxically, then — and despite the implication of the title — we cannot allow ourselves to be idle for a second as the work becomes exemplary of “faire penser”, the philosophes ultimate aim of stimulating reflection as a first step to resistance.2 3 Dictionary main 10-2005.qxp 05/05/2006 09:56 Page 4 Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities Voltaire In a manner entirely similar to Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, the Franco regime was predicated on a series of par- tial and tendentious interpretations of history which, together with a discreditable recourse to myths, lent spu- rious justification to its execrable designs. Though less inimical than the new Roman Empire of the Fascists or the Aryan supremacy of the Nazis, there was no shortage of the same messianistic purpose in Spanish Caudillismo. In familiar autocratic fashion, the divinely inspired nature of the Generalísimo’s crusade against democracy was pro- claimed far and wide from every official quarter but may be illustrated pertinently by the legends on the coinage which rejoiced in the anointed victor of the Civil War, “Francisco Franco, Caudillo de España por la gracia de Dios” (Francisco Franco, Caudillo of Spain by the Grace of God). As was the case with Italy and Germany, the no less despicable imperialist spirit was also pervasive and evident in the device on the flip side whence from the fascis- tic war cry resounded with equal numismatic pretension, “España, Una, Grande y Libre” (Spain, One, Great and Free). Needless to say, the “greatness” and “freedom” per- ceived in an economic backwater whose chaotic loss of empire and disastrous policy of autarky was rivalled only by its total disrespect for human rights and rule of justice merely serves to underline the maniacal irrelevance typi- cal of the abomination of Francoism.

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