Books and Reading Year News Eva Muñoz

April

05.04.05

The thriller: a history of the genre according to Ken Follett

Ken Follett (Wales, 1949) was forbidden by his very religious and strict parents to watch television, go to the cinema and even listen to the radio. So the only entertainment for the young Follet was reading. It seems that at some moment he decided to dedicate himself to writing books that might entertain readers. And there is no doubt that he achieved this. The author of Pillars of the Earth is today one the most popular and widely read writers in the world. But the thriller is the genre that he has cultivated most —in Spain he has just published Whiteout, about the theft in a pharmaceutical laboratory of an extremely dangerous virus—, and he gave a lecture on the history of this genre on 5th April at the auditorium of Random House Mondadori. What is a great idea for a novel? Follet is obsessed by this question but at least he already knows the condition that defines it: “A good idea for a novel is one that generates forty or fifty good scenes.” And the main characteristic of a thriller? “The danger that threatens the protagonist.” These two ingredients —who knows whether by planning or chance— were in The Riddle of the Sands by Robert Erskine, published in 1903, “the first thriller in history,” according to the British writer. When Carruthers and Davies, its two young protagonists, set out to enjoy a pleasure cruise through the Baltic, they discover that the German navy is planning the invasion of Great Britain. An idea that, undoubtedly, offered many scenes, in which our protagonists would also have to save themselves from the moment the enemy discovers them. However, its publishers did not have everyone on their side when they decided to publish it, “because it was a completely new genre,” so they pretended that it was based “on a true story”, a magic formula that always seems to add an extra attraction. Even Daniel Defoe implied the same with respect to Robinson Crusoe, recalled Follet, and, in 1790, there were not many published novels —one should note that Don Quixote, considered the first modern novel and published in 1605, did not create a real novelistic tradition until a century after its publication. The Riddle of the Sands “is the foundation of most thrillers of the 20th century,” asserts Follet. However, twelve years would have to pass —can you imagine the number of thrillers that would appear in the next twelve years?— until the appearance of The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan (which would later be adapted for the cinema by Alfred Hitchcock). Hannay, its protagonist, not only has to save himself but prevent a war, which amplifies the dimension of the danger. One of the characteristic aspects of the early thriller, apart from the absence of female characters, is the status of the protagonist: a hero, “an upper class” man. Why would the reader want to identify with him if he was a vulgar and ordinary man? Moreover, the thriller, like the western, another genre that appeared at more or less the same time, will almost always have a violent ending. But violence did not impede Phillips Oppenheim soon after from taking the thriller to glamorous heights, now populated by beautiful enigmatic women (as Ian Fleming would do years later through his impeccable James Bond). The Dreyfus case and the disquiet of the European bourgeoisie over communism is the context in which Follet situates the appearance of spy novels, such as The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad, the first exponent of what would come to be called the psychological thriller, although Follet asserts without hesitation that “the archetypal psychological thriller is Hamlet.” However, he adds, “if I had written it, in the first place it would have been much more difficult for him to enter the castle. It is far too easy for Hamlet to get access to his enemy the King, his step father, given that he also lives in the castle.” But we are left with the Shakespearian option and allow Follet the possibility of a remake. In any case, it seems that the honour of having written the first psychological thriller of the 20th century lies with Conrad for his aforementioned The Secret Agent, a trend which would later be embraced by the master Graham Greene and later John Le Carré. For her part, Daphne du Maurier would inaugurate with her Rebecca (1938) —also adapted for the cinema by Hitchcock— a kind of psychological thriller “especially aimed at the female public”, in which all the dangers faced by the protagonist “are in her head.” Although they are often confused with each other, detective novels “are not exactly the same as the thriller.” The fact is that neither Miss Marple nor Inspector Poirot are ever really in danger, a condition which is shared by all the protagonists of the thriller genre. But the American Dashiell Hammett will impose this condition on his protagonists, a moment in which “for the first time an American author influences the thriller,” considers Follett, and who will be followed by Raymond Chandler, with his popular detective Philip Marlow, and many others. And what happens after the Second World War? On the one hand, the novels of Follet himself are an example of the phenomenon. The Second World War will become one of the favourite subjects for the plots of thrillers, a genre that will reach its peak with the Cold War and authors like Ian Fleming and John Le Carré. At the same time, the genre diversifies with writers of the stature of Patricia Highsmith, who persuaded readers to identify with the attractive and immoral murderer Tom Ripley, or with curious variants like that developed by Mickey Spillane, author of “the sexiest stories”. By way of example look at two of his titles: The Erection Set or My Gun is Quick. “His attitude was as bad towards men as it was towards women,” comments Follett, “but his paperback novels sold in their millions.” But perhaps the most mythical author of the time was Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond. At least he was for Follet who confesses: “I read Casino Royale at the age of twelve. Of course, from that moment I wanted to be like James Bond.” The sophisticated agent 007, at Her Majesty’s service, “is the first secret agent with a salary, a civil servant,” comments the author of Jackdaws. The distinguished Bond, “provides us with a vicarious excitement,” says Follett. Without doubt, that of experiencing dangerous adventures always compensated by sexual favours from a fabulous woman to share a bed with surrounded by luxury and glamour. But the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 obliged the authors of the genre to seek out new plots for their intrigues. Organised crime was a logical alternative, with a “masterly” precedent by Frederick Forsyth and his Chacal, published in Spain in 1971. One of the important aspects of this novel is that “Forsyth was painstaking in the practical aspects of how to carry out a murder. After Chacal we all had to be much more careful when describing this type of scene,” recognises Follett. Another alternative comes from novels about psychopathic murderers, with Tom Harris and The Silence of the Lambs, the book that I would like to have written,” confesses the Brit, at the top of the genre. Or those of professionals in danger, scientists, journalists or lawyers, like those in The Firm by John Grisham. In any case, concludes Ken Follet, the thriller “is perhaps the definitive literature of the 20th century. It is of course one of the most important genres.” And “until one hundred years ago,” explains the author of Hornet Flight, “it was the military and volunteers who would make war.” However, in the 20th century there was a change and all men and women were convinced that one day we would fight or die in a war. And perhaps this is why we are fascinated by stories of danger. Because they speak of anxiety and anguish peculiar to men and women of the 20th century.”

A friendly third degree

After the lecture, Sergio Vila-Sanjuán, curator of the Books and Reading Year, submitted our protagonist to a friendly third degree. This was the result:

“Everyday I sit at my desk and rack my brain.” This is Follet’s not very mysterious “trick” for creating stories, who, before he writes says that he dedicates an entire “year” to “planning them”. “Planning a story takes time because you have to organise everything correctly.” This methodical writer never starts with the end. “It would seem suspicious to me,” he argues. “I would write five hundred pages about the end.” The Second World War is one the most recurrent scenes of his novels. And “the Nazis embody in the contemporary imagination the archetypal villain.” Moreover, “today we continue to see it as a war between good and evil, and there is no other war that has given rise to this consensus,” he explains. There is an abundant bibliography about the Second World War for research, but Follet also always makes use of the sources when possible. For this he has a paid researcher in charge of finding the right people. So, to write Jackdaws, he contracted as consultant “the best expert on infiltration of enemy line,” while for his latest novel, Whiteout, he consulted three people who design security systems for laboratories and nuclear plants and asked them “what would they do if they wanted to outwit one of these systems.” “My experience as a journalist helps me, of course, but imagination is more important than research,” he concludes. Follett recognises that “for many years they have asked to write the second part of Pillars of the Earth.” However, so far he has resisted and it seems that the novel that he now has in preparation definitively settles the matter. “It frightened me because second parts are not usually good. Moreover, most of the characters of Pillars… were dead. However, I also thought that readers believed that it was my best novel, so finally I decided to write another that takes place two hundred years later in the same place,” and, therefore, most of the characters are descendants of them. In this case, the Black Death substitutes the Herculean task of constructing a Gothic cathedral. The pandemic that reduced one third of the European population in the 14th century seemed to the writer, “a sufficiently great and important drama” to achieve the category of what he considers “a good idea for a novel.” Follet, who confesses that he would like to write a political thriller and says that he admires “this kind of story such as The Grapes of Wrath or To Kill a Mockingbird,” recognises nevertheless that “when I try it doesn’t work.” And he admits: “As a writer, one does not have as many choices as it may appear. And I don’t believe that I have a political novel within me.·” Finally, to the question of whether he has thought about contemporary Spain as a setting for one of his novels, the author said: “The truth is that I’d never thought about it but I’ll keep it in mind.” 07.04.05

The British Cervantes’ scholar delivers the inaugural lecture of the congress ‘Cervantes, Don Quixote and Barcelona’. The event closes on Saturday with a tribute to Martí de Riquer

Anthony J. Close analyses the comic dimension of the Barcelona episodes of Don Quixote

Barcelona is the setting of the episodes of Don Quixote and Sancho which, as Cervantes himself affirms in the epigraph of chapter 61, “have more truth than discretion.” In Barcelona, “innately courteous” and as many other eulogies as Cervantes dedicates to it, Don Quixote knows glory and defeat; and all the scholars agree in pointing out the importance of the Barcelona chapters as much for their meaning as for their formal aspects. The congress ‘Cervantes, Don Quixote and Barcelona’, directed by Carme Riera and Guillermo Serés and inaugurated today in the Auditorium Caixa Catalunya in La Pedrera, brings together until Saturday some of the main contemporary specialists on Cervantes with the end of recalling the figure and work of Miguel de Cervantes and his relationship with the city of Barcelona.

Lyricism, realism, contrast between the epic sweep and dramatic comedy… all these registers coexist in the Barcelona episodes of Don Quixote, in which, in the judgement of the scholar from the University of Cambridge Anthony J. Close, Don Quixote and Sancho “confront real life episodes more amazing than the chimeras of the books of chivalry.” However, the professor, who delivered the inaugural lecture of the congress, was charged with the “difficult job” of dealing with the comic dimension of these episodes. And Close does not find Antonio Moreno’s mocking of Don Quixote and Sancho “at all funny”; neither is he amused by the defeat on the beach against the Knight of the White Moon “that induces tears more than laughter.” So where is the humour? The humour lies, among other things, in the contrast produced between what the reader knows and what Don Quixote and Sancho do not know. When they arrive in Barcelona, our protagonists are two very popular characters, one with the reputation as a mad man and the other as a fool, as in the second part of the novel all those who come across them have read the first part of their adventures and know about their wanderings. Cervantes’ “immodesty”, which converted the continuation of 1615 into something like a “self-homage,” points out Close, makes inevitable “the public acclaim for Don Quixote and Sancho,” and that is combined with a good dose of mockery. But, moreover, our hidalgo and his squire arrive in Barcelona on the Saint John’s eve, with the city celebrating, which gives their first movements in the city “a universal feeling of joy.” The narrative model used by Cervantes in the entrance of Don Quixote and Sancho in Barcelona, explains the professor, is that of the chronicles that describe the entrance of monarchs into a city. “What is comical in these episodes is that Don Quixote thinks that it is only for him and the merit of his deeds that this celebration is held, and for being a festival and for his fame as an amusing mad man.” Of course, the mockery also extends to the style of the books of chivalry but it does so “from a point of view very close to them,” as Cervantes, who was familiar with them as he had cultivated the idealising genres, “aspired to the reform of the genre of books of chivalry more than their annihilation.” “What is truly revolutionary about Don Quixote in terms of the prose of the time,” continued the professor, “is its hybrid nature,” which frequently changes, without interruption, from the lyrical to the comical, from the realistic to the burlesque. But with reference to mockery, Cervantes suffered from a contradiction similar to that of other contemporary authors such as Mateo Alemán, Anthony J. Close pointed out: “to like the end while hating the means.” And so for example, Don Antonio Moreno, who is initially presented as a “model practical joker,” ends by recognising “at least implicitly” what is morally reproachable in his behaviour in the words that he says to Sansón Carrasco after he, in his role as Knight of the White Moon, defeats the knight of La Mancha. And this episode was another of those that focused the attention of the Brit, emphasising its irony over its tragic nature that a certain tradition has attributed to it. If, on the one hand, in the combat episode we witness a “romantic idealisation of the character,” it is no less true that the same narration allows us to see a “latent humour” through the eyes of Sancho what is taking place. The professor, who cites the Persiles to support his argument, pointed out how, while in the latter “Renato truly suffers the death of his honour,” in Don Quixote the pathetic nature of the situation contrasts with the frivolity of the matter for which Don Quixote and the Knight of the White Moon fight, that is, “the beauty of a non existent lady.”

Language diversity: a sign of verisimilitude

The professor of the Sorbonne Jean-Pierre Étienvre, who participated in the congress in the afternoon, took up Close’s argument and pointed out that Cervantes is capable of making us laugh and cry from one moment to the next. The “genius” of the writer, added Étienvre, lies in the fact that “he does not oppose the tragic and the comic but rather he “fuses them.” The professor also underlined the “symbolic dimension” of the challenge of the Knight of the White Moon on the beach in Barcelona, one of the “horizons” of Don Quixote on the final stage of his adventures. And although the Barcelona episode of Quixote can continue to be analysed in the smallest detail in books, congresses and exhibitions, “one must not lose sight of Cervantes’ work as a whole and its many dimensions.” This was stated by the professor of the University of Saragossa Aurora Egido, who ended her contribution paraphrasing the critic Northop Frye, for whom it is not necessary to resort to Macbeth to know the history of Scotland, but to know the story of a man who gains a kingdom and loses his soul. First, Egido referred to the contrast between the urban adventures of Don Quixote and Sancho and their wanderings on the open road, pointing out that “the former only give them troubles,” in contrast to the freedom of the previous episodes. The professor of the University of Palermo Maria Caterina Ruta also referred to the specific weight of the bourgeois context. Finally, Egido highlighted the interest of Cervantes in languages, “a sign of verisimilitude” which is made clear with the inclusion of words in Catalan, Portuguese and references to Gasconian , Tuscanian , German, Arabic, Turkish and the consideration of Latin and Greek as the “queens” of languages. There is even a dissertation about the values of translation in the episode at the printer’s. “Cervantes understands language diversity as richness and not as divine punishment.” Ruiz-Domènec talks of the will for social transformation in Tirant lo Blanc and in Don Quixote

While at the Auditorium of Caixa Catalunya the Cervantes scholars Anthony J. Close, Aurora Egido or Jean-Pierre Étienvre discussed Don Quixote in the congress ‘Cervantes, Don Quixote and Barcelona’, the Chapel of Santa Àgata hosted the words of the writer and professor of Medieval History at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, José Enrique Ruiz-Domènec, who delivered the lecture ‘Tirant lo Blanc to Don Quixote: something more than a chivalrous revival’ which closed the cycle ‘Don Quixote-Tirant lo Blanc’, organised by the Institució de les Lletres Catalanes within the programme of activities of the Books and Reading Year. “To observe the world through the eyes of the wandering knights: this is greatness of Tirant lo Blanc by Joanot Martorell and Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes,” stated Ruiz-Domènec at the beginning of the event. The two novels offer a portrait of European social life, a context in which the chivalrous ideal triumphs and in which it is difficult to distinguish a knight of blood and bones from a literary hero. But the renewal of the chivalrous ideals was “something more than just a mere revival of the classical models from Arthurian novels,” explained the professor. It was “a demanding option for a new period characterised by the coexistence of two cultural models of major influence: that which is based on Borgognian Gothic and that which is articulated around the Renaissance.” Ruiz-Domènec helps us to explore the social and political context of 15th century Europe, “a context in which the European states, incapable of restoring the political order upon sacred bases, chose the culture of war as a minor evil.” A decision which, however, did not have the moral blessing of the humanist doctrines of the time which “defended war as the main honour, which those who believed that life had to be at the service of their king and public affairs aspired to.” Thus, in 17th century Europe. “the chivalrous ideal is not an anachronism, not even an ideology of the leisured nobility,” but rather a way of “making need a virtue,” transforming the rule of honour and the precepts of virtue into the principles governing a society. Moreover, “the chivalrous ideal made patriotism a pretext to safeguard the European culture from the absorption by Ottoman Turks.” And, in a Europe which at that period was creating the first worldwide economy, “the ideal of a straight life of honour and loyalty laid the foundations of the concept of international law.” In short, in Europe “there was the impression that the world needed a profound change, and the chivalrous ideal had to provide it.” It is in this context that it is necessary to locate the masterwork of Joanot Martorell, Tirant lo Blanc, published in 1490. Martorell imagines “a world dominated by the noble game of the rules of honour that encourages some chosen men to make justice and the defence of women the main objective of their existence.” These ideas, Ruiz-Domènec recalled, “are present in the majority of military orders created in those years.” The character chosen to develop this conception of the world is a young knight from Bretagne, “painfully conscious that a superior mission is awaiting him, as he is convinced that he must join the order of chivalry.” The meeting with a hermit shows Tirant that the chivalrous life “inexorably involves the reading of books of chivalry,” a “rite” which makes him realise that the chivalrous life “is a procedure to achieve fame, that modality of immortality that kept growing during the 15th century among the Europeans concerned about their role in the world.” But some, like Martorell himself, “suspect” that chivalrous values can only exist in books and that, precisely because of this the chivalry of the time is no more than nostalgia for passed times. For this reason, authors such as Martorell, Diego de Valera and Jean de Bueil share a same idea: “to remove literature from these values and make them the sediment of a new conception of social life.” In this way, “the awareness of this mission opens Tirant lo Blanc to the real world, the world of daily things, ambition, cruelty, sex, envy.” This is why “the human interest of the character created by Martorell,” concluded Ruiz-Domènec, “consists of showing us the world as it was at his time.” It is worth pointing that Queen Isabel the Catholic did not like this chivalry so committed to social life. “The queen,” noted the professor “enjoyed fantastic stories of unreal heroes, little or no interested in politics.” Those books, such as at that time so famous Amadis de Gaula, which provide an image of society “which contrasts with the parodic description that of these values we find in Ariosto and Spenser,” a very indicative contrast of the difference between Europe and Castille in the 16th. And it is at this precise moment when Don Quixote enters on stage. “Cervantes’ initial objective is to return the issue of chivalry to where it belongs, but the art of the novel takes him along unexpected paths and becomes an in-depth reflection on the condition of man in the world.” Cervantes, continued Ruiz-Domènec, knows that he can only achieve his purposes in terms of chivalry by writing about chivalry parodically. And thus, “he imagines what could have happened if a hidalgo in his thirties had hit the road to solve injustices and put in order an unfair and debased society.” In reality, “we could not find anything further from the sophistication of the chivalrous ideal represented by authors such as Montaigne than the eccentric hidalgo from La Mancha,” commented Ruiz-Domènec. However, “understanding the Knight of the Sad Face in order, thanks to him, to establish a diagnosis of the world is the mission that Cervantes aimed to carry out.” The result is “a critical stroll through the mental lucidity of a society, a precious portrait not only of the clumsy international policy of Felipe III but of the whole Spanish society,” while demonstrating that “the past was not what was stated in some history books nor was the present as brilliant as the shark lawyers of the Court or some playwrights used to show.” Don Quixote “brings together all the teachings of more than two centuries of renewal of the chivalrous ideal, and locates it over the appropriate judgement,” added the professor. This is why he admires Tirant lo Blanc while he despises books of chivalry, as we find out in the “witty scrutiny” of the priest and the barber. The journey, first through La Mancha and later through the areas of the Crown of Aragon until reaching Barcelona, “is a tribute to the notion of adventure of the wandering knights and at the same time a way of perceiving what is really happening in his country, and what he does not like.” And what is really happening in Spain “is an absolute lack of distinction, a passion for the vulgar aspects of human life, an absence of critical sense before the abuses of power or dogma.” Like in the case of Joanot Martorell, that of Ariosto and, perhaps that of Spenser, added Ruiz-Domènec, “Don Quixote’s search for truth is incompatible with the totalitarian universe.” Moreover, in the wandering life that the Knight of the Sad Face chooses, the professor sees “praise for the cosmopolis that is about to disappear in Europe due to the constraint created by the rigour of the Calvinists and the reactionary tone of the Counter Reformation.” The modernity to which Cervantes aspires, and that his protagonist shares, bestows on the person the right to judge the political power, to have some honourable rules in which the friendship between equals and solidarity with the most deprived are the basis of society. “Again,” concluded Ruiz-Domènec, “the ideal of chivalry supports a renewal of the social and cultural fabric of Spain and a transformation of its literary values.” But the chivalrous ideal is not possible with a lady, added the lecturer, and the novels of chivalry were “the privileged space to reflect on the relations between men and women,” which “literature called love.” And “there where Martorell located the plan of silenced sexuality, Cervantes approaches the distance between reality and literature.” So, when Don Quixote, sighing for Dulcinea in his retreat in Sierra Morena, saw himself suddenly overwhelmed by doubt over whether all this made sense, “he did what any human being with a sense of humour must do: laugh at himself.” “A gesture,” concluded Ruiz-Domènec, “from which we can all still learn a lot even today.”

A lecture by Arnaud Dercelles opens the exhibition ‘Le Corbusier and books’

The Catalan Association of Architects participates in the Books and Reading Year with a proposal that brings together one of the best architects in history with the world of first editions. ‘Le Corbusier and books’, whose curators are the architects Fernando Marzá and Josep Quetglas, features, until 23rd April, around eighty volumes of the first editions of the publications of one of the contemporary architecture masters. It was opened on 7th April with a lecture at the venue of the Association of Architects by Arnaud Darcelles, from the Fondation Le Corbusier in Paris, on the private library of the French architect. “With 1,600 volumes, it is the library of a visual artist and of an architect,” stated Arnaud Darcelles. “His library resembles him. It shows us his personality, his travels and his centres of interest.” It is an eclectic collection including “essays, prose, poetry and a few theatre plays,” as well as art and architecture books (and also journals), travel and photography guides and books as different as a copy of La danse hindoue or another of Vie de Jesus. In fact, his library can show us aspects of his personality. Like his way of reading. Some books, for instance, have uncut pages, which indicates that “in some books he stopped reading at some point or he searched for specific pages.” In others we find dedications, which lead us “to the prelude or the conclusion of a friendship.” They often include notes and comments by the architect from which we can deduce “a gradual embellishment or depuration of Le Corbusier’s prose,” pointed out Dercelles. Notes, by the way, which, generally accompanied by a date, “allow us to reconstruct the evolution of his reading, given that his agenda, as turbulent as his life, is difficult to reproduce.” “His readings,” explained Dercellles, “were never innocent.” During the lecture, the scholar showed slides of some of them. Baedeker Travel guides or Les matins à Florence, “works which must have provided him with basic information for his trip to Italy, which was so important.” A photographic guide to the Parthenon, but also a copy of Thus Spoke Zaratustra, another on Leonardo da Vinci or another on Fernand Leger, as well as a copy of Une cité industrielle. Étude pour la construction des villes, by the architect Tony Garnier, one of the two hundred architecture books in his library, and several journals he subscribed to. This, according to Dercelles, makes it clear that “in contrast to what is said, Le Corbusier was really interested in his architectural roots.” Another of the aspects that the notes he used to write on his books indicate, as well as the editions of his own works, is the importance that he attached “to the graphic design, layout and editorial aspects of the books,” which, evidently, should not surprise us. As we can see in the scale models preserved and in the first editions brought together in the exhibition (aesthetically excellent books such as Ronchamp or Le Modulor 2), the architect “was very rigorous with their composition.” A personal rigour that would make him a demanding reader as proven by a comment of his own from 1950 written in a copy of the Iliad kept in his library: “This edition makes me sick. It has no life. Its typography is horrible (...), the translation dreadful and lugubrious.” But his library also shows that “Le Corbusier used to attend not very recommendable eugenist readings,” added Dercelles, “which, however, must be contextualised.” In fact, the architect’s would not be the only library of an intellectual of the time where we can find books on this subject, as well as others “notably leftist.” This is the case of a copy of Das Kapital by Karl Marx. Eclecticism which should not lead us to conclude, according to the scholar, “that Le Corbusier had an unclear political criterion.” “This is a hard accusation,” he pointed out. We also find several copies of the Bible, the complete works of Rabelais, a copy of Salambo by Gustave Flaubert or a book on Greek mythology. However, from all those that Dercelles showed, the book that had more impact, not to say real confusion and horror, among Le Corbusier’s lovers, was a copy of Don Quixote bound with the skin and the hair of his beloved dead dog (a book which, covered with long brown hair, became a real surrealist object). Once we had recovered from the impression, the lecture ended with some comments by Dercelles on the literary interest revealed by his library. “Most is French literature and, above all, from the 20th century such as Albert Camus, with whom he also had a personal relationship given that they used to maintain a correspondence. There are works by Mauriac and Sartre, and by less well known authors, both novels and essays, that I believe show the interest of the architect in his time.”

08.04.05

The Convent de Sant Agustí, the Mercat de les Flors and the Espai Joan Brossa evoke the visual poet with Barribrossa 2005

A week with Joan Brossa

The programme, which started on 4th April with the visual theatre show El cap als núvols, by the Companyia Playground, included among other activities the screening of films by Frederic Amat and Chris Marker. Of special note was Wamba va!, a project by Gerard Altaió, Eduard Escofet, Josep Pedrals and Martí Sales that was defined as “a lavish music-hall from the past for tomorrow’s audiences.” The show capsized the Maria Aurèlia Capmany hall to convert an old music-hall from Barcelona into a modern multimedia show. It is a theatre play full of performances that require the participation of the audience, with dance, live music and surprises. The stalls, almost empty, substitutes the space of the conventional stage while the mobility of some cars helps to construct the different spaces that the singular show evokes. In its turn, the group Aigua Teatre Ciutadà staged Embrió XYZ, inspired by the post- theatre of Brossa and by the nude. The play, which deals with the end of human nature, was performed outdoors in plaça d’Allada Vermell, in front of the fringe theatre named after the poet, and put an end to Barribrossa 2005. 09.04.05

Francisco Rico, Alberto Blecua and Juan Manuel Blecua close the congress ‘Cervantes, Don Quixote and Barcelona’ in an event in homage to Martí de Riquer

Illustrious jousts and homage to the master

The congress ‘Cervantes, Don Quixote and Barcelona’, which on 7th, 8th and 9th April brought together in Barcelona some of the most prestigious Cervantes scholars in the world under the baton of Carme Riera and Guillermo Serés, directors of the sessions, the watchful eye of Alberto Blecua, Anthony J. Close and Martí de Riquer, members of the scientific committee, concluded on the 9th with an emotional homage to professor Riquer at the Reial Academia de Bones Lletres de Barcelona. But first, the audience were in fits at the exchange of illustrious bloodless jousts between Francisco Rico and Alberto Blecua on their respective work as publishers of Don Quixote.

“Let me give you some advice,” said Alberto Blecua suddenly to Francisco Rico. “I think you should include the explanatory notes as footnotes.” “But this is blasphemy of the first order!” bellowed Rico. “You cannot inflict such a punishment on the reader!” “The notes should be put at the foot of the page,” insisted Blecua calmly. “The text cannot be sown with indications that distract the reader even for a second!” continued Rico with elegant indignation. And Blecua, stubbornly: “I insist: footnotes!” “No! Never!” exclaimed Rico honourably. “My edition of Don Quixote is aimed at the reader of literary books, not at the philologist or the scholar. And if it is not published like books of modern literature, we do no justice to Don Quixote, we kill it!” “So in that case, my edition is the best of all!” decided Blecua happily. Before this instructive exchange of views, Francisco Rico —“I shall begin, I am a few months younger”—, responsible for the edition of Don Quixote which Galaxia Gutenberg – Círculo de Lectores, the Instituto Cervantes and the Sociedad Española de Conmemoraciones Culturales have published on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of its first publication, talked about his work. “Any edition is good for reading Don Quixote. Don Quixote neither loses nor gains for using poor typology, for including errata or even because some lines are missing,” he went on with surprising modesty. Master Cervantes and common sense oblige. To which he added that “it has never been so easy to publish a good edition of Don Quixote as now,” thanks to the contribution of computers to the research task of the philologist. Following on from this, professor Rico characterised the work of the philologist in his role as editor as the result of “a pact of loyalty with the author, the reader and himself.” “What distinguishes the philologist is the animus suspitas,” because “writing is no guarantee of veracity or exactitude, just as the mere publication of a text guarantees nothing” (a very pertinent observation in these times, we might add). But, after all is said and done, how does this animus suspitas translate? By way of example, Rico refers to the investigations into the use of the “muy alegrísimo” (very happy), an adjective that, like the “muy sabrosísimo” (very tasty), seems consigned to Don Quixote and that, however, “cannot really said be and, above all, is not said.” The fact is that the use of these expressions “is exceptional” in Don Quixote. And, if you go to the pages of the first edition of the work, explains Rico, you realise that, where they appear, “there is an excess of space everywhere.” Possible inference: “the ‘very’ is an addition by the printer.” “I wouldn’t bet my hand on it but certainly three fingers that Cervantes never wrote the adverb ‘very’ with a superlative,” concluded the professor. Next, Rico referred to the many other contingencies to which the process of editing a text was subject in Cervantes’ day, and that could explain some of the “carelessness” frequently attributed to him. But one should bear in mind that “at the printer’s it was not Cervantes’ draft but a clean copy written by a scribe,” that the author could not correct proofs because “there was no physical possibility of doing so,” apart from he himself being present during the printing process; that while this clean copy was at the printer’s, it is highly unlikely that Cervantes was “hands on” and “making corrections to his draft;” and that there was still a third version to take into account, the one that passed through the hands of the censor. And some corrections of one kind or another must have been incorporated into a single original text. In the judgement of the professor, all of this could explain “the carelessness attributed to Cervantes.” But, nevertheless, he concludes, “none of this changes Don Quixote.”.

The “magic positivism” of Martí de Riquer Another Blecua, this time José Manuel, former student of professor Martí de Riquer, was charged with delivering the speech in praise of the master. “My greatest merit is my relationship with you,” started Blecua. “You, as Nebrija would say, have opened many different horizons,” he continued, and characterized the work of professor Riquer as “clearly positivist.” But it is not a “cold and mechanical” positivism but a “magic positivism, which permits the analysis of second realities that lie beneath a first reading.” A quality that in Blecua’s speech was associated with the mythical attire of Martí de Riquer, the “chasuble coat” (a coat “hated by the entire female branch of the Riquer family”) with which the professor, rigorously punctual, “flew into the class,” to speak to them of gentlemen troubadours, ladies and “widowed queens of Barcelona.” “He was a magnificent professor. He knew how to communicate passion for the text to his students.” That “hardworking” man, who “greatly valued time,” was not lacking in a sense of humour, as is made clear by the following anecdote told by Blecua: “I once received a telex. At that time I was greatly affected by these things and I was one of those people who thought that a telegram could only bring bad news. I went to professor Riquer’s office and told him that a telex had arrived. And he said to me: ‘look after it because tomorrow it will be more urgent.’” Blecua, who also recalled that when his family arrived in Barcelona, “the Riquer family, like that of Díaz-Plaja, was a real family for us,” concluded his talk comparing Martí de Riquer with some enormous trees that exist in South America, the pirules, so called because they come from Peru, where at some time a branch of the Riquer family settled. “Don Martí is like a great tree both in his professional dimension and in the personal, which unites, in secret harmony, the best of the currents of European thought with this magical impulse that comes from American soil.” César Antonio Molina, Director of the Instituto Cervantes, referred to Martí de Riquer as “one of the few people to whom you can apply the word wise with justification.” And he thanked Riquer for having encouraged his students “to be ever more precise, clearer and simpler.” For his part, Antonio Nicolau, Director of the City History Museum, who envied those who preceded him for having been able to enjoy the teaching of Riquer, concluded the homage thanking the master for “his contribution to Catalan culture and to Spanish culture.”

Good friends “I have just listened to such flattering and cordial words. You have spoken of my works, my labours and my books. But you don’t have to thank me for anything, because I have had the great luck of being a person who has enjoyed his work,” responded Martí de Riquer. “I have, above all, good friends, which is the most important thing.” And the professor said little more, because he had already said the most important and it was also getting late. “Well, many thanks to you all,” he concluded. “If I said ‘oh, I don’t deserve this homage,’ I would be lying. Many thanks.” Professor Riquer not only awakened literary passions but also musical ones. So told him Francesc Bonastre, author of the piece El Túmulo de Altisidora, a cantata composed expressly for the occasion and with which the homage was closed after the performance of the choral suite Epitafios by Rodolfo Halffter.

A new author for Carmen Balcells

The congress had also made it known that Don Quixote is the literary work most translated into Catalan. This had been said the day before by Professor Monterrat Bacardí, from the Department of Translation and Interpretation of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, who participated in a session dedicated to Catalan studies on Cervantes and the translations. “We Catalans must make Don Quixote our own, because there are around thirty adaptations, of which five are complete.” In the same session, the translation expert Luisa Cotoner presented the latest and most complete Catalan version of Don Quixote, a work by the Majorcan Cervantes scholar Josep Maria Casasayas (1927-2004), to whom Carme Riera has dedicated the congress, and which will be published in May. “Casasayas’ translation is very faithful, although it uses the technique of making it our own,” explained Cotoner. This resource is especially apparent in the translation of names and toponyms, and so for example, Juan Palomeque el Zurdo becomes Joan Colometa, alias s’Esquerrà. Casasayas’ version, which uses “the genuine Balearic language,” also admits the other distinct dialectal forms of Catalan and the spoken language. For his part, the Hispanist Jean Cannavaggio, internationally recognised as one of the main biographers of Cervantes, managed no more than to conclude, to the disappointment of empiricists, that “there is no sure evidence that Cervantes was in Barcelona.” However, he added, “I think it is more difficult to demonstrate that Cervantes was not in Barcelona than to demonstrate that he was.” This conclusion prompted fellow Hispanist Anthony J. Close to rise from his seat, in one of these moving outbursts that on rare occasions affect usually calm people. “I speak as spokesman of Anglo-Saxon empiricism. And although prudence is a great virtue, I think that here we are too prudent. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” he pointed out. For her part, Carme Riera admitted that she would like the stay of Don Quixote Barcelona to be proven. But, having recognised this, she decided to join the Englishman, or magic empiricism, and affirmed: “Last night, of course, he did not come to dinner (apparently, the congress members, in a wonderful touch, also laid a place for Don Miguel de Cervantes). But I am sure that he went to see Carmen Balcells.” 11.04.05

Juan Villoro participates in the cycle ‘Contemporary Narrators and Don Quixote’

On the idea of frontier in Don Quixote

The writer Juan Villoro (Mexico D. F., 1956) participated on 11th April in the cycle ‘Contemporary Narrators and Don Quixote’, organized by the Fundació Caixa Catalunya, with a brilliant lecture “on the idea of frontier in Don Quixote.” “I hope that Don Quixote survives our enthusiasm,” said the writer as a preamble in reference to the multitude of acts of homage being paid to Cervantes’ work, to go on to justify, as a Mexican, the subject chosen: “The idea of frontier, in its economic, political, geographic or cultural dimension is omnipresent not only in Mexico but throughout Latin America.” “The prevalence of the classic is a decision of reading,” pronounced Borges. And, for Villoro, “the first frontier of Cervantes” is precisely that: “reading”. One of the conditions of modernism is that the characteristics of beauty cease to be immanent to depend on the creative appropriation of the real. In other words, they go from the object to the subject. And so, “Don Quixote sees the world (not how it is but) how he has read it,” argues the author of El testigo. Only the good sense, we could say, in extremis of Don Quixote —again another early quality— allows him to reflect on what initially he has misinterpreted. But also “Cervantes is postulated as the first reader and commentator of the materials he has found,” which also makes Don Quixote “a work that maintains its autonomy with respect to the writer.” And the author gives another turn of the key incorporating a new mediator between the reader and the writer: Cide Hamete Benengeli, supposed first narrator of the adventures of the ingenious hidalgo. The language of Don Quixote is another element that relates to the notion of frontier and foreignness, given that “although Cervantes writes in the language of the Empire,” he uses an “impure”, popular form, a language that he knows to be “weak” and that, therefore, affords him “greater freedom”. Apart from the fact that, through the intermediation of Cide Hamete, Don Quixote would come from Arabic. Or from the Spanish written by a Frenchman called Pierre Menard, according to Jorge Luis Borges. “Cervantes and Borges,” says Villoro, “respond to the same impulse: what defines the logic of the text is how read it.” “The Venezuelan writer José Balza,” he adds, “calls attention to the recurrence in Don Quixote to the moment before the work was written.” In this way, “Cervantes inaugurates a genre in which the decisive criterion of verisimilitude is constituted by the fact that Cervantes, in contrast to his protagonist, places himself outside the work.” And so, says Villoro paraphrasing Juan José Sáer, “fiction is not the contrary of truth, it represents an unverifiable proposition.” And “if we laugh at the absurdity of Don Quixote, it is because we can connect both dominions: that of the literal reading and that of the reading that questions what he reads.” In summary, “nothing is ever definitive, and the truth does not depend on the authority assumed by the narrator.” The lecturer returned to Borges, when he referred to “the sudden supplanting in the consciousness that the fact of reading implies,” as, while one is reading, what we are reading acquires greater importance in our consciousness than our environment. From this we can find in Don Quixote “a precedent of the divided subject of the 20th century.” Or as Piglia says: “Don Quixote is the staging of an extreme reader.” Another threshold, which “narrates the passage of the Middle Ages to the Renaissance,” as well as “from the ideal to the real”, is according to Villoro in the third chapter of the novel, when Don Quixote discovers in an inn that, in contrast to what he has read in the books of chivalry, the knights, like other mortals, also need money to make their way around the world. The novel is also “the territory where the figurative sense represented by Don Quixote —that is, the only one— and the utilitarian sense represented by Sancho Panza —that is, all the others— come into contact and contaminate each other.” And a “library novel”, that includes many other external accounts, “thus overcoming its own limits.” Cervantes, concluded Villoro, “is the first reader of a story that cancels one tradition and founds another. Posterity has perfected the way of reading that Don Quixote inaugurated.” And if in the first part of his lecture the author of El disparo de Argón had focused on reading, in the second he referred to “writing in movement.” Once again, the concept of frontier, and the reception of Cervantes in America through travel. And Mark Twain’s invitation to travel when he says “it is time for us to leave these lands” is “a Cervantine gesture.” In Cervantes’ novel we appreciate a constant tension between “Sancho’s sedentary yearnings and the wandering longings of Don Quixote.” At bedtime, Sancho is always for finding a roof, while Don Quixote insists on trusting to the elements. This desire to “sleep under the elements” can be read as a desire to “appropriate virgin space,” which we find of course in the western and, later, in the road novel. And so, “Cervantes founds on two accounts the novel and the sub-genre of the road novel, which reaches as far as Los detectives salvajes by Roberto Bolaño.” Centuries later, the protagonist detective of the crime fiction appears as a subject with the same eagerness to read the world in order to transform it. And “like the poets of Bolaño, Don Quixote is a reader in the skin of a man of action.” And if in the Chilean writer, “valour is the fundamental ethical and aesthetic condition,” so for Don Quixote “valour is decisive,” and it is because of its absence that Sancho does not see what he sees. The journey “from delirium to good sense” constitutes of course “a constant migration.” And Don Quixote makes use of the comicalness for this return journey, between madness and sanity, between fiction and reality. A resource, humour, profoundly “destabilising” on the frontiers, as Villoro points out. Don Quixote also represents “a frontier sickness,” just as Roger Bartra called melancholia. “This great sickness of displacement that, on the one hand, provokes the madness of the protagonist, while conferring on him a strange lucidity.” “The crossing of this frontier,” concluded Villoro, “of his narrated trajectory, is what we call literature.”

12.04.05

An afternoon with Quino

At the age of three he decided he wanted to be a cartoonist. At twelve, in the transit of the Second World War to the Cold War, he discovered that “well, so, ideas of good and bad are very changeable.” Ten years later, the same sentence could have been in the mouth of his most popular creation: the mythical Mafalda. On 12th April, Quino inaugurated the exhibition ‘Travelling with Quino’, which can be seen at Fort Pienc Library until the 30th. Before, he participated in a roundtable in the company of Krahn, Peridis, Mariscal and Juanjo Sáez. “After hearing so much talk of the Pope, hearing people talk about oneself is fantastic,” said the cartoonist after hearing the many praises heaped on him by his colleagues. For Krahn, cartoonist on the newspaper La Vanguardia, “Quino is a myth that has become a classic, someone who takes us, through children, to this so tedious adult world.” An author who offers us a “disturbed life,” ours, and that “always surprises us.” And, so many years later (it must be something like twenty or twenty-five years since Quino stopped drawing Mafalda), it seems that nothing has changed: “we go on experiencing the same stupidity.” “He is a painstaking story teller,” started Peridis, author of the political strip of the newspaper El País. “And an investor. The day came when he was tired of working for Mafalda and decided that Mafalda should work for him.” To which he added: “I was brave enough to put aside Mafalda before I started to repeat myself.” Of course I could do so because “I had created a world apart,” that of Mafalda, a black and white universe that appears to have no expiry date. “All my children, who are from different generations, have experienced Mafalda.” Something made clear by taking a walk through the exhibition: his humour has not lost a jot of its effectiveness. I, who was also an avid reader of Mafalda, smile again at the implacable logic of this non-conformist girl. Mariscal is “fascinated” by Mafalda. And he noted the “great capacity for observation” and the “apparent ease” of Quino’s drawing. “Jesus, this guy’s a fantastic cartoonist,” he concluded. For his part, the youngest of the quartet, Juanjo Sáez, author of the book Vivir del cuento, confessed to having discovered Mafalda before Quino, that is when he still believed that the drawings were characters with their own lives and not just something sprung from the pen of a cartoonist. And we do not know if it was because he is a good friend and wanted to free himself of the painful explanation or because he is very talkative —perhaps both things—, but it was Peridis, rather than Quino, who launched himself —almost literally— into explaining “why one day Quino stopped drawing Mafalda.” “The day came when Mafalda had said all she had to say, and she limited him greatly as a cartoonist.” Quino needed to breathe, imagine, philosophise… and for this, he needed time and space, more than the five or six vignettes to which a daily strip is limited. And to travel (something that Quino has not stopped doing since then). “Any real creator,” he added, “has to investigate and follow his path.” And it seems that Peridis was not wrong. “It is true that Mafalda constrained me,” said Quino at last. “Freedom, as we all know, is very nice,” but also there came a moment when the Argentinean author began to think that “we already know that the world is very bad, so why go on about it.” “I had come full circle,” he concluded. But he added that, “I would like people to realise that what Mafalda said I continue to talk about through the cartoons I draw now. I believe there is coherence throughout my work. After all, one realises that you don’t have such different ideas.” It is true that there is coherence, although if you walk through the part of the exhibition that shows the vignettes of ‘Quino travelling’, that covers themes such as ‘The ends of reality’, ‘The weight of culture’, ‘They lived happily… ever after?’ or ‘The final journey’, you think that what has happened is that Mafalda —who now does not appear because, as Peridis says, “he is working”—, just like Quino, they have grown up. In some way, his cartoons have become more sophisticated, or more complex, while they have become almost completely mute, as there is hardly any text. Today, Quino is no longer a “popular” author. We might say that, with the years, Mafalda’s soul changed the Beatles for the tango. 14.04.05

FC Barcelona joins the activities of the Books and Reading Year

Literature enters the football field

Those who on Saturday went to the Camp Nou to see the League football match that pitted FC Barcelona against Getafe CF, met a very special team who greeted them from the field. It was formed by eleven Catalan writers who had been invited by the Fundació Futbol Club Barcelona to write a story about football. The spectators were given the booklet ‘Lletres, al camp!’ which contains the eleven stories. It was the end of a day which the Fundació FC Barcelona, with the collaboration of the Institució de les Lletres Catalanes and the Institut de Cultura de Barcelona, dedicated to the celebration of the Books and Reading Year. “Some people believe that books are the most important thing in life, while others believe that football is the most important. Some, like us, believe that there are two important things in life: books and football,” stated Jaume Subirana, Director of the Institució de les Lletres Catalanes, in the press conference for the presentation of the programme of activities. Subirana explained later that the initiative “Lletres, al camp!” responds to the will of the institution of “taking writers and literature to less habitual spheres.” And, without wanting to talk of a “national team” but just a “team”, he added that it comprised “eleven writers of very different ages, styles and geographic origin, but we believe that they are representative of the power of the current Catalan literature.” The team was formed by Maria Barbal, Jaume Cabré, Josep Maria Fonalleras, Joan-Lluís Lluís, Empar Moliner, Vicenç Pagès Jordà, Carme Riera, Maria Mercè Roca, Marius Serra, Isabel-Clara Simó and Vicenç Villatoro. “We will not disguise anyone or make them shoot a penalty,” explained Subirana either for the tranquillity or disappointment of the supporters and of the writers themselves, who ended with these words: “Catalan writers, apart from telling of beautiful things, can also talk about football.” In his turn, the Arts Councillor Ferran Mascarell thanked FC Barcelona “for having joined this vindication of the importance of books,” while pointing out the opportunity “to promote, en masse, the meaning of the Books and Reading Year. “From that Sunday,” added Mascarell, “Barça will be the most literary club in the world, as well as being more than just a club. I don’t know if anywhere else a group of writers have run out onto a football field with a book under their arms.” Finally, Albert Vicens, First Vice-President of Barça, stated: “We believe that the country has given a lot to Barça and that Barça must give something back to the country.” And, recalling the motto of an Argentinean campaign that also sought to link football and reading, he proposed: “If you read, you always win.” Apart from ‘Lletres, al camp!’, two hours before the beginning of the game, the Boulevard del Camp Nou became the setting for a series of activities related to books, such as the contest ‘Sopa de lletres’, the ‘Poesia en blaugrana’, where everybody could also express their opinion with rhymed writings, a performance on the legend of Saint George, a workshop of bookmarks and roses, and the performance of the Cant del Barça by the BCN Arcs string orchestra. Moreover, on the occasion of Saint George’s Day, those who became members of the club were given a copy of the book Barça by Jordi Finestres.

15.04.05

Getting to know Barcelona through the eyes of a wide range of authors who have made it their literary territory is the proposal of the book Walks through Literary Barcelona, simultaneously published in Catalan, Spanish and English.

Presentation of Walks through Literary Barcelona, the emblematic book of the Books and Reading Year

“Among the initial objectives of the Books and Reading Year was the assertion of Barcelona as a literary city, and this book responds to this objective,” explained Sergio Vila-Sanjuán, curator of the Books and Reading Year and editor, together with the journalist Sergi Doria, of Walks through Literary Barcelona, which was presented on 15th April at Barcelona City Hall. The book, an invitation to get to know Barcelona through the vision of the authors who have made it their literary territory, is also an approach to the literature published throughout the centuries on Barcelona and the first work of these characteristics that offers an overall view. However, it is above all, “an entertaining book addressed to the general public,” stressed Sergio Vila-Sanjuán. Divided into different walks (some of which are based on literary walks that Biblioteques de Barcelona has organised for some years), the book accompanies the reader through the Barcelona landscapes of authors such as Bernat Metge, Joan Boscán, Miguel de Cervantes, el Baró de Maldà, Narcís Oller, Joan Maragall, Jacint Verdaguer, Josep M. de Sagarra, Josep Pla, George Orwell, Carmen Laforet or Mercè Rodoreda, until reaching the contemporary period through Terenci Moix, Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, Juan Marsé, Eduardo Mendoza, Quim Monzó or Carlos Ruiz Zafón. “We wanted this book to have a chronological continuity and to represent the diverse geographies of Barcelona,” added Vila-Sanjuán. Halfway between the travel book and the cultural chronicle, it has been written by journalists or writers specialising in Barcelona literature: José Enrique Ruiz- Domènec, Jordi Galves, Joan de Déu Domènech, Julià Guillamon, Joan Nogués, Josep M. Huertas Claveria, Miguel Dalmau, Montse Clavé, Borja Calzado, Ignasi Aragay and Rossend Casanova; and includes unknown, rare or unpublished documentation. Walks through Literary Barcelona has been jointly published by Barcelona City Council, the Fundació Germán Sánchez Ruipérez and Grup 62 on the occasion of the Books and Reading Year and it has been simultaneously released in Catalan, Spanish and English. 16 – 17.04.05

CCCB and MACBA have for two days become the fabulous world of children’s stories

During the weekend of 16th and 17th April, more than 16,000 people participated in the children’s literary festival World Book, held in several venues of the CCCB, MACBA and plaça Joan Corominas. World Book included more than two hundred activities in around twenty thematic spaces and enjoyed the presence of more than fifty children’s and young people’s writers and illustrators and the main Catalan and Spanish publishing houses. Given the large participation, World Book, an initiative of the Books and Reading Year conceived as a gateway to Saint George’s Day and specially aimed at the promotion of reading among children from an entertaining perspective, will be repeated next year, as Ferran Mascarell, Arts Councillor at Barcelona City Council, explained.

A strong woman’s voice telling something to children ―you need a lot of energy to be the master and commander of a group of boys and girls under twelve― warns me that I am getting closer to World Book, the literary festival that this weekend has transformed several venues of CCCB, MACBA and plaça de Joan Coromines into the fabulous setting for the experience of one thousand and one children’s stories. The ‘Pati de les Dones’, with the four flourishing almond trees on the left where two kites and a big paper dragon fly have been caught, is today much more colourful than usual, with the clothes of the children who fill it, and even of their parents, who are used to dressing more colourfully at the weekend. . “There are so many things that we don’t know,” says a mother of two children to Pilar, one of the persons who assist people at the entrance of the CCCB. “Yes, there are a lot of things. How old are you?” “I’m ten and she is seven,” the eldest tells her. “Well, now at noon there’s The jungle of impossible animals. So, you have to go in that direction and you can listen to a story about African animals.” And off they all go. I stop at The tree, that is number 11, in the same ‘Pati de les Dones’, which is next to the almond trees but this one is made of cardboard and is rooted in a pile of children’s books. A bunch of children is browsing the books on the floor. Judith’s mother shows her the storybook Princeses, but her attention is drawn by a balloon that has just popped next to her, where they are inflated, and naturally she wants one. So they leave Princeses and go to get a balloon while I continue walking through the patio. I head to The bookshop. The rambleta of World Book and I browse some books, such as Contes per a nenes and Contes per a nens by Victòria Bermejo and Miquel Gallardo, who I had met before when having breakfast in the Belvedere of the CCCB ―hot chocolate, a way of orientating ourselves while drinking― with other authors of books for children and the young, such as Andreu Martín or Jordi Serra, some publishers, the Arts Councillor Ferran Mascarell and the curator of the Books and Reading Year, Sergio Vila-Sanjuán. It’s a quarter past twelve at The Kitchen of Stories, space 13, still in the patio, and Eduard Estivill and Montse Doménech are singing Lila, who “runs, jumps and screams (...)” before more than twenty children sitting on the floor. Behind them there are many more sitting on the chairs with their parents. They are listening first with a certain coldness and then with more enthusiasm, when they start waving their arms and screaming “Lila” when Eduard signals to them with his hand. I move to another space and go to plaça de Joan Coromines. At The Island of Mice, the creatures that are the main characters of so many children’s books, a modelling workshop is underway to make paper mice when at the activity called Vet aquí..., located at the patio of sculptures, between the MACBA and the CCCB, I recognise the woman’s voice that I had heard from the street when arriving. “Attention please! Adults are not allowed to enter,” warns a sign. So I stay at the barrier, like the parents who strain their necks to see what their children are doing, who once in this games space created by the Col·lectiu d’Artistes d’Aigua, with large white pieces of card, baskets with coloured pieces of cloth, cardboard boxes, silk papers of all colours… and all kinds of things to draw, build and disguise themselves, forget, at least for a moment, their parents. Next to it there is a pirate ship made of white fabric. “Can we go in? Can we go in?” asks a little boy with blond curls. The ship is closed on the top but not on the bottom and Miquel, a little older than the other, does not ask: he crawls through the few centimetres that separate the fabric from the floor. “Mummy, mummy, can I?” asks a girl when she sees Miquel, and before the mother can say anything, the girl has also slipped into the ship, perhaps so excited to be there inside like the girl who meets a boy underneath the table of a family meal in the story of Victòria Bermejo. There is also the mouth of the latest campaign of linguistic standardisation, which now is not talking and a couple of children are banging its teeth. It is close to The tower of dragons. There, the children who dare to read aloud can take away the book they read. Francesc does it best: “Very well kit-ty, I see that des-pite everything (...)” At Don Quixote Space, a mother catches her daughter who is running while jumping from green circle to green circle in front of a big float where a Don Quixote made of fabric wields not a spear but an enormous pencil. It’s one o’clock. I go to The jungle of the impossible dreams, where the narration of La nit del lloro is about to begin by its author, Elena O’Callaghan. As in the theatre, if I arrive when the story has already begun I won’t be allowed to enter, so I must hurry up… There’s quite a lot of anticipation. Around twenty children with their parents are queuing. The truth is that the green and wet atmosphere, poorly lit, which you can sense from the other side, is quite attractive. Once inside and from a discreet corner next to the stage ―I, as an adult, shouldn’t be here― I concentrate on how children are looking at Elena while she is telling the story. And I see, beyond the glasses that enclose the small jungle, a couple of boys who also seem to be having a lot of fun but in an unexpected way: until the parents see them and make them stop, they go the wrong way up the very long escalators that go down from the upper floor. At the end of the jungle there is something similar to giant wooden eggs and wine tunnels and lit from the inside that separate this space from The mystery alley, where a dozen children are sitting in a circle. They all have a set of cards with characters drawn. “Is he a boy?” asks a girl to another who has thought of her character. “No, he is not a boy.” “He is not a boy,” repeats one of the monitors. “So all boys out then!” and all remove the cards with drawings of children. “Is she a girl?” “Yes.” “I know who she is!” says a girl jumping up triumphantly. “Because I have only one girl!” “This one, mummy!” says a girl with red cheeks as red as an apple who cannot be more than four holding up a book about Snow White. I’m back in plaça de Joan Coromines, in the Book Exchange Market, where Biblioteques de Barcelona and the publishing houses that participate in the festival invite children to bring books from home and exchange them for others. In front of me is Olmo. He is only one and is sitting on his mother’s lap, Elisa, who is flicking through the pages of thick cardboard of a book on dogs that they have swapped for another on clothing. Elisa also has a daughter aged three, Lola, who is watching a theatre performance at The Library of found books, a space where Biblioteques de Barcelona offers some of the performances programmed in the libraries on the occasion of the Books and Reading Year and where children can also get their membership card. She says that she is happy that they have organised this free children’s festival. “There are free theatre performances, and this is good,” says this woman who regularly follows the children’s programme of Biblioteques de Barcelona. “For the very young there’s very little. And less for free.” It seems they can come back next year. With more than 16,000 people during the weekend, Ferran Mascarell has announced that this festival for the promotion of reading among children will be repeated. “I will tell the story of a jungle in Nepal. Does anyone know where Nepal is?” Unexpectedly, a girl, who must be a good reader, says: “Next to India.” We are in the Desert of golden sand where, under a haima, many children, some with their shoes off, are listening to the story of the tiger Bangish. Irene, seven, and Diana, five, have found it “very cool”. Goya, who must be no more than three, does not know what to say and, as an explanation, she shows me a storybook that she has just got from the book exchange. ¿Quién teme al Libro Feroz?, Conte per llegir a les fosques, Sant Jordi, Un príncep massa encantat, La rata cochero, a version of Cinderella rewritten from the point of view of the rat converted into the coachman that, I must admit, I would like to read, How to Train Your Dragon and, of course, Harry Potter (“God bless Harry Potter,”·Ana Maria Matute will say later, “who has made children love reading.” For instance Lluís, who I am about to meet). The bookshop Laie in the CCCB has joined the festival and has taken all its children’s books outside. “This morning they were quite disoriented,” Pilar tells me at the entrance of the CCCB. “But I think that they already know what they are here for.” Its half past five in the afternoon. The ‘Pati de les Dones’ is very alive and, certainly, it looks like something that has been on for some hours. When I reach the ‘Sala Mirador’, a space where parents and older children have been able to talk with authors of children’s and youth stories and take down some reading recommendations, Emili Teixidor is talking about the identification of readers with the characters in the books. “Between the age of eight and thirteen the main tragedy is to be expelled from the group,” he points out, “this is why the books which are more successful at that age are those of the Famous Five, the Secret Seven...” (I must admit that, at that age, I swallowed the complete works of Enid Blyton). Emili believes that “saying that people are gradually reading less is a commonplace.” “I think that people read more than ever, now. Remember that twenty years ago there were no libraries!” Among the audience I see that there are three children of the age Teixidor referred to and I decide to talk to them as soon as Emili says goodbye with “Read a lot and be very happy.” I stop Edu while the other two continue down the ramp. I feel very bad because I have mistaken him for a girl. I am about to tell him that this is because he is very cute but I prefer not to try to sort it out. He seems a good boy and takes it with a shy smile. He is thirteen and the last book he has read is City of Beasts. He tells me that now he wants to read The Lord of the Rings. “It’s a pity because I’ve already seen the film,” he comments regretfully. I feel obliged to tell him that “it’s not a problem. Especially if you enjoyed the film!” He says that he reads neither a little nor a lot, like Oriol, aged 11, who has just joined us and who tells me of a Cazadragones. But they all want me to meet Lluís, the bookworm of the group and who has become a real character. “You must talk to Lluís,” “You must talk to Lluís,” they say altogether. “He has really read everything!” Lluís, aged twelve, looks proud of his fame as a voracious reader. He does not look like a swot, but rather like a “naughty” boy and he says that the books he likes the most are “fantasy”. “Do you remember the book that made you passionate about reading? “Sure, Harry Potter 1.” “But do you like reading as much as going to the cinema, for instance?” “No. I like it more than going to the cinema,” he answers challengingly. But Edu, Oriol and Lluís are in a hurry to go to The world upside down, a journey that makes participants enter, through the reading of a story of which they become the narrators, a maze where you can walk in the air, you can walk on without feet, everything is back to front. It is the proposal of Teatro de los Sentidos for this festival and one of the most successful with those attending. This is when I say farewell to the three boys and I go down. On the ramp leading to the hall of the CCCB today there is laundry hanging. “Once… upon… a… time…” I read on the sheets, and I get into a space where dragons and birds fly, as it could not be otherwise in a Forest of fairies, witches and magic. This is where I recognise Tato, a narrator that Pablo Larraguibel mentioned to me, from the Venezuelan publishing house Ekaré, in the wonderful voice that, in front a large family audience, is reading a charming version of the Fábula de la ratoncita presumida and continues with children’s poems by Eugenio Montejo. Once recovered from the enchantment, I continue advancing into the darkness in search of the World upside down. I am told that, at my age, I am absolutely not allowed to enter. So, I decide to go to the exit of the maze so that any of the fortunate young people who could go through can tell me what I have missed. On my way I go through the Magic Pencil Exhibition, organised by the British Council, with plates by contemporary British illustrators of children’s and teenager’s literature. Looking at one of these plates is Lucas, aged eleven, who his mother has left on his own to go and see the exhibition Paris and the Surrealists, held on another floor of the CCCB and which today is free for parents. I decide to talk to him so he can tell me how he feels about the festival. Lucas tells me that he has previously been in the Forest of fairies, witches and magic in a magic show. “Did you like it?” “Some things were quite spectacular but he didn’t do some others quite as well.” “And now?” “Now I was going to enter the World upside down, which I think is the best. I’m waiting for some friends, who are about to come out.” Lucas talks slowly, as if he reflects too well on what he says. “And upstairs, in the patio, what do you think?” “It’s too loud. I think it is for the very young.” He says that he loves the adventures of Alex Ryder, a kind of youth version of James Bond that is the main character of the novels by Anthony Horowitz. “Could you tell me why you like reading?” And Lucas, who with his air of a responsible boy does not know that he has touched my heart, thinks about it a little and says: “Because, in contrast to watching a film, you imagine the book the way you want.”

The magical life of Ana María Matute

“In Latin countries children’s literature is usually treated with a certain disdain, considering it a minor literature. There is no minor literature. There is good or bad literature.” So said the writer and academic Ana María Matute (Barcelona, 1926), who participated in one of the meetings held last weekend in the children’s literary festival World Book. “I had a grandmother who told me wonderful stories,” said the author of Olvidado rey Gudú, who valued the fact that in northern European countries they have recovered the legacy of oral literature. It is what authors like Perrault, Grimm or Andersen did, although Andersen, qualified the author, “was a creator.” “Clearly children’s stories are cruel,” she said in answer to a question from the public, “but so is life.” A subject that served Matute to criticise political correctness, which falsifies at the cost of the story’s magic, converting, for example, “an angel into a truck driver.” “These reformers must forgive me, but children are not idiots, and they know perfectly well when they are being deceived.” They also know when they are palmed off with a boring book, because “a book written for children and which bores adults, will also bore a child,” pronounced the writer. As in stories, life is cruel, but it is also magical. “I have always been drawn towards magic because life is magical. Yes, yes,” insisted the author, “it is true, life is magical. For example, the great love of my life. I found him when I was going to run an errand and at that moment he was leaving his house. And from that moment my life changed. And you will say: ‘what a coincidence.’ But it is not coincidence, it is magic.” And she added: “If you are aware of all the things that beset you in life, from microbes to people, survival is magical!” And then the moment arrived when she gave her opinion about the most widely read children’s book in recent time. “Harry Potter? Bless him, children have returned to reading with him. Because there is imagination and there is magic. Today they are reading Harry Potter and tomorrow they will read Madame Bovary.” But Ana María Matute would not give any advice to any child about the goodness of reading, “because for one thing they don’t listen.” In any case, Matute would give it to the parents of children: “that they should start by reading themselves, that reading at home should be something as everyday as eating or going to the cinema.” And what did she read when she was young? “What I liked most were the stories of Andersen, Grimm and Perrault. The Eleven Swan Princes by Andersen is a wonderful tale. So much so that I called Andersen Swan’s Wing”. And to these three authors Ana María Matute dedicated Olvidado rey Gudú, “the book I had always wanted to write since I was a girl.” “And when I was seventeen, Wuthering Heights fascinated me. And Alice, especially Through the Looking Glass.” And indeed Ana María had already gone through many looking glasses, even before reading Lewis Carroll.

17.04.05

The creative literature journal Granta en español dedicates its issue 4 to Barcelona

The new issue includes stories by Juan Marsé, Pere Gimferrer, Colm Tóibín, Jesús Moncada, Tibor Fischer, Ponç Puigdevall, Ana Nuño, Juan Antonio Masoliver Ródenas, Nuria Amat, Enrique Murillo, Manuel Pérez Subirana, Michi Strausfeld, Boris Matijas, Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Manuel Ortínez, Avel.lí Artís-Gener, Juan Goytisolo, José Corral, Wendell Steavenson, Ryszard Kapuscinski, Paul Auster and Enrique Vila-Matas and photographs by Txema Salvans.

Juan Marsé tells the story of the policeman Raúl and that of his brother Valentín, who live in Lolita’s Club in love with Milena. Pere Gimferrer recalls from his notebook three school scenes in the streets of Barcelona. Colm Tóibín commemorates a multitudinous sexual awakening in the dictatorial panorama of 1975. Jesús Moncada gives voice to a judge who instructs his secretary in a new species of Catalan man and Ana Nuño locates in a café the protagonist of a scathing monologue demolishes the common places of Barcelona… Where can all these and quite a few other authors (who look at Barcelona from Barcelona, or from London, Berlin, New York or Marrakech) be found? In the pages of the Spanish edition of the literary creation journal Granta, whose issue 4 is dedicated to Barcelona and was presented in society on 17th April at the Palau de la Virreina by its progenitors and godparents. “Barcelona is not a village, is not a capital, is not yet a museum and is not a theme park, it is a city,” said Aurelio Major, father (or editor) of the baby, still, perplexed? by the paradox that “Barcelona, a city that does not speak Spanish, is the international centre of publishing in Spanish.” Finally, its mother (or editor) Valerie Miles showed herself to be less political and confined herself to a brief comment: “in Granta we want to keep our nose close to the window.” An expression that undoubtedly takes us to the Anglo-Saxon roots of Miles herself, but also to Granta en español. In May 2003, Emecé (grupo Planeta) launched on the market the first issue in Spanish of the prestigious British journal Granta, dedicated to creative literature and to photo journalism and always attentive to the new values of British literature (there they published Amis, Barnes, Ishiguro, Rushdie and McEwan), with the intention not of publishing a mere translation of the British journal, but of creating a new Granta dedicated to contemporary fiction in the Spanish language. Also present were the other parents (in this case “biological” and not adoptive) of the baby. Pere Gimferrer: “Barcelona is only one of the possible issues of Granta.” Enrique Vila-Matas, who preferred to go from Barcelona to Basle to relate his journey to the sanatorium where the Swiss writer Robert Walser was interned (a fragment of his next novel, to be published by Anagrama in the autumn). Or the literary critics Juan Antonio Masoliver Ródenas and Ponç Puigdevall, who on this occasion had gone over to the other side and published stories. And the godparents, of course. Jesús Badenes, Director of the grupo Planeta, who assured us: “It is said that literature, like gastronomy, cannot be recommended, but I think I can recommend this journal to you, which is many books in a book. Granta offers us a showcase that allows us to see if we connect or not with these authors and discover new talents.” Or the curator of the Books and Reading Year Sergio Vila-Sanjuán, who recalled how last April three publications appeared, “which document the literary character of Barcelona: Walks Through Literary Barcelona, Viajeros en Barcelona and now Granta. If the first two deal with previous literature, Granta concerns itself with the current trends of literature linked to Barcelona.” And the Arts Councillor Ferran Mascarell, who wanted to stress the importance of literature in the construction of a city: “The vision of literature is particularly important because it is what explores the corners of a city, in its light and shadows, in its complexities and its necessarily contradictory character.” Good reading.

19.04.05 Gimferrer, Rico and Cercas assert the importance of Eduardo Mendoza’s The Truth about the Savolta Case, a narrative and linguistic reference of late Spanish fiction

On 19th April, Pere Gimferrer, Francisco Rico, Javier Cercas, Llàtzer Moix and Jordi Gràcia accompanied the writer Eduardo Mendoza in a roundtable on the occasion of the thirty years of the publication of The Truth about the Savolta Case. The participants in the event, organised by the publishing house Seix Barral within the framework of the Books and Reading Year and held at the Palau de la Virreina, asserted the importance of a novel which went against the prevailing forms of the time, formalism and experimental novels, and which revealed an extraordinary creative freedom and appeared as a narrative and linguistic reference of late Spanish fiction. “All the linguistic work undertaken by Mendoza since the first paragraphs of The Truth about the Savolta Case is for me significant for what it anticipates in relation to late Spanish literature, in keeping with what happens with El Jarama,” stated the prestigious philologist and Cervantes scholar Francisco Rico. “However,” he insisted in relation to his style, “it is neither a parody nor a pastiche.” The style, he had previously commented with reference to the beginning of the novel (which starts with the facsimile of the presumed news article of the Barcelona of the biennial 1917-1919) is not a parody of what an anarchist newspaper of the time could publish. On the contrary, “it belongs to a point at which things, for their very verisimilitude, become weird.” Rico related the style of Mendoza with some of the masters of the Spanish universal literature. “He is very close to Jorge Luis Borges. Well, let’s not exaggerate and put everyone in his place,” he specified. “But Borges always wrote projecting his own voice.” “The voice of Mendoza,” he continued, “is in the place of language from which reality becomes picturesque.” He takes us to “the real of the absurd or, vice-versa, to the absurd of the real.” A place that led the professor to another, spatial and stylistic, which is “relevant to the aspect that I am trying to emphasise.” In other words, to the episode of Don Quixote in which the knight and his squire are resting next to a tree before reaching Barcelona and Sancho is frightened when he feels on his head the arms and legs of some hung men, which makes Don Quixote point out simply that, consequently, they must be close to Barcelona. The final analogy referred to another classic of Spanish literature. “Javier Miranda (protagonist and narrator of the facts in The Truth about the Savolta Case) repeats the story of the Lazarillo,” he stated. And he concluded: “In a time when some of us, from our individual positions, wanted to take fiction down other paths, it was Eduardo Mendoza who hit the bulls-eye.” For his part, the writer Javier Cercas started recognising, with humour and in the first person, “a narrative to which we are all indebted.” He next referred to the nouvelle of a young author awarded in the biennale called by Barcelona City Council in 1998, which was no more than “a coarse imitation of Eduardo Mendoza.” The author was, of course, no other than Cercas himself. “It is not by chance,” added Cercas, “that all the developments of Mendoza’s future fiction but also of the rest of Spanish fiction are in The Truth about the Savolta Case.” Published in a moment when the “experimentalist” novel, which tried to undermine the foundations of the classical novel and announced its death, prevailed, “Mendoza asserts the prevalence of the novel and the strength of fiction.” Experimental novels, stated Cercas paraphrasing Félix de Azúa, “that nobody understood and which, therefore, nobody read.” In this context, that of Mendoza was an “extraordinarily readable and amusing” novel. A novel which is, at the same time, “picaresque, experimental in a way different to what Azúa referred to, classical to a certain extent, moral.” Or “of bullets and laughter,” as Mendoza himself would point out. “When nobody can recall almost any title published in Spain in the last thirty years, people will continue to laugh and get excited about The Truth about the Savolta Case,” he concluded. However, Llàtzer Moix wondered how Mendoza overcame the “committed” fiction of the time. In the first place, with a “wide literary background.” In the second, thanks to “the way he manages to combine forms, styles, ways of talking, registers, genres, which give as a result an elastic and powerful prose,” which, in contrast with other dogmatic options, is the way Mendoza understands vanguard. Despite what he and the previous participants said, Moix considered that “the reception of the novel was not enthusiastic,” as it did not respond to what people thought was appropriate for the time. Thus, he concluded, “we are faced with a case of conviction, effort and literary intelligence.” Jordi Gràcia, Professor of Spanish Literature at the Universidad de Barcelona, also emphasised, faced with the structural fiction of the time, “Mendoza’s overwhelming freedom of expression, which allows him to strive for what amuses him and what he likes doing,” but he preferred to focus the rest of his contribution on an analysis of the novel which stressed the political and moral issues, in terms of which he considered it “anticipatory.” He noted the mocking tone with which anarchist attitudes were characterised, at one time, the beginning of the transition, in which politics was not taken very seriously. A tone which, however, was not offensive but “moving.” Was he advancing the register with which today political issues are approached? “Read today, the lesson of democratic scepticism that The Truth about the Savolta Case advances attracts attention although it does not ignore the convictions of a moral nature.” And, finally, the person honoured took the floor: “As you can imagine, I am overwhelmed, but I will go on. Moreover I have an advantage and it is that I have never read The Truth about the Savolta Case,” said Mendoza light heartedly, to continue in a more serious tone, that “it is a novel guided by several destinies.” The first, “that Pere Gimferrer, who I knew, had just joined Seix Barral when I was trying to place the novel. After a couple of days he said that he had read it and was interested.” The second, “that it followed the normal course of other novels, whose commercial success nobody trusted, so that the novel was not released until Saint George’s Day of 1975, a time when the country was very receptive.” And despite everything, he recognised, “it went almost unnoticed. I think that on Saint George’s Day it only sold eight copies, four of which were bought by my sister.” The critics were “kind and generous,” added the writer. And finally the magazine Cambio 16, at that time very influential, recommended it as summer reading.” However, “at that time I wasn’t aware of anything,” assured the author. Mendoza was living at that moment in New York and he explains that he invited some friends to have a glass of wine to celebrate the publication of the novel and when they left, “I realised that they had forgotten the copy on the table.” And again in a serious tone, the writer pointed out that “I wrote it because I had a good time and I liked it. I was not demolishing myths. This trend was already present in authors such as Javier Marías and Travesía del horizonte, in the detective novels of Manuel Vázquez Montalbán or in La infancia recuperada by Savater, which sought to restore fiction before formalism. I started from there and from unconsciousness. And, of course, I never thought that after thirty years anybody would remember it.” But, looking back, the writer decided to make a date with his public for ten years’ time.

The foreign arts institutes celebrate European linguistic diversity from the perspective of love

Under the title ‘Love, what language do you speak?’ professors and students of several foreign arts institutes located in Barcelona —Institut Français, Istituto Italiano, British Council, Goethe, Camoes— and the Institut Ramon Llull went on stage in the auditorium of the Institut Français in Barcelona in the afternoon of 21st April to recite poetry and prose from their respective literatures on the subject of love. The event, jointly organised by the diverse centres and which formed part of the programme of activities of the Books and Reading Year, was the way they chose to join in Saint George’s Day and pay tribute to European linguistic diversity. The event was opened, explains Isabel Obiols in El País, by the dialogue of the roses of The Little Prince, by Saint-Exupéry, read in French by two children, in a hall packed with people. The audience was made up of young people and middle aged people ready to enjoy literature read in original version. For those who could not understand the other languages, the stage, decorated with books, included a screen with translations. The event was presented by Mary Ann Newman, from the Institut Ramon Llull, who read a poem by Federico García Lorca (Serenata) and another by Joan Maragall (Enviant Flors). This was followed by the contribution of the consuls of the respective countries who also participated. The first sonnet of Petrarca’s Cancioniere, the Cantiga VII by Camoes, Sonnet 130 by Shakespeare, Barbara by Prévert, and Intermezzo 35 by Heine were the texts chosen. The recital was about “amor, amour, amore, love, liebe and amor”, but the participants covered all its phases and nuances, as Isabel Obiols points out, from falling in love to breaking up, including passion and indifference. The Portuguese were the first with the reading of a poem by Eugenio de Andrade on the end of love, Adeus. The two representatives of the Instituto Camoes continued with verses by Sophia de Mello, Breyner Andresen and Ana Hatherly. “It was a very brief contribution, adorned with fados and performed with sobriety,” writes Obiols. Night Carnations, by Adrian Henri; a scene from Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare; Love, by Philip Larkin; an extract from the novel High Fidelity, by Nick Hornby; Celia, Celia, by Adrian Mitchell; a fragment of The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde; and Vinegar, by Roger McGough... “The repertoire in English was generous, with texts of diverse genres, and performed ad-lib with great humour by four teachers of the British Council,” notes Obiols. “With them the soiree enjoyed one of the most ironic and also bitterest moments.” Like the British, the representatives of the Institute Français also mixed the classical repertoire with the contemporary, with Bérénice, by Jean Racine; Dans ces bras-là, by Camille Laurens, and L’amant, by Marguerite Duras. Another brief repertoire that would lead to another longer formed by pieces of twelve authors in Italian (Dante, Valduga, Ungaretti, Saba, Rinucini, Montale, Penna, Leopardi, Pavese, De Amicis, Caproni and Luzi) and a final one with texts by eight German writers (Goethe, Von Günderrode, Von Eichendorff, Rilke, Walser, Brecht, Bachmann and Domin). And to judge from the success of the event, it seems that they will repeat it next year.

Biblioteques de Barcelona launches an online reading club On 21st April at Francesca Bonnemaison Library, a new initiative of Biblioteques de Barcelona was presented ―the Online Reading Club (active on the website www.clubdelectura.net)― in an event which had the participation of Emilio Manzano, presenter of the book programme of BTV ‘Saló de Lectura’; José Antonio Millán, specialist in digital publishing, and the writer Màrius Serra. “We have wanted to take a step further in an activity, reading clubs, that Biblioteques de Barcelona has organised for some time,” states Juan José Arranz, its Director of Programmes. At present, there are forty active clubs with an average of twenty-five readers each. The online reading club also wishes to bring together all those interested in sharing their reading and comments on books but, in this case, through Internet. “With this initiative we want to approach a public who does not go to the libraries physically but who perhaps will do so if this space is available,” adds Arranz. In fact, José Antonio Millán himself states that he only reads books on screen. “We’ll see if it is attractive to young people,” concludes the officer in charge of this programme. For the moment, the club has started with the proposal of a selection of novels by contemporary authors: The Plague by Albert Camus, Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo, Nada by Carmen Laforet, Last Meeting by Sandor Marai, Age of Iron by J.M. Coetzee or Extension of the Battlefield by Michel Houellebecq, among others. The running of the online club is similar to the presential: a monthly reading is proposed, the participants have documentary materials within their reach and there is a conductor who seeks to answer the questions of the participants and moderates the forum which in this case is obviously online. Moreover, once the reading is over, those registered can participate in a chat with a guest specialising in the author or in the issue of the book, which will always take place the third Tuesday of each month at 7 pm. This month, the reading proposed is The Plague by Camus and the chat, which will be held on Tuesday 17th May at 7 pm, will have as a guest Hélène Rufat, Professor of French Language and Literature at the Department of Humanities of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra.

22.04.05

Saint George’s Day starts with a speech by Professor Riquer

A Saint George’s Day that formed part of the Books and Reading Year and which commemorated the four hundred years of the publication of Don Quixote deserved a speech to match the occasion, and the honour fell, deservedly, to the Romanist and Cervantes scholar Martí de Riquer. The esteem of Barcelona citizens for Professor Riquer was evident in a Saló de Cent full to brimming. The publisher Jaume Vallcorba paid tribute to Riquer, “a wise man”, who later talked responding to the questions of the curator of the Books and Reading Year, Sergio Vila-Sanjuán, who introduced him as a “humanist”. “And why are Hellenists fascinated by the Greek world?” Doctor Martí de Riquer was amazed when asked for the reason for his fascination with the medieval world. “Perhaps because since I was a child I have been immersed in this world and it amused me a lot.” What is clear is that the amusement is the good argument that Martí de Riquer has the fortune to give to many of the questions he is asked on the reason for his concerns. We learnt that the troubadours recited “because it was a means of gaining prestige.” “There is no other way to tell a woman that she is very good and generous but by singing to her.” (Did the men in the audience take good note of it?) But there were also troubadours who wrote political poetry “which could be compared to the current news chronicles.” And we learnt that “the jealous husband is the great enemy of troubadours,” as revealed by the end of the troubadour Guillem de Cabestany, which he immediately explained to the audience. “The jealous husband catches Guillem, kills him, cuts out his heart and has it roasted. Then he makes his wife eat it. ‘How did you like it?’ he asks her while revealing the nature of what she has just eaten. ‘So exquisite that I will never eat again,’ answers the woman, and she jumps out of the window.” Obviously, we were also told what 15th century knights were like, and it seems that they were braggarts. “Any knight wanted to be the best knight in Europe. Generally, the knight was a male exhibitionist, although they adorned this with love or politics.” And of all the literary knights Tirant lo Blanc is a good example “because he is very human. He breaks his leg!” And although it is “with another adornment,” Martí de Riquer does not believe that human beings have changed that much. By the way, neither Tirant lo Blanc nor Don Quixote, the book of chivalry that King Juan Carlos loved the most, as his old professor told him, was Amadis de Gaula. With reference to the story of Guifré el Pilós and the four stripes, Martí de Riquer suspects that “it is a legend rather than a historical fact. As also is the legend that he spoke Latin in some seminars of Romanists. Did he never feel disenchanted with the books of chivalry when he read Don Quixote? “On the contrary, I read the parody before the parodied books. And I enjoyed the parodied books very much, although not as much as the parody.” The reason why Martí de Riquer decided to document the relationship between Cervantes and Don Quixote with Barcelona is simple and logical: “Because I am from Barcelona.” But after the concise answer, the man who has recently been defined by his colleagues and disciples as a “magic positivist”, remained in silence for a moment and then he said, as if thinking aloud: “I presume that the combat between Don Quixote and the Knight of the White Moon took place in what is now plaça Antonio López, between the restaurant Set Portes and the Civil Government.” And he recalled how one day, at dawn, at the statue of Columbus, he saw the sun as described in Don Quixote: “Red and big as a buckler.’” “It is true; this is how you see it. Cervantes had seen it!” Thanks to the patience of his mother, who put in order what had to be a labyrinthine family archive, Martí de Riquer could write his book Quinze generacions d’una família catalana. He points out that he wrote it to have a good time, but be aware, “everything is true!” “I think that if there were ten or twelve books like mine we would have a very accurate history of Catalonia!” It is quite probable. And, yet, if he had to choose a specially interesting century, Martí de Riquer would choose “the 21st century,” an answer that prompted the applauses of all those present at the Saló de Cent. Despite his not at all nostalgic answer, the curator of the Books and Reading Year asked him to talk about the Barcelona of his childhood, when he lived in carrer Ample on the corner with carrer Avinyó where, from the balcony of his house, the child Martí “could also view some performances.” But after letting himself be absorbed by memories, he protested: “You can see that I am quite old. Otherwise, you wouldn’t ask me these questions!” Finally, some reading notes: the book that Martí de Riquer has read the most is not Don Quixote or any book of chivalry but “the dictionary”, and the detective novels that he loves the most, a genre for which he feels an evident attraction, are those of Arthur Conan Doyle. And as a reader, what advice would you give to encourage people to read? “I think that it’s quite difficult. It’s something that one bears inside. Either you like it or you don’t.” However, Riquer believes that “fortunately, people read more and more. Do you think that the publishers are so dumb as to release so many copies of Don Quixote if they did not think they can sell them? For the moment, people are buying it, perhaps they will read it.”

23.04.05

Saint George’s Night

Who had said that Saint George was a day and Saint John a night? This year, Saint George’s day has dressed up for Saturday and, if during the day La Rambla and the streets of the centre were a hive of people browsing between stalls of books and roses, at night, people still filled the streets and many venues which proposed a literary or artistic soiree, such as the Palau de la Virreina, several libraries of the municipal network, social centres and a large number of museums, which opened their doors free from 8 pm to midnight. In the Palau de la Virreina alone, 17,500 entered throughout the day. This year, Saint George’s day did not end with the closing of the traditional stalls of roses and books. When they dismantled the stall, others took over. At 8 o’clock, a night of poetry and music started at the hall of La Virreina with Loquillo and Sergio Makaroff. The first spoke about the relationship between poetry and rock and the second decided to talk about love and not allusively: before the audience attending the recital he asked his girlfriend if she wanted to marry him. She agreed. That was Hollywood! Then came other poets: José María Micó, Eduard Sanahuja, Francesc Garriga and Carles Hac Mor, with a repertoire that combined the Spanish Siglo de Oro and Catalan popular tradition, poems of their own and, even, by Ludovico Ariosto. Everything under a common denominator: a sense of humour, which had its best moment —laughter resounding among the audience— when Francesc Garriga read, with great humour, the anonymous poem ‘Un moro, un lloro, un mico i un senyor de Puerto Rico’. The event had begun with the reading of a fragment of The Bachelor Vidriera by Miguel de Cervantes, where the bachelor says, when asked about the appreciation he has of poetry: “For poetical science a lot, for poets none at all,” which would mark the burlesque tone of the soiree. Eduard Sanahuja and José María Micó chose erotic love and the epitaph. Thus, Sanahuja started with Quevedo’s ‘Soneto cacofónico’ and continued with the “Romance de Gerineldo y la infanta” or the “Epitafi d’un amant’. In his turn, Micó read, among others, the ‘Epitafio a una mujer pública llamada Salvadora’ by Juan de Salinas, the episode of the queen and the dwarf from Orlando furioso (the work by Ludovico Ariosto that he has just translated into Spanish) or the first fragment of his ‘Retablo de la transición’, to be specific that dedicated to the death of Franco also called ‘El 20-N por aleluyas’, inspired by the television appearance of the minister Arias Navarro announcing the death of the caudillo. Francesc Garriga continued with more popular wisdom with ‘Del bressol al cementiri’ and Carles Hac Mor concluded with poems of his own. Later, Dolors Miquel, Laia Noguera and Esther Xargay read love poems accompanied by a wheel viola. And, finally until midnight, Juan Carlos Mestre read his poems accompanied by an accordion. Meanwhile and from 9 pm, each district hosted the screening of a film linked to a literary work. In the case of Ciutat Vella, the film was La febre d’or by Gonzalo Suárez, based on the homonymous novel by Narcís Oller, which could be seen at the Ateneu Barcelonès. In the same district, several museums opened their doors to the public until midnight: CCCB, MACBA, City History Museum or Picasso Museum, among others. The latter, full of visitors at ten o’clock, offered, apart from the free visit to the permanent exhibition and the exhibition devoted to Jean Hélion, a poetry reading at the Neoclassic Hall. Ferran Marquina, accompanied by Eva Gumà at the violoncello, recited poems by Alberti, Apollinaire and Cocteau devoted to Picasso. From a quarter past nine to quarter past eleven, Biblioteques de Barcelona also proposed a literary soiree under the title ‘The voice of the night in the libraries’. At the hall ‘La cuina’ in Francesca Bonnemaison Library (full house), the Colombian storyteller Aleko accompanied by the accordionist Antonio Rivas taught the audience to dance the vallenato of One Hundred Years of Solitude. At Barceloneta-La Fraternitat Library, Joan Garriga, former singer of Dusminguet inclined to the reading of poems by Joan Salvat Papasseït, bathed in satirical sailors songs and sea waltzes. In its turn, Vila de Gràcia Library was also imbued by sea airs, these from the Atlantic, with O retorno dos homes mariños, the name of the performance which included sailors stories, Atlantic legends and enxebre Galician music by Xurxo Souto and Sofia de Labañou accompanied by the band O Garbanzo Negro. Among the audience, another unexpected companion, the Galician writer Manuel Rivas. Meanwhile, at Sant Pau i Sant Creu Library, Tremendo recited his hip hop verses to a young and family audience on the bases of DJ Fat Kut. The rapper from Terrassa, author of the record ‘Vidalogia’, offered his critical view on contemporary life and a philosophy within the reach of common people in the form of a seducing and energetic phrasing: “I live for the moment / if I am interested I pass through slowly / if not, I jump over it / as high as necessary (...)”; “No politician represents me / because no one is worth it (...)”; “I sell advice but I have none for me (...)”

...And the hangover On Sunday morning, the districts of the city were the setting of the literary walks which went through the most emblematic spots of Barcelona. Ten walks, one per district, led by well-known characters closely linked to each district. Tours such as “Theme Park”, in Ciutat Vella, by Pau Vidal; “Literary Eixample”, with Mercè Ibarz; “Carmel, on the road”, by David Castillo; or “The Barcelona of the workers”, in the district of Sant Martí, led by J. M. Huertas Claveria.

28.04.05

The magic of puppets gives life to the knight Tirant lo Blanc in the libraries of Barcelona

It is six o’clock in the afternoon and in one of the halls of Francesca Bonnemaison Library there is quite some bustle. Around twenty children, most of them from the Social Centre Convent de Sant Agustí, in the district of Ciutat Vella, are waiting impatiently for the show to begin. More than a dozen puppets from the company L’Estenedor are about to stage the adventures of the knight Tirant lo Blanc. The show forms part of ‘Small Print’, the activities addressed to children from Biblioteques de Barcelona. ‘Small Print’ is like a “big umbrella”, tells me Marta Clari, the director of the municipal libraries consortium, and includes, among others, the programme ‘Small Format’, which is precisely small scale theatre for a small (in age) audience. “At the beginning we bought the shows, but as the network of libraries is now quite large and the shows rotate through all the centres, we commission them made to measure according to two criteria: that are they based on a literary work and that they use different narrative techniques.” With reference to the texts chosen, “on the one hand, we wanted to make children know the work of a living writer (today the authors chosen are Joaquim Carbó and Emili Teixidor) and, on the other, to update the classics.” In a Cervantine year, one of the choices has been Tirant lo Blanc, the book of chivalry by Joanot Martorell for which Cervantes had a predilection. Moreover, adds Clari, “given that we are celebrating the Books and Reading Year, this same performance is offered in the morning in the schools through the Barcelona Education Institute and in the afternoon to the parents.” The shows, however, always take place at the libraries of the municipal network. And the other classics that are staged this year are Shakespeare, Verne and Andersen. And, finally, David Laín, puppeteer of L’Estenedor Teatre de Titelles, goes on the stage or rather he places himself next to the small stage where he will give life to the knight Tirant lo Blanc and princess Carmesina, to give a brief explanation to the public: “Tirant lo Blanc is a book of chivalry written five hundred years ago by a man called Joanot Martorell, who was from Valencia (...)”. As well as a couple of clarifications: “But you must know that there are two things with which we don’t agree. One is how this book treats women. Because here all women are wives, mothers or daughters of someone, and we believe that women are important for themselves. And the other is how it treats all those who are not white and European, because what matters to us is what is inside each person, whether from Morocco or from Barcelona, whether she is called Fatima or Laia (...)”. Any questions?” he adds. And a girl lifts up her arm and says: “I know a girl called Fatima.” The first chords of Germán Zecchin’s music resound, and the walls of the city of Constantinople appear on the stage of the puppet theatre. Before the wall, a small chariot drawn by four white horses is dragging the corpse of the knight Tirant lo Blanc. The bells peal and the voice of the narrator says: “People of Constantinople, lament, because the knight Tirant lo Blanc is dead.” The company L’Estenedor believes that the current children’s audience has enough audiovisual culture to start from the end and explain the whole story as a flashback. However, will children accustomed to the sophistication of animated films and videogames be able to enjoy the subtle magic of the puppets? This version aimed at a children’s audience reduces the nine hundred pages of the novel by Joanot Martorell to ten scenes, half of which focus on the loves of Tirant lo Blanc with princess Carmesina. “We could have made another adaptation more focused on the battles, it could have been more spectacular, but for us the most important was to transmit the idea that, no matter how famous you are, at the end death awaits, and that you must trust people, which is what Tirant lo Blanc does not, who trusts more the Rested Widow than the love that princess Carmesina professes for him.” The truth is that, although the first idea about love is perhaps a little too much for children between six and nine, the episodes of the love between the knight and the princess and the corresponding misunderstandings seemed to be what definitively seized the children. But first there were, indeed, battles. That which confronts the ship that takes Tirant and Felipe of France to Sicily against a Saracen ship in the Straits of Gibraltar, won thanks to a witty rouse; and that of Rhodes, besieged by the Turks and the Genovese and freed thanks to another stratagem of the army of the knight Tirant; and an amazing welcome dinner in the castle of the king of Sicily… And in all the episodes the beauty of the handicraft puppets, their small medieval clothes, the ships, castles and scenery, the collection of small objects that they manipulate stand out. And the skill of David Laín to manipulate up to five puppets at the same time, with grace and capacity of improvisation and a wide vocal register to give voice to men and women, young and elderly people, intelligent and simple, good and evil, to a strong and valiant Tirant who arrives triumphantly in Constantinople and is named by the Emperor General Capitan of his armies, and another shy and shivering because he has just received Cupid’s arrow. And everything presided over by humour. By the way, the mothers who accompanied their sons and daughters watched the show even more enchanted.

30.04.05

Biblioteques de Barcelona proposes a fascinating tour thorough seven “unusual libraries” of the city

An unusual stroll through bourgeois Barcelona

Alongside modern functional public libraries, in Barcelona there is a series of libraries which, often of restricted access, remain unknown to the general public. These libraries, which illustrate several aspects of the culture, science and civil society of Barcelona and are exponents of different moments of bourgeois Barcelona, deserve to be known because of their history, specialisation of their sources and the singularity and beauty of their location. This is what the tour ‘Unusual libraries’ proposes, which from 16th April to July (included) has been organised by Biblioteques de Barcelona: a guided tour through seven libraries: Antoni Tàpies Foundation, Arús Public Library, Francesca Bonnemaison, that of the Reial Acadèmia de Bones Lletres, that of the Centre Excursionista de Catalunya, Ateneu Barcelonès and Reial Acadèmia de Medicina. A real pleasure, essential for all those who love books, history and art or, simply, good and beautiful things.

Antoni Tàpies Foundation The meeting point is the entrance of Antoni Tàpies Fundation, in carrer Aragó close to Rambla Catalunya. Forty people have gathered, most from the Catalan Association of Bibliophiles. At ten o’clock, a member of the staff opens the thick wooden doors which give access to the headquarters of the former publishing house Montaner i Simón, a work of the architect Domènech Montaner and which today houses Antoni Tàpies Foundation. Mercè Riera, the guide of the tour, leads us to the upper floor which hosts a good part of Tàpies’ work that makes up the permanent collection of the Foundation and which also houses the library. It would be unpardonable to go in the library without stopping first, if only for a moment, at the work of Tàpies. Thus, Mercè Riera provides us with basic information in front of the some of the works of this “very personal” artist, an exponent of abstract informalism, and the “matteric” nature of his painting. An explanation which is complemented by the words of Joan Perucho said by an actor who (with a measured tone and without any excess of theatricality which make him almost invisible) keeps appearing in several libraries, without anybody having seen him arrive or leave, in order to evoke his link with some significant character. That of Tàpies Foundation is the most luminous of all the libraries that we will visit today thanks to the large vertical windows that go up to the vaults of the ceiling and between which are the rows of the library (made of honey coloured wood and, like the remaining furniture, original from the old publishing house). It is so beautiful and harmonious and you would like to stay and live there. But it seems that it is not possible: in order to enter an appointment is required although the opening hours are quite long, from 11 am to 8 pm, Tuesday to Friday. The library specialises in art, to be specific 20th century avant-garde movements and in the art of non-western cultures, in which Tàpies is especially interested. Obviously, it also houses the complete commented work of the artist and his graphic work. A procession of taxis is waiting at the exit of the Foundation to take us to the following destination: Arús Public Library, in passeig de Sant Joan. The other journeys will be made on foot. It is not yet eleven in the morning and the streets of the Eixample are quite empty. It is sunny and fresh. It is good travelling by taxi with so little traffic.

Arús Public Library At the entrance of this building in the Eixample a big Art Nouveau lamp is hanging where you can read, in wrought iron letters on the glass: ‘Biblioteca Pública Arús’. So you cannot miss it. When entering the portal, a plaque on the left side informs us that Rossend Arús i Arderiu lived between 1844 and 1891 and that he was a “writer, poet and philanthropist.” The upper part of the staircase, surrounded by Ionic columns, imitates a Greco-Roman temple. From here you can enter the hall of the old library, presided over by a reproduction of the Statue of Liberty. Rossend Arús, High Master of the Catalano-Balearic Lodge, admired, like other Masonic colleagues, the United States, the symbol of individual freedom and Republican federalism. The walls are covered by books from floor to ceiling, locked in dark wooden showcases. The books are organised by size and those on some of the shelves can’t be more than eight centimetres. The ceilings are painted in red, adorned by ornamental borders with floral and geometric motifs and, in the rear hall, the names of the greatest men of art and science from all time illustrate the hypothetic reader (the desks are now empty) from the top of the wall. The visitors are slowly surrounding the central showcases where books and several Masonic objects are displayed: an apron and a necklace of the High Official of the High Spanish Lodge, a Masonic dictionary, a book of liturgies, a ceremonial sword, rings and jewels, Masonic philately… “When he died,” explains Mercè Riera, “Rossend Arús left his capital to Valentí Almirall and Antoni Farnés, with the commission of making this residence the first public library of Barcelona. The architectonic reform was the work of the architect Bonaventura Bassegoda i Amigó, and the library was inaugurated in 1895, with the participation of more than 150 civilian institutions of the city.” At present, Arús Public Library hosts one of the most important sources in Europe specialising in the workers’ movements of the 19th and 20th centuries (especially the anarchist movement) and Freemasonry.

Francesca Bonnemaison Library We return to the street and walk down passeig de Sant Joan until reaching Arc de Triomf. We take carrer Trafalgar (the limit of the district of Sant Pere, in the past devoted to textile manufacturing) and today a small Barcelona Chinatown full of wholesale clothing shops owned by Chinese people. Halfway we turn to the left through carrer Lluís el Piadós until reaching plaça de Sant Pere, where Mercè Riera tells us of the writer Dolors Monserdà (Barcelona, 1845-1919) and her novel La fabricanta, inspired by life in the street around the textile business and whose main characters are two women, one the typical wife and mother of a bourgeois family and the other an emancipated businesswoman, “la fabricanta”. Feminism and Monserdà’s desire to educate of women helps Mercè Riera to introduce another feminine character: Francesca Bonnemaison, founder of the next library we will visit. But first, we walk through the narrow and popular carrer Sant Pere Mitjà and, turning at carrer Arenes de Sant Pere, we end at carrer Sant Pere més Baix, where, at number 42 are, on both sides of a patio, the house and old factory Vilumara (now empty and rented by floors as a warehouse) that Dolors Monserdà portrayed in her novel. In the carrer Sant Pere més Baix, close to Via Laietana, is Francesca Bonnemaison Library, the only one of the “unusual libraries” which forms part of the municipal network of Biblioteques de Barcelona. We go up to the Dante Hall, the former office of Francesca Bonnemaison, the daughter of a bourgeois family also concerned with the education of women and who the priest of the church of Santa Anna appointed librarian. “In which library?” asked Francesca. And this was her task: to create a library (which was inaugurated in 1909) conceived for the education of working women which, when the factories closed, offered “(…) artistic, scientific and handicraft training, for the moral and material wellbeing of women,” in the textual words of Bonnemaison, which had its third headquarters in this building. On the desk of the old office (the furniture is preserved), among other objects, photographs that record the story of the old library and women’s centre, as well as postcards of Francesca’s correspondence, a copy of the journal Feminal, another instrument for the education and social and cultural promotion of women and in which, for instance, in the issue of 29th May 1910 we find “Ms Teresa Alcover y Sureda, Queen of the Jochs Florals of this year.”

Reial Acadèmia de Bones Lletres de Barcelona Crossing Via Laietana we quickly reach plaça de la Catedral. From here we take carrer dels Comptes and, crossing carrer Jaume I, we continue along carrer Dagueria, where carrer Bisbe Caçador begins, which is closed on the other side by the façade of Palau Requesens, a medieval building which hosts the headquarters of the Reial Acadèmia de les Bones Lletres de Barcelona, the fourth destination of our tour. Fortunately, the front patio of the palace is today holding a flute concert of the 28th Festival of Early Music by the “B-Five” Quintet, with works by William Byrd, John Dowland among others, a very appropriate music prelude to enter the medieval chambers. In the auditorium we are told that the institution was born in 1700, although under another (quite curious and eloquent) name, the Academy of the Mistrusted, whose headquarters were the Palau Dalmases. Its objective, explains Mercè Riera, was “to compile and promote knowledge of the history of Catalonia and the teaching of humanities, as well as the organisation of the literary competition of Jocs Florals.” We are surrounded by the portraits of the Galleries of Illustrious Catalans, among whom there are two women: the poet and novelist Maria Josefa Massanés and Queen Elisenda de Montcada, the wife of King Jaume II. There is no portrait of, for instance, Caterina Albert (Víctor Català), who joined the Reial Acadèmia de Bones Lletres in 1923, but we can hear her words from the membership speech in the mouth of the actor Òscar Intente: “(...) I do understand that the high honour I am given is not a reward for personal merit but an example of consideration and a stimulus for Catalan women who are in charge of and concerned with matters of the spirit (...)” These words had the response of a quite masculine recognition, which stated approximately that the prose of Caterina Albert was so powerful that it achieved “the most masculine note of Catalan literature.” Next we visit other premises: the hall where the members of the Academy meet, which conserves the old voting system based on small black and white balls which are put in wooden urns, and the adjacent hall, located in one of the towers of the Roman walls and presided over by a portrait of the former owner of the palace, Isabel de Requesens i Enriquez de Cardona Anglesola, whose original, conserved in the Musée du Louvre, is attributed to two painters, Giulio Romano and Rafael.

Centre Excursionista de Catalunya “Singular, curious, attractive and partly unknown.” This is the comment of Agustín, one of the bibliophiles that are today following the tour, in relation to what has been the visit so far. He only knew Arús Public Library or Francesca Bonnemaison Library from other’s comments but “I had never been there.” “There is a mixture of sensitivities and contents, like that which takes us from the Acadèmia de Bones Lletres to a general library.” “Sure, because now Francesca Bonnemaison Library would be called general, wouldn’t it?” intervened Jordi, also a member of the Association of Bibliophiles. “Although I don’t like this word at all,” he states. By the way, what is the difference between a good reader and a bibliophile? “In fact, none,” answers Jordi. “The bibliophile is a person who is aware of loving books. He is interested in their textual contents and also the book itself as an object, how it is published, its design… But the person also generally appreciates these aspects, so…” Understood. And we reach one of the most singular venues of the tour, only what we are about to see would justify the visit: at the entrance of the Centre Excursionista de Catalunya, located in carrer Paradís, very close to plaça Sant Jaume, you come across four columns from an ancient Roman temple which have been trapped within an inside court, which stresses their size. Given that the Centre Excursionista is being rebuilt, the visit to its library, specialised in mountaineering, is today virtual. By the way, the centre has its own gallery of illustrious mountaineers, headed by the great mountaineer as well as poet Jacint Verdaguer.

Ateneu Barcelonès When we leave, another Jordi (the son or son-in-law?) of the previous tells me that he thinks that the visit is “very interesting”. “It offers you the possibility of seeing places that are usually closed or places that perhaps you don’t know.” “Like this one?” I ask him while pointing at the columns. “Yes, perhaps I had been here when I was a boy but I didn’t remember. Or plaça de Sant Pere where I had really never been.” We are now walking alongside one of the sides of the cathedral. “Walking through these streets makes me feel very quiet,” he says. It seems that the bibliophile father has brought his entire family with him; apart from Jordi, with whom I have just spoken, there is his daughter, his wife and his beautiful granddaughter, Jordi’s daughter, who must be no more than ten and who is almost always holding her grandmother’s arm. We are in the library of the Ateneu Barcelonès, “the most important library in Europe,” as Mercè Riera tells us, “(...) abundant and very amusing, almost inexhaustible,” as Josep Pla tells us in his Quadern Gris, read by Òscar Intente, who is reading while sitting in one of its halls in the dark like Pla had done years ago, while wondering “(...) whether those we see in the library on Saturday morning are not the crème de la crème of human stupidity.” Despite the poor light in the left aisle, we distinguish the paintings on the ceiling, a work by Francesc Pla “El Viguetà”. The Ateneu occupies the old palace of the Baron of Sabassona, of neoclassical style, and the library preserves “almost half a million volumes.” In the right aisle it is lighter. A glass door gives way to the journal hall which, in its turn, leads to an interior garden, five metres above street level, and where we all end up making admiring commentaries.

Reial Acadèmia de Medicina We are heading to the final point of the tour, the Reial Acadèmia de Medicina. On our way I speak to Marc Ignasi, another bibliophile who is more critical than his colleagues. He says that he has found the visit “very light” because “what bibliophiles like is to touch the books.” It is worth saying that the tour is not conceived for a specialised public. This former medicine student tells me that he thinks that the Reial Acadèmia de Medicina conserves a copy of De Humani Corporis Fabrica livri VII, by Andreas Vesalius, who, in the 16th century, revolutionised medicine basing his studies of anatomy, for the first time in the West, on dissections of human bodies rather than animals. But, apart from this, he tells me what he thinks is the most attractive part of the Academy: its anatomic amphitheatre or dissection hall, which dates back to the 18th century. He tells me that on the upper floor there is a balcony “from which bourgeois women, who were very morbid, looked at the operations behind the lattice windows.” The Reial Acadèmia de Medicina de Catalunya was founded in the 18th century as the headquarters for the studies of surgery in Barcelona by the surgeon Pere Virgili, therefore becoming one of the forerunners in Europe. The building, of neoclassical style, forms part of the architectonic site of the Hospital de la Santa Creu. Its library, specialising in medicine, conserves, among others, studies of mortality from the time of several Catalan towns, as well as meteorological tables of an exceptional quality, as Mercè Riera explains to us. But, undoubtedly, what is more attractive for the visitors is the great anatomic amphitheatre with the marble table for dissections in the centre. The chairs of the lower rows are Baroque and excessive, such as the immense ceiling lamp from the factory of Murano. On the upper part stands out the lattice window with wrought iron banister behind which, according the version of Mercè Riera, “the nuns of the neighbouring Hospital de la Santa Creu, as well as other important members, used to hide when they wanted to attend the dissections.” One of the most illustrious scientists who taught in this amphitheatre was Santiago Ramón y Cajal, who was Professor at the Faculty of Medicine (the Faculty of Medical Science was founded here in 1843). And it is with his words that Òscar Intente put an end to the visit. Well, not completely, because one of the participants explains that “on this table the students of medicine who wanted to graduate had to perform twelve dissections of corpses and one of a living dog (to explain how the blood circulation system works). The medical candidate, who worked with corpses of executed men, also had to pay the priest for the service for the twelve dead men.”

And also...

Adolfo Sotelo Vázquez presents Viajeros en Barcelona at Francesca Bonnemaison Library On 5th April, within the framework of the well attended cycle ‘Come and have a coffee with…’, which has been held since February at Francesca Bonnemaison Library, Adolfo Sotelo Vázquez, Professor of History of Spanish Literature at the Universidad de Barcelona, presented Viajeros en Barcelona. The book compiles the impressions and comments made about the city in letters, notebooks and different texts by Spanish and Latin American writers from the 19th and 20th centuries following their stay in Barcelona. Among others, it is possible to read fragments by Galdós, Pardo Bazán, Ruben Darío, Unamuno, Azorín, Baroja, Valle-Inclán, Antonio Machado and Cela.

Ricardo Piglia closes the Caixaforum cycle “On the great masters of 20th century literary criticism” On 5th April, the novelist, literary critic and professor at the University of Princeton Ricardo Piglia closed the literary criticism cycle which has been held since January at Caixaforum. Key international literary criticism and theory personalities such as Roberto Calasso, Alberto Manguel, Andrzej Warminski or Joseph Hillis Miller have approached the function of literary criticism within the current socio-political context and have tried to discover if there is a model of literary theory and / or criticism as there is a model of novelists.

The new Talks in Barcelona cycle ‘Books to change the world’ begins at Palau de la Virreina To examine a set of works of our cultural ambit which in their time contributed to changing ideas about the world, human beings and the path of their history, either because this was the implicit aim of the text, or because they helped others to see in them the possibility of making these changes reality. This is the aim of the new Talks in Barcelona cycle ‘Books to change the world’ which, organised by the Catalan PEN, began on 12th April at Palau de la Virreina with the session ‘Civilisation: Ars generalis ultima, in which Josep M. Ruiz Simon and Albert Soler approached the work of Ramon Llull. The cycle will approach another three revolutionary books until 7th June.

Start of the ‘Readers in books’ cycle at Círculo de Lectores The lecture by the writer José Maria Merino on Don Quixote de la Mancha opened on 14th April at Círculo de Lectores the cycle ‘Readers in books’, directed by Carme Riera. The series of lectures aims at analysing, until 2nd June, the key role of readers in a varied miscellany of works from universal literature.

The Catalan Writers Association discusses Catalan literary criticism ‘On literary criticism’ is the title of the conference which, organised by the Catalan Writers Association (AELC), was held from 18th to 20th April at the Cultural Centre Caixa Catalunya. La Pedrera, with the objective of reflecting on the situation of Catalan literary criticism and discussing the reception of the different schools and trends that have taken place in Europe in the last 30 years.

Opening of the exhibition ‘Hemenegild Miralles, graphic arts and binding’ at the Catalunya Library The exhibition ‘Hermenegild Miralles, graphic arts and binding’ was opened on 20th April at Catalunya Library. It reviews the whole work of Hermenegild Miralles (1860- 1931), a graphic arts industrialist born in Barcelona and the main exponent of the restoration of the art of decorative binding in Catalonia at the turn of the 20th century. The exhibition features 115 artistic bindings never seen, such as posters of Ramon Casas or adverts, projects and photographs, most of which belong to the collection of Catalunya Library, and can be visited until 18th June. The Institut Cambó organises a cycle of lectures on the Greek and Latin classics of the Fundació Bernat Metge On 20th April, the professor of Latin Philology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Jaume Medina, opened the cycle with the lecture ‘History of the Fundació Bernat Metge’ at the Saló de Gremis de Foment del Treball Nacional. The cycle will be completed with three more contributions which will examine Cicero’s Speeches, Eratosthenes’ Catasterisms and Homer’s Iliad.

R.C.D. Espanyol distributes 20,000 books among its members in a major book festival On Sunday 24th April, the Reial Club Deportiu Espanyol coinciding with the match that the Barcelona club played against the Saragossa Football Club, paid homage to the writers who have expressed their support to the football club. After the match, which was attended by the Arts Councillor Ferran Mascarell and the Catalan Minister of Culture Caterina Mieras, 20,000 books were distributed among the members.

Inauguration at the art gallery Sala Parés of the exhibition ‘Readings’ which brings together works on books and reading by its main artists On 28th April the Sala Parés inaugurated the exhibition ‘Readings’ which, within the framework of the Books and Reading Year, features two works by each of the 34 painters of the art gallery specially made for this occasion. The event, which enjoyed the presence of most of the artists, had the participation of the poet, essayist and professor Antoni Marí, author of the text of the catalogue, and Sergio Vila-Sanjuán, curator of the Books and Reading Year. ‘Readings’ can be visited until 29th May.

The Barcelona Ethnology Museum makes a trip around the world in 80 objects The Ethnology Museum features ‘Around the world in 80 objects’, a re-reading of the permanent exhibition of the museum through the famous novel by Jules Verne Around the World in 80 Days. The tour, with which the museum pays tribute to the writer and traveller on the one hundredth anniversary of his death, emphasising fragments of the work that evoke places and objects described, including, African bazaars, Japanese Kimonos and representations of the goddess Kali. The exhibition, whose curator is Josep Fornés, can be visited until the end of the year and provides a journey through the 10,000 pieces displayed in the museum through the eyes of Jules Verne.

Eva MUÑOZ