Classicism…Muse, Mistress And Mentor: Exploring Catalan Literature - Part Six

During this series, we’ve observed how the past osmotically permeates the present, conditioning modern sensibilities, and often undergirding the literary voices of those building upon the creative efforts of their authorial forebears. The classical Western Canon can be seen as the bedrock upon which Catalan literature has built its literary towers, however they have risen skyward not as mimetic homages, but as profoundly organic and scintillatingly creative reinventions of the literary architecture inspiring them.

In this article, literary translator Tiago Miller shares his admiration and affection for two iconic Catalan writers steeped in classicism’s traditions, yet entirely unbridled by that which they lovingly venerated: Josep Maria de Sagarra, and Jordi Cussà. We began our conversation by exploring Josep Maria de Sagarra (1894-1961) and I asked Tiago to tell me something of the man, and his work.

“He was a novelist, poet, popular playwright, travel writer and translator, in short, the total Modernist man, in the same vein as Santiago Rusiñol or Prudenci Bertrana. Not only did he pen one of Catalan’s most important Modernist works, but he was also the leading playwright of his era and translated Dante and Shakespeare.

cq[As someone who in part grew up next to the Slough Trading Estate, this is a fantasy I’m more than happy to buy into]

His collection of poems Cançons de rem i de vel – this year celebrating 100 years since its publication – entered Sagarra into the literary tradition centred around the coastal town of Port de la Selva. However, these poems have nothing to do with the brutality of the Mediterranean, as depicted by the works of Joaquim Ruyra, rather they give the reader an idyllic portrayal of the Costa Brava full of references to blue skies, white sails, green vineyards, olive trees and seagulls.

As someone who in part grew up next to the Slough Trading Estate, this is a fantasy I’m more than happy to buy into. Indeed, these poems are much in the same vein as Joan Maragall’s popular poetry, shunning the values of Noucentisme in favour of localisms, repetitions, and simple rhymes, but always with great lexical range. In fact, many of these poems have been put to music by contemporary Catalan singer-songwriters. The collection also includes the rather outstanding line: ‘All that you think, all that you desire, / vanity! vanity! sings the sea.’”

cq[The book caused a scandal when it was published, and no one escapes Sagarra’s biting satire.]

As in my previous article, I asked Tiago to select a work from Sagarras’s multihued oeuvre which could be regarded albeit subjectively, as his creative apogee. It seems Sagarra not only wrote something truly exceptional, but he also put the proverbial cat amongst the pigeons!

“His great work is undoubtedly the novel Vida Privada (Private Life) and it’s one I return to often. In fact, Mary Ann Newman’s translation is such an outstanding rendering that I often find myself picking up the English version over the original (Newman’s translation is the best translation I’ve ever read of any Catalan novel).

The book caused a scandal when it was published, and no one escapes Sagarra’s biting satire. He was an aristocrat fascinated with every aspect of Barcelona life, from its bourgeois salons to its licentious underground, passing through the popular cabarets and music halls on the way. With echoes of Marcel Proust and Jean Genet, the reader is presented with a kaleidoscopic vision of Barcelona in the 1930s as Spain transitioned from the Primo de Rivera dictatorship to the Second Republic.

In fact, a contemporary reading bestows a kind of tragic farcicalness reminiscent of Luigi Pirandello (who Sagarra also translated) upon the novel: while the different social classes jostle for position and seek out cheap pleasures, the horrors of war, exile and dictatorship await them.”

Thinking of Maupassant and perhaps Gogol, I wondered if Sagarra had also given us a myriad colourful character causing his own prose to effervesce, as it lampooned those deftly caught in his assiduously aimed literary crosshairs…

“Sagarra’s characters are corrupt, immoral, and hypocritical, but ultimately hilarious, and Sagarra fills his scenes with the colour, texture and fragrances of the city’s parlours, restaurants and boudoirs. At times, he adopts a documenting style, certainly influenced by his background in journalism but they also bear the mark of the great Catalan prose writer, Josep Pla. In one memorable line he writes that, during the 1929 Universal Exposition, ‘if someone didn’t steal shamelessly it was because the poor sod simply didn’t have fingers.’”

We moved onto our next featured Catalan writer, the novelist, playwright, poet and translator, Jordi Cussà (1961-2021). Having read Tiago’s marvellous translation of Cussà’s, Wild Horses and immediately reviewed it for our readers, my ears were itching to hear Tiago’s thoughts on this astonishingly inventive son of Catalonia. I hoped he would discuss Cavalls salvatges and I was not disappointed!

“Although dedicating himself mainly to narrative fiction, Cussà moved freely across genres without ever losing his unique voice. The fluidity with which he moved between novels documenting drug abuse, metaphysical short stories and anachronistic historical fiction is probably why he was forever on the margins: the press were unable to pigeonhole him and it scared the cowards.

cq[As with so much of Cussà’s work, the novel brims with metafictional games ...]The most direct way to describe Cussà to readers is to say that he was an epic storyteller, but ‘epic’ in the classical sense, drawing as he so often did on Virgil, Homer and Shakespeare. He was uniquely capable of mixing this with references to popular culture and psychedelic rock. He was everything you want from a countercultural author but, at the heart of it all, he was a storyteller, a troubadour who rarely left his hometown of Berga.

His last ever work, the novel Les muses, is a testament to genius, art and the unbreakable flow of knowledge from one century to the next disguised as a historical novel. In it he explores important figures such as Da Vinci, Shakespeare and Poe (who he translated), but from the perspective of the women closest to them, making it a powerful work of modern feminism.

As with so much of Cussà’s work, the novel brims with metafictional games and we are never really sure exactly who is writing the novel: is it the writer-protagonist, his partner, his editor, or someone else? Les muses displays Cussà at his most mature.”

Tiago’s selection of Wild Horses as Cussà’s finest, most significant work did not surprise me. His sparkling translation of Cussà’s first book stood as testament to his adoration for its author, itself an act of deeply creative sympatico. Tiago did not merely re-voice Cussà, he had seemed to channel him! I wanted Tiago to tell me why this book is so special, and where it stands within Catalan literature in his estimation.

“It’s the rawness of Cavalls salvatges that makes it a cult classic, and one of the greatest Catalan works of the 21st Century. As you know, I was lucky to have the opportunity to translate the novel last year and it gave me a new perspective on Cussà’s work.

While his prose is often compared to that of Beatniks such as Jack Kerouac and Alan Ginsberg, the truth is Cussà revised his work multiple times to achieve the novel’s depth, tone, and web of interconnecting stories – the characters’ sailing upon the high seas of existence and their serial succumbing to the fatally sweet song of the sirens of heroin has much more to do with The Odyssey than On the Road. What’s more, his wit is so boundless and free flowing that the novel’s humour is never obvious, its intellectualism pedantic or its linguistic inventiveness banal. Wild Horses is a crazy trip that I recommend everyone try at least once.”

In the penultimate episode of this series, we examine the current state of Catalan literature and the factors influencing its creative output. Readers can expect to hear the variegated views of a leading literary translator, as well as those of an unflinchingly candid independent publishing house at the vanguard of ongoing efforts to produce fine Catalan literature in translation.

Until then, Tiago, ever generous, left me with a recommended reading list for our readers. Enjoy!