Is Rodoreda corny?

BarcelonaDavid Uclés is on his way to becoming the great champion of Rodoro's work. Elisenda Solsona is no slouch either. Within the framework of the CCCB exhibition on Mercè RodoredaHer talk this Monday before the more than four hundred people who filled the Hall, an enthusiastic audience, has become a festival of unrestrained praise. Rodoreda as a precursor of European magical realism (earlier and harsher than its Latin American counterpart), as an eternally innocent yet malevolent child, as an author of the everyday and terror, as a dreamlike and symbolic master. How could she be a not-so-good witch? It seems that in most of her texts, witches of all kinds and conditions appear...

Ricard Ruiz Garzón was responsible for bringing to the surface Uclés and Solsona's admiration and devotion to the author of The Diamond Square and, above all, of Death and SpringThe author's unfinished and most radical novel, which both consider her masterpiece. As Neus Penalba, curator of the exhibition, says Rodoreda, a forest (You have until May 25th to visit it.) Uclés believes this book has changed him forever: "I'm obsessed with it!" He has no limits when it comes to recommending it. urbi et orbiConvinced that it's impossible for her to disappoint anyone.

Rodoreda didn't win the Sant Jordi Prize with either of her two titles. Uclés blames the sexism of authors like Josep Pla, about whom he says it's no use excusing him by saying he was a man of his time: "But he died four days ago! I should have said so. Now I can rest easy." Laughter from the audience. But even today there's a whiff of sentimentality surrounding Rodoreda. And a great deal of ignorance in Iberia: "I'm an Iberianist," clarifies the author of The peninsula of empty houses and The City of Dead Lights. And he adds: "A novel that if I had written it after reading Death and Spring It would feature Rodoreda as the absolute protagonist."

Symbolic Violence

There is an image of Death and SpringThe scene where someone who is about to die has cement placed in their mouth to prevent their soul from escaping has become a symbol of the symbolic violence in Rodoro's literature. This force, according to Solsona, draws from Catalan folklore and is also reflected, for example, in the story The salamanderA fragment, read by Lídia Pujol, serves to introduce the conversation: it describes how the people in a town square—men, women, and children—all become a "happy shadow" before the spectacle of a girl-witch being burned at the stake. A witch, a victim of normalized human barbarity. "We're not so far removed from this today, are we?" Lídia Pujol remarks to me before the performance begins. Since the tragedy of the Second World War, "pure realism is no longer sufficient to explain reality," they will later repeat on stage.

These shifts in Rodoreda's rhythm, like cement in the mouth, like people chatting before a human bonfire, or like Colometa on the rooftop when she can no longer bear the pigeons, are what Uclés defines as "Rodoreda moments," when reality becomes the monster that "slaps you in the face." A blow that has left its mark on Uclés and Solsona. And in many readers, past and future.