A son willing to end his mother's life

Barcelona"A son is like the sea. He shines before the houses, and a voice in his eyes the morning, the midday, the murky sunset, and the night, warm, violet, and crystallized like a glass of wine." Thus begins the moving and delicate monologue of the mother of Andreu Crous, protagonist ofHaceldamaHe recites to the chronicler who records his humble and unfortunate life after his death as a result of the train bombing perpetrated by his son. It is one of the most impressive and also one of the most controversial episodes in the second novel by Blai Bonet (Santanyí,1926 - Cala Figuera, 1997), published in Aymá Published in 1959 and now reissued, two decades after Ensiola's version (2005), by Club Editor, restoring the original text without the censorship, especially editorial, of the proofreaders of the time.

The philologist and professor Nicolau Dols, author of the afterword that closes the volume, explains why. "Suddenly it appeared Haceldama"The critics have already pointed out a supposed construction error: Andreu Crous's mother is simultaneously a fatal victim and a narrator of the attack that took his life," he admits, before referring to a 1960 review by the writer and historian. Bernat Vidal and Tomàs in which he emphasizes how the book "escapes the usual logic" because the protagonist is "an alienated individual who writes his narrative with witticisms, even jokes, and ultimately culminates in an illusory and involuntary parricide." Dols also appeals to the withdrawal that Joan Triadú He did so in the novel, also in 1960, due to his "excessively poetic" style, "full of dazzling metaphors." "This only makes all the characters sound the same," Triadú complained, before mentioning the problem of having three such similar narrative voices: that of the chronicler of the work—Blai Bonet himself—that of Andreu Crous, and that of his mother, who, despite her humble origins, is able to express herself with such precision: "a mouth, fat and red like a piece of raw meat, where, at that moment, a green lettuce leaf gave her the peasant physiognomy of an ox ruminating on the threshold of a fence."

Break through and enlighten the reader

Decades after the publication ofHaceldama, in a literary system in which novels such as have had a great impact I sing and the mountain dances, ofIrene Solà (Anagrama, 2020), or Sunset and fascination, ofEva Baltasar (Club Editor, 2024), with proposals that broaden and push the boundaries of verisimilitude, Bonet's book's problems have become, rather, virtues. The Mallorcan author's "sensual, and quite critical" literary voice, which "broke and illuminated," is now one of its main attractions. This year marks the centenary of Blai Bonet's birth, celebrated with a handful of new publications. Haceldama She was the earliest riser, but they must arrive before Sant Jordi The lost books to 1984 Editions, which includes the unpublished poetry collections Oh Calvary, Calvary (1962) and The young man (1971), and also, with the same publisher, reissues of two of his most emblematic poetry collections, The Gospel according to one of many (1967) and New York (1991). In addition, Carles Rebassa will publish the literary biography Myth and pulse of Blai Bonet (Eumo), in which he explores "the rise and fall of the author from the Catalan literary field."

Blai Bonet worked simultaneously on The sea (1958) and Haceldama (1959). According to Nicolau Dols, Haceldama —which means “field of blood”— is “a magnificent document of the desperate reaction against the silence of God or, in Bonet’s own words, the deafness of God.” In the “core of war scenes that took place on the Aragon Front” during the Civil War, the narrator of these chapters, Andreu Crous, is confronted with the trial and execution of his friend Lucas, for having momentarily left the company to visit his grandmother. Crous “remains silent, sees the enormity of the sentence for an innocent act, and participates in the execution,” Dols comments. As Bonet explained in a letter to Bernat Vidal in 1958, Haceldama It is "the document" of the following aspiration: "To find the living God, I have gone to his antipodes."

After the war, Andreu Crous's return to civilian life is not easy: the dictatorship and Francoist repression gradually tighten their grip on him until he decides to attempt to take his mother's life. "May you be born in May, tearful son who makes us cry," we read in the novel, "not like a four-day-old corpse or a love that only has two legs, but like the onion that leaves the eyes wet in the cruel cook who lives with her drooling belly over the iron stove." Andreu Crous will end up in prison.

The effects of a proofreader's "dry rigor"

Nicolau Dols also recalls how Haceldama He suffered the "dry rigor" of the proofreader of Aymá's edition. Bonet's "enormous and deeply rooted" lexicon was gutted in several published works, among which the following stand out. Mr. Evasion (1969) and HaceldamaIn this last instance, Dols notes how the proofreader patiently and diligently replaced 29 of the 30 instances of the expression "por muere" with "due to," changed "coza" to "coz" and "punto de pie," "muestrador" to "escaparate," "descuidado" to "abandoned," and "una estona." The Club Editor edition "restores the original as it was," Dols points out: "It is a work of art that functions perfectly as it was written. I have respected the blatant Castilianisms. I did not want to sacrifice the novel's material to the current state of linguistic norms or trends. It does so.