The book by Josep Pla that started it all is back.

BarcelonaOne hundred years ago, Josep Pla i Casadevall (Palafrugell, 1897 - Llofriu, 1981) decided to publish his first book, Things seen, which inaugurated the Diana publishing house. "There's no choice but to do a second printing," wrote editor Ignasi Armengou in Pla a few weeks after the volume arrived in bookstores. "We'll call it a second edition. This will have a certain effect on the public. At the rate we're going, it had sold out. arrived."

"In September, Pla and his entourage were already planning a third printing that doesn't seem like it will ever be made," writes Maria-Arboç Terrades in the edition of Things seen that Destino has just presented, one hundred years later: with this book, Josep Pla inaugurated one of the most prolific and unique literary careers in 20th-century Catalan literature. At that time, Pla was a 27-year-old journalist who already had a considerable following of readers thanks to the articles he published in newspapers such as Advertising and The Voice of Catalonia and that he sent from cities like Paris, Madrid, Genoa and Berlin. "If we were to believe what Pla never tired of repeating, we would have to believe that his first book was the fruit of the initiative of several friends, led by Ignasi Armengou, the driving force behind Editorial Diana, who not only chose from among Pla's articles published in the newspaper the ideal texts to make a volume, but also a suitable text to make a volume Things seen", adds Jordi Cornudella to the epilogue of the volume. "The freshness of Pla's language, which in its day was a real stimulant against the grip of the more common literary language, and the captivating vivacity of his style are still perceived today with the same intensity as a century ago," explains Xavier Pla, a scholar of Josep Pla and author of the most complete and up-to-date biography of the author, A furtive heart (Destiny, 2024).

The dream of living without working

"I've finally decided to launch a book. My friends have beaten me to it," Josep Pla assures the Four words inaugural of Things seen–. This fact, for me, has a certain importance because I never thought I would end up doing such serious things. I suspect that I was not born to write books, or novels, or stories, because what I am really good for is to live without working, to read pleasant things, to chat and go for walks, with a cane and a cigarette in my mouth." Since the second edition of Diana in 1925, the original text of Things seen had not been put back into circulation. It was partially reissued by Selecta in 1949., and in this same publishing house –directed by JM Cruzet– it ended up forming part of a series of seven volumes including Still life with fish (1950), The island of chestnut trees (1951) and Smuggling (1954). "In the Complete Works of Destiny, the title Things seen no longer exists; but the first volume, The gray notebook (1966), which are memoirs of adolescence and youth arranged in the form of a diary, includes many of the texts of the Things seen of 1925 (all of them taken up in one of the seven series of Things seen from 1949-1954), and practically all of the Early writings from 1956. Other texts ended up in other volumes of the definitive complete work," says Jordi Cornudella.

"I go through the world like a shadow"

The volume is divided into four main sections that foreshadow some of the paths Josep Pla would explore in depth later on. In the first, Men and landscapes, the reader will find texts dedicated to Calella de Palafrugell, the town of the family where he grew up and which nourishes, among others, The gray notebook; in Girona, the city where he lived as a boarder at the Marist school, as he recalled in Girona, a book of memories (1952), and also in Barcelona, ​​​​where he studied law and made his way as a journalist: a Montjuïc He writes that the city's "harbor lights," "so full of color," had "stolen his heart."

In the second section—and the shortest in the volume— Intermezzo, writes about Catalan cuisine, which he describes as "very mixed" and "eclectic", and which prefigures books such as What we have eaten (1972). And the third, which is titled Novel chapters, is a brief example of how Pla later intertwined reality and fiction in works such as The narrow street (1951). Things seen It closes with about twenty portraits of figures such as Josep Carner, Joan Estelrich, Pompeu Fabra and Josep Maria de Sagarra, which Pla extended to the various series ofHomenots, published first in Selecta (1958-1962) and later in Destino (1969-1974). Finally, Self-portrait, comes to the following conclusion: "I would like to be fat and I can't, I would like to fight but I can't find a partner. An unfortunate and comical situation... From this lamentable situation comes the air I have of a lazy man who looks for work and can't find one. That's why I'm not well off anywhere and I go through the world like a shadow, in a pedantic and mediocre way."

Things seen It was not the only book that Josep Pla published in 1925. That autumn it appeared, also in Edicions Diana, Russia. News from the USSR. A journalistic survey., where he explained his journey through Soviet lands and detailed how that country that dazzled him at the time functioned politically, economically and socially. Although Pla will never see a single cent of royalties from Diana –its manager, Miquel Ferrer y Sanxis, collapsed with the publishing house's income and ended up in prison–, the journalist and writer published two more titles, Magic Lantern (1926) and Relations (1927). The bankruptcy of Ignasi Armengou's project led him to diversify his production: thus, Manolo's Life (told by himself) It was published in La Mirada in 1928 – a publishing house of the influential Sabadell Alloy–, Letters from afar and Francesc Cambó (materials for a history of recent years) They appeared in Editions of the New Magazine, also in 1928, and Southern charts It was distributed through the publishing house Librería Catalònia in 1929.