Josep Piera: "Living in hospital for almost a year, very ill, made me more human"

BarcelonaAlthough Josep Piera (Beniopa, 1947) considers himself above all a poet, he has left a handful of memorable prose books, among them The green cliff (Destino, 1982) –with which he won the award Josep Pla–, Greek Summer (Destiny, 1985) and This is where it all ends (Ediciones 62, 1993), which the young publishing house Cabo de Brot has just republished in a corrected and expanded version. "The epilogue that Josep has now written has made us cry with emotion," admits Josep Maria Codina, who together with Germán Bartolomé and Judit Pujol has just launched a project that has already presented its first three titles: Birds of clay, of Santiago Rusiñol; The mark of the hook, by Laura G. Ortensi, and This is where it all ends.

After having to obtain part of Josep Piera's work in second-hand bookshops or libraries, the editors of Cap de Brot decided to recover one of the peaks of the Valencian author, which had been undiscovered for years. Piera recounts, with a prose "that wants to be stylised and at the same time natural" –in the style of three of his masters, Josep Pla, Mariano Manent and Joan Fuster–, his first trip to Sicily and the long period he spent hospitalised in Gandía due to a serious outbreak of Crohn's disease, which was unknown at the time. "At 40 years old I had to learn to be someone else," he recalls now. "Living almost a year in hospital, very ill, made me human. Every little thing I achieved became a wonder. I will never forget the day I was able to leave my room and look out the window at how they came out of the window," how the children came out.

A provocative graffiti

The journey that Josep Piera explains to Here it ends all It starts in Palermo, a "garden of agonies" that, however, is capable of hiding the beauty, "of a modest shyness", of the painting.Announced by Antonello da Messina. The author's journey, "without a goal or direction, at the mercy of fate," passes through places like Agrigento, Catania, Syracuse and Randazzo. "It was in this little village next to Etna that I saw, at the train station, the graffiti of an immense phallus, with a collonera even, which spread the name Laura with sperm. In a graffiti you can find the whole history of literature, from the most basic desire to the woman who is loved." Petrarch dedicated the Song book".

When traveling, Piera took a notebook to take notes and a camera. "Both things were useful later for writing," he recalls. "I remember a photo in which there was an image of theAnnounced torn on a wall in Palermo and, below, the initials of the Communist Party and those of the Italian Social Movement, the two extremes that sum up the country: communism and the nostalgic for Mussolini who, unfortunately, have ended up giving rise to Giorgia Meloni and company. "85-1986 I was reading Catalan in Naples and I realized that my Italy is the one in the south," he admits. "Naples and, later, Sicily, educated me to understand the beauty of degradation. I realized that there was not much difference between the piles of garbage that were everywhere and the sculptures and installations in museums."

From the Honorary Prize to the uncertain future

When, a couple of years ago, Josep Piera received the Honorary Prize for Catalan Literature, his health was precarious. "I still remember the night they gave me the prize at the Palau," he says. "Everyone was applauding me and I raised my arms to say thank you. I was amazed and I hadn't taken anything, I promise!" The Valencian author is currently feeling better, but he has not yet recovered the strength to resume his cycle of memoirs, which includes titles such as Postwar whore (Editions 62, 2007) and Change of course (Alfonso el Magnánimo, 2023).

"I would like to dedicate a book to the eighties, my years of creative and experiential plenitude," he admits. They were prolific years, with poetry collections such as The smile of the grass (Proa, 1980) and Maremar (Editions 62, 1985), as well as those mentioned The green cliff and Greek Summer, in addition toA beautiful baroque corpse (Ediciones 62, 1987). "I could start by explaining the trip to New York that we made with an expedition of Catalan-speaking authors, most of them deceased, among whom were Jaume Fuster, Josep Maria Castellet, Maria Antònia Oliver and Joan Fuster," he recalls. "It was in the spring of 1982. I was expecting to find the Mediterranean escalforeta and after a minute, there was a misunderstanding: I was not Miss Piera the'Alex Susanna It was not Miss Susanna!"So far, Josep Piera has not found the time to start writing: "Every night I go to bed thinking about the first sentence of the book. The next day, when I wake up, I am unable to remember it."