Ten literary gems recovered for Sant Jordi

BarcelonaOne of the best indicators for measuring the health—optimal, correct, or precarious—of a literature can be to review the translation of classics and the policy of recovering its canonical authors. The harvest leading up to Sant Jordi in 2025 is proving, in this regard, quite remarkable, with such ambitious projects as the publication of a new version of Emily Dickinson's complete poetry, the publication of all of Hans Christian Andersen's stories, the recovery of Joaquim Amat-Piniella's most emblematic book, and the demands.

"Now that the Nazi salute has arrived in America, rereading the lessons learned from those who fought against fascism is dizzying," we read on the back cover of the new edition of KL Reich (1963), of Joaquín Amat-Piniella (Manresa, 1913 - Hospitalet de Llobregat, 1974). Club Editor reissues the novel, the only one in Catalan literature to describe the experience of deportation to Nazi camps. It begins in Mauthausen, where the story's protagonists, Emilio and Francisco, are imprisoned along with thousands of Republican soldiers. There they discover the daily hell and the will to survive: "Nazism sought to physically annihilate its enemies and, if it didn't completely succeed, it prepared the atmosphere that could permanently annihilate them morally," writes Amat-Piniella. "Emilia would try to overcome both trials."

We had to wait 150 years after the death of Hans Christian Andersen (Odense, 1805 - Rolighed, 1875) to be able to read all his stories in Catalan translated directly from the Danish and in an edition that recovers the original, detailed and graceful illustrations by Vilhelm Pederssen and Lorenz Frølich. Although Adesiara has accustomed his followers to such unusual feats as the edition of the Thoughts and pamphlets by Pascal – translated in 2022 by Pere Lluís Font, the latest Honorary Prize for Catalan Literature – and the volume Archaic Greek wisdom (2012), in which Jaume Pòrtulas and Sergi Grau brought together the best of so-called pre-Socratic thought., the enjoyment they provide All the stories Andersen's work is enormous: the result of the work that Miquel-Àngel Sánchez Fèrriz and Henrik Brockdorff have carried out for almost a decade exceeds 1,500 pages, divided into two volumes, and includes 160 stories among which there are such emblematic ones as The Little Mermaid, The Little Tin Soldier and The Snow Queen.

The first novel of James Baldwin (Harlem, 1924 - Saint Paul, 1987) is "a portrait of the adolescent sinner," he says. Colmo Tóibín in the postface of the magnificent edition that the Andorran publisher Trotalibros has made of Spread the word. Translated by Yannick Garcia, the book focuses "on consciousness and the spiritual life" based on the story of John Grimes, a boy raised in New York's Harlem neighborhood in the 1930s with the aspirations of becoming a preacher like his father, Gabriel. "The battle he wages against his father is almost a metaphor for other, more essential supernatural struggles, such as saving one's soul," admits Tóibín: these involve leaving behind racism, poverty, and sexism and daring to accept one's own sexuality. We have recently been able to read Baldwin's novels in Catalan Beale Street Blues (1984, 2019 Editions) and Giovanni's room (Trotalibros, 2024). Also the collection of articles and autobiographical texts Notes from a Native Son (Manifesto, 2024).

Although The bedroom, by Attilio Bertolucci (San Lazzaro, 1911 - Rome, 2000) is one of the pinnacles of 20th-century Italian poetry, but until now it has not been fully translated into any other European language. It was the poet Joan-Elies Adell who took charge of it for the Saldonar publishing house. Divided into 46 chapters and comprising almost 10,000 verses, it is, according to the critic and essayist Pietro Citati, an autobiography "drawn in a dream", a poem that starts from the author's family tree –the admired figures of the grandfather and the father play a prominent role, and also the intense relationship with the mother–, delves into controversial episodes of Italian history and delves into a cat the discovery of sex and the meeting with Ninetta, who would become his wife and the mother of his two children, both filmmakers, Bernard and Giuseppe.

More than a decade ago, Edicions de 1984 already discovered Catalan readers Willa Cather (Black Creek Valley, 1873 - New York, 1947) thanks to My mortal enemy, but it has been the young and exquisite Cal Carré, the editorial that has persisted in vindicating it during the last five years. AfterThe Alexander Bridge (2021), Pioneers, oh pioneers! (2023) and Lucy Gayheart (2024), all translated by Núria Sales, now arrives Grandma Harris, covered this time by Esther Cortada.

This long story first appeared in installments at The Ladies' Home Journal and ended up being part of the volume Dark destinies (Dark Destinies, 1932). It tells the story of the ups and downs of three women from the same family who move from Tennessee to a town in Colorado. It does so through the voices of Grandma Harris, her daughter Victoria, and a neighbor, Miss Rosen, who observes the newcomers from the South from the perspective of someone from the northeast and with a Jewish cultural heritage.

The length of many of the novels of Charles Dickens (Landport, 1812 - Gadshill Place, 1870) made Catalan publishers wrinkle their noses for decades. Even now, a significant portion of the work of one of the most popular authors of the 19th century has not been translated into our language: it happens with Dombey and Son (Dombey and Son, 1848), Martin Chuzzlewitt (1844), Little Dorrit (Little Dorrit, 1857) and Nicholas Nickleby (1839). Carles Llorach-Freixes has taken care of this last one for Adesiara after having dared with theUlysses of James Joyce, published by Funambulista in 2022. Nicholas Nickleby It is Dickens's third novel – published months after Oliver Twist (1838) – and is also the name of the story's protagonist, a boy who must support his sister and mother after his father dies. Nicholas becomes a teacher in a rural school, joins a theater troupe, and experiences many other amusing, humiliating, and extravagant experiences, written in a style that flows with a still admirable ease.

In life, Emily Dickinson (Amherst, 1830-1886) published only eleven poems. Even so, although he rarely left the room in the family home where he grew up, he sent more than six hundred manuscripts of poems to about forty correspondents, an "alternative system" for making his unique, cryptic, and luminous work known, as he recalls. Mr. Sam Abrams in the prologue of this Complete poetry, translated by the poet Jaume Bosquet and published by Edicions in 1984. Abrams was precisely one of the first to be adapted by the American author in the anthology I'm nobody! Who are you? (Café Central, 2002). Dickinson has recently had new translations, such as This is my letter to the world, choice of Marcel Riera (Proa, 2017), and Poems.1850-1886, edited by Carme Manuel (Alfons el Magnànim, 2022). The novelty of Bosquet's version is that, in addition to offering readers more than 1,500 of the author's poems, it also includes the "preliminary versions" and a "generous" set of notes by Bosquet himself in which "references, allusions, and obscure meanings are explained." As Abrams states, this volume is "the jewel in the crown of Dickinson's presence in Catalonia."

"One day in January 1941 / a German soldier was walking / through the San Lorenzo district of Rome. / He knew only four words of Italian / and knew little or nothing about the world. / His name was Gunther. / His surname is unknown to us." With these seven verses begins the first chapter of The History, one of the most ambitious and beloved novels by Elsa Morante (Rome, 1912-1985), "the most beautiful of the 20th century", according to Natalia Ginzburg. First published in 1974 and previously unpublished in Catalan, it examines the Second World War and the post-war period through the eyes of a Jewish schoolteacher and her son, Ida and Useppe, and a wide range of characters who accompany them on their journey through the neighborhoods, refugees, and other social outcasts.

Robert Walser (Biel, 1878 - Herisau, 1956) was one of the most unique and inimitable writers of the first half of the 20th century, but his presence in Catalan has been too discontinuous for him to have been able to make a mark among readers. In addition to having written masterpieces such as the novels Jakob von Gunten (Cuadernos Quema, 1999) and The assistant (1984, 2016 editions) and the autobiographical text The walk (Flâneur, 2017), Walser stood out thanks to his short stories. In addition to the abundant Micrograms –Written in pencil during the decade prior to his psychiatric confinement, still unpublished in our language, his early production of stories was collected for the first time in 1914. Anna Soler Horta now offers a translation that allows us to savor the meticulous and dazzling prose of the Swiss author.

Twenty-five years after the last Catalan edition, the most emblematic novel ofEdith Wharton (New York, 1862 - Saint-Brice-sous-Fôret, 1937) returns to bookstores with a new translation by Marta Pera Cucurell. The Age of Innocence (1920) delves into a love triangle in 1870s New York. It portrays the moral conflict of the most powerful New York families of the time through the clash between the influence of the decadent traditional aristocracy and the pretensions of the nouveau riche, who are unwilling to accept their renunciations.

Since 2022, Vienna has been publishing several of the writer's most outstanding long stories, such as Lady of Treymes (1907), New Year's Day (1924) and A single woman (1924). Comanegra has just released an anthology of short stories, translated by Yannick Garcia and with a prologue by Marina Porras. As literary critics affirm, Wharton is "one of the best narrators of dualities, games of concealment, and the petty pettiness that permeate characters."