The new city. Literature on freedom, equality and Catalan

The new city. Literature on freedom, equality and Catalan, Magí Sunyer, Benicarló, Wave Editions, 2010

Magí Sunyer, professor of Catalan literature at the University Rovira & Virgili , presents a collection of his articles, carefully structured in a volume that deals with  work and civic action of several contemporary writers broadly. This publication is therefore a worthy continuation of studies previously published by Sunyer, as social outcasts in the literature of modern group of Reus (1984), Modern and Contemporary (2004) or National Catalans Myths (2006). The new city consists of five chapters dealing with literary and cultural contributions of five authors who found the war in 1936 as a brake to their careers and civic engagements: Antoni Rovira i Virgili, Ramon Vinyes, Ventura Gassol, Rafael Tasis and Artur Desumvila. The five, in Sunyer´s view opted for the defense of a free society from a leftist perspective, in order to reconcile ideological concepts such as freedom, equality and Catalan. Not in vain this study fits into the activity of the research group of National Identity and Gender in Literature Catalan in the University of Rovira i Virgili, Sunyer is one of the most representative ones. A task reasearching the ideological concretions moved some authors in their texts fighting against inequalities and shared the dream and the defeat of Republican exile.
The complete authors list analyzed and the list of writers who have been analyzed by Sunyer in previous publications as Aladern Josep Pere Cavallé, Antoni Isern, Plàcid Vidal, Joan Puig i Ferreter, Josep Maria de Sagarra, Jaume Vidal Alcover Maria Aurèlia Capmany, Josep Pin i Soler, and Joan Cavallé Narcis Oller, among others. A revaluation of the idelogical contribution some intellectuals in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have been key, according to various studies by the author, in the actual execution of Catalan literature. The five chapters are now presented as the origin twelve articles previously published, the author has been consolidated and has connected perfectly general thesis of the book, achieving a remarkable unity of analysis which speeds up the reading interest and understanding of the initial assumptions and the extraction of conclusions. Thus the first chapter, “The young writer Antoni Rovira i Virgili” is the result of four previous articles dealt with the author’s literary beginnings and shed as theater critic. A rigorous set of articles published in media solvency as diverse as the Journal de Catalunya, Language books of Arts or records of specific studies is the writer´s reference.

Interestingly, the title of the book published, The New Town, which Sunyer explains in the preface, is taken from a prose Rovira i Virgili on the May Day celebration that refers to the defense of a free society without inequalities and “fully understood in the context of debate over the city in early twentieth century and presents an alternative to topical Noucentism” (p. 10). Thus, the analysis of the work of Rovira i Virgili becomes the starting point in the realization of a personal aesthetic that since the youth of the writer is forthcoming. As you remember Sunyer, the author is on the generation of Joan Josep Carner and Puig Ferreter, and Alfons Ors Eugeni Maseras and at the time of the realization of the nineteenth-century movement, within the Regionalist League, Rovira i Virgili professionalized as editor of the Catalan people, faced directly into The Veu. Is the time of realization of a personal aesthetic marked by Catalan republicanism and the writing of an Ibsen drama, New Life (1904). Calling an early stage to reflect the use of literature that makes its author, in the service of ideology, that is, the use of theater as an effective means to remove consciences. A parallel activity to its realization as a theater critic for the newspaper El Pueblo Catalan or as narrator, with the publication in 1909 of the volume episodes, which make clear their intentions criticism of society and its commitment to an ideological anticlericalism. The second chapter of the book, “Ramon Vinyes, Angels and Demons” seeks to recover the intellectual figure that was marked by both cultural crisis of 1909 and the Civil War in 1936. Sunyer stresses the importance of his prose with a book like The fiery ride (1909) aligned with the thesis of the decadentism and the potential use of the symbolism. A high-rise prose the author of the study linked to Fatal Tales (1911) by Alfonso Maseras and Legends of Love and Torture (1909) by Palol Miquel. A highly expressive and also effective stories where, Sunyer´s “components of transgression, of cruelty and profanity are recurrent in this literary world” (p. 56). Secondly, we find an analysis of the stage production of Vinyes, especially, the work Dance of Puppets (1926), a work of great quality, like the other thrillers of the author, might not succeed in the big picture of Catalan literature of these times.

Gassol Ventura’s poetry focuses on the study of the third chapter and references to the three plays he wrote. The difficult relationship between the poet and the Novecentismo guide the analysis of Magí Sunyer, relocating all the importance of the path he concludes: “by the age, education, friends and initiation in Catalan, Ventura Gassol would correspond to part of the second generation of the Novecentismo. “(p. 79). The seven books of his poetry published between 1917 and 1977 offer exquisite control model metric and meticulous work of the language and, as indicated by Sunyer, “from four areas of interest: love, home, nature and death” (p . 80). The author’s study says in detail several poems that serve as contrast Gassol’s theses initially raised: the recovery of the literary and intellectual figure of Gassol in the Catalan scene of the twentieth century. Note the contrast of the evolution of the poet’s work between the two exiles who suffered, specifically the lack of renewal that was in the works after 1946, because the author was seized with the poetry of circumstances that had been governed by calls for the Floral Games exile.

Similarly, the fourth chapter, “The novelist Rafael Tasis”, is offered with the desire to claim the intellectual figure of the narrator. Thus, Sunyer says that “the Catalan novel of 1925-1939 should revisit and recover for the modern reader” (p. 110), an excellent example is the novel Twenty years Tasis (1931). Tasis became, as concluded by the author’s study , a writer and political activist committed to leading cultural and showed in his novels a perfect synthesis of the evolution of Catalan fiction since the nineteenth century and the realization of the detective genre in House: The Bible Valencia (1955), Time to end (1956) and A Crime in Parallel (1960). A solid foundation for the renewal of the Catalan novel of the last decades of the twentieth century.

Finally, “Homeland and Exile: the lost paradise of Artur Bladé i Desumvila” turns on an analysis of work of a writer and journalist who, in the words of Sunyer, “if Catalonia had not been defeated in war, probably Bladé would be converted into a sober expression journalist and brilliant. “(p. 126). We can read a defense of ideological contributions of a former student of Rovira i Virgili from the prose he wrote, produced by the observation of their immediate world, and we see an analysis of his books Benissanet (1982) – where he was natural, “Chronicle of the homeland (1958), People of the Ribera del Ebro and the posthumous The Golden Age (1995) and First Steps (1996).

Some works have in common the same starting point, the narrator’s personal vision, a clear descent autobiographical element that makes the stories a more personal vision and ideologically charged vision than the author intended. To summarize, we have a thorough review of the literary and ideological contribution of five contemporary Catalan writers as they saw the war and exile as a held back in his career. We therefore attend to the appreciation of his figures with an excellent analysis of who Magí Sunyer, the only criticism we can do is not including final conclusions synthesized from the comparison, the overall contribution of the studied writers.