Edicions Tres i Quatre has published the letters that the writer Joan Fuster and the singer Raimon sent to each other over almost 30 years, from the sixties to the nineties of the last century. This work, volume 23 of the ‘Correspondència de Joan Fuster’, also includes the letters that the author from Sueca (Valencia) exchanged with other representatives of the ‘Nova Cançó’, as reported by 3i4 in a statement.
The book has been prepared by the Sociology professor at the University of Valencia and singer-songwriter Rafael Xambó. The publisher has pointed out that in this publication “we witness the birth of the Raimon phenomenon and the ‘Nova Cançó’ and we discover the faith that Fuster had in the singer from Xàtiva (Valencia) and in the singers who would join in immediately, capable of arriving with his voice, with his sung word, far beyond where the written word could reach”.
Thus, pointing out that “it was not only about their extraordinary social reach, their ability to gather and move massive audiences in recitals and meetings repeatedly described as historic due to the massive attendance they attracted and the political significance they represented”, also “of their own aesthetic consistency, claimed again and again by Fuster in his writings, whether the texts accompanying the albums, the articles published in the press or, above all, the enthusiastic biography” that he dedicated to Raimon and that was published in 1964 .
Edicions Tres i Quatre has highlighted that in addition to the epistolary relationship between the singer from Xàtiva and his wife Annalisa Corti, the published volume brings together the letters that Fuster exchanged with other names from the ‘Nova Cançó’ world such as Maria del Carme Girau, Josep M Espinàs, Ermengol Passola, Ovidi Montllor, Vicent Torrent, Quico Pi de la Serra or Pep Laguarda.
As an appendix, the book includes a selection of Fuster’s texts on the ‘Nova Cançó’ by Xavier Hernàndez, from the Joan Fuster Chair at the University of Valencia and a scholar of the Swedish writer’s relationship with music. These are texts that the author published in the periodical press or accompanying some of the albums that the singer-songwriters published, either on the back cover, in the folder or in a notebook.
3i4 has highlighted that Fuster wrote “many letters, thousands of letters, some of great value both for their content and for their high literary quality”, while stating that “many others, the majority”, were “circumstantial, marked by the contingency of day-to-day life and the demands of his profession as a writer and his condition as a committed intellectual – with the language and country, with the problems and concerns of his time -, of a public man, of father of Homeland”.
“He himself was aware of the interest of his extensive epistolary for future readers and scholars and not only did he keep everything he received in an orderly manner – letters, cards, telegrams, handwritten notes handed under the door, circulars, forms, invoices, notices, insults, threats– but he made copies of the letters he sent” and “hence the majority are typewritten and not handwritten,” the publisher specified.
Along these lines, he has assured that this “enormous material is invaluable to better understand the writer and his work, to also understand his public projection, his simultaneously literary, cultural, civic and political dimension.”
Taking into account this “documentary, historical and literary value”, Edicions Tres i Quatre has specified that it began to publish in 1997 the ‘Correspondence Joan Fuster with Antoni Furió’ — professor of Medieval History at the University of Valencia — as director of the project and, since its creation, with the collaboration of the Joan Fuster Chair of the University of Valencia”.
The publisher has pointed out that each volume is dedicated to collecting the epistolary with a correspondent or a set of correspondents connected by a thematic axis. So far, 20 volumes have been published that bring together Fuster’s letters with characters such as Josep Pla, Josep Carner, Marià Manent, Salvador Espriu, Carles Riba, Agustí Bartra, Vicenç Riera Llorca, Aina Moll, Francesc de Borja Moll, Eulàlia Duran, Teresa Lloret, Josep M. Castellet, Xavier Casp, Miquel Adlert, Ernest Martínez Ferrando, Joan Triadú, Josep M. Llompart, Manuel Sanchis Guarner, Vicent Ventura, Joaquim Maluquer or Josep M. Castellet.
