Josep Pla (1897-1981) is not unknown. News and interpretations have been published about him from all points of view: from camaraderie, philology and journalism, from Catalanism, the independence movement and the intellectual environment of Ciudadanos. In recent years, very interesting volumes have been recovered from correspondence with his brother Pere Pla, with Josep M. Cruzet, Gaziel, Jaume Vicens Vives, Joan Estelrich and Francesc de Borja Moll. What remained was to gather all these scattered testimonies into a biographical work that would organize the information and interpret it, adding dozens of documents from the Josep Pla Foundation that guards his papers (Pla did not throw away anything) plus the legacy of nephew Frank Keerl Pla.
The author of this colossal work was Xavier Pla (Girona, 1966), author of Josep Pla, autobiographical fiction and literary truth (1997), a reference book of Catalan literary criticism of the last thirty years, the result of a doctorate in Comparative Literature at the Université Paris Sorbonne (Paris-IV), editor of the work of Eugeni d’Ors and author of several books on Catalan literature of the 20th century.
Xavier Pla is an excellent academic essayist and Un cor furtiu. Life of Josep Pla has a very good start, which connects with the ideas of that 1997 book. It begins with a biographical detail that does not seem of the utmost importance – Pla, in recent years, liked to wear gifted clothes; one day Josep Vergés met him at Mas Pla wearing one of his suits – to explain a profound aspect of the writer’s personality: he could never show himself naked (perhaps no one can really do it, after all) and he put on different costumes until he found the canonical form of dissimulation: the beret. The author maintains that Josep Pla is a Faustian character defined by existential anguish, a man with a great individualistic drive, who sacrifices his life to writing. Writing is unfolding. Dissatisfaction and contradiction are key concepts to understand his personality.
Pla built a character, which hid a lonely monster, a sad comedian. Fragmentation, the breakdown of cause-effect relationships, could be seen as a desire to conceal or as the manifestation of an incomplete personality. For Xavier Pla – who on this point follows the philosopher Galen Strawson – it is not about that. He believes that an identity can be created without having to construct a story. At each moment there is a different Plan and not necessarily consistent in time.
Starting from this theoretical premise, Xavier Pla reconstructs the writer’s life with a method that is inspired by the biography of Roland Barthes by Tiphaine Samoyault and that of Gabriel Ferrater by Jordi Amat: he wants to be, at the same time, close and distant. Where this intention is best expressed is in the “Trencaclosques de la guerra”, which presents the materials that he has compiled in calendar form, arranged by month. It results in a very copious list of facts, built from archival materials, contrasted with correspondences and diaries. The author intervenes to highlight certain aspects, for example, about the writer’s alleged espionage activities in Marseille: he presents the documents and then asks if this or that paper really proves that Josep Pla was a spy.
In the years of the Second World War, history half repeats itself with the names of characters linked to Allied espionage in Barcelona who appear in the Pla papers and which allow us to imagine that the Pla brothers put the Mas de Llofriu at the service of the English aviators. who crossed the French border. One thing does not compensate for the other.
Something similar happens with Pla’s sentimental and sensual biography, which is displayed in detail – sometimes, in too much detail, because excess documentation is a vortex of this type of work. Mercedes Costa, Aly Herscovitz, Adi Enberg, Lilian Hirsch. Aurora Perea, Consuelo Robles, Luz de Santa Coloma: we have the portrait of a rapt, inflamed man who never achieved sentimental stability. It is the most literary part of the book, with Adi Enberg, who lived with him for thirteen years, heartbroken and hurt because Pla used her relationship to avoid committing to Lilian Hisrch. Cristina Badosa, who interviewed Adi Enberg, has spoken about it at length. Also interesting is his infatuation with the Argentine Luz de Santa Coloma, when Pla was sixty-four years old and wanted to be her Pygmalion.
From the political point of view, Plan is a broken mirror. A stealthy heart Vida de Josep Pla presents the writer close to Macià, at the time of the Prats de Molló plot, in a continuous rife-rafe with Cambó, fooling around with Lerroux, entering Barcelona with Franco’s troops, approaching Tarradellas, expelled from Destino por unos artículos in favor of the Portuguese dictatorship.
Xavier Pla is a very competent literary critic and, although the objective of the book is not to analyze or comment on the work, it has round moments of criticism. When he describes the publishing environment of the 1920s, with Antoni López Llausàs who tried to establish a monopoly on books in Catalan at the expense of the Diana publishing house where Pla published his first works. When he recounts the lack of understanding with Francesc Pujols, with whom – contrary to the most widespread image – he did not connect at all. Or when he gathers and comments on the interpretations of Viaje en bus (1942), which Rafael Tasis i Marca read in exile. Tasis knew how to recognize the criticism of Francoism and timidly opened the door to the recovery of cultural Catalanism. On the other hand, some Franco personalities see him as someone who is untrustworthy, too ironic and too Catalan. That he deliberately slipped in Catalan when he wrote in Spanish, and that he was so popular, was not exactly in his favor.
Pla has many followers. And although it cannot be said that Un cor furtiu. The Life of Josep Pla reads like a novel, it is a book that will provide many pleasant hours for men and women who love literature. A reference work, a monumental book about the Catalan writer who – together with Rodoreda – has had the most diverse and lasting influence.
