Josep Vallverdú (Lleida, 1923) needed four books to explain his life from 1923 to 1970, beginning with his childhood between Lleida and Sant Martí de Maldà (Desmudat i a les golfes ), continuing after the war with his experience in Barcelona (Vagó de tercera ) until maturity (Garbinada i ponent ), added to other books such as Proses de Ponent or Indíbil i la boira. He now culminates these memoirs with Mosaic de tardor (Proa), where he reviews his life from 1970 to last year. It is, at the same time, his most public stage, with the publication of his most recognized books, Rovelló, En Roc drapaire or L’home dels gats, yes, but also a life dedicated to teaching, to intellectual life, with friends like Guillem Viladot –whom he defines in the book as “my other self, in the field of writing”–, while in the most private sphere there is life in common with his first wife, Isabel Arqué, and the mourning that follows upon his death in 2012, his son, Eloi, and the rebirth of love with his current wife, Antonieta Vilajoliu.
Right from the beginning, the writer recognizes in the book that “the thread of the Grim Reaper can break abruptly”, but yesterday in the Ona bookstore he explained the illusion of being able to celebrate the centenary while alive, with the acts of this Any Vallverdú, “for on the one hand starring in it, and on the other as if I were seeing it from the window”, says sarcastically a few days before turning 100, next July 9, the day for which some acts that they have not told him are being prepared to surprise him: “Only I know that the president told me: ‘You will eat with me’”. But he does not lose sleep: “I give so little importance to turning 100 or 103 …”, he says. He has arrived at the bookstore with a nose injury, nothing serious, just a fall that he doesn’t care about.
He has a clear mind and two concerns: “The environment, because we are damaging it a lot” to the point that “there will end up being a war for the last drop of water”, and “our situation as a people, that we do not know how to get out of the alley dead end that we have gotten ourselves into, and that has no solution”.
Carme Vidal Huguet, curator of Any Vallverdú, who has become almost his shadow in recent years, and who has written the book’s prologue, celebrated the writer’s 303 titles, including originals and translations, while recalling that the volume he talks about the most contemporary Vallverdú, with so much that has happened in the last fifty years, and also highlighted how he talks about mourning the death of his wife: “It moves us because he knows how to convey it so that each one feels their own grief.” Vidal has also highlighted his sense of humor, “without avoiding criticism, but without acrimony”, and always with great precision “because he knows how to use adjectives as the philologist of classical languages ??that he is”.
Vallverdú wanted to insist on the fact that as a child he had had an inclination for the language: “I am still that four-year-old boy who is interested in the word.” He also reviewed his introduction to professionalization as an English translator – “I learned it by myself” – by Seix Barral, who published his first novel in Spanish for him until in 1960, with the relaxation of censorship, he landed in Catalan with the youth novel The fish vendor, the beginning of a golden moment shared with Emili Teixidor, Sebastià Sorribas and Joaquim Carbó.
However, he assures that he does not feel bad that his works for adults have not been taken more into account, especially the literature of the self and poetry, the genre that he currently practices the most. “When she talks about him, she also talks about the country,” Vidal insists.
The author agrees: “I am still at the service of the country”, and details a couple of projects that he has in the drawer: a half-finished book of poems that will be called Orama (vision in Greek) and a “gray novel, because there is little sang i fetge”, which will be out soon. It doesn’t stop.
Catalan version, here
