Four years have passed since Canto jo i la muntanya balla came to light, the second novel by Irene Solà (Malla, 1990), which broke the mold by making all kinds of beings speak, such as roe deer, water women or even clouds. . The international success it achieved has fueled the expectations of what is now being published, Et vaig donar ulls i vas mirar les tenebres. Solà continues to follow untrodden paths and presents a novel that, although brief, has a gigantic scope and requires careful reading.

In the heart of the Guilleries is Mas Clavell, the absolute protagonist of this novel. For four centuries, the reader is immersed in the stories and legends of the people who have lived there and who still inhabit it, especially women and all at the same time. With dazzling mastery, the characters move in and out of the paragraphs, now alive, now dead, to explain the history of the lineage founded by Joana, the woman who married the owner of the farmhouse thanks to a pact with the devil: “There was a home ancestor, who followed here and who had a few lands and a few teulada.”

But the boyfriend was not a whole man: “In Bernadí I had a hairless hair and pudent with només quatre dits.” This lack is what Joana celebrates because, according to her, she breaks the pact with the evil one. What the bride does not know is that this will mark all her offspring and that all the women who will come will lack something, and it will not be heaven that will welcome them with open arms when they die.

Among the literary novelties we find novels for all tastes: light, dense, black, intimate, philosophical, romantic, sensual, historical… But in Catalan literature we add a plus: the use made of the language. Between controversy and controversy over the authors who use a particular language model, sometimes bastard, Irene Solà takes the baton from Espriu and sets out to save words.

In an overwhelming lexical display, Mas Clavell’s history adds the language of language, in sentences that chain words and more words, with the objective of describing spaces, feelings, sensations, smells, flavors and materials, so that the reader immerse yourself in a multisensory feast to celebrate por dentro. This is what one of the characters says: “The first time she slept in the mill, Elizabeth already asked the Virgin to please kill her husband (…) And when the Virgin killed him, that it didn’t take long, Elisabeth threw a party. Inside. With musicians who played xirimias”.

In the story of Mas Clavell, Solà not only recounts the vicissitudes of these women, but also how they cook and what they eat. From the kid that runs through the corral until it is served on the plate, the pages describe the entire process that follows, from when it is selected, bled, killed and skinned, how the skin is separated from the white fat membrane that covers the meat, how the kidneys, the heart, the lungs are extracted, how the different parts are cooked with centuries-old recipes and how, finally, everything is eaten. But also, in between, the stories do not stop, and the reader continues to learn details of the lives of one another, or how all kinds of animals mate, which Blanca watches carefully.

The novel focuses on a single day that lasts centuries. Divided into chapters that begin at dawn, still dark, and end when night falls, we witness the death of Bernadette, cared for by Marta and watched over by the spirit of Margarida. Marta drives “a car without horses”, as described by Margarida, daughter of Joana, who hopes like agua de mayo that the soul of the old woman goes to hell. All of them are “the ungrateful, thick-skinned, frivolous, perfidious, sore-burdening and backbiting women of that house”. A cursed lineage, that in I gave you eyes and you looked into the darkness is blessed by the pen of Irene Solà.