There are numbers that seem cursed. By recurring. Numbers that passed by at the worst time. One of them is 23. And not February 23, which we already know how it ended 42 years ago, but April. That date on which International Book Day is celebrated, the great festival of Sant Jordi with its epicenter in Barcelona, ​​a literary earthquake that will explode on the Rambla, as always, and will spread along Paseo de Grà cia and adjacent areas.
Although we find the holiday romantic and joyful, we must not forget that it commemorates not one but three deaths. All of them occurred in a repetitive year, 1616: Miguel de Cervantes, William Shakespeare and Inca Garcilaso de la Vega. Although of the three, only one actually died on the 23rd, the one known as the prince of the writers of the New World. Cervantes died a day earlier and Shakespeare on the 23rd of the Julian calendar, which would correspond to our May 3rd. Things are never easy.
There are other jinxed numbers, like 10 in classical music. How many composers died without being able to finish their tenth symphony… Beethoven, Schubert, Bruckner, Dvorak, Mahler, Vaughan Williams, Glazunov, Welesz, Atterberg or Sessions. It was one of them, Mahler, who affirmed: “It seems as if there is something that we should not know and that prevents us from a tenth… for which we are not prepared”.
The post-romantic invented a stratagem to avoid the curse. He did not name his ninth as ninth and started a tenth that would bear the number nine. But as it happens with death, there is no deception that is worth it, and the Austrian died with the tenth half. Now, there is always room for the exception that proves the rule. Shostakovich managed to premiere his tenth without problems, something that had not happened since Mozart.
Another number has broken into the most recent music scene: 27. Many singers have died at this young age and are part of the sad club, such as Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse… to name just a few.
Although he was not a musician, another young man who died at this age will surely become one of the best-selling authors this Sant Jordi. In fact, his book has remained number 1 on Amazon for days before it went on sale.
Indeed, we are referring to El chico de las musarañas by Aless Lequio together with Ana Obregón, an uncomfortable book for purebred booksellers who recommend high-flying literature but who have not stopped asking for it for their stop with authors who promise to succeed tomorrow like Aramburu, Bosch, Cercas, Calpena, Nesbo, Redondo, Gabás, Sáenz de Urturi… The media sells a lot for Sant Jordi, and nothing is more media these days than the sad story of the actress and her son who died at 27 All a claim for this 23, day, by the way, in which he was diagnosed with lethal cancer. Numbers are more powerful than we think.
