Who was Armand Obiols, beyond Mercè Rodoreda’s partner? To remove the entanglement, the former president of the Generalitat Quim Torra (Blanes, 1962) has just published Armand Obiols, of a coldness that burns. The intellectual who was lost (Empúries). Torra not only traces his biography, but turns him into a Bartleby (the character Herman Melville would prefer not to), since despite his literary passion he dies unpublished, in part because, as he wrote in a letter l author of La plaça del Diamant, “as critical as he was – more with himself than with others – he ended up not writing anything”. After his death, several books were published, especially from the Fundació La Mirada de Sabadell.
President Torra came there because, after immersing himself in the life of Eugeni Xammar and the journalism of the Republic – a subject he has covered in several books -, “Obiols attracted me a lot because I find him very funny, very intelligent, he is a loser, and he is a man outside the canon”. In addition, “when we rediscover the Sabadell gang, he comes out as the third in the gang, later he comes out as Rodoreda’s partner, he is always a secondary actor and very few, like Montserrat Casals, put him in the center, because he was a character always very dark, very enigmatic”.
Joan Prat (Sabadell, 1904-Vienna, 1971), his real name, “has this facility to combine the literary and the political world, and it has helped me to understand both literature and the history of the country”. According to the author, “he is magnificent as a character to study even after the war, because it turns out that he is a friend, a very good friend, of Josep Carner, he corrects books by Puig i Ferreter, continues to help Rovira i Virgili and Nicolau d’Olwer, attends the end of Irla’s government, continues to have a lot of grace to explain to us the rise and fall of Catalonia”.
The reader will first find a poet who, by publishing in the press, becomes “the great promise” of literature, who becomes the critic who distributes right and wrong, later works as a political columnist until he enters Acció Catalana… The Civil War arrives and he directs La Revista de Catalunya – which celebrates its centenary tomorrow – which for Torra is his greatest work. He marries – the sister of his colleague from the Colla Francesc Trabal – and has a daughter – to whom he will never write a letter and after the war he will only see once. He flees to France, without his family, with the famous bibliobus of the Institució de les Lletres Catalanes and ends up first at Roissy Castle, where he forges a relationship with Rodoreda, the famous “Roissy novel” told so many times and where so many friendships fall apart The Second World War arrives and he is recruited to do forced labor, hard times that some will take advantage of to spread a shadow of collaborationism of which with the facts in hand, explains Torra, there is no trace: “If there were found the slightest proof I would have written it, but there is none. He is a victim and at the same time he is a survivor.”
He goes through hardships doing editorial tasks and trying to resume the Revista de Catalunya, until he ends up working as a translator for Unesco (where he also befriends Julio Cortázar). “He is the man who loses everything – says Torra-. In addition, if he had had a will to build himself, to read, to create a work, which he has, after the wars and the camps, he finds a job as a civil servant and takes it”. “My theory – he continues – is that when the couple Obiols and Rodoreda are happiest is when she is in her mini-apartment in Geneva living alone and he is in the cafes of Vienna reading and doing crossword puzzles: each one has what he wants. He realizes that she has the genius, that everything he couldn’t be, or didn’t want to be, is her”, he says. “In this sense it is admirable, because it is by his side. He acts as a coach, helps him, pushes him, gives him comfort, encourages him… sometimes he writes to him twice a day and that’s it,” he concludes.
Beyond the biography, however, “the idea that is present in the whole book is the monumental disaster that the Civil War and the Franco regime meant for Catalan culture, the bestial slaughter. And that’s why I was interested in Obiols within the generational gear”. In addition, at many times it reflects very current problems: “Since we live in a rebirth, you read things from almost ninety years ago and it seems like they were written yesterday. In this sense, it’s a little creepy.”
During the period in which he was engaged in politics, the intellectual charged a lot against the Republican Left, and this rivalry is very present in the book. Is President Torra taking the opportunity to take revenge afterwards? “This was written by Obiols, I’m innocent,” says Sorneguer. But his party, Acció Catalana, always loses: “Acció is like the national team, but it is clear that this country never votes for an intellectual, it is afraid of him. There is always a certain suspicion in this country against the intellectual and someone who goes for work is preferred. That’s how it is.”
Now, is this the book of an intellectual or a former president of the Generalitat? “Neither an intellectual nor a former president, it is the book of an intruder… I carry the idea that I am an intruder in everything: I was an intruder as an editor, an intruder writing these things, an intruder in politics … Or I want to believe this idea to feel more free when focusing on the subjects. Since I am not a teacher of literature I can afford according to which comments. It is a book written with total freedom, trying to better understand a character who has many faces, but which in any case allows you to take a fabulous journey through literature”.
