Josep Vallverdú (Lleida, 1923) needed four books to explain his life from 1923 to 1970, starting with his childhood between Lleida and Sant Martí de Maldà (Desmudat i a les golfes), continuing through the post-war period with his experience in Barcelona ( Vágó de terça) until maturity (Garbinada and ponent), this added to other books such as Proses de Ponent or Indíbil i la boira. Now he culminates these memoirs with Autumn Mosaic (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 the most recognized books, the Rovelló, En Roc drapaire or L’home dels gats, yes, but also the life dedicated to teaching, to the intellectual life, with friends such as Guillem Viladot – whom in the book he defines as “my other self, in the field of writing” – while in the more private sphere there is life in common with his first wife, Isabel Arqué, and the grief that follows his death in 2012, his son, Eloi, and the rebirth of love with his current wife, Antonieta Vilajoliu.
Right from the start, the writer acknowledges in the book that “the thread of the Grim Reaper can break suddenly”, but yesterday at the Ona bookshop he explained the excitement of being able to celebrate the centenary while alive, with the acts of this Any Vallverdú, “on the one hand starring in it, and on the other as if watching it from the window”, says sorneguer a few days before turning 100, next July 9, a day for which some events are being prepared that they did not tell him to surprise him: “I only know that the president told me: ‘You will have lunch with me'”. But he doesn’t lose sleep: “I don’t give much importance to turning 100 or 103…”, he says. He arrived at the bookshop with a nose wound, nothing serious, just a fall which he dismisses as important.
He has a clear head 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 don’t know how to get out of the impasse we’ve gotten ourselves into, and that has no solution”.
Carme Vidal Huguet, curator of the Vallverdú Year, who has become almost his shadow in recent years, and who has written the foreword to the book, celebrated the writer’s 303 titles, between originals and translations, while he recalled that the volume talks about the most contemporary Vallverdú, with as many things as have happened in the last fifty years, and he also highlighted how he talks about mourning the death of his wife: “It moves us because he knows how to convey it in a way that everyone feels their own sad”. Vidal has also emphasized his sense of humor, “without avoiding criticism, but without bitterness”, and always with great precision “because he knows how to attribute as a philologist of classical languages ??that he is”.
Vallverdú wanted to insist on the fact that from an early age he had had an inclination towards language: “I am still that four-year-old boy who has an interest in words”. 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 until 1960, with the relaxation of censorship , landed in Catalan with the youth novel El venedor de peixos, the beginning of a golden moment shared with Emili Teixidor, Sebastià Sorribas and Joaquim Carbó.
However, he assures that he is not sorry that his works for adults have not been taken into account more, especially the literature of the self and poetry, the genre he currently practices most. “When he talks about him, he also talks about the country”, insists Vidal.
The author nods: “I continue to be at the service of the country”, and details a couple of projects he has in his drawer: a half-finished book of poems that will be called Orama (vision in Greek) and a “gray novel, because there is little blood and liver”, which will be released soon. It doesn’t stop.
