The creativity of Mercè Rodoreda (1908-1983) not if he limited himself to a novel -with Diamond Plaza (1962) as it was his production, until it was also used in the field of sculpture and poetry.
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Thank you Rodoredo
Bilingual edition. Translated by Nicolau Dols. Godall, 2025. 140 pages. €18
Between 1946 and 1965, the writer created a lyrical corpus, from which less prizes were expected, but I had to hope that it would see the light of day as a book in 2002: 105 poemsIn all cases it is a form that Rodoreda adopted on the advice of his poetic master, the great Josep Carner.
From that book Agony of light [Agonía de luz]carefully edited by Abraham Mohino Ballet, if further available, Save clean, a bilingual anthology of five poems that Nicolau Dols translates with scrupulous fidelity to the rhythmic and structural sensibility of the original (with the salvation of rhyme, yes, but if more is lost, if preserved).
The sonnets in alejandrino, endecasílabos and octosílabos – the meter that Dols convertivo in a dúctil eneasílabo – are much more than an exercise in style and give expression to the cultic sensibility, sometimes refined and reserved, which is sought in the context of myth (with Odysseus and their protagonists in the first place), benign nature and paralanos que que escucharlo – de nuestro paso por la terra: “¿Vivir? […] / Just rozar impossible orillas, / wander in a sea full of desire”.
If “Soldados muertos” evokes the catastrophe of war, “Ulises en la isla de Circe” (“Que os valen las vilezas recibidas”) serves as a warning to comrades in exile.
The small bestiary that completes this selection underscores the cruel man in the playfulness of circumstance to show us that poetry was always for Rodoreda the place—the front—where you and the world could dialogue and agree.
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