Wednesday, March 4, 2015

Catalan Victory



The original cover for Solitude (source: Wikipedia)


In taking a chance with a relatively unknown work of literature, one sometimes turns up buried treasure. Victor Català’s 1905 novel Solitude, for me, is one such work; more than a few of its indelible scenes have settled in for good.

I’m probably not alone in my ignorance of Català, whose fame has remained largely within Catalonia, where the author is regarded as among the finest of 20th century Catalàn writers, primarily due to Solitude and its pioneering depiction of female sexuality and desire. Català’s absurdly patriotic name, meaning “Catalan Victory,” is rather obviously a pseudonym. It belonged to Caterina Albert i Paradís (1869-1966), a writer of poems, plays, numerous short story collections and two novels, whose early work garnered swift attention and high praise. Following Solitude, however, Albert published only sporadically for the remaining 61 years of her life. Assuming the rest of her work is anything like this exceptional novel, those periods of silence may represent a substantial loss.

Beginning like a female version of Dino Buzzati’s Desert of the Tartars, Solitude follows the young Mila on the long road to a lonely mountain hermitage, where her new husband Matias has accepted, for reasons incomprehensible to his wife, the position of caretaker. The journey creates a rich chiaroscuro of hope and foreboding, echoed by correspondingly dramatic descriptions of the rugged landscape. Signs of disaffection in the marriage appear on the way. In one of Albert’s characteristically robust and specific images, Mila glances at her husband, whose back,

broad and soft as a pillow, strained against the black jacket that stretched from armpit to armpit, as if in constant danger of ripping asunder.

‘How fat he’s gotten since we married,’ thought Mila, remembering how tight all his clothes had become, so that he seemed crammed into them like a straw doll in its rags.

Once installed at the hermitage, a “house full of bolts” described with as much melancholic intensity of feeling as Buzzati’s mountain fortress, Mila begins tackling years of neglect. Over weeks she spends scrubbing walls and floors, clearing cobwebs, and dusting the figure of St. Pontius and the chapel’s morass of relics, Mila’s recognition of Matias’ laziness and indifference to her own needs crystallizes. Her almost complete isolation is otherwise peopled only by a kind shepherd, Gaietà; his eight-year-old assistant Baldiret; members of Baldiret’s family from the nearest farm, including Arnau, who develops a strong attraction to Mila despite his betrothal to another; and Anima, a louche, nearly feral peasant, “more beast than man,” who survives by hunting rabbits with a ferret he calls his “wife” and whose unexpected, irruptive visits to the hermitage provoke unease. Given this stage-small cast of starkly defined, even symbolically named characters, the reader can discern early on, helped by ample foreshadowing, the direction interactions between them are likely to take. Any predictability, though, is more than outweighed by Albert’s inventiveness, bold, precise descriptions and distinctive style, and by the grand landscapes against which this drama plays out.

Approaching the end of Solitude, I began to wonder the same thing that Mila herself articulates: “What else could possibly happen?” For despite flashes of happiness and pleasure, Mila’s life reads like a catalog of drudgery and misfortune. As her husband spends more time with the miscreant Anima and in gambling away the couple’s meager savings, Mila’s isolation increases, leaving only Gaietà and Baldiret, while not tending their flock, as companions and protection against Anima’s disconcerting appearances.

Albert conveys the coarse texture of Mila’s existence through vivid naturalistic detail that can take on a decadence Zola might have envied, as in a scene graphically documenting the skinning of a rabbit, one of several potent set pieces that add to the novel’s force. Another depicts a religious festival at the hermitage that combines the rural revelry one might find in a painting by Brueghel the Elder with the caustic grotesquerie of one by George Grosz, as the mob-like celebrants leave behind

…an espadrille, a new jug, a dirty napkin tossed behind some blackberry bushes, a pocket knife amid all the refuse: greasy paper, orange peels, squashed roses, well-gnawed spare ribs, bits of chicken covered with black ants, dead campfires…all the festival’s repulsive debris.

Especially unforgettable - surely one of the great food scenes in literature - is an account of a meal of large snails the shepherd has gathered to serve with some garlicky aïoli. After roasting them in a fire - “souls in torment…still begging for more, hissing and sputtering like sinners in Purgatory” – the hungry group pulls them from the embers, “soldered together with dark, sticky paste” and oozing “a yellowish-green liquid,” with Anima nauseatingly “crack[ing] the shells between his teeth like green almonds, and, after spitting out the pieces, swallow[ing] the snails.” But Albert’s descriptive power comes in a wide range of registers, even edging into the surreal, as when Mila has a dream of St. Pontius pelting her with scarlet hackberries that enter through a gash in her forehead, or the ethereal, as in a later description also involving snail shells, here filled with oil and “nailed to doors, balconies, and windows,” forming

diminutive lamps [that] glowed in the mountains’ high solitude, where the scent of violence still seemed to linger, and outlined the hermitage with tiny points of light, making it look like a fairy palace in one of Gaietà’s stories.

In these stories, slipped contrapuntally in among passages chronicling the hard life at the hermitage, Gaietà recounts enchanting, occasionally gruesome folkloric legends sprouted “from every field, rock and branch,” and that draw on Catalonia’s Aragonese and Moorish past as well as the gloomy history of the hermitage itself. Under their spell, Mila emerges from her solitude and finds herself drawing closer to the shepherd, both alarmed and pleased by the feelings he arouses in her. The young Baldiret too gloms hungrily onto any suggestion of story, a precious resource in a life of such scarcity and deprivation.

This weight of ancient myths on the present, making almost palpable the fantastical world of fairies, spirits and phantoms, is reminiscent of the novels of Albert’s Sardinian contemporary Grazia Deledda, as is the nearly ethnographic attention Albert lavishes on particulars of rural customs and superstitions. One comes to know the landscapes, flora and fauna, peoples and manners of the region. In contrast to Deledda’s gauzy evocations, however, Albert’s descriptions are hard-edged, physical, raw. Her focus on the poverty and harsh, sometimes violent quality of life in the mountains also calls to mind the alpine novels of Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz, with whom she shares a similar painterly, almost cubistic style of description.

Though literary portraits of women trapped by marriage and other social institutions and tormented by desire are hardly unusual, Albert’s protagonist perseveres in ways that contrast strongly with female characters of an earlier generation. Unlike Flaubert’s Emma Bovary or Ana Quintanar in Leopoldo Alas’ novel La Regenta (with whose life, though of a completely different class and social milieu, Mila shares many similarities), Mila, in an effort to extract herself from her oppression, wages a defiant protest against her condition.

Solitude, with its carefully constructed, intrepid aesthetic pleasures; agility and modernity; and powerful portrait of female conviction and courage, is a novel I’m pleased to have discovered and eager to pass along. I’ll be equally eager to read Caterina Albert i Paradís’ second, more experimental novel - the intriguingly titled Un Film (3,000 Metres) (A 3,000 Meter Film) - should it become available in English translation.

Solitude is translated by David H. Rosenthal and published by Readers International. I learned of the book when translator Peter Bush mentioned it during a recent talk. 

17 comments:

  1. The imagery is remarkable, the snails must be utterly disgusting! I'm always so envious of these inventors of memorable descriptions, how I wish I could write sentences this powerful.

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    1. The imagery throughout is striking. Believe it or not, despite the hideous way the one character eats the snails (and another repulsive image of a dog eating them), Albert actually manages to make this sound like an appealing feast. But yes, there's a kind of alchemical magic in the ability to carve such indelible images.

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  2. This sounds really good.

    I like the way that you contrasted this to other works involving memorable women characters in similar circumstances.

    I second Miguel's comment, that part about the snails is so striking and amusing. Perhaps if they were cooked properly they might not be so bad...

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    1. Thanks, Brian. I suspect that Albert may have been strongly influenced by La Regenta, as there are some remarkable similarities (including a "consumptive" looking statue of St. Pontius like a similar statue of Christ in Alas' novel). I think she's also deliberately challenging the models of women in oppressive relationships and situations. Mila is an incredibly courageous character.

      As I noted above in response to Miguel's comment, the snails actually sound pretty good once you get past the vile descriptions of how they get eaten. The characters utterly revel in eating them!

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  3. I like how you've compared some of the novel's scenes to images from paintings; it helps in conveying a feel for the book. (A slight aside, but Bruegel's Hunters in the Snow has long been a favourite painting of mine.)

    The snail passage caught my eye too, quite remarkable stuff. The cover art is quite haunting; it fits perfectly with your commentary on the book.

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    1. Thanks, Jacqui - my bringing in painting was directly a reflection of how Albert seems to do so herself. In fact, funny that you mention Hunters in the Snow, a favorite of mine as well, since a description of hunters and their dogs in Solitude is in fact what first made me think of Brueghel. I'm nearly convinced that Albert had exactly that painting in mind when she wrote the description. (By the way, have you Andrei Tarkovsky's film Solaris? That painting features prominently).

      I'm glad too that you mentioned the cover art of the original edition. I was struck by it too, and think it captures both the mood and the aesthetic texture of the novel almost perfectly.

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    2. How interesting! Yes, I have seen Tarkovsky's Solaris (in fac,t I think it might have been the catalyst for my interest in Brueghel's painting). It's been a while since I watched that film so I'll have to add it to the DVD rental list.

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    3. *in fact

      More haste, less speed.

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    4. Talking of The Hunters in the Snow, I caught a radio arts programme yesterday featuring a discussion about the new Roy Andersson film, A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence. The film was apparently inspired by Bruegel's painting - there's a little bit about it here if you scroll down to the director's note of intention.

      http://www.royandersson.com/pigeon/

      Another movie to add to the list of works featuring or inspired by The Hunters in the Snow.

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    5. Thanks, Jacqui - I will look for it. I'm trying to write up a small post - regarding another work - that indirectly has to do with Hunters in the Snow.

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  4. I've wanted to read Català for a while but have yet to get around to "him/her." However, these descriptions you've cited--esp. the one about the snails--are quite lively! Will keep this in mind for after I complete my next Catalan novel (prob. by Mercè Rodoreda). Fins aviat!

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    1. I'd almost assumed that you'd posted on Català, since she seems right up your alley. I'll be curious to know what you think when you do get around to her.

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  5. I am struck by the image of Anna in the hermitage/mountain fortress, cleaning cobwebs, dusting and polishing as a very apt picture of the gritty part of marriage. Her husband stuck in his too tight clothes, herself stuck in a dirty house, seems a paradigm for marriage of the most common kind. An illusion of princesses in castles, damn Disney anyway, is not often where we find ourselves when we grow up. Perhaps I'm reading too much into the situation, having not read this author, that's merely what occurred to me from your review. I like the idea of exploring a woman's wants...now that's a vast topic! Coupled with her courage and conviction? I'm fascinated.

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    1. Bellezza - the marital situation in Solitude - this "marriage of the most common kind" - is hardly unusual. Removed to another familiar context, her husband would be lying on the couch drinking beer and watching football. Mila, though, is a great dynamic character - and not one to put up with this for very long. Her indignation and courage make Solitude stand out for its time. But I was even more impressed by Català's expert manipulation of setting and imagery to convey Mila's story. I found it a rich and remarkably modern work.

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    2. I am a great fan of indignation, and better yet, courage. Those would be the two qualities that would most appeal to me in this book you've reviewed, with those character traits alone making it modern. Or, perhaps more modern than what I've come across even today where I'm hard pressed to name one truly courageous heroine from the 21st century...I'll have to think about it.

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  6. You've made this sound like a book I must read! The images seem powerful and the quotes are wonderful. The book and author are completely new to me. Thanks Scott.

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    1. Thank you! If I've made it sound like a book you must read, then I suppose I've succeeded with the post. I had never heard of Caterina Albert i Paradis (or Victor Català either, for matter) before learning of this, but I'll certainly be on lookout for any other of her works that might find their way into English one day.

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