Journeys and Flowers by Merce Rodoreda
Catalan Fiction
Original title – Viatges i flors
Translators – Gala Sicart Olavide and Nick Caistor
Source – Library book
I read Death in Spring a few years ago by Merce Rodoreda and was pleased to see this on the shelf at the library. I was grabbed by the fact it was vignettes of villages and flowers but with an undercurrent going back years before the book was written which was 1980s but hark back to the war years in which she had first escaped the Spanish civil war heading to France but then when the Nazis took over France she had to move again. She was regarded as one of the leading voices of Catalan fiction had won all the big prizes for Catalan fiction on her wiki page there was this prologue from one of her books I think it capture whart she does in this book so well. “I write because I like to write. If it didn’t seem like an exaggeration, I would say that I write to please myself. If others like what I write, the better. Perhaps it is deeper. Perhaps I write to affirm myself. To feel that I am … And it’s over. I have spoken of myself and essential things in my life, with a certain lack of measure. And excess has always scared me”That last line struck me this is a short but hard hitting book
I suggest you go to the village down there, can you see
ne building houses instal
it? The view is blocked by the trees, but it’s right behind them, come on! Can’t you see it, obscured by the foliage.”
ed. We were surrounded
This is what an ageless woman said to me, dressed all in
t we were saying. When t
black, her ample skirts gathered at the waist. Her round
he explained to them: “
face framed by a scarf neatly tied under her chin. ‘You’ll
the sweetest, softest wo
fall in love with it.’ And she gave a half smile.
The day was ending by the time I reached the village,
he rats squeaked in unive
a village more or less the same as any other, with low one-
‘re hungry and wantroc
storey houses, two-storey at most; streets, some narrow, some
man, his eyes lifeles, ki wide; a square with arcades; a watering-trough; an inn; all
wo of the prettiest hous
kinds of shops and an undertaker. I strolled round the
e noise of their crun
village, went everywhere in it, and thought the woman’s
hey were I whispereds
idealised view of this completely boring village must
7 chewed it hung like!
stem from nostalgic childhood memories. I left it slowly,
” He looked at me piy
my thoughts lingering on the people living there.
The thoughs of those that were there struck me !
An unnamed narrator is wandering from village to village , where the village has no real names but are the village of warriors , of well bred rats , of the two roses , of glass .Each village is told in a fable like well , so reality and the surreal drift intoi one the violence of war haunts the background of these places , women wrapped in cocoons ,men playing at being knights it is all not as it seems and is at the same timer. I like this it remind me of what calvino did well using slightly surreal things to convey things. Then the second part is odes to flowers these again are mainly made up flowers and the meaning and thoughts behind them. Blue flowers desperate flowers to Dead flowers . again they are thoughts about the war years and the meaning of flowers at times .
Ballerina Flower
She is yellow and very dishevelled. Four tendrils emerge from her stem. She opens in mid-summer, at dawn with the sun. Her slender round petals are born in tiny pushes, and hang down. She gives off a perfume which combines the smell of woods – that is, dry – and mown grass – that is, damp. Once she has unfurled all her splendour, the tendrils spread, wrap round the nearest branches: they become as taut as wires. Captive, the flower begins the exhausting work of freeing herself. She slowly folds in on herself with little shakes, right and left. Forwards, back-wards. She tries, but when after a great deal of patience and grief she has only managed to become more entangled, she abandons her efforts.
This had such hidden thoughts to me
I liked this collection if I see it second hand i”ll pick tit u;a s I think it will need a few more readings to fully grasp the beauty of her words and ideas. It is something that you will see something more every time tyou read them again I think. There is something about the cut down nature of these short tales that leaves so much to be filled in by the reader and thought about if that makes sense.It goes back to the earlier quote about excess in her life and her writing it seems . It also mixes the beauty of her homeland with the horrors violence and divide nature if the spanish civil war bleeds of these pages as you read these little gems. Have you read any of her books in English ?
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