Let's think of a mermaid. The sea, yes. And the wings. At? Wasn't it a fish tail? Well yes and no, because the mythical mermaid had wings and flew like birds. In any case, if in 2015 Carme Riera (Palma, 1948) had already been interested in the woman with the fish tail in La veu de la mermaid, now she has chosen the winged one as the protagonist of La pau dels somnis feliços (Edicions 62, in Spanish in Bruguera).
It is an illustrated story, but both Riera and its editors – Pilar Beltran at 62 and Isabel Sbert at Bruguera – assure that it is written for adults because of the themes it touches on, beginning with the discovery of sensuality or chosen motherhood.
“What would we be like if we had wings?” Riera asks herself. “We couldn't rock a baby or give hugs”, and from there she drew a paradisiacal and matriarchal island where mermaids live, and where mermaids can only go once a year, to procreate. But young Nisa sees a flock of birds go by and thinks that if mermaids have wings they have to fly far, and that's against the rules of the community. She, however, takes flight and discovers the human world, so close and at the same time so different that she has no words to describe the hands, the fire or the camels.
But Riera reminds the reader that when he explained the story, his grandmother –that of the narrator– would invent what suited her like so many rondallas, and thus, for example, although the story is situated in a mythological time, it often intersects with the referents of Arabian Nights. "I think it is the readers who write the book," says the writer, who also explained that although she does not like the month of November, "it is the most attractive in relation to my literature": on the 14th, for example, Exactly 50 years ago he wrote Te deix, amor, la mar com a penyora –which would be his first book already in 1975–, and on the 25th, L'arxiduc, an opera with his libretto, opens in Palma.
Riera acknowledged her fascination with these beings, first of all because she is from the island, and also because of her interest in the literature of the late 19th century, when mermaids were considered an epitome of the femme fatale that seduces men to perdition.
It is a short book, with illustrations by Silja Goetz, which the author began writing during the pandemic, as a way of "going far away despite being confined."
Catalan version, here
