Le bonheur de vivre is a painting by Henry Matisse, from 1905-1906, who played a fundamental role in avant-garde art. Starting from the classic idea of the pastoral, Matisse created a composition with a predominance of yellow, green, blue and orange and – as is mandatory in pastorals – many people in pots. A woman collects some herbs, two more hug her neck, one plays a double flute (the Greek aulós). The two central figures are engaged in posture. A straight couple kisses, an androgynous character plays the flute for some sheep and other ladies dance a sardana on the beach just as they came into the world. What colors, what joy. She looks like a rave, with substance use. Comparatively, Joaquim Sunyer's pastorals and nudes in the woods seem like a mystery of pain.
Picasso, who did not let one pass, wanted to pay homage to his friend Matisse and in 1946 he painted a new version of the famous painting that he titled La joie de vivre. He had survived the war, settled in Antibes, and was happier than Easter. In her painting there appears a single woman in a pot, with large breasts, who crosses her legs as if she were dancing the tarantella. The lord of the aulos is drawn schematically. A centaur plays the flute. In the background you can see the sea, with a sailing ship. The big difference is that Picasso mixes men and animals or, better said, as often happens in his work, animal pleasure represents a beatific state of communion with the earth, interpreted here with jest.
The book by Diana Athill (London 1917-2019) Diari de Florència that in 2020 inaugurated the La Joie de Vivre collection of the Univers publishing house (in Spanish at Catedral, both stamps of Enciclopèdia Catalana) has the same origin as Picasso's painting : recover happiness after the war and a sentimental failure. A collection about happiness, literary, with quality books for all audiences? That's the idea. I'm going to present my theory. Have you noticed that in recent years fiction has become problematic? It can be seen in the novel, in the theater and also in the cinema. It seems as if, to be really good, fiction had to be dramatic and, I would even say more, thematically dramatic. All accidents and sentimental, sexual, family and social disorders have their novel or their play. And instead it's hard to find light books and movies, well done, good comedies that don't treat you like you're stupid. This space has been largely occupied by non-fiction. It is in this space that La Joie de Vivre makes perfect sense. It offers readers practical and simple examples of a passionate life, a full life, from a point of view that tends to be retrospective. It starts from the idea that experience is a fundamental factor of good living. On the one hand, memory embellishes things. On the other hand, when the author is a veteran, he has more capacity to insulate what is really worth from the honks of the modern world. Writing, when it is good, has the virtue of transferring memories and impressions of another time to the present.
As at the time when Picasso plunged into Antibes and Diana Athill arrived in Italy with her cousin Pen, we are sorely in need of hope. Since the first volume of La Joie de Vivre was published, we have gone through six waves of the pandemic, with thousands of infections and deaths, total confinements, canceled trips, postponed vacations. Next, mental health has become a huge global issue. And now we have a war, an economic crisis and a climatic mess with unforeseeable consequences. Reading the memories of Rafel Nadal when he was a child on the Fosca de Palamós beach (Mar d'estiu) or accompanying Fúlvia Nicolàs on the journey through the Faroe Islands, which gives rise to evoking other trips to the Scandinavian countries from the years eighties (Zugunruhe), may have a therapeutic value, with all due respect for people who have a hard time. It evokes a life that we have also lived or brings us closer to an experience that we have not managed to undertake.
La Joie de Vivre has a very important journalistic component, with off-road writers who have developed most of their careers in the press and some media authors, such as Albert Om, who, in El dia que vaig marxar, explains a moment of disconnection which he took the opportunity to learn French and live in Provence. The book begins with a grieving experience (the death of her friend, actress Rosa Novell) and ends with an immersion in small everyday pleasures. "La vie n'est pas finie, la vie n'est pas passée", she sings with Dominique A.
Sílvia Soler has written a book without a specific theme, which serves as the motto of the collection: La joia de viure. She searches for “points of light enmig de la foscúria”: from summer reading to the adventures of Enid Blyton that created her addiction to reading to the joy of being able to go for a walk early in the morning with a friend. From the houses in which she has lived (with a counterpoint to some pages of Toni Soler in The tumor) to the first trip to Mallorca with her parents and a teenage love.
I heard the philologist Modest Prats speak for the first time of the coffees that the soviet of Girona had in Rome, meeting around Llibreria 22 (soviet was the name given in the twenties and thirties to the Catalan gatherings, which they always have a confabulatory and court point, I like it, it seems very appropriate and I recover it). Josep M. Fonalleras has dedicated a book to him (Un café a Roma). Taking advantage of the cheap flights from Girona airport, they planted themselves in Rome, had lunch and drank coffee. Prats, who had studied theology in the city, acted as cicerone. Fonalleras learned to fly and love the city on his own account and has written the most literary book in the series, more evocative than descriptive, one of the most nostalgic and honeyed.
Five hours in Venice by Miquel Molina, which has been published in Catalan and Spanish, offers a portrait of Venice that is nothing like the one provided by the guides. He goes to a friend's wedding (a wedding that lasts three days!) and decides to search for the secret city. This week the controversy has broken out because after the pandemic the population of Venice has been reduced to 50,000 people. Molina knows how to find this world suffocated in tourism and emigration to Mestre, scenes of authentic life, in a similar way to how Paolo Sorrentino showed a contemporary Rome, with museums and perfume announcement parties in La grande belezza.
The idea is that each book is a unique piece, also in terms of design, with graphic details. One last thing is that, in an age of individualism and books of family reproaches, parents, grandmothers, friends and colleagues parade through La Joie de Vivre who have contributed and continue to contribute to a pleasant existence.
