When dedicating Poemes de l’Alquimista to him, Palau i Fabre referred to “a veu full of bons auguris.” Then Marina Rossell started singing. More or less at the same time, she did it spontaneously at the Universitat Catalana d'Estiu, in Prada de Conflent. It would be 1974 or 1975. When she finished, she was approached by Maria Aurèlia Capmany, who a year later would present her first album. From her he learned to wait for the elevator to arrive when visitors leave; among other things. In her hall, a plaque from Allée Neus Català.
It has L'hora violet, by Roig, and Obres completes, by Espriu, dedicated to it. He says that reading forms the skeleton of thought. “And it's such a wide universe! It's like when they ask you to highlight three songs. As! "If I have spent my entire happy life listening to songs." Music, cinema and literature, conversations, the wise people he met when he arrived in Barcelona, build that skeleton and, he adds, have literally saved her from ignorance.
He came from La Gornal, he was 16 years old. Third of five siblings, she is the daughter of farmers. In her house there were novels, many by Corín Tellado, that she read as a child, as well as magazines like Mundo Joven. When she was about 20, she sang on the subway. Upstairs, in front of the Zurich, Marta Marín-Dòmine sold her poems for a peseta, later she would live in Canada. That's how they met, and upon their return, they met again: "I will say that what I invented is brutal." Then Rossell worked as a nurse and later, in the French bookstore on Diagonal. The smell of bookstores, she says, awakens a primitive attraction.
He reads in an armchair next to the large terrace full of plants and light, not a sign in sight. When he renovated the apartment, in Sagrada Família, he began to get rid of the books that he had not touched in twenty years and also the repeated ones – sometimes he buys one that he already had; for example when she fell in love with Walser again. Her neighbor and friend Joan de Sagarra said that she left them at the Little Red Riding Hood fountain, on Paseo Sant Joan. And she does the same. She sits on a bench to see who takes them.
Distributed between the study and the dining room in colors of earth, sea and wine, there are some to which he always returns: Capote, which fascinates him; by Antònia Vicens, the contemporary poet who most touches him, “very Antonin Artaud”, English and North American poetry. “Dinesen's descriptions in Out of Africa are extraordinary. The elephants pass by as if they had a date at the end of the world. Damn, when I read it... yes, that's how it is, look at them. But the jewel in the crown is Memories of Spain, 1937, by Elena Garro, Octavio Paz's first wife, with whom they got along badly until death. Behind the sofa, essentials like Yourcenar, “especially the most philosophical part”, biographies of Brel, Aznavour, Brassens. Musical intelligence, by Iñigo Pirfano. And Joyce, Dubliners, both the book and the movie are sensational for her. She sees it once a year and it is cathartic. She cries a lot because that is the brevity of life.
He is impressed by the fragility. “We will return to the universe and be part of it, like that Shakespeare sonnet: we are just a fly in the spoon of destiny. A fly, which is nothing. If only I had said a butterfly, the bastard,” she laughs. Llull also teaches that this is the journey, he adds. In Sant Jordi he bought The Danger of Being Sane, by Rosa Montero, which talks about highly sensitive people. Maybe she is a bit PAS: “Living is not going well, but singing is.” She doesn't sing anything that doesn't move her. If she hasn't made him laugh or cry, if she doesn't transform her, she doesn't sing.
She usually keeps newspaper clippings between the pages: articles by Maruja Torres in Maria Callas's memoirs, or an interview with Bob Dylan from 2009 in The Eternal Noise, by Alex Ross. Following advice from her beloved Manel Forcano, she makes the effort to read on paper a little every day, so as not to forget it. You can underline in pencil, put post-its. He acknowledges that, with Instagram and series, he doesn't read as much as before. And in bed, before going to sleep, listen to podcasts. He has discovered Great Unfortunates, by Javier Peña, which tells of the misfortunes of writers. Her happiness doesn't interest her. Or as André Gide said: happiness cannot be explained. You can only tell what built a love and what later destroyed it, but not when you live it. “Beastly, huh?” she smiles. “And you ask me why I read.”
