Who was Armand Obiols, beyond Mercè Rodoreda's partner? To find out, the former president of the Generalitat Quim Torra (Blanes, 1962) has just published Armand Obiols, d'una fryr que crema. L'intel·lectual que es va perdre (Empúries). Torra not only traces his biography, but also turns him into a Bartleby (the Herman Melville character who would prefer not to do so), since despite his literary passion he dies unpublished, in part because, as the author of The Plaça del Diamant, “he was so critical – more with himself than with others – that he ended up not writing anything.” Once he died, especially from the Fundació La Mirada in Sabadell, several books have been published.
President Torra came to him because after having immersed himself in the life of Eugeni "He is a loser, and he is a man outside the canon." Furthermore, "when we rediscover the Sabadell group, he comes out as the third of the group, later he comes out as Rodoreda's partner, he is always a secondary actor and very few, like Montserrat Casals, put him in the center, because he was always a character very dark, very enigmatic.”
Joan Prat (Sabadell, 1904-Vienna, 1971), her real name, “has this facility for combining the literary and political worlds, and it has helped me understand both the literature and the history of the country.” For the author, "Obiols is a magnificent character to study also after the war, because it turns out that he is a friend, a very good friend, of Josep Carner, he corrects books by Puig i Ferreter, he continues to help Rovira and Virgili and Nicolau d'Olwer, "He attends the end of the Irla Government, he is still very funny in explaining the rise and fall of Catalonia to us."
The reader will first find a poet who, publishing in the press, becomes “the great promise” of literature, who becomes a critic who distributes left and right, later he acts as a political columnist until he joins Acció Catalana... He arrives the Civil War and directs La Revista de Catalunya – which celebrates its centenary tomorrow – which for Torra is his great work. He marries – to the sister of his Colla colleague Francesc Trabal – and has a daughter – whom he will not write a single letter and after the war he will only see once. He flees to France, without his family, with the famous bookmobile of the Institució de les Lletres Catalanes and ends up first in the castle of Roissy, where his relationship with Rodoreda is forged, the famous “Roissy novel” told so many times and where he made so many friends. They get rid of. The Second World War arrives and he is recruited to do forced labor, hard times that some will take advantage of to spread a shadow of collaborationism of which, with the facts in hand, explains Torra, there is no trace: “If I had found the slightest proof I would have written, but there is none. He is a victim and at the same time he is a survivor.”
He goes through hardships doing editorial tasks and trying to restart the Revista de Catalunya, until he ends up as a translator for UNESCO (where he will also become friends with Julio Cortázar). “He is the man who loses everything,” says Torra. Furthermore, if he had had a desire to build himself, to read, to do a work, which he has, after the wars and the fields, he finds a job as a civil servant and stays there. “My theory – he continues – is that when the couple Obiols and Rodoreda are happiest is when she is in her mini-apartment in Geneva living alone and he is in the cafes of Vienna reading and doing crossword puzzles: each one has what he wants. He realizes that she has her genius, that everything that she couldn't be, or didn't want to, is her,” he says. “In this sense she is admirable, because she is at her side. She acts as her coach, helps her, pushes her, gives her comfort, encourages her...sometimes she writes to her up to twice a day,” he concludes.
Beyond the biography, however, “the idea that is throughout the book is the monumental disaster that the Civil War and the Franco regime represented for Catalan culture, the bestial cut. And that's why I was interested in Obiols within the generational gear.” Furthermore, in many moments it reflects very current problems: “As we live in a rebirth, you read things from almost 90 years ago and it seems like they were written yesterday. In this sense it shocks a little.”
During the time in which he dedicated himself to politics, the intellectual charged a lot against Esquerra Republicana, and in the book this rivalry is very present. Does President Torra take the opportunity to take revenge after the fact? “Obiols wrote that, I am innocent,” he says sarcastically. But his party, Acció Catalana, always loses: “Acció is like the national team, but it is evident that this country never votes for an intellectual, it scares them. There is always a certain suspicion in this country against intellectuals and someone who is direct is preferred. That's how it is".
All in all, is this the book of an intellectual or a former president of the Generalitat? “Neither as an intellectual nor as a former president, it is the book of an intruder... I carry the idea that I am an intruder in everything: I was an intruder as an editor, an intruder writing these things, an intruder in politics... Or do I want to believe this idea to feel freer when approaching the topics. Since I am not a literature teacher, I can allow myself depending on what comments. It is a book written with total freedom trying to better understand a character who has many faces, but which in any case allows you to take a fabulous journey through literature.”
Catalan version, here
