"In no case is it a book of overcoming", says Elisabet Riera (Barcelona, 1973), aware that this is a possible reading of her new novel, Once upon a time it was summer all night (Males Herbes), one of the nine finalists for the Omnium award for Best Novel of the Year. And its narrator is a woman who, at the age of 49, after being diagnosed with cancer, embarks on a journey, first through the Sierra de las Alberes and then the Sierra de las Salinas, to follow the trail of the trobairitz Alba de Peralada.
And he continues: “There is a transformation, as happens when someone begins to delve, from intellect or from emotion, or from faith or from art, into a deeper path. It is a vital journey, the most important we can make.” During the journey, the narrator begins by imagining the story of her trobairitz and the reader also encounters the solitary walker of the Winter Journey, the Winterreise, the cycle of lieds that Franz Schubert composed with verses by Wilhelm Müller, from which he structures the novel: 24 chapters in two distinct parts.
However, the trigger for the book was not the illness: “I have been interested in both the trobairitz and the romantic universe for many years, and listening to the Winterreise in such a Romanesque context as the Schubertíada of Vilabertran, where I go almost every year, was the Click to bring these two worlds together. I came into very deep contact with music and lyrics, and I related that walking trip to the trobairitz. Although historically the 18 that are known are Occitan, one could well have passed through there, and more so in Peralada, where there was a small court.” The text is thus a tribute to these troubadours, who help him to invent one and to fill the text with real quotes from at least one verse of each one. “There is a lot of hybridization,” he continues. I dissected the poems and put them where they suited me, mixed with verses from the Winter Journey, whether in the mouth of Alba, the walker or the narrator, with great freedom, because the three voices are one." In any case, “I didn't think I would make a romantic manifesto in the form of a novel, I never work like that. The voices at the beginning were more balanced, more separated, but it was necessary for the more contemporary voice to move the action forward, which is what makes it a novel because, if not, it would be a treatise." In fact, in a first version the narrator suffered from the death of a loved one and in a second from the breakup of a relationship, but “I had breast cancer and I decided that that still made me understand the story more, but this is not the essence, just a trigger and the excuse to talk about other topics.”
It is “a path of losses, but also of voluntary abandonments. This woman has lost her health, she has lost her youth, she has lost loves, she has lost many things”, and draws a biblical parallel with the narrow gate and the narrow path (Matthew, 7:13-14) along which the narrator travels – takes the mystical path –, trobairitz –courtly love as a spiritual path– and walker –romantic idealism–, the three “go to nature to search for a different voice, the anima mundi.” Because once confronted with death, the narrator “seeks if there is something else, an answer, a revelation, an illumination, and I refuse to admit that having returned you can continue living the same way. You can do the same, but what you won't be able to do is look at the world the same way.”
The writer, also founder of the Wunderkammer publishing house, does believe in “the redemptive role of art, which has the power to bring us closer to the afterlife, it is a spiritual path, as love should be, and that is why they are here together. For this reason, the trobairitz represents the path of transcended love, because she is not even next to her beloved, she does not care, she loves and that is enough for her, just like Schubert and his lonely walker, they choose the path of art, life as work of art, which is eminently romantic. Living like this changes your perspective a lot, to begin with you never get bored; You hit it fifty times, but you don't get bored. “I don’t believe in art as entertainment or in superficial culture.”
Catalan version, here
