“Broken mirror It’s a novel where everyone falls in love with someone who doesn’t have to be in love, and those who lack love seek it no matter what, within an hour or within a moment. Broken mirror (1974), the longest novel he wrote, and for many his masterpiece. Twenty years after the last edition in Spanish, Seix Barral now restores it with the same translation by Pere Gimferrer and a new introduction by Rosa Montero, following the line of post-war author recoveries she had already undertaken with Concha Alós and Luis Martín-Santos, among others.
In Catalonia, rodoreda is an institution, and not just because the literature says so; Although he was more than forced to read any of his novels throughout high school in general Diamond Square (1962), Aloma (1938) or this same, Broken mirror. It is difficult for her to choose just one masterpiece, since her level of self-demanding was so high, and the ways in which she expressed her literary impulse have developed so much over the years, that every reader can have his or her favorite. To those mentioned, we must also add his posthumous works, Death and spring (1986), a gothic novel that distances itself from urban realism and which until recently was the most misunderstood of its literary body (for the Spanish edition, by the club editor, Mariana Enríquez was commissioned a mailer to give you an idea).
Reading adventure Broken mirror It begins before the first chapter of the novel, thanks to an introduction signed by the author herself, an introduction worth more than any kind of creative writing. It is an extraordinary text in which Rodoreda reflects on the development of the book and its entire narrative project as a whole; The privilege of access to the workshop of a novelist who, like Gustave Flaubert, had always sought Just the word He never lowered the bar.
writing Broken mirror It began in exile: in January 1939, the author fled with other Catalan intellectuals to France. She was not yet the distinguished writer she would eventually become, but she had already published five novels—and eventually abandoned her young adult works, with the exception of her “novel.” Alomawhich she conscientiously rewrote, did journalistic work and integrated well into the Catalan literary field. In exile, she went through many economic difficulties, worked as a seamstress and for some time was unable to write more than a few stories, although her ambition never left her.
The exile, which lasted until 1972, she shared during the early years with the poet and critic Armand Obiols, pseudonym of Joan Pratt (Sabadell, 1904 – Vienna, 1971), her companion and the great love of her life, who also served as her first reader and encouraged her to continue growing as a storyteller. However, he was married and had a daughter who resided with her mother in Catalonia. This circumstance caused quite a few headaches for Rodorida, which hit rock bottom. In fact, the latest research suggests that he contemplated suicide. It is about this relationship that Eva Comas Arnal, a specialist in the author, wrote the novel Mercy and Joan (Pro Award 2024).
At the end of the 1950s, Rodoreda resumed writing novels, submitting some manuscripts to Catalan prizes – without much success – and through rewriting, he was little by little able to re-establish himself on the literary scene, this time with a new dimension. For a time, he combined writing Diamond Square and Broken mirrorwhich took longer than expected to see the light of day, so he carefully revised and polished it. with Broken mirror She wanted to write a novel with many characters and a large garden (she herself, who had grown to love flowers – a staple of her work – under the influence of her grandfather, had come to grow her own flowers in Romagna de la Selva, a town in Girona where she settled upon her return).
Decline of the Catalan bourgeoisie
Among the many (and distinguished) admirers of his work is Gabriel García Márquez, who is said to have learned Catalan so he could read it in the original. If you compare Broken mirror with One hundred years of unity (1967), in fact, connections can be seen between the two: family sagas, important symbolic load, the voice of different social classes and, above all, a sense of decadence. Broken mirror It recounts the rise and fall of the Valdora family, the model of the Catalan bourgeoisie, from the beginning of the twentieth century until the end of the Spanish Civil War. It all begins when Teresa Godai, the fishmonger’s daughter, marries landowner Salvador Valdora for the second time.
The glamorous Teresa always knew that she was destined to do something more, something better than helping her mother clean fish at the Mercat de la Boqueria; But her future, and with it the future of her offspring, is determined by fate. Rodorida weaves a dark, sometimes claustrophobic novel, combining third-person narration and monologues of various characters, with this amazing mastery of the free, indirect style of looking at an inner world full of shadows. In addition to Teresa Godai, Armanda deserves a special mention, she is one of the maids who stays with the family the longest, who stars in many emblematic scenes and who, in the series of the same name by Josep María Benet y Jornet in 2001, was played by Emma Villaraço.
The mirror – or rather, the Mirrors—mirrors that restore their image, but are also imbued with an illusory and distorting effect—are a crucial symbolic element in various scenes of the novel; But he is not the only one: as in all his works, Rodorida lavishes on everything that has to do with nature, such as the garden and the different types of trees and flowers, associated with the characters and the situation in which their relationships exist. There is a look at the space and decor, the palace and its interiors, which lose their lustre, like family and historical sophistication, with the mice emerging as a climax.
The characters, especially the female ones, are another of her strengths. Broken mirror And her entire novel (Heroes Aloma, Diamond Square And unfairly undervalued Camellia Street). Women like Teresa Goday, who is established as a high-society woman, the beautiful and cursed woman, with the “taint” of her origin and her unfortunate future; His daughter Sophia has a colder personality and is very different from her mother and who represents the new generation of wealthy people; Armanda, a maid who goes to work when she is very young and ends up as the lady’s friend, a loyal and generous companion, and a keeper of secrets. In some chapters, the service forms a poetic chorus that allows the author to depict the passage of time and the gradual decline of the family.
A novel of loneliness in a house full of people, family feuds, worldly passions and interests, the contradictions between above and below, between the indomitable nature and the degradation of human creation, of the human race itself. A psychological novel, meditations on the passage of time, and the loss of a lost paradise that never really was; The X-rays of the fall of the universe, of the dream that humans have corrupted with their lowest instincts. A novel of ups and downs, youth and old age, masters and servants, death and steadfastness, imposture and purity, corruption and innocence. If there are works that deserve the description “round”, this is one of them.
Mercy Rodorida, an endless pit
Mercy Rodorida plays in a league of giants, like Thomas Mann, Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, or Rosa Chassel. Like them, she was a restorer of Catalan literature, and European literature in general. Her mature work, which elevated her to the status of the pantheon, saw the light of day in what might be called the golden age of Catalan literature under the Franco regime: beginning in the late 1950s, a timid cultural openness allowed publication in Catalan, which had been prohibited. Literary prizes were established, and many authors who had converted to Spanish or lived in exile returned to publish in their mother tongue.
Mercy Rodorida plays in a league of giants, like Thomas Mann, Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, or Rosa Chassel. Their ideals were a renewal of literature
In just a few years, the works have become essential to Catalan culture Uncertain glory (1956), by Joan Sales – who, in addition, as founder of the Club Editor label, was the editor of Rodoreda and many other famous authors -; Kuala Lumpur Reich (1963); Essential Testimony of Nazi Concentration Camps by Joachim Amat-Pinella; Bear or doll room (1961), by Llorence Villalonga; he Romance (1957) and Natural stories (1960), by Joan Peruto, an inescapable representative of the Catalan fantasy genre; various volumes of stories by the master of short distances, Bear Calders; And already mentioned Diamond Square (1962), the first of Rodorian’s great novels, did not win the Sant Jordi Prize, to which he sent the manuscript—Jusep Pla, a member of the jury, deemed it too “vulgar”—but over time it prevailed as a transcendent classic.
The best news is that Rodoreda does not just end there, but as a stubborn and insatiable writer, she has continued to grow, and has continued to expand her map. Broken mirror He presents it once again in its entirety through a hypnotic, claustrophobic and captivating family saga, with characters that are difficult to forget and scenes of lyrical evocation that leave a mark on the memory. Dark, because there is no other honest way to write from the rupture of war, from the distance of family – she has left her mother and son in Barcelona, the result of an unfortunate young man’s marriage with the family’s cousin, the “returned Indian,” an incident she does not allude to and about which information has come to light in recent years – to write from heartbreak, from the reality of an enlightened Europe that has yielded, but most terrible, human horror.
The world Rodorida knew was not kind; Her literature, however floral or feminine, has sometimes been criticized as maudlin. Everything incorporates a fading mythical scene, a reflection of the spirit of the times, and the sense of human existence. In his letters from exile, as he struggled to write and publish again, he defined himself as a “literary monster” who would return to the ring to “enter the Sicilian horse.” “There will be no one to stop me,” he assured, and he was right. And he didn’t just write: at that time he also began to paint.
It has been studied in universities for many years and has many regular readers, but, in many ways, Rhodorrhea remains a bottomless pit, a box of secrets that has never been fully deciphered. Or rather, a treasure chest from which new discoveries never cease, new readings in the light of the present, from the fresh eyes of youth. Now comes the Spanish edition of this wonderful family novel, this “battle that they cannot tell whether it is love or hate.” What in its pages is “happiness lost” will be “happiness found” for the reader.
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