In the heart of Manacor, Jaume Vidal Alcover, in his melancholic poem Sonet to Eurydice, sings how he has lost his love and therefore the city remains an orphan.
The city is drowning under the waters
Of winter and, since you do not pass by,
Streets and squares have lost their names.
There are only crossroads, enigmas.
Asphalt and mirages, nothing more,
Triumph in silence. I search
For signs of you still, those sure
Steps, the glory and life of the streets.
But only an intact sorrow responds,
And furtive light closes the act,
Wings, on the threshold of the horizon.
An old rain falls, an interrupted
Rain, and around a dark corner
Sorrow embraces me as love once did.
Sonets a Eurídice, 1967
Translated by Richard Mansell.
(Manacor, 1923 – Barcelona, 1991). Vidal Alcover graduated from the University of Barcelona in Law and Romance Philology. He was Professor of Catalan Language and Literature at the University of Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona. A genuine man of letters, he wrote poetry, narrative, essays and also journalism and theatre. Much of his work is still unpublished, and even his published work has not received sufficient attention. His volume of poetry L’hora verda (The green hour, 1951) is worthy of mention as a work that breaks with the previous generation, that is influenced by the Spanish Generation of ‘27 and is free from formal constraints. El dolor de cada dia (The pain of every day, 1957) moves closer to realist aesthetics that dominate the landscape of Catalan poetry in the 1960s. Sonets a Eurídice (Sonnets for Eurydice, 1962) was perhaps his most innovative work of poetry. As for narrative, there is Sophie o els mals de la discreció (Sophie or the evils of discretion, 1971), Visca la revolució! (Long live the revolution!, 1974), Dido i Eneas (Dido and Aeneas, 1980) and more. In Vidal’s narrative we find a vision of Majorcan society before the advent of mass tourism that is disappearing fast and on a collision course with the new society that will take its place. He was a translator of Proust, Rimbaud, Foscolo and Brecht amongst others. He also studied the work of Berenguer d’Anoia, Francesc d’Olesa, Guillem Roca i Seguí, Sebastià Gelabert and more.
Jaume Vidal, like Orpheus, has lost his love. His love has disappeared, and the city is orphaned. Now everything is old and freezing, and around street corners yearning takes hold.
He must have often passed by the plaça de sa Bassa, the heart of the city and a meeting point for both those from Manacor and further afield. Although the odd building has notably disfigured the whole, there are still some interesting buildings from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. Some people thing that the name of the square comes from a watering hole for livestock at a nearby house. Of the buildings worthy of note are can Serra, now a restaurant, can Busco, just in front of that with its stone balustrade above a classical frieze, and next to this the s'Agrícola café, open virtually all year round.
