A lover of Mallorca, Josep Carner presents us in this poem the landscape of humanized Fornalutx.
Amongst blue and violet mountains,
When the evening fades away,
There are light clouds of slow and enchanted smoke.
Fornalutx is small, like a flower. Water passes through the quiet valleys
With calm and soft tears,
And suddenly the coveted and golden oranges
Shine through dark leaves. The town is untiringly steep,
Women sit on the small levels,
There is the scent of flowers, the murmur of prayers. Over a gentle and blessed way of life
Night rises like a tale of horror
With fiery eyes and black as coal.
«Fornalutx» Segon llibre de sonets, 1907
Translated by Richard Mansell.
(Barcelona, 1884 – Brussel·les, 1970). A poet, journalist, playwright and translator, Carner was a precocious writer, stimulated by the atmosphere at home; when he was 12 years of age he was already writing for “L’aureneta”. He was a contributor to “La Veu de Catalunya”, an editor, and since 1920 he was a diplomat, which meant he spent long periods away from his country, across Europe, America and the Middle East. 1939 marks the beginning of his exile, first in Mexico and later in Belgium, where he was a lecturer at the Université libre. In 1970, a few months before his death, he returned to Catalonia.
He edited the magazine “Catalunya” (1903-1905), from where he promoted the ideals of “Noucentisme”, and where he had contributors such as Eugeni d’Ors, and which also established solid ties with Majorcan writers. Els fruits saborosos (The delicious fruits, 1906) was his first successful book, where he established, under the pretext of fruits and the passage of time, some of the values of “Noucentisme”: common sense and wisdom, a mastery of nature, serenity, and so on. He published many more volumes up until El tomb de l’any (The turn of the year, 1966), and they are all collected in his complete works (1968). He was a flawless translator of Dickens, Twain, Andersen and more, and also wrote short stories. His work and his model of language had considerable influence on subsequent Catalan literature. In the poem, the landscape of Fornalutx is personified, at the service of humankind as “Noucentisme” liked to think of it, ordered and placid, protected by the “eyes of fire” on the mountain.
Fornalutx has its own character compared to the rest of the valley, and even today it retains a landscape and daily rhythm that attracts visitors from all over the world. Writers captured this long ago: Miquel Ferrà is one example, and also Josep Carner in the poem included here. All of them talk of the murmuring torrent, the silence, the tree-lined streets, the old houses, the old vines on pilasters and wooden balconies, stone staircases and stone walls. Surely it is not as silent now as it was, but many things remain the same. The immense oak wood at Monnàber, the estate owned by the family of the poet Guillem Colom, is part of the protective canopy above the village. Carner describes an activity which no longer takes place: the production of charcoal, where the stacks would become eyes that would keep watch through the night. He also does not forget the orange, an emblematic fruit across the valley.
