Craving diamonds

The Café Central publishing house was founded 35 years ago. Since its founding – led by Antoni Clapés and Víctor Sunyol – this book house has hosted some of the most outstanding poetic works of the last three decades and has, indeed, had talent from the Balearic Islands. The fertile list ranges from Àngel Terron to Antònia Vicens, passing through Nora Albert, Margarita Ballester, Andreu Gomila, Isidor Marí, Biel Mesquida, Jaume Munar, Arnau Pons, Ponç Pons, Antoni Vidal Ferrando, Gabriel de ST Sampol, Jean Serra, Lluís Servera and Antoni Xumet Ros. From the aforementioned poet, translator and editor Xumet Rosselló, born in Port de Pollença, the following is now published. The right measure of cold in the Gardens of Samarkand collection with a beautiful epilogue by Teresa Pascual, who asserts that it is an important volume created from a very personal, beautiful but also painful writing, and which invites profound reflections on the rawest depths of life and the essence of the human being in the face of the pristine coldness of the world. The book recovers two previous works by the author (Nakedness and poison and Styx) but carefully revised for this reissue. The unpublished Celanío-sounding poems included in the final section, The slow leaves, complete an impressive work.

Antoni Xumet Rosselló's verses pierce like knives. From an expressive possibility that broadens the horizons of silence through a series of resources that transform each poem into a surgical and concise instrument of suggestion, each composition thus operates a philosophical investigation that delves into the pain of existing with the weight of loss. These raw pages delve into the absences and spasms of grief and confirm the strict stupefaction of existence. The brief aphorisms and poetic prose combine in a kind of requiem subdivided into canticles marked by dryness and verbal brilliance in the manner of José Ángel Valente: written traces of a desolation that shines because it unfolds from the minimum to condemn the maximum. It is thanks to this incisive operation of broadening that we build the support from which to confront the muteness of God in search of meaning. It cannot be denied: death is one of the predominant themes, but Xumet Rosselló—like Andreu Vidal, another of his literary masters—does not treat it morbidly. On the contrary, he confirms it as one of the inevitable customs of our passage through the Earth. Like Josep Palàcios, Xumet Rosselló knows that the silent divinity hides in the most icy peaks. And it is true that it is not necessary to be shipwrecked to know the shores, but it is in sinking that the coasts reach salvific plenitudes like those alchemical verses that transform wounds into gold.