Let's raise our glasses!

The neo-Kantian philosopher Ernst Cassirer defined human beings as symbolic animals, that is, creatures who enjoy creating symbols, playing with metaphors, and celebrating rituals of all kinds. Activities like these strengthen bonds and help build individual and collective memories. Around these tribal foundations also orbit commemorative dates: specific dates we remember for different reasons, all valid for maintaining the fabric of community. For example, we give a sense of completion to the centenaries of the birth of prominent figures—in fact, as is well known, this year we celebrate the Year of Llompart and 2026 will be the Year of Blai Bonet—but we also hold significant events around round numbers, which we find more appealing, as they say, let's forget that everything is a convention…

It is taking into account these issues steeped in intuitive poetic conceptions regarding the order of the cosmos that the new book by Maria Victoria Secall de Fermentino and Àngels Cardona Palmer, a four-handed adventure entitled Toast Published by Godall Ediciones, this book weaves a web of meanings and projects a series of powerful ideas. In her insightful and well-crafted prologue, M. Antònia Massanet explains that in this volume, "the poems of both authors meet and intertwine, knotting and complementing each other to create a book woven with each other's writing, an experience accompanied and enhanced by Lola Huete's photographs and Carmen's lithographs. It is beautiful to see that two poets over seventy years old still have much to say and much to contribute." Indeed, this textual feat is born from the awareness of entering their seventieth decade and from the culmination of a constant cooperative process that both authors have built through a fruitful collaboration of recitals, gatherings, performances, presentations, and mutual support, among many other activities.

However, Toast It is not only a series of happy circumstances that are epiphanically embodied in a special book, it is also, and above all, a literary proposal that delves into the passage of time, the defense of other models of femininity, the celebration of poetry as a fuller way of life, an absolutely necessary reflection on nature and the world and social pacts and the c. In addition, it is a work that also establishes a fruitful dialogue with other figures, from Antonina Canyelles to Virginia Woolf passing through Nora Albert. Toast, By Maria Victoria Secall de Fermentino and Àngels Cardona Palmer, it's a book that invites us to raise a glass. Cheers!