Josep Maria Llompart, the man who only wanted to be a poet
PalmJosep Maria Llompart lived a peaceful life dedicated exclusively to writing, but his attitude toward life was based on the conviction that culture is inseparable from collective responsibility. For this reason, he left us with reflections on the commitment of writers, stating that "a writer, if he wants to be faithful to his people, cannot remain indifferent to the attacks they suffer. Words must be weapons and consolation, resistance and hope." In difficult times, Llompart and an entire generation of writers understood that the book was a weapon, a trench against forgetfulness and submission.
Taking advantage of the exhibition on Llompart's civic commitment at Ca n'Alcover, the headquarters of the Balearic Cultural Work, one cannot help but compare the contexts of linguistic difficulty in which the poet moved with the current situation. Llompart came from the dark times of Franco's regime, with a language persecuted and marginalized from the public sphere, but with an almost hegemonic force in terms of use among the population of Mallorca. Now the situation is radically different: with a legislative corpus that more or less protects us, and a democratic regime, we have no guarantee of survival as a linguistic community.
The current situation of the Catalan language is complicated. The demographic changes of recent decades, unaccompanied by policies of linguistic and cultural integration, and the overt attacks on the Catalan language, driven by the same powers that have the obligation to defend it, are not anecdotal: they are an attempt to dismantle what keeps us alive as a community. But it is precisely in difficult times that it is worth remembering that we are not starting from scratch. Other generations, under very adverse conditions, knew how to resist and keep the language alive.
Among them, the figure of Josep Maria Llompart shines with special force. Llompart, whom we remember this year on the occasion of the centenary of his birth, understood like few others that Catalan literature could not be merely an artistic expression: it had to be a form of resistance, a way of defending collective identity and projecting it into the future. The best tribute we can pay him is to continue his work: to make words a space of resistance and freedom and to hope that in the not-too-distant future this land will become a blaze.
