Who takes care of the classics?

We spoke a few days ago with the writer Sebastià Alzamora and the editor and poet Jordi Cornudella, at the presentation of the new edition of Béarn or the doll roomSurely, the maturity of a culture can also be measured by the care it takes for its heritage authors. Reading, rereading, and revisiting the ideas and creative universes of the writers who have come before us is a very good way to remind ourselves of where we come from and, above all, where we can gain momentum to move forward. This new edition of Béarn In Edicions 62, which recovers the definitive revision by Josep A. Grimalt and includes four readings by Alzamora, Carlota Gurt, Carme Riera, and myself, must be very similar to the way in which ordinary countries should relate to their artistic heritage: from a contemporary perspective, with historical and philological rigor. Yes! Béarn Return to the bookstores because, as Jaume Fuster said, every book we haven't read is something new.

Second snapshot: last August, the Consell de Mallorca and the Andratx Town Council announced the start of the project to create the Baltasar Porcel House Museum, which will be managed, as it already does exquisitely with the spaces dedicated to Villalonga himself, Blai Bonet and Father Ginard, by the Mallorca Literary Foundation. It will certainly be a good opportunity to read with today's eyes one of the great storytellers and polemicists (with Villalonga's permission) that Mallorca has produced, and who knows if the creation of this space will contribute to spurring the reissue of his work, almost completely shelved since its transfer in 2009. Juan Carlos and Pujol supporters, Baltasar Porcel would have loved it, and most importantly: a project that you open as Black Sun, Horses into the darkness and The springs and the autumns, inter alia, deserve.

And yet a third flash: the reissue of two essential works by the first modern poet in the Catalan language, Maria Antònia Salvà. This fall, Barcino is bringing back Spikes in flower and The return with an introduction by Lluïsa Julià, one of the leading experts on the author from Llucmajor, and with an afterword by the poet Maria Callís. Thus, if in 2020 we had to lament the impossibility of finding her works in bookstores in the middle of the Year of Salvation, now we will be able to read her twice over. And she will be great: readers who come will find the one I have always defended that we should dare to read as a kind of Dickinson in the Catalan language, an introspective, visionary author, rooted in the vividness of words and in the deepest sensitivity, a precursor of feminism and environmentalism in the .

It seems, then, that publishers, philologists, and institutions are doing their job: making the legacy of our greatest authors available to the public, especially when they aren't here to defend it. Now all that's left is for readers to get motivated.