Note under the door to Mercè Rodoreda | ctxt.es

“Leave,

Or leave me to my sorrows!”

William Blake

Mrs. Rodoreda, excuse the boldness, I know that I annoy you wherever she is. I know that I annoy you from this other place, you who are on the other side of the fence, who knows exactly where, perhaps among green waters the color of an iridescent beetle, who knows if surrounded by wisteria, or next to a weeping laurel . Of course, I imagine her surrounded by flowers, because the flowers in her literature are exactly the same as jewels, they are exactly like words, they are exactly the same as the body. Teresa's flesh-colored roses, the corollas that that nameless girl who suffers so much devours, the white geranium petals that are Balbina's teeth, the mimosa that makes Crisantema sneeze when she falls in love with her. Everything is flowers, everything is words, everything is jewelry.

By the way, how women suffer in their texts. My mother told me when I discovered her literature, I must have been ten years old, in one of those orange editions of Edicions 62 that ran around the house. My mother used to say “how those girls suffer”, when I obsessively reread El carrer de les Camèlies and we watched Silvia Munt on TV crying in La plaça del Diamant and we said “how Colometa suffers” and I intuited, but I still didn't know, that in that suffering there was something that remained, something petrified, hard but shiny, exactly like a diamond, exactly like the gray and pink pearl with which Salvador Valldaura is buried.

It wasn't until recently that I read her letters to Anna Murià and understood where those women with eyes full of Genevan water came from, who contemplate the horizon of the lakes and thus see their lives go by. It was not until I read those words of hers in which she recounts the effort of sewing and writing, sewing and writing, and the dry eyes and the rage and poverty that I intuited how all that coal and all that misery had crystallized in those protagonists who, from Paris, they longed for Barcelona so much that they prefer to stuff themselves with cream cakes and vanilla cookies rather than give up a past love that will never return but that cuts the meat and grinds the teeth until it breaks them in two, just like the first day.

https://t.co/VHJH5KayfQ

— Nakshatra Garg Wed Jul 28 03:36:00 +0000 2021

Still, I must confess that the details of her life have never mattered much to me. I, who always wanted to know every last crumb that belongs to idols, have never felt any kind of curiosity about whether you were a better or worse person, what you did or with whom. It is enough for me to understand through his writing that he loved and lost. Only in this way could “Abans de muerte” have been written, perhaps the longest of his stories, apparently simple but containing an entire world, and which marked my sentimental literary education. A nameless woman, a summoned lover, a revenge ending. We all know that stories are written for revenge, right, Mrs. Rodoreda? You don't have to answer me, not yet.

Sometimes I think that some people have preferred her docile image of an endearing old woman because the writings of beauty, flowers and excess of her have always bothered them. As if writing wasn't about running away from so much, so much war. As if her texts had no commitment, intellect, hunger. I wouldn't want to bother her by refuting nonsense. Her pain, her desire and her grief are exactly the same as that black flower, the one you speak of, which looks like a very curly carnation covered in a varnish equal to that of seven wells and seven of the longest nights. Her sorrow is so deep and the beauty of the words so immense that there is no point in wasting time, as you did not. "I would like to capture the very slow spasms of a bud when it leaves the branch, the violence with which a plant expels the seed...", she explained and detailed how giving prominence to each word is the only thing that really works. Highlight each word, polish each jewel. With that explanation everything is said, I don't need more. The rest is in her writing, which contains itself and requires nothing more than her words, which are her jewels, which are her flowers.

Forgive me, Mrs. Rodoreda, if this is giving you a headache. I wouldn't want to bother her, many before me did, like that famous writer, perhaps the most famous of all, who they say showed up at her door completely stunned after reading one of her novels, hoping to meet her. You don't have to open the door for me, it would be missing more. That's why I prefer to leave you this note under the door and you'll read it when you can, I wouldn't want to bother you. It's fine like this, I prefer to imagine her after so much life, who knows if smiling, with a bottle made of glass and silver, overflowing with red wine (we already know that wine makes blood), surrounded by starry jasmine and dahlias that look like silk.

I just wanted to ask you, and I'm sorry if I bother you, I know you don't like excessiveness and so far I've only spoken, but how did you manage to write like that? How the hell did he do it?

—------------

(Translated from the original in Catalan.)