4 - Interliterariness and the Literary Field: Catalan Literature and Literatures in Catalonia

Summary

Nearly a century ago, in an opuscule entitled Momentum Catastroficum, Pío Baroja made an assertion upon which we must meditate in various ways: “If Catalonia separates from Spain, within fifty years it will be spiritually French” (55). Independent of his motivations, the thing that most attracts our attention in Baroja's affirmation (which in no way can be understood simply as a boutade) is his ability to do something that Catalans have scarcely done for some time: that is, to think about our literary, intellectual, political, and editorial culture, once independence from Spain has been achieved. This issue cannot be assumed to go without saying, nor may we postpone its consideration until independence has been effectively achieved. We cannot subordinate it to the fact that independence has not already been achieved (or that it may never be achieved), nor can we assume that once the other dimensions of the matter have been resolved, literature may, in the end, have little importance. While literature (culture in general) no longer occupies what was once a central place in the constitution of societies, this fact paradoxically does not prevent the literary field in Catalonia from being simultaneously the stage and the object of some of the most ardent political debates of recent years. Suffice it to say that the Catalan case is not exceptional in Europe, and thus its study should be liberated from the dramatics with which it is often discussed. But we must also take a step forward to situate it in this European context of reflection, which makes it intelligible. Precisely because of this, we must think about the relationships between Catalan literature and the literatures of its vicinity – Spanish, Iberian, and European on one plane, and Western and world on the other – once the moment of genuine political independence arrives. This is because with the future establishment of Catalonia as an independent state in the heart of the European Union, many things will have changed in this country, but others will not. People will continue speaking the same languages and they will continue writing the same literature, or literatures.

In reality, it is not very difficult to think about Catalonia in the terms in which Baroja did.