Mercè Rodoreda i Gurguí (Catalan pronunciation: [məɾˈsɛ ruðuˈɾɛðə]; 10 October 1908 – 13 April 1983) was a Catalan novelist, who wrote in the Catalan language.
She is considered the most influential contemporary Catalan language writer, as evidenced by other authors' references to her work and her international reputation, with translations into more than thirty languages.
She also has been called the most important Catalan female novelist of the postwar period. Her novel La plaça del diamant ('The diamond square', translated as The Time of the Doves, 1962) has become the most popular Catalan novel to date and has been translated into over 30 languages. Some critics consider it to be one of the best novels published in Spain after the Spanish Civil War.
After her death, another of her artistic talents was discovered, painting, which had remained in the background due to Rodoreda prioritizing writing:
I write because I like to write. If it didn't seem like an exaggeration, I would say that I write to please myself. If others like what I write, the better. Perhaps it is deeper. Perhaps I write to affirm myself. To feel that I am ... And it's over. I have spoken of myself and essential things in my life, with a certain lack of measure. And excess has always scared me.
Mercè Rosa Rodoreda i Gurguí was born on October 10, 1908, at 340 carrer de Balmes, Barcelona Her parents were Andreu Rodoreda, from Terrassa and Montserrat Gurguí, from Maresme. Both were lovers of literature and theatre and had attended recital classes taught by Adrià Gual at the School of Dramatic Art (which would later become the Institute of Theater). Her mother also had an interest in music.
Her parents' financial problems forced her to leave school at age nine. From 1915 to 1917 she attended the Lurdes School in the Sarrià neighborhood, and from 1917 to 1920 she went to the Nuestra Señora de Lourdes centre, which was closest to her home, on Calle de Padua, at the height of the street of Vallirana. Later she went to an academy where she studied only French and business arithmetic.
Her maternal grandfather, Pere Gurguí, was an admirer of Jacint Verdaguer (of whom he had been a friend) and had collaborated as an editor in the magazines La Renaixensa and L'Arc de Sant Martí. In 1910, Pere Gurguí had a monument in memory of Jacint Verdaguer erected in the garden of his house that bore an engraving with the title of the two most important works of the author, Canigó and L'Atlàntida; that place became the space for parties and family gatherings. The figure of her grandfather marked her intensely and she came to consider him her teacher. Gurguí instilled in her a deep Catalan feeling, and a love for the Catalan language and flowers that were well reflected throughout Mercè Rodoreda's work.
I remember the feeling of being at home when, leaning over the railing of the roof, I saw the blue flowers of the jacaranda fall on the grass and the hydrangeas. I will never know how to explain it; I have never felt more at home than when I lived at my grandfather's house with my parents.
On May 18, 1913, when she was only five years old, she performed for the first time in a play playing the role of the girl Kitty in The Mysterious Jimmy Samson, at the Torrent de les Flors theater. Years later, this character was, recovered for the story The bathroom, within the work Twenty-two stories.
During her childhood she read all the classic and modern Catalan authors, such as Jacint Verdaguer, Ramon Llull, Joan Maragall, Josep Maria de Sagarra and Josep Carner, among others, influenced by the bohemian atmosphere of her family's home.
On May 30, 1920, she participated in the drama Fifteen Days of Reign at Lourdes School. In the same act she also read the poem in Catalan called La negra.
In 1921, her uncle Juan moved in with the family and changed the lifestyle of all its members, imposing austerity and conventional order. She had idealised him as a result of the letters she had previously received and ended up marrying him on October 10, 1928, her twentieth birthday, in the church of Bonanova. He was fourteen years older than her and, due to the degree of consanguinity, they needed a papal dispensation.
After the wedding, the couple went to Paris on a honeymoon, and then they settled in a house on Zaragoza Street. Her husband had gone to Argentina when he was very young and had returned with a small fortune.
On July 23, 1929, their only son, Jordi Gurguí i Rodoreda, was born. From that moment on, Mercè Rodoreda began to do literary tests, to get rid of the economic and social dependency that the monotonous married life gave her. That is how she began to consider writing as a profession. Every day she locked herself for a while in a blue dovecote that was in Manuel Angelon's maternal house, which possibly later served as an inspiration to include the dovecote in The Time of the Doves. During that time, she wrote verses, a theatrical comedy (which remains defunct), and a novel. Meanwhile, the Second Republic was formed.
In 1931 she began to take classes at the Dalmau Lyceum, where she improved her knowledge of language under the guidance of the pedagogue, linguist and esperantist Delfí Dalmau i Enero, who greatly influenced her and encouraged her to train, and with whom a bond of friendship developed. Rodoreda showed Dalmau what she wrote and he encouraged her to make these first texts public. According to Dalmau, Mercè Rodoreda was an exceptional student, possessing spiritual fulfillment and a promising literary soul. This admiration led Dalmau to ask her to be one of the counterparts in her work Polémica, An Apology for Catalan and Esperanto; she answered affirmatively and the piece was published in 1934. As Dalmau recognized, this work had also been influenced by Rodoreda's observations.
In 1932, Rodoreda wrote her first novel, titled Am I an honored woman?, and also some stories for various newspapers. The work went almost unnoticed until it was nominated for the Crexells Prize in 1933, although the winner that year was Carles Soldevila. She also published an interview with the actress Maria Vila in the Mirador magazine on October 20th of that year.
On October 1, 1933, she began her journalistic career in the weekly magazine Clarisme where she published twenty-two contributions: five prose on traditional culture, thirteen interviews, two reviews, a short story, and three comments on political, musical and film themes. That same year, she joined the Barcelona Press Association, evidence of her intention to formalize collaboration with journalistic work.