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Foreword by Geoffrey Pridham
Introduction
Select Bibliography
Appendix by Maria Lluisa Julià compares and contrasts this work with Joseph Conrad's Typhoon.
Ruyra was in the vanguard of the Catalan modernist generation
as they constructed a new literary model after 1860 when the Catalan
language became the vehicle of cultural nationalism. He has been
called the 'prince of Catalan prose'.
This is a sea story whose epic quality has invited comparisons
with Homer and Tolstoy and, in its treatment of the sea as reference
in a psychological voyage, with Melville, Conrad and Hemingway.
El rem de trenta quatre is a high point in Ruyra's work
which is outstanding for his transformation of poetic rhythms
into the music of his prose. Here, the narrator's internalisation
of near shipwreck, her experiences, emotions and mental awakening,
are mapped onto maritime elements that are detailed with a painter's
eye. Through masterly dialogue, Ruyra characterizes each personality
in the rich català salat dialect of Blanes, centre
of a linguistic map of the Catalan coast from Alacant to Roses,
lovingly describing and naming its villages and physical features.
An Appendix, by M. Lluisa Julià, provides a comparison
between this story and Joseph Conrad's Typhoon.
Julie Flanagan was born 1945 in Western Australia, worked as a Radiographer and lived in Papua New Guinea before going on to study the Politics of South East Asia at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. As co-editor of TAPOL (Bulletin of the British Campaign for Political Prisoners and Human Rights in Indonesia) Ms Flanagan has broadcast and addressed numerous human rights conferences and settled with her family in Barcelona in 1983. As well as having a working knowledge of Indonesian, Dutch, French and German, Ms Flanagan is also fluent in Catalan, Castilian and English and has translated stories by Carme Riera, Robert Saladrigas and Agustín Cerezales for Origins of Desire (Serpent's Tail), Solitud by Victor Català, Pel camí ral del nord by Robert Saladrigas, and numerous articles for the International Journal of Psychoanalysis.
144pp (1994) cl 604 2 $59.95 / £35; pb 605 0 $22 / £11.95
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SOME COMMENTS BY REVIEWERS
"Translating Ruyra is an adventure, indeed an
exciting adventure" El País
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See under Hispanic Classics