Fever for Barcelona

At the beginning of this century, when Barcelona began to lose its Olympic glamour and the authorities invented that vulgar nonsense of the Fòrum de les Cultures, the city's most nostalgic literary culture vultures were gripped by a kind of fever to discover "the great novel of Barcelona." Now the matter might provoke some amusement, but the sect of the apocalyptic thought that our city had not inspired enough venerable literature of European level (poor things, they still hadn't read Vida Privada nor had they rediscovered the greatness of La Plaça del Diamant) or, in any case, they believed that the great pre-war literature had not had followers in contemporary times, which is contradicted by sufficiently current works by authors as generationally and aesthetically disparate as Tina Vallès, Luisa Cunillé, Lluís-Anton Baulenas, Adrià Pujol, Adrià Targa, and Roc Milà. The current dullness of our city, therefore, has no correlation in the literary field. 

I was thinking about this matter recently when, somewhat reluctantly and without too much hope, I reread La febre d'or by Narcís Oller (1846-1930) in the wonderful edition published by Barcino's "Imprescindibles" collection with an impeccable prologue by Professor Gemma Bartolí. Like many colleagues of my generation, we studied the author from Valls solely through the label of being the creator of our modern novel (in simple imitation of Parisian writers) in books far inferior to this novel. Nowadays, due to our writers' dreadful obsession with telling us their traumas, to adjective a novel as "fun" might seem a sacrilege: well, despite narrating some highly traumatic scenes, La febre d'or is a very thrilling book, a text spectacle in the most capitalist sense of the term, with a language contaminated by Castilianisms and Frenchisms but of great purity, and with dialogues drawn with perfect ruling pen.

As Bartolí says in the prologue to the volume, one cannot speak of modern Catalan novel about Barcelona without mentioning La febre d'or, and not only because the city is the essential co-protagonist of the work along with Gil Foix and his acquaintances, but because its spaces are the thematic core of a new type of socialization that arises from the explosion of mercantile sting. In this sense, it is wonderful to read and reread chapter VIII of the first part, in which Oller tells us about the preambles and clashes of opinion at an evening at the Liceu (which is not a figment of imagination, as he speaks of a Faust performed there in April 1881, starring the great tenor Masini) with a first-rate descriptive capacity: "Dependents de botiga i d'escriptori, possessionats de llotges de terç pis, duien encara allí dents més esmolades i més perilloses, com són les de l'ignorant infatuat". Read it, I beg you, because it is also a proverbial school of language.

Apart from the magnificent descriptions of late 19th-century Barcelona, which is still the basis of our city (pay special attention to the word-paintings of the Stock Exchange, carriage rides along La Rambla or references to the old Montjuïc Hippodrome), it is already known that La febre d'or tells us about the rise and fall from grace of a family. Again, Oller's skill is not only that he patiently recounts the Barcelonians' fever for wealth (a mental distortion that is not a simple metaphor, but ends up being postmodernly corporal), but that he judges the new capitalism without any kind of moral, appreciating the necessary madness of businessmen when it comes to prospering and equally dignifying the old women who do not want to estirar més el braç que la màniga, allergic to luxury and torracollons by nature. As onclo Bernat says at the end of this great text; "great conquests are not made without blood."

Now that we live immersed in the need to reconcile with our city ---which, I dare to insist, continues to produce notable literature--- I recommend to the readers of La Punyalada that they approach Oller again and that they review a novel that survives its time and wonderfully contemporizes with us. This is a recommendation that also applies to the followers of the Post more accustomed to the business world, not only because it will recommend them to act as oligarchs according to a healthy moderation and without excessive ambition, but also because the author often insists on something more than important; namely, that the economy can never function if the home is not humanely healthy. In short, have a good febrada.