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e had left very young from a Barcelona still walled and gripped by the opprobrium of the Ciutadella, but where the spark of revolt and the fire of the bullanga had already ignited. Orphaned from a very young age, he had been an apprentice in various trades, from jeweler to commercial clerk, but his obsession was literature, steeped in Castilian, French, and Latin authors. In Madrid, during the reign of Isabel II, he had found himself like a fish in water in political journalism and café conspiracies. A type of journalism that is by no means a bargain for earning a living, but rather a guarantee of ending up as fodder for censorship or prison.
In the Villa y Corte, he experienced the misery of bohemia, the rigor of censorship, and the humiliation of prison. From there, he continued to write feverishly, articles and novels, but he left sick with tuberculosis. Having become a parliamentary chronicler – one of the inventors of the genre in Spain – the political divisions within the democratic camp to which he belonged had left him in misfortune again. Perhaps to recover from this, he had returned to his city, which had already torn down its walls and dreamed of growing with the Eixample. It was there, between 1865 and 1866, when the journalist Robert Robert had enough with just twenty-seven articles published in Catalan in the magazine Un Tros de Paper to create a tradition and, almost, a language model.
"The prose of this man really has a certain effect and some of his writings, such as, for example, 'La rebotiga' –The back room–, is among the best things written in Catalan that were written in this country in the era of the so-called Renaixença –a very difficult era and for that very reason most appreciable." Pla's words in El quadern gris.If anyone has any doubt about this primogeniture of Robert Robert in Catalan journalism written in this language, three of the most important writers of 20th-century Catalan literature, Josep Carner, Carles Riba, and Josep Pla, three offspring straddling Novecentismo and Post-Novecentismo, endorse it: at the end of 1920, the Prince of Poets incorporated him as an author for Editorial Catalana –the publishing company promoted by the Liga de Prat de la Riba, financially supported by Cambó and where he served as literary director–, with a selection of prose from A Piece of Paperthat Riba commissions. It is in this context, when Riba ponders it, that Josep Pla learns about him: "These days I have read the small volume published by the Biblioteca Popular L'Avenç –it is number 73– with some writings by Robert Robert titled 'Barcelonesas'. This man's prose really has a certain effect and some of his writings, such as, for example, 'La rebotiga' –The back room–, is among the best things written in Catalan that was written in this country at the time of the so-calledRenaixença–a very difficult and for that very reason most appreciable time." Pla's word inThe Grey Notebook.
Born in Barcelona in 1830, the writer, journalist, and politician Robert Robert y Casacuberta could hardly imagine that he would be remembered by his grandchildren's generation and up to today, practically and solely for those few articles written in Catalan, and not for the enormous production written exclusively in Castilian. A member of that generation of Catalan men who set out to conquer Spain morally, economically, and politically –Joan Prim was born in 1814, Víctor Balaguer ten years younger than the man from Reus–, the democrat Robert clearly represents the option of men of letters, Catalans by birth who genuinely believe in renouncing their own culture and language to build a greater body of work in Castilian, linked to their peninsular political project. A renunciation that did not prevent them, at the same time, from enthusiastically participating in a Renaixença –the rebirth of Catalan culture– which had begun with the poem of another expatriate in Madrid, Bonaventura Carles Aribau.
The novella El último enamorado (The Last Lover), the progressive and anti-conservative trilogy formed by Los cachivaches de antaño (The Old Trinkets), Los tiempos de Mari-Castaña (The Times of Mari-Castaña) and La espumadera de los siglos (The Skimmer of the Centuries), the satirical work La corte de Macaronini I (The Court of Macaronini I) –about the arrival of King Amadeo of Savoy– or the anticlerical pamphlet El gran Tiberio del siglo entre luces y pedrades. Jolgorio celebrado en Madrid con motivo del 25º aniversario de Pio IX (The Great Tiberius of the Century Between Lights and Stones. Revelry Celebrated in Madrid on the Occasion of the 25th Anniversary of Pius IX), should have been for this romantic liberal graphomaniac, a spirit of his time, of more value than the little articles written in his mother tongue. His commitment to Castilian has not earned him, in any case, glory within Spanish letters –he could not overshadow a Larra or a Mesonero Romanos, much less a Zorrilla, to name some predecessors and contemporaries– however, the publication of this collection of Barcelona articles has prevented oblivion.
Robert opts for the Catalan that is spoken because he has no accessible references in this language. His admired Larra can serve as an aesthetic model, but at a linguistic level, he must do the work alone. He finds the model in the orality of the streetBARCELONAN STAGE
His Barcelona period, during which he was part of the consistory of the Jocs Florals –a contest that still enjoyed a progressive reputation and had not fallen into subsequent stagnation–, Robert came into contact with the group of Un Tros de Paper, –directed by Albert Llanas–, which had the flavor of Pitarra's backroom and the populations of Innocenci López, owner of the Librería Española. Precisely, Frederic Soler –Pitarra's real alter ego– was one of the collaborators, along with Eduard Vidal de Valenciano, Eduard Aulés, Josep Feliu i Codina, Conrad Roure, Frederic Pous, Josep Maria Torres, Francesc Figueres and Manuel Angelon, of the magazine published by López. Robert connected with them due to his progressive spirit, his desire to create a humor magazine with the aim of reaching and influencing the general public, to try to awaken the conscience of a society increasingly domesticated by the bourgeois morality of order and moderation, and which had relegated faith in progress only to material and economic matters.
And furthermore, he coincided with the group of Un Tros de Paper in the use of "the Catalan that is now spoken", in the dispute with the vulgarity of the Jocs Florals group –although as we have seen, the relations between both groups were more ambiguous than we believe. Robert opted for the Catalan that is spoken because he had no accessible references in this language. His admired Larra could serve as an aesthetic model, but at a linguistic level, he had to do the work alone. That is why he found in the orality of the street, in the genuine Catalan of maids and stable boys, of pharmacists and market vendors, in what he heard on the Rambla and in backrooms, the solution to his lack of a model.
"Robert Robert is not negligible as a prose writer. He was a man who saw things, who observed them well. One cannot, in any case, ignore or minimize the moment: from 1865 to 1866. In these years, still, Castilian influence is total. Pitarra is attacked, by important Barcelona newspapers, as the quintessence of vulgarism. Society –Castilianized– thought it was different. No, no, Robert Robert is a considerable writer who wrote a certainly wild but very important prose, prior to Verdaguer's 'itinerary'. Two different things, certainly, but for today's taste, Robert's vulgar descriptions are much more interesting than Verdaguer's rhetorically topical ones," assures Josep Pla, when he contrasts Jacint Verdaguer's Dietari d'un pelegrí a Terra Santa, "the best book of Catalan prose of the last century," with Robert's articles in Un Tros de Paper.
Regarding costumbrismo, it has been, precisely, the cursed epithet that Robert's prose and that of his contemporaries or disciples have had to hear too many times, reducing them to a minor, anecdotal, domestic, or folkloric matter, in the face of great epic or lyrical literature.Pla –like Carner or Sagarra– also begins his career as a prose writer from journalism. He does not start anew like Robert, however, son of a tradition lacking due to a language that has just been ordered under the aegis of Pompeu Fabra, an official life that is Catalanized with the Mancomunidad and with newspapers mostly written in Castilian, when looking for references –a not easy task– he must place Robert Robert at the top: he is the link that connects the generation of the twenties and thirties with the European tradition. A genealogy that starts with English journalism of the early 18th century –when Catalonia was not in a position to bake cakes, much less to generate essayistic journalism in the manner of Addison inThe TatlerorThe Spectatoror like Daniel Defoe's pamphlets, and the language had retreated to the private chambers of the Baron de Maldà–, passes through the French moralists –whom Josep Pla so admires– and joins with Larra's costumbrista romanticism. From the Madrid writer, Robert takes the combination of description, short essay, dialogue, and the conversational tone with the reader, clearly evident in Robert's articles. A key tradition in European literature, which Pla is forced to fabricate for himself, taking Robert, even inventing him if necessary, to explain his literature. Faced with other proposals, Carner, Sagarra, and Pla take Robert's path and will imitate him or –directly– plagiarize him, as Professor Ferran Toutain has observed.
Regarding costumbrismo, it has been, precisely, the cursed epithet that Robert's prose and that of his contemporaries or disciples have had to hear too many times, reducing them to a minor, anecdotal, domestic, or folkloric matter, in the face of great epic or lyrical literature. Robert is not a nostalgic for the old city, nor a historicist in the manner of L'orfeneta de Menargues o Catalunya agonisant, by Antoni de Bofarull –the first novel in Catalan of La Renaixença, published in 1862–, but an urbanite, a stroller, a gawker, a son of the city. And here it must be remembered that while in Barcelona the works of the Ensanche –l'Ensanxe, to which Robert refers and observes– are beginning, in Napoleon III's Paris the great reforms of Baron Haussmann are being carried out, from which the figure of Charles Baudelaire's flâneur will emerge.
"The joyful, idle Barcelona, the shifting Barcelona, look for it only on the Passeig de Gràcia, and now more than ever since the Ensanxe, damn the word! The Passeig de Gràcia is more of a promenade than the Rambla", writes Robert RobertThe streets where Robert walks are the same Ramblas and the same Paseo de Gracia that his "grandchildren" will talk about, but between them, a Universal Exhibition of Barcelona will have passed, the development of the Ensanche – with streets barely baptized at Robert's time, at the proposal of Víctor Balaguer –, the aggregation of the surrounding towns – Sants, Les Corts, Sant Gervasi de Cassoles, Gràcia, Sant Andreu de Palomar and Sant Martí de Provençals, plus Sant Joan d'Horta and the latest of all, Sarrià – the opening of Via Laietana, with the disappearance of a part of old Barcelona under the Reforma project, and the plans for a new exhibition in Montjuïc, finally inaugurated in 1929.
In between, names like Lluís Domènech i Muntaner, Josep Puig i Cadafalch and Antoni Gaudí rival to erect their houses on a Paseo de Gràcia, about which Robert writes: "The joyful, idle Barcelona, the restless Barcelona, look for it only on the Paseo de Gracia, and now more than ever since the Ensanxe, damn the word! The Paseo de Gràcia is more of a promenade than the Rambla, because it is much wider; because it has more expansive and pleasant views; because the buildings are now beginning to surround it. They do not recall, like those of the Rambla, the punishment of work and the greed of industry, but rather deep rest, well-being, wealth, luxury." This promenade, where the first buildings are barely beginning to rise according to Cerdà's ideas – soon betrayed – "offers us the sight of the half-circle of mountains guarding a delightful plain, now covered with green wheat and red poppies, now gilded by the shining stubble." In any case, this still rural promenade is full of "People coming, people going, people coming and going," and has already become the favorite place to see and be seen.
"Always the Rambla, like everything in Spain, begins with ecclesiastics and ends with soldiers," writes RobertFurther down, about the Rambla, or the four Ramblas – the clerical dels Capellans, at the current Caneletes; the joyful de les Flors; the cosmopolitan and intellectual del Mig and the military de Santa Mònica – Robert notes "The special character of each of the four Ramblas or part of the Rambla has lasted a long time and will last as long as that thoroughfare is the center of Barcelona, the unique center for those who live in the incipientEnsanxe, who since birth have lived in El Padró and Pla de Palau. The Rambla, like everything in Spain, always begins with ecclesiastics and ends with soldiers." That is, what seems like a fully costumbrista article, Robert ends it with a phrase that is a complete metaphor for the politics of his time.
In fact, this fully ideological mordancy that marks the end of one of the most vivid and, apparently costumbrista articles of the twenty-seven published by Robert in Un Tros de Paper, is characteristic of a writer who until then had earned his living and prestige in political struggle and considered writing as a tool in the combat for progress and freedom in the tumultuous Spanish nineteenth century. In Ai, que han mort un noi! –Oh, they've killed a boy!–, the writer attacks the manipulation of the masses, elevated to avengers of a non-existent death –where a story by Monzó seems to resonate distantly, who would be one of the last epigones of the lacking tradition initiated by Robert. While El ball d'en Serrallonga, on the contrary, serves him to again attack conservatives who long for the world of the Ancien Régime: "those blessed times when those who today sell vinegar with a 'don' as big as a temple, and shout themselves hoarse trying to make us believe that everything new is bad, were hangable and quarterable vassals. The Serrallonga dance means that in that much-lamented time people found pleasure in what today is disgusting. It means convents and tithes, bad customs, streets without lights, provinces without roads or mail, and four-wick oil lamps; it means that the idle was a person and the laborious a scoundrel, before the law. It means hanged, beheaded, quartered, tongues pierced; it means monkey and snake and cat , inside the criminal boot... And they want me not to be glad to see it?".
Death came to meet him when he had just been appointed by the republican government as minister plenipotentiary to the Swiss Confederation. To Switzerland, however, he would never arrive.The liberal broadside continues withSome good men–Unos hombres de bien– (Men of Good Standing), where he portrays those gentlemen who are "thrifty, homeowners, religious, whatever you want," but who "are scoundrels from head to toe." Revived lice, sons of illiterate day laborers or washerwomen, but with enough ingenuity to ascend and despise the world they come from, selfish, conservative, anti-liberal, and anti-political, who complain about the harms of material progress, while "they travel by steam, use gas, own railway shares, and as soon as they rise a little, they found a credit or insurance company." A ridicule of a certain type of Barcelona artisan who seems to be a predecessor of Rusiñol's archetypal Mr. Esteve, for whom his contemporary Robert would not wish "that the old forms of government would return," when they would be kicked by nobles and fed with friars' soups.
Gossipy neighbors, love stories, the fondness for swimming, the incipient custom of spending the weekend in the torreta –the chalet– of Putxet –today a high-standing neighborhood–, the art of choosing a melon, classes for widowers, or costume parties, are also essential literary material for moralizing but cheerful articles, crossed, however, by the shadow of death. Yes, death caused by cholera, which, despite the humor, cuts short our laughter just thinking that in two months the epidemic killed 4,000 Barcelonans. All houses count dead, the city is deserted, shops, cafes, theaters, everything is closed, workers have no jobs, and despite everything, the group of Un Tros de Paper finds the strength to continue publishing the magazine. Robert emerged alive from that plague that infested his city, and soon returned to Madrid where he became deeply involved in the conspiracies that led to the dethronement of Isabel II –the queen he had ridiculed in Quisicosas del rey y la reina, published in El Tío Crispín, for which he was sentenced to prison–, the so-called Glorious Revolution of September, the brief reign of Amadeo, and the First Republic. Death precisely came to meet him when he had just been appointed by the republican government as plenipotentiary minister to the Helvetic Confederation. To Switzerland, however, he would never arrive.
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