Mercè Rodoreda

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Mercè Rodoreda

Mercè Rodoreda i Gurgui (born October 10, 1908 in Barcelona , † April 13, 1983 in Girona ) was a Catalan writer . She is considered one of the most important Catalan authors of the 20th century. Her novel Auf der Plaça del Diamant (1962) has been translated into more than 20 languages.

life and work

Mercè Rodoreda began writing short stories for magazines, not least to escape from their unhappy marriage. She then wrote psychological novels, including Aloma , with which she won the Crexells Prize . Despite the success of this novel, she later decided to revise it as she was dissatisfied with this period of her life and the works created during this time.

At the beginning of the Spanish Civil War she worked for the Catalan Generalitat , the Catalan regional government. She went into exile in France and later in Switzerland. After a long time she only published again in 1958, the volume of short stories Vint-i-dos contes (Twenty-two Short Stories), for which she received the Víctor Català Prize. With El Carrer de les Camèlies (1966) she won several prizes.

In the 1970s she returned to Romanyà de la Selva ( province of Girona ) in Catalonia and finished her novel Mirall trencat in 1974 . 1980 u. a. Viatges i flors and Quanta, quanta guerra . That year she also won the Premi d'Honor de les Lletres Catalanes . In the last period of her work she preferred a more symbolistic style. Rodoreda became an honorary member of the Association of Catalan Language Writers ( Associació d'Escriptors en Llengua Catalana ).

memory

In 1998 the “Mercè Rodoreda Prize for Short Stories and Stories” was launched and named after her.

Works (selection)

  • Aloma. 1938. (German: Aloma, translated by Angelika Maass, Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1991)
  • Vint-i-dos contes. 1958.
  • La plaça del Diamant. (German: On the Plaça del Diamant. , translated by Hans Weiss, 1962, 2nd edition. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1999)
  • El Carrer de les Camèlies. 1966. - Awarded the Premi Sant Jordi de novel·la
  • Jardí vora el mar. 1967. (German: The garden over the sea , translated by Kirsten Brandt , Mare Verlag, Hamburg 2014)
  • Mirall trencat. 1974. (German: The broken mirror , translated by Angelika Maass, Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1982)
  • Semblava de seda i old contes. 1978.
  • Viatges i flors (German: Journey to the Land of the Lost Girls: poetic prose pieces ; Catalan and German , translated by Angelika Maass. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1981)
  • Quanta, quanta guerra ... 1980. (German: Because there is war, translated by Angelika Maass, Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-518-41927-4 )
  • La mort i la primavera. 1986. (German: Death and Spring , translated by Angelika Maass, Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1996)
  • The river and the boat. Stories. Transferred by Angelika Maass, Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1986.
  • And leave you the sea as a pledge, my darling. Fifteen stories. Vervuert, 1988.
  • The blood. Narrative. In: Catalan storytellers. Manesse Verlag, Zurich 2007, ISBN 978-3-7175-1558-6 .

The Garden Over the Sea (1967) - Reception

“The garden over the sea” was translated anew in 2014 and experienced a rediscovery - especially as an audio book with Roger Willemsen : Michael Krüger wrote in the FAZ : “Every passionate reader puts together a small special library in the course of his or her book life, in which only works that went very deep to his heart ... Now I have recorded a new book, the novel 'The Garden over the Sea'. " Sigrid Löffler in Deutschlandradio Kultur says:" The sophistication lies in the perspective from which Mercé Rodoreda takes it Time-relieved, windless idyll told - broken twice by social and temporal distance (...) A great little novel that carefully preserves the melancholy beauty of a lost time. "

Web links

Commons : Mercè Rodoreda  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael Krüger in Faz, January 24, 2015, p. 12
  2. ^ Sigrid Löffler in Deutschlandradio Kultur, December 13, 2014


personal data
SURNAME Rodoreda, Mercè
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rodoreda i Gurgui, Mercè
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Catalan writer
DATE OF BIRTH October 10, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Barcelona
DATE OF DEATH April 13, 1983
Place of death Girona