Reclaiming a native tongue to talk about death
The oppression of Catalonia bleeds through the pages of Rodoreda’s novel.
The aftertaste of this scrumptious translated masterpiece is still dripping at the edge of my mind. Death in Spring, originally La morti la primavera in Catalan, is a darkly unsettling novel about growing up under dictatorship and finding hope in the desire for change and independence.
In the midst of social alienation, to be able to see the world so naively is both a gift and curse. In an oppressive society — or, as Bukowski would put it, when death is cheaper than living — Rodoreda grieves in her own language. Even when no one wants to hear it, when the language is despised and sneered at, when the imprisonment of the soul is the only punishment suited for those who use it.
Rodoreda evokes a sense of something beautifully painful or soaringly melancholic, and more hopeless phrases we use to describe pain we couldn’t understand. She writes as if carving a path through the mountains, all while dodging beasts in the dark; we can feel their eyes on us.
That was what I felt throughout the story. Bad things are happening, but I was half deaf. Do deaf people hear their own screams?
Philosophical arguments of life, death, desire and what makes a person a person are also a part of Rodoreda’s rendition that will stay with me. I’ve been thinking about death a lot, like someone in their twenties should. Yet when a little earthquake occurred, I would be the first one to flinch in fear of dying swallowed by earth.
Rodoreda has left me overflowing with thoughts, but I will leave you simply with this:
With unfocused eyes he said: accompanied by the wish to live, you have the wish to die; it’ll be like that til the end.
Death in Spring by Mercè Rodoreda
If you are looking for something to keep you up at night, lost in words and thoughts and all that falls somewhere in between, read Rodoreda.
