Salvador Espriu (1913-1985) is one of Catalonia's greatest writers. This year we celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of his birth. He wrote poetry, fiction, and theater, with exceptional richness and depth, with an unmistakable personal style. He created a contemporary vision of a world with strong roots in the three founding Mediterranean cultures: Egyptian, Jewish, and Greek, which together with his own Catalan, expand their branches into a universal vision and sense of the difficulties of man throughout history.
The text below, which is little known, should be read taking into account the current situation in Catalonia. It shows that our links to Europe and the way we understand it did not just happen by chance, but have deep roots in our past. Espriu became a spokesman for the traits that have defined our nation since its founding in the 9th century AD.
To Joan Crusellas.
I am a small piece of land with no real rivers, often thirsty for rain, scarce of trees, forests and plains, full of mountains, and my east flank lies along the old sea that links the difficult and bloody dialogue between three continents.
I see with my eyes shut some palm trees immobile despite the breeze, which close my country by midday; to the north there are wetlands; to the west there are other lands that hint at the desert—the noble, parched, spiritual sister lands that I love so much.
How diverse my small land and how much it had to suffer for centuries and millennia from the violence of various nations, and the harsh civil wars that happened within its borders and beyond the palm trees and wetlands, the dry highlands, and the waves!
For our long pain knows that any war between men, the weirdest or greatest struggle between men, is only a civil war and brings us all suffering and sorrow, destruction and death.
This is the reason why our hope—in my dream, already a reality—of embracing a higher unity in the future is so deep; a unity that bears the name, open, beautiful, of Agenor’s daughter, who was seen by a wise man prodigiously passing from Phoenicia's coast to Crete’s beaches—preserving our language and our history.
When the day arrives, we must take a first and memorable step towards this supreme unity and equality among men.
And maybe then we will be allowed to begin, freed from social classes, religious hatred, and cruel and unfair differences because of skin color, our pilgrimage through space towards the ultimate light, and follow God's mysterious voices without fearing the no-thing—the infinite, free, and yet necessary ways of true goodness.
THEY ASKED ME TO TALK ABOUT MY EUROPE
Cum grano salis.
High peaks break my country into two states, but the same language is still spoken on either side, in some clear islands all the way into the old sea, and in some island, further away, that nowadays belongs to a third power.
Let our hope not be deceived, our trust not be mocked—this is our humble request.
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