First period
His name may not ring a bell on this side of the Pyrenees, yet Ramon Llull was one of the most important writers of the Middle Ages. He is still highly regarded today, if only for his contribution to the Catalan language. He was born in Palma around 1232, three years after Mallorca had witnessed the victory of James I of Aragon over the Moors who had occupied it, during the Reconquista. At the crossroads of civilizations and languages, his native island undoubtedly had a great influence on Ramon Llull, who, a scholar of rare intelligence, quickly became the infant's tutor. After a merry life, he decided to convert to Catholicism in 1265, but did not abandon his love of letters; he simply switched from writing love songs in Occitan to writing a monumental Book of Contemplation of God. A polyglot, he set about learning Arabic in order to pursue his personal crusades, and his works - of which there are more than 200 - are just like him: eclectic, philosophical and sometimes a little excessive. But in addition to being a jack-of-all-trades - he wrote theological works, novels and scientific encyclopedias - Ramon Llull is considered above all as one of the fathers of the written Catalan language. His experiments with syntax and vocabulary helped to set the standards for the language and to differentiate it definitively from Occitan. Once again, Catalan is given pride of place in one of the most remarkable historiographical texts of the Middle Ages, Les Quatre Grandes Chroniques, of which Ramon Muntaner, who was not born on the Balearic Islands but breathed his last in Ibiza in 1336, wrote the longest. In this chronicle, which bears his name, he memorializes the period stretching from the birth of James I (1207) to the coronation of Alfonso IV (1328). However, it was said that the autonomous Kingdom of Mallorca would eventually be attached to the Crown of Aragon, which was the case in 1348, following lengthy dissensions. Guillem de Torroella, about whom little is known other than that he was born in the mid-14th century into a Mallorcan family from the Empordà, wrote a tale strongly inspired by French romances of chivalry. In La Faula, he explains how he was brought by a whale to a mysterious island, which some equate with Sicily, where King Arthur had resided since the Battle of Salisbury. Dejected by the disinterest of his time in chivalric and courtly principles, the Breton sovereign, then in the throes of a serious depression, is said to have invited Guillem to recount his journey to the Majorcan people, so that they might, in spite of everything, regain hope. Whether a pure work of the imagination or an allegory of an era, the French translation of this Catalan text is now available from Classiques Garnier, allowing readers to make up their own minds.
The revival
Balearic literature was revived in poetry at the end of the 19th century, notably by Miquel Costa i Llobera. Born in Pollença in 1854, he died in Palma in 1922, following his religious vocation by becoming a priest, but it was to the sacredness of nature that he dedicated his most beautiful odes. Winner of the Jeux Floraux, the Catalan-language poetic jousts that were popular in Spain at the time, he made a name for himself with Lo pi de Formentor, published in 1875, a poem dedicated to a tree in his native land that influenced, among others, the painter Joan Miró. His major work, Horiacianes (1906), established him as an important member of the so-called Mallorcan School, which also included Maria Antònia Salvà (1869-1958) and Llorenç Riber (1881-1958), Emília Sureda (1865-1904), Miquel dels Sants (1864-1920), and above all Joan Alcover (1854-1926), who liked to hold salons and whose poem La Balanguera became the island's official anthem when Amadeu Vives set it to music.
The period also lent itself to defining an identity of its own, as witnessed by the various works of Antoni Maria Alcover, born in Manacor in 1862. In addition to his ecclesiastical activities, Alcover set about transcribing local legends, which he published under a pseudonym, first in the magazine La Ignorancia and then as a collection. He was also interested in linguistics: in 1900, he began collecting vocabulary in the local dialect, Majorcan, and the following year launched Spain's first philological journal. This project was to become the Catalan-Valencian-Balearic dictionary, to which he made an active contribution and which he edited before the Minorcan Francesc de Borja Moll took over from him on his death in 1932. The first volume of this colossal ten-volume work was published in 1926, and the last only in 1962, the Franco dictatorship having in the meantime put a stop to such initiatives.
The twentieth century was studded with names that left their mark on the history of Balearic literature. In 1931, for example, Llorenç Villalonga (1897-1980) published what is considered to be the archipelago's first novel, Mort de dama, whose satirical and clearly mocking tone did not help its reception. Surprisingly, another of the writer's titles, Un été à Majorque, is more readily available in French, as a response to George Sand's famous Un hiver à Majorque (Presses universitaires de Clermont-Ferrand). Marià Villangómez (1913-2002) and Jaume Vidal Alcover (1923-1991) will explore the possibilities offered by theater, while journalist Baltasar Porcel, born in Andratx in 1937 and who died in Barcelona in 2009, will try his hand at all styles, moving cheerfully from travelogue to novel, from short story to political essay, and winning several major literary prizes in the process. Some of his work has been translated by Actes Sud. Finally, it's impossible not to mention Carme Riera, born in 1948 in Palma, who has also won prestigious awards including the National Prize for Spanish Literature in 2015, and whose La Moitié de l'âme, to be discovered at Points, gives a glimpse of her talent, and her fellow countryman José Carlos Llop, a prolific protean author, whom Jacqueline Chambon Editions has been faithfully following since 2005. In 2018, Rois d'Alexandrie was translated, awakening memories of the 70s in Mallorca and the author's 18th birthday, between pop music, politics and drugs of all kinds.
