#mercè

[cronicasdelholoceno]

Barcelona. Setembre 2024.

[mhsdatgo]

Sometimes I think about her and randomly start world wars.

[negreabsolut]

No els mostreu cap mena de mercè.

[albertotal]

Les parets del nus de la Trinitat.

[useless-catalanfacts]

Mercè Rodoreda ❤️

(Vídeo d'una entrevista el 1980)

Transcripció sota el tall.

Vídeo d'una entrevista a la televisió a la Mercè Rodoreda, ja d'edat avançada.

Periodista: quina importància té la llengua en el teu treball?

Rodoreda: és capital. És a dir, si per exemple, a l'escriure en català, no m'hagués pogut guanyar la vida escrivint en català i hagués estat impossible, és a dir, [si] és impossible, sobretot vivint a l'estranger, de guanyar-me la vida escrivint en català, aleshores hauria fet com en un conte de Julio Cortázar, que hi ha una senyora vella que es lloga a les nits a persones que se'n van al teatre o a l'òpera i tenen gossos, i es lloga per cuidar o vigilar els gossos. Doncs jo hauria fet igual. En comptes d'escriure en un idioma que no és el meu, m'hauria llogat per cuidar gossos.

[garadinervi]

Mercè Lledós, Poster 2024 de l'Agenda 23-24, Barcelona, 2024 [© 2024 Mercè Lledós]

(on the way of Cargo)

[clemensclemens]

«Por supuesto, era ridículo preocuparse —y decía preocuparse para evitar una palabra más dura y crear círculos y círculos de encono por culpa de la palabra— por una mañana sin besos. Pero ¡le gustaban tanto los primeros besos matutinos…! Sabían a sueño, como si el sueño desvanecido regresara por los labios de él y se dirigiera hacia los ojos que se cerraban y querían dormirse de nuevo. Aquellos besos que se daban jugando valían más que cualquier otra cosa»

Mercè Rodoreda. (1958). Cuentos completos.

[deathbyoctopi]

Festes de la Mercè!!

For a wonderful look at the soul of Catalan traditions, take a look at our capital's most important festival: Les festes de la Mercè (Barcelona, 2022).

Quin goig!! Quin goig, per favor! ^-^

@useless-catalanfacts

[whilereadingandwalking]

I read most of this novel, Camellia Street by Mercè Rodoreda, translated from Catalan by David Rosenthal, in and around the winding streets of Seville. It was surreal, time overlapped around me as I recalled the last time I was here, March 2020, just before everything twisted in a net of nonsense. But while my memories of Seville recall that chaos, none of that chaos happened here for me—Seville then and now is oranges, green or ripe, and wine, sipped and slowly enjoyed.

That overlapping, strange feeling fit perfectly with Rodoreda's prose, the writing of a woman who lived exiled from her home and her language for decades, writing of a young woman who lives a life defined by an unnamed and unidentified longing. Protagonist Cecília is found on a threshold as a baby and raised in a home that never feels like hers. Running away, she ultimately becomes a sex worker, stepping from love to love, from empty home to empty home. It's all told in a strange stream of language as Cecília wanders through grief, pain, romance, and fear, all set in a Barcelona that itself was frozen, paralyzed after the Civil War and the region's subsequent collapse (Catalan as a language and culture was suppressed brutally).

Cecília can be a frustrating narrator. She drifts from place to place, from situation to situation. But she does it for a reason, it seems like. She is disoriented, lost, and all of this seems to be a desperate search for some kind of stability. For a place, a corner, where she feels she is wanted, appreciated, and most of all, safe. In the end, in a strange way, her world is stabilized by her own wandering, by returning, by reminiscing on the beginning instead of the future and sharing in the absurdities of the in-between. Rodoreda is such a gifted author, and this novel was just one more great example of her greatness.

Content warnings for self-harm, domestic abuse, sexual assault, abortion, abusive relationships, fatphobia.

[deathbeguiled]

“When she cried, I was the one who wished to cry loudly; I would have preferred her not to be born, because I knew what awaited her. Breathing. Only the chore and sadness of breathing and breathing, as things change from tender to dry, new to old, the night-moon that grows thin then swells, the fireless sun that lights up, the soughing of wind that transports, shatters, gathers, and drives away the clouds, raising and flattening the dust. Only the sorrow of going to sleep and waking up, feeling life without knowing where it comes from, aware that it will flee without knowing why it was given to you, why it is taken from you. Here you are: there is this and this and this. And now, enough.”

Death In Spring — Mercè Rodoreda.

[hitku]

by Mercè Riba

[eky-funciona]

Talking about les Dones D'aigua, here's Mercè! She's such a good poet, believe me.

[translucent-serendipity]

“T’obres camí en un laberint de runa”

Maria-Mercè Marçal

[ncityzen]

not to sound like I'm a reader who reads ex literature student who misses uni but I actually always loved the assigned readings at school 😔

[kiki-de-la-petite-flaque]

[useless-catalanfacts]

Today (September 24th), the city of Barcelona celebrates its festa major (Catalan holiday for the local patron saint), dedicated to the Virgin of Mercy (Mare de Déu de la Mercè, in Catalan).

Usually, on this holiday of La Mercè, or at least on the days around it, it rains. The legend says that it's not rain, but the tears of Saint Eulàlia —old patron saint of Barcelona—, who cries because the city forgot her.

In this post I'll explain who was Eulàlia (according to the legend) and what happened that made her lose the position as the city's main patron saint.

1. Saint Eulàlia of Barcelona, martyr

Saint Eulàlia is believed to have lived in the 4th century AD, when the Roman emperor Diocletian was persecuting Christians. Eulàlia lived in Sarrià (village near Barcelona, nowadays a neighbourhood of Barcelona). She was only 13 years old, but she knew she was a good speaker so she went to see Dacian —the Roman governor in Barcino (modern-day Barcelona)— to try to convince him to stop the persecution of Christians in his territory.

The Roman governor accused her of going against the emperor's orders and sentenced her to suffer as many tortures as her age: they beat her on the streets, teared her skin off with hooks, marked her body with burning irons, forced her to stand on her feet on top of a burning grill, cut off her breasts, scratched the inside of her tights with rocks, threw boiling oil in her injuries, poured melted lead on her, locked her naked in a prison cell full of fleas, and tried to burn her; but during her whole tortures she had been praying, and by the time they tried to burn her, the flames moved away from her and attacked her torturers instead.

The most famous one out of the tortures was when she was put inside a barrel full of broken glass, knives and nails, and she was thrown down a hill 13 times to roll on them.

In the end, she was crucified naked on a cross shaped like an X to make her die in an dishonourable way. Then, a miracle happened. Some say that her hair grew quickly to cover her breasts and sex; others say that a snow storm suddenly appeared and covered her in snow. The thirteenth torture killed her, but the passerbies saw how her soul turned into a white dove that came out of her mouth and ascended into heaven.

Two scenes from a Medieval altarpiece that explained Saint Eulàlia's story, by Bernat Martorell. Nowadays it's in Museu Episcopal de Vic (Vic, Catalonia).

She became a local hero, was canonized as a saint and declared patron saint of Barcelona.

Centuries later, during the Islamic invasion in the Middle Ages, her body was unburied and hidden to make sure the Muslim armies wouldn't profane it. From then on, the location of her body was lost until the year 877, when Bishop Frodoí found her hidden tomb under the church Santa Maria de les Arenes (nowadays Santa Maria del Mar). Her remains were moved to the Cathedral of Barcelona, where they remained until the Cathedral was sacked during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939).

Saint Eulàlia's tomb in the crypt of Barcelona's Cathedral.

2. Our Lady of Mercy

Our Lady of Mercy is one of the aspects of under which the Virgin Mary is worshipped. She became popular in Catalonia in the 13th century, after a night of August 1218, when she appeared in the dreams of the king James I and two religious men who would later be canonized as saints (Pere Nolasc and Ramon de Penyafort), ordering them to start a new Order destined to rescuing Christian prisoners who had been kidnapped by Saracens.

In the year 1687, a terrible locust plague attacked the city of Barcelona, as well as much of Catalonia. The desperate population of Barcelona asked Saint Eulàlia and the Virgin of Mercy for help. The City Council promised that they would nominate the Virgin of Mercy as the city's patron saint if She freed it from the locusts. Soon, the locust plague ended, and the City Council kept their promise, though the change didn't receive official permission from the Pope until 200 years later, in 1868.

3. Protest and change

This change also had a political side, because Saint Eulàlia symbolized the city's historical self-government, while Our Lady of Mercy was favoured by the sectors in favour of a more authoritarian monarchy. Barcelona's population didn't forget that for so many centuries there was great devotion for Saint Eulàlia nor its symbolical role. A group of citizens showed up to the Church of Mercy and threw stones at the city's authorities, asking for Saint Eulàlia to be the patron again. After this event, the City Council decided that Eulàlia should be co-patron.

4. The holiday

Since then, and particularly since the 1900s, the day of the Virgin of Mercy became the most popular festa major (Catalan holiday celebrated with big parties and folk culture on the day of the local patron saint) for the whole city together. Though each neighbourhood (nowadays they're neighbourhoods of Barcelona, but most of them used to be towns that became attached to the city with the industrial expansion) keep their own festa major and Saint Eulàlia is also still celebrated in February, La Mercè is the biggest festa major in Barcelona.

Source: Carla Galisteo for Sàpiens.