If the dream of reason produces monsters, as Goya wanted; the traffic written with the letters breathes life into and out of the printed page. Beasts, ogres and beasts are a constant in literature and in the world of books. But each creature has its differential note, according to the pen that describes it or the actor who personifies it. Perhaps this is why the motto chosen this year in the traditional Literary Conversations of Formentor , directed by the director of the Santillana Basilio Baltasar Foundation, was so rich in nuances and gave so much of itself: "Monsters, beasts and aliens . " The meeting and the international prize recovered in 2011, with the sponsorship of the Foundation and the patronage of the homonymous hotel of Simón Pedro Barceló, refers to the legendary sections of Carlos Barral and the European publishing cream of the 60s (Gallimard, Einaudi, Rowohlt, among others).

"A writer lives surrounded by monsters that he has to defeat. Those that are in my work are all those things that I do not want to address and that revolve around the sexual," confessed the French writer Annie Ernaux , shortly before refueling to conscientiously in his speech of reception of the prestigious Fromentor Prize 2019, in relief of the Romanian Micea Cartarescu of the last edition. Owner of a dry and devastating prose, in the first person and without a gram of fiction, around such thorny experiences as clandestine abortion, gender violence or the oppression of marriage with books as powerful as The icy woman or Girl Memory (both in Cabaret Voltaire). Ernaux had to go through a wasteland of years and years until criticism and the gala academy paid attention to it beyond the label of "feminine literature", or the label of "obscene", horny "or even" class transfer "to he cites his humble extraction, and although the monster with which he still struggles to "subvert the social, masculine, cultural hierarchies" is not saying in these terms, he is the hetero-patriarchy .

Wiser than Buddha and sweeter than a lump, the Uruguayan poet Ida Vitale , the last Cervantes Prize and the Guadalajara FIL, was instead more modest and at peace with her monsters to the energetic 96. If "nostalgia" he scratches his heart, "feeling more sorry for what you leave behind, what a joy for the new things you find," he confessed while shelling delicious memories like the vision of Juan Ramon Jimenez who was hiding behind a screen in his NY apartment so as not to greet his wife's visits, or the years of exile in Mexico with Octavio Paz, of which he speaks at Shakespeare Palace (Seix Barral).

But who enters the rag to the game of reading and interpretation of the Conversations , in which each invited author proposes a vision on a work of universal literature is Felix de Azú. The newest veteran and academic of the RAE comes to the island to talk about the little known Ninety-three of Victor Hugo, "Here appears a radically modern monster, which is believed to have the right to kill the other but no longer with a religious justification , because it has replaced God with ideology: the party, the nation, the identity, "he explains. Azúa does not refer only to intolerance, but something more dangerous and perverse that he calls "the ideological monster". And his choice of subject is nothing innocent, because he personally confesses: "I have been lucky because I have only known two types of monsters," he says. "Franco and the Francoists, and the Basque and Catalan nationalisms that I have lived closely," whips the writer who escaped from Barcelona eight years ago "because he could not let my little daughter be educated in Catalonia," he remarks.

The monsters of Manuel Vilas are much more intimate, not in vain he chooses to comment on the kafkiana and uncomfortable novel by Tomeo Amado monster , successfully taken to the theater. The Aragonese poet and narrator lives a sweet moment, not only because of the recognition and popularity of his Ordesa , but because Ernaux pointed it out as his favorite discovery in Spanish. "It is a satisfaction, because I am a great reader of it and I feel an ethical affinity ," says the author, concerned "about the place of literature in global capitalism, which seeks utility and profitability." "The monsters that inhabit us are those of guilt," he summarizes. "The fear of having done wrong to those who love you well." The young Herralde Novel Prize, Cristina Morales prints a nuance: "If the writing faces a monster it is that of correction, not politics but the monster of knowledge, the stylist, that of expertise, which make up the literary canon I would like to fight the monster of the castrator literary canon, "he shoots.

But if there is an editorial monster by antonomacy, an invincible beast, the veteran Jorge Herralde, who takes the leading role of the meeting, despite sharing a poster with the director of Einaudi Ernesto Franco and Antoine Gallimard. The "beasts" of its catalog, Marcos Giralt, Marta Sanz, Sara Mesa and Jordi Gracia honor him for the 50th anniversary of Anagrama . But the last Mohican of the edition reluctantly accepts the monster and prefers to talk about the "real monsters" he has faced in his long career: "Franco's censorship and capitalism," he says in reference "the struggle of the two large publishing groups "that define" the duopoly "of the Spanish edition.

And a hidden tribute to another great absent literary monster is the return is the play Sergio Vila-Sanjuán The literary agent. Although the narrator and cultural journalist is shielded in fiction, references to Balcells in his acid comedy are evident. With Mercè Sampietro, Montse Germán and Francescca Piñón, the dramatized reading of the work directed by Manel Dueso, produced by the Romea Foundation, won the applause of Fromentor. " I have known great beasts of the world of books in Barcelona and this is a tribute to this type of mythological personalities, who were also Barral or José Manuel Lara Sr.", which promises a soon premiere in the Inclan Valley of Madrid, waiting of a complete theatrical assembly.

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