Vicent and Canogar shake palms: poetic columnism illustrated by abstraction | Culture | EUROtoday

The future of a journalistic textual content as soon as learn (or not learn), Manuel Vicent (La Vilavella, 90 years previous) rightly states, finally ends up being, extra typically than one believes, wrapping a kilo of fish. Or potatoes in case you favor. The nice report, the interview of the 12 months, the informative observe, the criticism: nothing escapes the perishable high quality of a newspaper. Neither do its columns. Not even these of Vicent himself, along with his poetic and impressionistic prose, along with his memoirist, melancholic tone. “I saw that in the bars of Lavapiés,” recollects the author, “people read my article. But it was enough for the waiter to arrive and ask what they were going to drink for those miserable people to prefer a beer over me.”

He says this on the presentation, on the Instituto Cervantes in Madrid, of his new e book, Behind the wound, a compilation of his columns, printed on this newspaper for nearly 50 years, which additionally illustrates, in a type of dialogue, the work of Rafael Canogar (Toledo, 90 years previous), grasp of informalism, pioneer of abstraction and member (the final alive) of the El Paso Group, which put Spain on the forefront of the worldwide artwork scene. Perhaps what was lacking for these silly folks from Madrid to take them extra severely and for them to endure because the poetic work that they in the end are.

The e book is, defined the editor Javier Santiso on the occasion, “a tribute to slowness in accelerated and very cannibalistic times. And a head-to-head between an artist and a writer.” His publishing home, La Cama Sol, has been making uncommon books since 2017. For starters, they’re made like these from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with pages that need to be opened with a letter opener. All devoted to poetry and with illustrations by among the most related modern artists within the nation. For this motive, though it’s not the primary e book of compilations of Vicent’s columns—in 2014 it was printed Radical libre (Chalk Circle)—sure it’s significantly particular. “Reading a column in the newspaper, good, bad or average, does not have any difficulty, but if you put the column in a book that you have to open with a knife, it is like entering the sacred rabbit hole of the arcane,” Vicent joked within the discuss moderated by journalist Juan Cruz, additionally the e book’s prologue author.

In this, the works of Canogar, who shares the identical age because the columnist, dialogue with the texts that beforehand accompanied information. They are totally different languages, however they discuss the identical factor. “Two souls,” within the phrases of Juan Cruz, “that ride together.” The two of them, Cruz and Santiso, satisfied Vicent to look amongst his hundreds of columns, essentially the most poetic and his favorites. He delegated the work to a number of mates who helped him select. “A confluence that concerns many people because, deep down, we all dream the same thing,” he mentioned. And in addition they served to fill the occasion with anecdotes, a lot celebrated by the general public, reflections of a world “managed by a crupier that starts the ball rolling, and depending on the number where it falls, the story changes”, and the job of a columnist. “You always write the same column. If, from all the things I have written, someone could bring out my obsessions, my dreams, my shortcomings. There you go emptying yourself,” he defined.

Experiences of Spain

The chosen texts verify this nicely. There are experiences of post-war Spain, the seek for freedom, private experiences and anecdotes. In letters, above all, but in addition in work. Because, as Canogar defined, each have lived by way of “the same Spain, the same history, the same circumstances,” and defended the identical concepts. The man from Toledo most popular to hear serenely, as if wishing to return to the canvas quickly, to the phrases of his “admired friend.” She praised him briefly and laughed like the remainder of the spectators at his jokes. “Vicent’s poetic prose has made us all happy.” Perhaps because of this, he has managed to captivate hundreds of readers who, as proof of this, have been crowding for a while (currently often) each occasion he attends, and who this Monday fashioned an extended line exterior the Institute’s headquarters greater than quarter-hour earlier than the occasion started.

In addition to his journalistic profession and his extremely celebrated books, Vicent has received awards such because the Alfaguara novel award (the one creator to have received it twice) and the Nadal award. “Poetry is not within the reach of journalism,” Cruz mentioned, “but we are lucky that journalism is sometimes nourished by poetry.” And Manuel Vicent has been doing it in these pages virtually for the reason that starting of the newspaper. Poetry, in verse or prose, deserves greater than sheltering fish.