Pere Calders

His writings were noted for their irony and occasional fantasy. After the Spanish Civil War, in which Calders fought on the Republican side, he went into exile in Mexico where he lived for twenty-three years. However, Calders did not become truly popular until 1978 with the premiere of Antaviana, a theatrical work by Dagoll Dagom based on his stories. Following the success of Antaviana, many of his books were reissued and his work was translated into fifteen different languages. In 1992, the Autonomous University of Barcelona awarded him an honorary doctorate.

• Name — Pere Calders • Born — 29 September 1912 • Birthplace — Barcelona, Spain • Died — 21 July 1994 • Place of death — Barcelona, Spain • Occupation — Writer, journalist, cartoonist • Genre — Catalan literature, Magic realism • Notable Works — The First Harlequin, The Glory of Doctor Larén, Chronicles of the Hidden Truth, People of the High Valley

Pere Calders i Rossinyol was born in Barcelona on 29 September 1912, at 274 Rosselló Street, in the Eixample district. He was the only child of the marriage between Vicenç Caldés Arús, a graphic artist and writer who had written some novels and plays, and Teresa Rusiñol Roviralta. Both parents were Catalan peasants who had moved to Barcelona shortly after getting married, and thus Calders’ education developed within a Catalan atmosphere. When he was born, his father registered him as Pedro de Alcántara Caldés y Rusiñol and did not normalize his name and surnames until 1936. Shortly after Calders’ birth, they moved to live in the el Clot neighborhood of Barcelona. During his childhood, he spent long periods at Can Maurí, a family property located between the municipalities of Polinyà, Sabadell and Sentmenat. Those stays greatly influenced Calders’ literary work because, at dusk, the family gathered around the fireplace and told stories and tales. Before attending school, his mother taught him to read. While living in Clot, Calders studied at the Sant Pere Claver School, which was run by Jesuits, and in 1920, coinciding with another move to Balmes Street, he enrolled at the Mossèn Cinto School, where Avel·lí Artís i Gener (Tísner), the philologist Joan Coromines, and Ricard Boadella were also students. There, students regularly wrote essays about whatever they wanted, and some of those exercises later became published stories, such as the one that gives the title to his first collection, El primer arlequí. However, the school was closed in 1923, accused of separatism. Afterwards, the school's director, Josep Parunella, continued teaching at the Reixach Academy. Calders went there to study and continued to receive writing classes from Parunella.

Between 1929 and 1934, he studied at the Llotja, the School of Fine Arts, where he met classmates like Tísner and had teachers such as the painter Ramon Calsina. There he met Mercè Casals, whom he later married. While studying at Llotja, he worked as an apprentice with a Czech advertiser named Karel Černý. In 1930, he founded a graphic design studio with two classmates, Estudi CCC. In 1933, he started working for the Diario Mercantil, where Tísner also worked, as an editor. There he published his first articles and drew illustrations to accompany articles and poems. That same year the newspaper closed, and its director, Josep Janés i Olivé, founded another newspaper called Avui, where Calders published a regular column. Calders also designed the newspaper and its header. It was in this newspaper that he published his first story. However, this newspaper did not last long and eventually closed. In 1934, when the Events of October 6 took place, Calders was a member of Palestra, an organization he described as "special, somewhat political, somewhat educational, a hiking club". On Sundays, they practiced military training with sticks that simulated rifles. On October 6, they were given rifles, including Calders, who did not know how to use them, and were divided into groups. Calders' group was sent to the Coliseum Theatre, where they spent the night. They heard gunshots but did not know exactly what was happening until Josep Maria Batista i Roca went up on stage at dawn and told them everything was lost and they could leave. On 4 November 1935, he married Mercè Casals, and on 31 July 1936 their first and only child, Joan Caldés i Casals, was born. That same June, Josep Janés published Calders' first book, El primer arlequí, a collection of eight stories, as part of the Quaderns Literaris collection. In December 1936, Josep Janés published, also within Quaderns Literaris, Calders' first novel, La glòria del doctor Larén.

• Illustration — Pere Calders co-directed L'Esquella de la Torratxa with Tísner during the Spanish Civil War. In 1936, before the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Calders was a member of the youth wing of Acció Catalana. With the start of the war and the creation of the PSUC, Calders joined this party, partly because its program was based on self-determination. In October 1936, the magazine L'Esquella de la Torratxa was relaunched, and Calders and Tísner were put in charge of its direction in this new phase. During this period, he also worked for the publication Mirador, where he published the story Les mans del taumaturg, later included in the book Cròniques de la veritat oculta. He also contributed drawings to the Diari de Barcelona. At the end of 1937, he enlisted as a volunteer in the Republican army, serving in the corps of customs officers, where he was appointed cartographic technician. With the beginning of the Battle of Teruel, his cartographic unit was deployed there. That same year, he submitted the unpublished novel La cèl·lula to the Joan Crexells Prize for narrative, which was ultimately won by Mercè Rodoreda with her novel Aloma. La cèl·lula was lost during his return trip from exile. From his war experience, he wrote the novel Unitats de xoc, published in 1938 by Editorial Forja. In 1938, he also wrote the novel Gaeli i l'home Déu, which was not published until 1986, and submitted it to the 1938 Joan Crexells Prize as well, but it did not win.

On 10 February 1939, Calders left for France, leaving his wife and son in Barcelona. He crossed the Coll d'Ares on the same day and went to Prats de Molló i la Presta. There, he was imprisoned in a concentration camp. Calders and four companions, including Tísner and his brother-in-law, Enric Clusellas, managed to escape and fled to Toulouse, where the University Committee for Refugee Aid offered protection to intellectuals. There he was given forms to choose the country where they would go if they had to leave France, and Calders chose Mexico. For a while, he lived there with Tísner and part of his family, including his future wife, Rosa Artís i Gener. On 2 April 1939, he left for Roissy-en-Brie, where he met other intellectuals of the time such as Mercè Rodoreda, Francesc Trabal, Armand Obiols, Cèsar August Jordana, and Xavier Benguerel i Llobet. He developed a friendship with Benguerel that lasted until his death. Finally, on 4 July 1939, he left for Mexico, where Tísner was already living, aboard the ship Mexique departing from Bordeaux. Shortly after his departure, his wife, Mercè Casals, arrived at Roissy-en-Brie, and when she saw Calders had already left, she also went to Mexico, unaware that Calders had written several love letters to Rosa Artís, with whom he was in love but never married. "I feel compelled to flee from everything I love, and I have so much rage and sorrow that I cry with dry eyes, and I wouldn't mind dying at all." — Pere Calders

On 27 July 1939, Calders arrived at the port of Veracruz. During the voyage, Calders took part in the ship's log. From Veracruz, he traveled to Mexico City. Calders carried a letter of recommendation from Francesc Trabal addressed to Josep Carner and another from Armand Obiols addressed to his brother. There, he first met Obiols’ brother, but he was unable to offer him work because his business partner had just stolen the company's money. He then met with Carner, who helped him publish three of his short stories in exchange for 240 pesos, enough to live for about three months at that time. Carner also gave him a letter of recommendation for the Atlante Publishing House, where Calders later worked. He also reunited with his friend Tísner. At the end of 1939, Mercè Casals arrived in Mexico and met Calders. Calders and his wife lived together, even though he had already declared his love for Rosa Artís and they were courting. In October 1941, he began collaborating with Full Català, where he published some short stories such as Raspall. With the stories he published during his exile, later collected in Memòries especials, Calders won the Concepció Rabell Prize for narrative at the Catalan Language Floral Games held in Mexico on 3 May 1942. For a time, he worked with Tísner at Publicistas Mexicanos, S.A. as a photographer, earning one peso per job. In 1943, he began working at UTEHA (Unión Tipográfica Editorial Hispanoamericana) as a graphic artist and technical draftsman and remained there until his return to Barcelona. Throughout his exile, he also contributed to several publications such as La Revista dels catalans a Amèrica, Quaderns de l'Exili, Revista de Catalunya, Lletres, La Nostra Revista, and Pont Blau, among others. On 22 July 1943, he was granted a divorce after having applied for it two years earlier and married Rosa Artís on the same day. On 5 May 1947, the first child of his second marriage, Raimon Calders i Artís, was born. Soon after this birth, they moved to Chapultepec. That same year, at the request of Josep Carner and Pompeu Fabra, he published the short story La ratlla i el desig in the Revista de Catalunya. With this same story, he won one of the prizes at the Catalan Language Floral Games of 1948. In 1949, the second daughter of the marriage, Glòria Calders i Artís, was born, and a year later their third daughter, Tessa Calders i Artís. At that time, Calders had decided to wake up every day at 4:30 a.m. to dedicate two and a half hours to writing. In the early 1950s, Joan Triadú encouraged him to compile the various short stories he had written during exile. These stories would become the book Cròniques de la veritat oculta. Calders sent them to Catalonia, where his father, with whom he maintained an intense epistolary relationship throughout his exile, typed them and submitted them to the Víctor Català Prize in 1954. The book won the prize and was published in 1955 by Editorial Selecta. The release of Cròniques de la veritat oculta was a success and established Calders as one of the great Catalan short story writers. Between 1954 and 1955, he wrote the novel Ronda naval sota la boira. He submitted this novel to the 1957 Joanot Martorell Prize for novels, but Blai Bonet won with his work El mar. In 1957, he also published Gent de l'alta vall, a collection of stories with Mexican themes. He had also written the short novel Aquí descansa Nevares, but it was not published until 1967. In the prologue to Aquí descansa Nevares, Calders refers to his exile experience:

Pere Calders returned to Barcelona on 9 October 1962 after twenty-three years of exile. His decision was influenced by various personal and political reasons, including a letter from his brother-in-law, Vicenç Caldés Arús, encouraging him to return and highlighting his parents’ advanced age. Initially, Calders remained ambivalent about returning permanently. In fact, upon arrival, he carried a return ticket to Mexico and continued to sign some of his letters with his Mexican address. Eventually, however, he decided to settle in Barcelona with Rosa Artís and their children. In 1964, he published the short story collection Demà, a les tres de la matinada ('Tomorrow at Three in the Morning'), written during his last years in Mexico. During the first years of his return, Calders faced economic difficulties, partly due to the censorship that affected his literary and journalistic output. Despite this, he began collaborating with magazines such as Serra d'Or, Destino, Tele/eXprés, and Canigó. He also exchanged letters with other Catalan intellectuals, including the poet and publisher Joan Oliver. In 1978, journalist Lluís Busquets described him as "a storyteller, witty and fun." Calders continued to publish fiction and essays, becoming one of the leading voices of postwar Catalan literature. He also appeared on the Catalan TV programme Identitats, where he discussed the struggles of returning from exile and rebuilding one's identity.

In 1978, Pere Calders returned to live in Barcelona. His reputation as a short story writer and his previous books had earned him considerable respect in literary circles, but it was in the 1980s, when his works reached a broader audience, that he gained widespread recognition. In 1983, the theater company Dagoll Dagom premiered the musical Antaviana, based on several of his short stories. The show's success brought his name to the forefront of Catalan cultural life and contributed to a revival of interest in his work. The staging, which blended fantastical elements with humor and political satire, perfectly captured the tone of Calders's narratives and won over both audiences and critics. This renewed popularity was also accompanied by the publication of new collections and reissues of earlier works. In 1984, the television program Identitats, broadcast by TV3, dedicated an episode to Calders, which included interviews and commentary on his life and work. Critics and readers alike praised his mastery of the short story genre, his use of irony, and his subtle criticism of authoritarianism and exile. The 1980s cemented Calders's status as one of the most important voices in post-war Catalan literature.

Pere Calders i Rossinyol died on 21 July 1994, aged 81, in the home of his daughter Tessa. The news of his death was published the next day in the newspaper Avui, and all Catalan media reported it. The funeral chapel was installed in the lobby of the headquarters of the Institution of Catalan Letters at the Casa Amatller. On the morning of 23 July, an open funeral was held at the Pompeia church, attended by several political personalities of the time, such as Pasqual Maragall, mayor of Barcelona, and Joan Guitart i Agell, Minister of Culture. A private ceremony was later held at Collserola cemetery where his body was cremated. His ashes were deposited in the monument erected to Pere Calders on the seafront promenade of Llançà.

Pere Calders is best known for his short stories, which have received much more attention from critics and the public than his novels. Calders's stories have been described as humorous, ironic, fantastic, and absurd, and some have placed them within magical realism, a style uncommon at that time that reflects fantastic or unreal ideas in an everyday world. In much of his stories, especially in his earlier narrations, Calders shows a predilection for the strange. In these stories, implausible and fantastic events occur which interact with the protagonist and often act as catalysts for the plot. However, the exaltation of magical or supernatural elements is not Calders's creative purpose, unlike in fantasy literature. A tendency observable in his fantastic stories is that his protagonists, although sometimes complaining about these fantastic events, usually end up accepting them very naturally, and those who do not are ridiculed by other characters who consider these events quite normal. An example of this can be seen in the story L'any de la meva gràcia ("The Year of My Grace"), where the protagonist one day suddenly discovers that by passing his hand over the unpainted face of wooden dolls, he can paint their faces with extraordinary realism, and not only accepts this power he has been given but even expresses discomfort because he believes the power is modest and not very useful. According to Amanda Bath, Calders's stories can be equated with Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar, or Gabriel García Márquez as equally talented exponents within the magical realism genre. But not all of Calders's stories are fantastic. Many contain no fantastic element, in which Calders plays with the reader by showing one thing but saying another. In these stories, a reality is presented that completely diverges from what the narrator tells, often showcasing Calders's humor and wit. Sometimes this contrast between reality and appearance creates doubts for the reader about what actually happened, as in Invasió subtil ("Subtle Invasion"), where the narrator is fully convinced he is dining with a Japanese man pretending to be Catalan, even though this interpretation completely contradicts the text. Or in Vinc per donar fe ("I Come to Bear Witness"), where the narrator says there is a vampire in the village and suddenly finds his cousin unconscious in the street, whom he kills believing she is a vampire, although the text tells us she was a woman who often fainted, creating doubt about whether she really had become a vampire. Despite no justification in the text, speculation arises about the possibility that the narrator is right. A contrast between reality and appearance occurs. Calders also wrote five stories and one novella that stand apart because they show a Mexican theme and influence. These narrations describe Mexican protagonists with behavioral habits and psychological tendencies similar to those described by the American anthropologist Oscar Lewis, whom Calders had read. In some of these stories, the attitude of Mexicans toward death and the cult of death they profess can also be observed. These stories are also different from the others because they have a more realistic and less fantastic tone.

One of the people who has studied Pere Calders' work the most is Joan Palà, who has identified a series of elements typical in Calders' work. In his literary universe, the house is a symbol of security and order that often appears at the beginning of his stories. He uses it as a starting point for a process that eventually leans towards upheaval. Another of these elements is the garden, which represents a setting where anything can happen. This is observable in the story El principi de la saviesa, where the narrator finds a hand in his home's garden and, while looking for the owner, many of the unbelievable things that happen in that garden are told to us. An object that often appears in Calders' literature is the clock, which symbolizes the futility of human effort to represent something that is pure idea, an impossible attempt to put limits on that which has none: time. Also often present are scientists, researchers, or inventors immersed in impossible endeavors, representing human naivety and the useless effort to master nature. Finally, another very present element in Calders' literature is crime. His texts are full of crimes and murders that, moreover, are usually committed with complete naturalness. Calders uses this to subvert moral and social conventions and, with the help of irony, to turn moral clichés about guilt and innocence upside down.

• El primer arlequí (The First Harlequin) (1936) • Unitats de xoc (Pieces of Conflict) (1938) • Memòries especials (Special Memories) (1942) • Cròniques de la veritat oculta (Chronicles of the Hidden Truth) (1955) • Gent de l'alta vall (People of the High Valley) (1957) • Demà a les tres de la matinada (Tomorrow at Three in the Morning) (1959) • Invasió subtil i altres contes (Subtle Invasion and Other Stories) (1978) • Antaviana (Antaviana) (1979), with Dagoll Dagom • Tot s'aprofita (1983) • El sabeu, aquell? (1983) • De teves a meves: trenta-dos contes que acaben més o menys bé (From Yours to Mine: Thirty-Three Stories That End More or Less Well) (1984) • Els nens voladors (The Flying Children) (1984) • Tres per cinc, quinze (Three Times Five, Fifteen) (1984) • La cabra i altres narracions (The Goat and Other Narratives) (1984) • El desordre públic (Public Disorder) (1984) • Un estrany al jardí (A Stranger in the Garden) (1985) • El barret fort i altres inèdits (The Bowler Hat and Other Unpublished Works) (1987) • Raspall (Brush) (1987) • Kalders i Tísner, dibuixos de guerra a L'Esquella de la Torratxa (1991) • L'honor a la deriva (Honor Adrift) (1992) • Mesures, alarmes i prodigis (1994) • La lluna a casa i altres contes (The Moon at Home and Other Stories) (1995) • Cartes d'amor (Love Letters) (1996) • Tots els contes (All Stories) (2008)

• La glòria del doctor Larén (The Glory of Doctor Larén) (1936) • L'ombra de l'atzavara (The Shade of the Agave Plant) (1964) • Ronda naval sota la boira (Naval Patrol Through the Fog) (1966) • Aquí descansa Nevares (Here Rests Nevares) (1967) • Gaeli i l'home Déu (1984) • La ciutat cansada (The Tired City) (2008) (unfinished) • Sense anar tant lluny (Without Going Too Far) (2009) (unfinished) • La marxa cap al mar (The Walk to Sea) (2009) (unfinished) • L'amor de Joan (Juan's Love) (2009) (unfinished)

• Taula rodona (unfinished). Argentona: Voliana Edicions, 2015. (The book includes La joia de ser catalans, by Víctor Alexandre, which merges with Calders' work.)