Presentation of the book “Allez, allez. Escrits del pas de frontera 1939” by Maria Campillo

Presentation of the book “Allez, allez. Escrits del pas de frontera 1939” (edited by Maria Campillo, UAB)

MUME, 22 January 2011 at 11 noon

Passing the frontier into France was the first act of exile in 1939. The testimonies left by those involved has an undoubted historical and literary value for our country and is a great account by many authors of one of the most decisive experiences that can affect the human condition.

Throughout time, and in any exile, crossing the frontier has been a core event in the memory of those involved; because crossing the imaginary “line” symbolically marks the scope of the loss, the end of a period and the start of another. The 1939 Republican exile remained recorded in different forms of the memorial, autobiographical and fictional literature, and the fact of “crossing the line” is always a significant motive. This book comprises a representative selection of accounts that reflect this experience, written by forty-one authors of diverse backgrounds: writer-soldiers and soldier-writers, poets, historians, novelists, politicians, students, doctors or visual artists. We have selected from the most classical texts (like those by Rovira i Virgili, Artur Bladé Desumvila, “Tísner”, Lluís Ferran de Pol or Teresa Pàmies), to the most recent (those by Carles Fontserè, Sebastià Gasch, Montserrat Julió or Agustí Centelles). And others less well disseminated (those by Edmon Vallès and Otília Castellví, among many others), or thus far unknown (Pere Calders or Francesc Trabal). In short, many forms of writing that, moreover, cover a wide range of genres, from diary to chronicle, from letter to memorial prose, from the impression experienced to the short story or novel.

Maria Campillo (Alhama de Aragón, 1953) is Professor of Contemporary Catalan Literature at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and Deputy Director of CEFID (Centre d’Estudis del Franquisme i de la Democràcia). She has published studies on cultural history, including Escriptors catalans i compromís antifeixista, 1936-1939 (1994), and on different periods and writers of 20th century Catalan literature. She has made several contributions to the study of the narrative of those exiled, has edited their correspondence, and has been scientific advisor on the exhibition “Literatures of Exile” produced by the CCCB in Barcelona in 2005. She is a member of the editorial board of L’Avenç