As if it were not enough to have written some of the great works of literature in Spanish of the last thirty years, Javier Marías (Madrid, 1951-2022) still had time, desire and enthusiasm to act as editor. After devoting himself to literary translation in his youth, always of important works, such as Life and opinions of Tristram Shandyby Laurence Sterne, which earned him the 1979 Fray Luis de León Translation Prize, he never lost that genuine drive to disseminate those titles that he considered significant. Then he did it as editor of Reino de Redonda, a small publishing house that he managed with his partner and life partner, Carme López Mercader, who has just ended the adventure after 43 publications.
If something characterized the Madrid writer, beyond his books, it was his exquisiteness. It is no secret that he wrote on a typewriter; he had a secretary in charge of transferring his manuscripts to the computer. He disdained social networks, digital modernity in general, shouting; and, although he kept up to date with current events, as he demonstrated in his weekly column, he lacked any desire to intervene in political reality; He was, in the best sense, a classical intellectual, and he lived by his classics (Shakespeare, Proust, Nabokov, Faulkner, Benet, Conrad, John Ford, Orson Welles, Bach, Schubert).
Also your publisher It denoted exquisite taste, both in the selection of titles – which were, of course, of great literary stature: Hardy, Dinesen, Auden, Faulkner, Balzac – and in the care of each edition; recovered some of his translations, such as the poetic anthology back to the seaby R.L. Stevenson; remade others, like The mirror of the seaby Conrad; It had other top-level translators, prologue writers who were fellow professionals, such as Arturo Pérez-Reverte, Eduardo Mendoza, Anthony Beevor or Zadie Smith; He worked meticulously on the editing, correction and presentation, without skimping on the quality of the paper and the binding, which were much more durable than average.
They are books with a sober, elegant appearance, discreet compared to the photographs and shiny letters that fill the bookstores. He did everything in his own way, under his criteria, not only as a select reader, but as an expert in the publishing professions. in your column This absurd adventure (2008), where he told the story of Reino de Redonda, he claimed to pay “the maximum” to the translators, in addition to giving them the possibility of charging half in advance: “It was not in vain that I was a translator at the time and I would have wanted that treatment.” for me”. For this reason, he also published very little, just three titles a year; Each edition involved a long, attentive, unhurried process.
He published what dazzled him, what he believed should be available to the Spanish public, even if it was a very small audience. From little-known facets of renowned authors to unpublished voices here, often with risky proposals, no meat of best-seller. Novel, stories, memoirs, poetry, essay, chronicle; by writers such as Vernon Lee, Janet Lewis, Gregor von Rezzori or Benjamin Harris. Modest circulations, launches without promotion, absence of noise on social networks; hence it had, as he lamented in the aforementioned column, little impact in the press.
All of this was the work of two: he, who was in charge of choosing the books and establishing how the text would be worked; and his wife, the Barcelona editor Carme López Mercader, who was in charge of the editorial process, that is, turning the manuscript into a book. They formed a good tandem: one for the most idealistic part, the other to make it feasible without him wasting time on tiring details (because, while he was doing all this, he didn’t stop writing). Kingdom of Redonda was something like an editorial utopia put into practice; and, of course, he assumed from the beginning that it would entail losses. It was an enterprise for the love of art in its truest sense, and he was lucky enough to be able to afford it.
The kingdom and its duchies
Why call it the Kingdom of Redonda? Javier Marías was editor and sovereign of the label, in more ways than one: like the readers of black back of time (1998) you know, he took the name of King Xavier I of the fictitious Kingdom of Redonda, an island in the Caribbean and, since 1880, legendary territory for writers of fine English humor. It all began with the British MP Shiel, who claimed to be the heir to that line of intellectual nobility. The monarchs followed one another, and, given that the Madrid author wrote about this island in his novel all the souls (1989), ended up being part of the lineage. Marías’ contribution as king was to launch this publishing house, inaugurated in 2000 with Huguenin’s wifeprecisely from his ‘ancestor’ MP Shiel, some fantastic stories.
Like every self-respecting monarch, since 2001 Xavier I asserted his rights to grant titles of nobility, as an honorary award (and after deliberation by a jury), to relevant figures in the arts and letters; among them, the filmmakers Pedro Almodóvar, Duke of Trémula, and Francis Ford Coppola, Duke of Megalópolis; the thinkers Pierre Bourdieu, Duke of Desarraigo, and Umberto Eco, Duke of the Island of the Day Before; and the writers Claudio Magris, Duke of Second Hand, JM Coetzee, Duke of Dishonor, and Alice Munro, Duchess of Ontario. These awards, in addition to their symbolic value, had a financial endowment borne by the publisher (“adding a deficit, for a change”).
Like a private joke made available to the reader, this was this Kingdom of Redonda, the dynasty and the publishing house; although the published books, so exceptional, had nothing as a joke. They were an extension of Javier Marías, his facet as a reader: refined, erudite, with his unmistakable air. british. It was to be expected, in a way, that the project would end with him. He chose and, above all, he had that literary restlessness of someone who lives devoted to words, to thought, to art; And it was not enough for him to write his work, but, attracted by the wickers of the sector – he defended, by the way, that translating was a magnificent exercise as an apprenticeship for a writer –, he devoted himself to the cause with passion.
A legacy for posterity
After Marías’ death in 2022, his widow and partner has decided to end the journey of Reino de Redonda. He did so after publishing, this same year, Black lamb and gray balcony (1941), chronicles of the Balkans by the British Rebecca West, whose essay had already been published The meaning of betrayal (1949), and of whom the author recognized the influence of the novel The return of the soldier (1918) in his Berta Isla (2017). Black lamb and gray hawktwo volumes of more than a thousand pages of travels through Eastern Europe at the height of Nazism, perfectly illustrates the spirit of the stamp: expensive to produce, destined to sell little and be read less; but of undoubted value.
In addition to this last will of Javier Marías, Carme López Mercader closes Reino de Redonda with her own title, Duel without a compassa confessional book about what her life has been like since the loss of her partner. The Madrid author used to say that he was a “compass” writer, as opposed to “map” writers, that is, those who start writing with a previous outline and from the beginning are clear about where the story will take them. He, on the other hand, preferred to discover that path as he went along, so when he started it he only had a notion of what he wanted to tackle, without drawing up a plan.
Carme López Mercader takes that metaphor: unlike a creative project, for grief there is no possible compass, nor is there a map, because, no matter how much we talk about stages, each case is different, each person requires a tempo. She has felt lost since September 11, 2022, when she said goodbye to someone who, despite being in Madrid and she in Barcelona, had been in a relationship for more than three decades. Departing from other memoirs about grief, it recounts no reconciliation with life, offers no consolation, and has no intellectual pretensions. It is a stark confession: she has lost her partner, she has lost her way of being in the world, she has lost who she was.
Torn by pain, angry with the world, with life broken; That’s how it feels and it doesn’t disguise it. Irritation at the good intentions of others, at that latent pressure to “turn the page.” The refusal to seek solace in the afterlife, even with coincidences that disconcert her. She appears raw, skeptical, rational. What is moving about the text is this emotional nakedness, this not pretending, this not hiding suffering to be kinder or to sound poetic. It has always been linked to culture, but for this trance there is no literature that is valid: death, losing a loved one, breaks us all, returns us to our most basic survival instincts.
And, although he collects some anecdotes lived with him, such as a trip or some of the differences that complemented them, he does not fall into impudence, he does not betray that zeal for intimacy that the writer always maintained. In fact, it explains the paradox of meeting people who, when speaking to her (the good intentions) of him, believe they know him better than she does. And not. Because there was a Javier Marías literary character and a Javier Marías companion. They joked among themselves about it. Marías’s reader will not be surprised: although some took his articles too seriously, his grumpy tone always exuded spark.
Duel without a compass It is a small book, without pretense, that ends with a glimpse of what can be called hope: the consolation of nature, the plants (different from the ones he kept during his life) that are reborn, taking care of something again. A discreet book, just as the couple was discreet and Javier Marías was discreet about his private life. His intimate side will always be a mystery, because he wanted it that way and his widow does not betray him; Of course, the literature remains, the one he wrote and the one he shared throughout this Kingdom of Redonda. Anyone who wants to purchase a title from the publisher should not delay: from now on only those that are profitable will be reprinted.
Books read with devotion, admired authors returned to again and again, always say something about oneself; These books, therefore, will be the ones that bring Javier Marías back to life for readers. The day will come when these works recovered by him will be collector’s items. Editing as Reino de Redonda did, without any business vision, was, in his words, “working for posterity.” It may sound pretentious, but what else does a writer, a creator, do? One of his size, at least. Demanding, exquisite and unique as a writer; demanding, exquisite and unique as a reader-editor-translator. An old-fashioned man of letters. This is his (other) legacy.
#days #Reino #Redonda #publishing #house #Javier #Marías #survived #death #years
