A sensitive and resonant view of the rural environment in three books by Julià Guillamon

Abstract

ABSTRACT The current boom in rural-themed literature in Spain has been interpreted as a response to certain social and commercial needs that acquire a contradictory ideological value (Ibarretxe Diego and Delgado [2022]. “Comunidades inimaginables: narrativas sobre la España vaciada.” In España comparada: literatura, lengua y política en la cultura contemporánea, coordinated by Christian Claesson. Granada: Editorial Comares, 104–108). In contrast to the fictions that perpetuate an idealized or uncritical imaginary of the rural world, a body of new works has emerged that develop an attentive gaze at living beings. In the Catalan context, this local and intimate approach to the daily life of rurality has allowed certain writers to promote an ecoresponsible sensibility, which is grounded in a sensitive relationship with the natural world. Based on these premises, the aim of this article is to analyze a selection of stories from the books El sifon de can Sitra (2017), Les cuques (2020) and Les hores noves (2022), by Julià Guillamon, which focus on different elements of the living world. The analysis is based on the idea that the author’s local attachment allows him to develop a sensitive and resonant view of the living beings that are part of a very specific environment: the town of Arbúcies and Montseny Natural Park, located in the center of Catalonia. Starting from the idea of “sensitive relationships”, developed by Estelle Zhong Mengual and Baptiste Morizot (2018), and the concept of “resonance”, defined by Hartmut Rosa (2020), this article will explore the way in which Guillamon develops rural themes that include not just living beings, but agriculture and forestry as well. In his books, the author uses resources from treatises on natural sciences, literary journalism and nature diaries. This use of nonfiction literature allows him to build a demystified and realistic vision of the Montseny massif (a space with a significant cultural weight in the Catalan literary tradition), through which it is possible to reconstitute a sensitivity towards natural life.