The publishing house Settecolori has published in Italian one of the most important works of Josep Pla: The gray notebook. Translated by Stefania Maria Ciminelliit is a deluxe edition with explanatory paratexts that was presented in December in Rome, at the Più Libri Più Liberi fair. The presentation was made by Xavier Plaauthor ofA stealthy heartthe biography of the author from Emporda.
Newspapers like La Repubblica, Il Corriere de la Sera, Il Foglio or Il Manifesto have devoted pages to this event since The gray notebook is considered the masterpiece of Pla, which he wrote as a personal diary between October 13, 1918 and May 25, 1919. It is remarkable what he says Tommaso Pincio a La Repubblica which defines it as “a tireless memorialist, in addition to being the greatest writer in the Catalan language and one of the most important authors of the European 20th century, even though he remains practically unknown among us”. Pincio remembers that Plan referred to this newspaper as “it’s only a kilo and a half of paper” or “it’s just a boy’s diary” and instead says, “it is precisely this prosaic detail, the kilo and a half, that should make us reflect. When did a banal notebook come to weigh so much?”.
The gray notebook it was published in 1966 when Plan was almost 70 years old and had been rewriting it. He also mentions this detail Giulio Silvano a The leaf “it is creating a silent but perceptible dialogue between two ages of life, two different intensities, two different ambitions”. Finally, Elisabetta Rosaspina, writes to Il Corriere de la Sera that “in 1966 it was no longer a notebook, neither in appearance nor in content, but a portrait of Catalan society and history, of the common and illustrious characters who animated them, both in Palafrugell and in the capital. In gray, it only retained the name and the cover of the original manuscript, which barely reached a hundred pages”.
In Italy, only the travel volumes of Josep Pla had been published The island of Sardinia i Letters from Italy in 1990 and 1994, respectively. With the successful translation ofThe gray notebook it is hoped that other works by the Catalan author can be published in Italian and correct what, in the opinion of Italian specialists, critics and journalists, has been an anomaly. In this sense, Xavier Pla provides more details about the reception by the Italian literary critics d‘The gray notebook and about Plan’s ties with Italy in the article Josep Pla, a Catalan ‘beffardo’ published in Notebook El País.
