Ambigua (Dec 2015)
Ribetes de Sicalipsis. Modelos cosmopolitas para un erotismo subliterario catalán
Abstract
After the consolidation of an initial literary canon, and solved, byFabra, the problem of the linguistic standardization, many Catalan intellectuals reflected on the need to standardize, next, the cultural offer in Catalan. Cèsar August Jorda-na and Rafael Tasis, for example, publish articles that make a call for Catalan writers to produce popular, middlebrow works, following models of international success.A particularly interesting text is published on 1933 by Tasis, where he states that, forthe cultural interests of Catalonia, "a good psychological novel,theana-lytical, densework of a Joyce or a Proust"would be as necessary as"the si-caliptic feuilletonismof a Dekobra or a Da Verona andthemysteries and crimes presented by a Wallace or a Simenon." It is very interesting to notice that Tasis uses a word restricted to the Spanish scope, sicalipsis, instead of any othereuphemism to refer to the literary production placed between the sentimental novel and raw pornography.The present paper reflects onthe choice of these international models to fill that empty space Tasis detected in the novel of Catalan expression. Indeed, it is striking that he has not mentioned any of those Spanish writers most frequently associated with the sicalipsis, one of which is El Caballero Audaz (José María Carretero Novillo), the first Spanish writer to assumethe dekobriandefinition ‘cosmopolitan novel’. However, this absence is fully justified in the set of pro-posals thatCatalan intellectuals made looking forward to a standardization of their literary and cultural circuit without Castilian intermediaries, in a direct dialogue with the trends, noble or not, of the rest of the European scene.
