Llorenç Villalonga i la llengua catalana

Abstract

Llorenç Villalonga,Majorcas greatest twentieth-century novelist, was not entirely at home with the Catalan language. In early statements and writings of his, he showed himself to be clearly against it, an attitude that was to change with time. Nevertheless, his first novel was written in Catalan, though it is obvious that he was continually dissatisfied with the treatment his writing received from copy editors, the comments varying greatly from one publisher to another. He wanted the Majorcan characters in some of his works to speak in dialect but, through a lack of knowledge of Catalan, he had to leave it up to the copy editor, who rarely succeeded in doing a good job. The surviving original manuscripts reveal insecurity and an absence of consistent criteria. These deficiencies, which were not always adequately remedied, depending on the edition, represent the more superficial side of his work, and do not detract from its essential worth at a deeper level.