[Reigian Studies.] [On behalf of the baroness.]


23.6.10

Xavier Fàbregas, 1975.





Xavier Fàbregas, 1975.


Once the murderous inquisitorial shackles of francoist castilian fascism were starting to slacken, the great Xavier Fàbregas, the critic who for thirty years systematized the whole magnificent Catalonian theatrical movement of the second Renaixença, was the first to realize that Reig was something else – a force onto himself.


He recognized Reig’s genius, and at the beginning of the seventies it was him who really brought Reig to the conscience of the cultural elite; he was also the one who first defined the Reigian character, and the first to come up with the phrases “Reigian style,” “Reigian constant,” etc.


Later, in sparse notulae, or more notably in the preface to the first edition of Travessa deserts, his lame pupil, G. J. Graells, followed the trend, trying to pin down the “estil reigià,” the “obra reigiana,” the “textos reigians,” the “peces reigianes,” and so on...



[That preface, by the way, is extremely funny, and totally idiotic.

“The Reigian text (he says) it’s scenic enough; until suddenly it falls into excess, even gratuitous excess; the coprolatrous author, often he’s just gone, adrift on slippery tangents; addicted to upmanship; and now and then even, he’s, ah, so mean... no holds barred, wading in brackish mirth, wallowing in caca, lolling and hiving... a degenerate hero, spontaneous boners in his trousers, his pockets in tatters, spent, plus the churned up shits or jizzms staining the whole fabric of plots and characters... Then voilà... here comes the moikhos (the adulterer,) strangely considered a victim... identifiable with the current lover of the author’s wife, whom the author must somehow repay with services and favors... or else... as when Aristophanic characters speak of moikhoi, and immediately something fishy wafts the public’s way, so Reig’s cuguços, upon whose appearance the public must titter... for almost invariably the husband is the pimp (a pimp paid with a beating: cocu et battu)... while the dignified Romans saw it differently... in Tacitus’s field work, for example, one sees the muscular hero pointing to the fact that the elsewhere vilified cinaedi (the passive catamites) are better behaved than women... that all things considered, men, and not women, are civilization’s torchbearers... but for Reig, alas, his Reigian instinct tints with reds of menses his murkier outlook... for him women are goddesses and whoever is hostile to them must be depicted as not quite there, and as a damned loser...”]



Slight matter indeed; instead, let’s to the gist of it.













Here the excellent “killer” article that Fàbregas published in Serra d’Or, the foremost literary magazine of the time (almost unique in scope and quality even by contemporary European standards).


Serra d’Or. 1975 (pages 279 and 280)

Pre-Biografia de Carles Reig, by Xavier Fàbregas.



1 comentari:

Arquimbau Cuca i Moixó ha dit...

Fàbregues was a hero in his own time; the Catalonian theater would lack one of its vital limbs if not for him; pity that he died so young.

In reference to Reig, his piece titled L'oli, l'ala i l'olor which has been hailed, even as recently as last March, as "something else," is now nowhere to be found.

Would you perchance know something about it?

Thanks.



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