Comments
Isidor Cònsul
BY NATURE OF A PROLOGUE
(...) Carn d’olla's most vivid impact comes from its well-tuned ear and from the strength and credibility of the dialogues that Jame Cabré builds into the novel. The reader realises that the book has been built on an intersection of voices, one of which is that of the author himself who, in a kind of offstage role, draws in and introduces the others. The strategy is quite a narrative challenge, but one that has been skilfully resolved, producing the luxury of a novel that uses tongue-bitingly meaty and realistic dialogues. On this specific point, in what could be termed hard labour on the living body of language, Carn d'olla exemplifies the author's thoughts and reflections almost twenty years on, when he muses on the art of language, and writes: "phonemes, words, sentences, paragraphs, are all living, breathing material, which link up and take on a rhythm and cadence of their own, thus, miraculously, acquiring their own meaning".Jaume Aulet
L'ombra de l'eunuc (The eunuch's shadow) is a complex and ambitious novel that does not allow superficial comparisons. Rather, its benchmark should be Cabré's previous work, with particular reference to Fra Junoy o l'agonia dels sons (Fra Junoy or the agony of sounds) for a consideration of aesthetics, and Senyoria (Honour) in terms of writing technique and of language.Sam Abrams
But what conclusions can be drawn from an overall reading of Jaume Cabré's work? Firstly, it should be said that each of his books focuses on an important aspect of the human condition. For example, L’ombra de l’eunuc addresses the theme of human creativity; Fra Junoy… deals with the theme of human freedom and intolerance; Senyoria with law and justice; La teranyina with the desire for power; Galceran… with human passion, and so on. Each book is a completely stand-alone work, and is now part of a long frieze reminiscent of the great narrative projects of novelists such as Eça de Queiroz and Balzac. (...)Àlex Broch
LUVOWSKI AND THE FEIXES BOOKS
A key time and date in the evolution of Jaume Cabré's narrative work is 1983, the year in which when he was the winner of the two most prestigious awards in Catalan narrative. He won the Prudenci Bertrana prize with Fra Junoy o l'agonia dels sons (1) and the Premi Sant Jordi with La teranyina (2), both of which were published in February 1984. The interest aroused by both books, and their quality, was a sign that his work deserved to be studied closely. This kind of situation, two novels and two prizes in the same year, is an uncommon event, and I cannot remember it ever happening, either before or since. On reading both books, however, clues began to emerge as to how this had happened. These two novels, despite their clearly different plots, set up crossover spaces that connected them using the same physical places and recurring characters. We were beginning to discover and get to know a mythical space in the author's mind that has given rise to a highly successful set of contemporary Catalan literary works, the Feixes books.
Vicenç Pagès
There are people who can compose an oboe solo that gives you goose bumps for fifteen seconds. Others, much fewer, excel at writing a piece of chamber music in which the violins set up a passionate and lively dialogue with the double bass. However, there is a scarcity of authors who, like Jaume Cabré, can successfully compose a symphony. Because Les veus del Pamano is just that, a symphony. Not so much in the sense of tempo or movements, but in the use of various instruments or, rather, groups of instruments, that come together in harmony in a text that can be described, albeit by changing musical genre, as polyphonic.
Ramon Pla i Arxé
Authors often cannot exactly define what mechanism led them to underline it or consider it a revelation. Which is why Carner talks about the "given word" and René Clair writes that "the beginning of a novel, like the first verse Valéry talks about, is a gift from heaven". They would probably be incapable of describing this revelation beyond the "jumble of feelings" that Jaume Cabré refers to. But the artist knows that the development of this central idea involves a simultaneous revelation of feeling, and maybe that is why authors like Jaume Cabré or Miguel Unamuno warn us that they start to write without really knowing where the story will take them, how it will develop and how it will end. Because, in fact, the plot of a novel is the outer skin of a complex whole that gradually acquires precision and substance. And the plot adapts to it, because the artist does not talk of things but in things So, things or the plot are the instrument, shaped to fit its function, of meaning. (...)
Jean-Charles Gateau
La peinture que fait Jaume Cabré de sa ville à l'aube du XIXe siècle fait penser à Balzac pour l'art de rendre vivants les personnages et l'atmosphère.