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.
Indeed, two voices play under Jaume Cabré's baton: the first, the orchestral voice, that winds its way through the Spanish civil war and its milieu; the second, situated in the present, searches for the first, they cross and separate, meeting up further on. A virtuoso pianist in permanent dialogue with the orchestra's complexity. The orchestra... Let's talk about the orchestra. Let's mention, for example, the cello that plays the sad music of the post-war village schoolmaster, the violins playing requited love, the sinister double bass of unashamed Falangism, the flute for hypocritical convention, the bassoon for old contraband, the piccolo of religious manoeuvrings, the trombones of caciquism, trumpets of orgasms, the tuba of death, and the cymbals of the maquis. And, finally, the triangle of the cat, an empathetic and nimble character.
Les veus del Pamano humbly yet courageously takes on the mantle of the 19th century novel and adds a pinch of contemporaneity. To start with, certain events take place that come straight from great novelistic tradition, such as adultery and murder. The weight of intrigue falls on Oriol Fontelles, a character with a somewhat dark side, one of the most paradoxical characters to be found in recent Catalan literature and who cautiously takes shape in the reader's mind. The duality between traitor and hero, one of Borges' much-loved themes, could be one of the book's secondary themes. But we have already commented on the classic novel's inheritance: when Jaume Cabré poses a problem, it is not so that the reader can be left to resolve it as they please, with the facile irresponsibility of the opera aperta, in other words, unfinished, unresolved, abandoned. Twenty-five centuries ago, Aristotle stated that many authors know how to weave a story but few master the art of the denouement. Indeed, there are no loose ends in Les veus del Pamano, every twist and turn of the plot is perfectly prepared and executed. The reader feels comfortable following an itinerary that has been planned down to the last detail, knowing they will not be abandoned in the fictional jungle with food for four days and a chewed-up piece of parchment. If Les veus del Pamano contains several versions of the same event, it is to heighten intrigue, not to drive you crazy. In the end, there is only one version because things only happen one way and there is nothing more relative, in Albert Einstein's centenary year, as relativity. Cabré gives information in small doses, he prepares the most memorable scenes with great care, he unfolds the plot with a craftsman's skill, and, to ensure success, he brings in elements of the popular novel, such as a manuscript stumbled on, or a lost son, or. if you prefer, a re-found son with a different surname. But Les veus del Pamano also contains traces of the 20th century novel: syntagmas invariably repeated when a particular character appears, like a spell or a stigmata; the impact of beginning the novel at the end; the distancing of some characters, as if the author tired of suspending his own disbelief.
Vicenç Pagès. (Presentation of the Critics Prize in the Palau Robert. Barcelona 2005)