Això era i no era: mito y memoria en Montserrat Roig

Abstract

This article analyzes the use and meaning of memory in the fiction of Montserrat Roig. Catalan fairy tales often begin “Això era i no era”, a formula which affirms and simultaneously denies the truth of the story; Roig felt a similar ambivalence about the history of Catalonia, which was incomplete and excluded the contributions of women. To recover lost voices, arrest amnesia and thus foster the writing of a more inclusive history, she turned to individual memory and to her own imagination: “Against memory loss, there is the word. Against the finality of death, there is the story of other lives.” She committed herself to the writing of different versions of the past, some true, others imagined. To give universality to the fictional stories, she used various myths; this article traces her use of the myth of Genesis and the loss of the Garden of paradise. It concludes with an analysis of El canto de la juventud a late story which synthesizes her beliefs about memory, the word and history.