In 1959 Camilo José Cela summoned in Formentor the first Conversaciones poéticas.
The Formentor conversations had an achievable aim: a continuous dialogue and immediate communication between Spanish poets on the eternal subject of poetry, this winged trembling of God that vibrates in the soul and, sometimes, moves some men to write, men who, in this case, sing, melodiously and emotionally, in the plural and evergreen Iberian tongue: the noble Castilian of Garcilaso, the sonorous Catalan of Maragall, the sweet Galician of Rosalía de Castro, the ingenuous, difficult and rural Basque of Aizquíbel and Arana-Goiri. [...] Poets will come to the conversations to converse and have a drink in an atmosphere of love and friendship. Wine - like the moon and impossible loves - is a good friend of poetry.
Papeles de Son Armadans, 1959
Translated by Richard Mansell.
(Iria Flavia, 1916 – Madrid, 2002). Born in Galicia into a wealthy family, to a Galician father and an English mother, Camilo José Cela is one of the great names of 20th-century Spanish literature. His career was recognised with the highest possible award, the Nobel Prize for Literature, in 1989. His first novels, La familia de Pascual Duarte (The family of Pascual Duarte, 1942) and La colmena (The hive, 1951), is a bitter portrait of post-war Madrid. He moved to Majorca in 1954, and he founded the journal “Papeles de Son Armadans” with Caballero Bonald, Baltasar Porcel and others. He was a prolific novelist, with a style that progressively adapted according to the times. His writing in general featured expression through prose and a slightly affected use of language. San Camilo, 1936 (1969) recreates his experience of the week before the outbreak of war in Madrid. He was also a great writer of travel literature, with works such as Viaje a la Alcarria (Journey to La Alcarria, 1948) and Del Miño al Bidasoa (From the Miño to the Bidasoa, 1953). He was made a member of the Royal Spanish Academy in 1957 and in 1995 won the Cervantes Prize, the highest award in Spanish.
In Majorca, Cela created an important centre of literary life connected to the global avant-guard. In 1959 he organised Conversaciones poéticas (Poetic conversations) and an International Colloquium on the Novel in Formentor, with such illustrious participants as Italo Calvino, Marguerite Duras, Vicente Aleixandre and Gil de Biedma.
Adán Diehl was an Argentine who fell in love with the landscape and wanted to build a house there: he finally settled on a hotel. He bought the lands that were property of Costa i Llobera's family between 1926 and 1928. His enthusiasm and money from the banks made the dream possible, but Diehl ultimately lost everything. The wealth of many distinguished visitor, such as Joseph Kessel, Winston Churchill, Francisco Bernareggi, Joan Estelrich, Ramón Gómez de la Serena and Henry de Montherlant, did not help the hotel to turn a profit, and in the end Diehl had to flee Majorca in 1934, hounded by his creditors. In 1959, Camilo José Cela, who lived on Majorca, organised the Jornades Poètiques de Formentor there, with the attendance of Catalan writers (Carles Riba, Blai Bonet, J. V. Foix, Miquel Bauçà and more), Spanish writers (Blas de Otero), English writers (Robert Graves) and French writers. There was heated discussion between Riba and Graves regarding Latin poetry and translating the classics. It was such a success that it continued to be held, until Franco's dictatorship, possible worried about the atmosphere of culture and freedom, prohibited it, and the whole event had to be moved to Corfu. The hotel continued to be the place where celebrities stayed, such as Grace Kelly, Charlie Chaplin and many more.
