Travel and flowers

Travel and Flowers (1980) is a compilation of short stories by Mercè Rodoreda and the penultimate work of the author published in life.

Pertaining to the last stage of the writer, who was marked by his return to Catalonia after a long exile, the work has been considered a minor production inside, a prelude to more serious works.

The work is divided into two parts: Trips to various villages and real flowers. More or less, this division is due to two different stages of writing: on the one hand, the flowers ... were written mostly in Geneva, throughout the 60s, on the other hand, The trips ... were conceived in Romanyá of the Forest. Both parts are brief, fanciful narratives that collect the author's temporal and spatial experiences. For example, Margarida Casacuberta has indicated that the Jealous Flower is dedicated to her friend Carme Manrubia, with whom Rodoreda lived in the villa of the first Romanyá; similar, Mariàngela Vilallonga has drawn the relation of the flowers of Rodoreda with the Flowers Book of Edward Burne-Jones. Likewise, Travel has a strong influence on the landscape in which the writer lived. The pages of Penedes, the forests of the Gavarres, or the same villa where he was staying have been described in several travel stories. It is a journey, in some cases initiatory, to the discovery of unreal and fantastic worlds with real basis, full of the impressions of the writer. For example, Villalonga has explained in several works that Viaje al pueblo del miedo is a portrait at many times of the villa "La Señal" (today "La Señal Vieja"), where Manrubia and Rodoreda lived. It describes the garden and the house, besides the town of Romanyá, all culminated by the feeling that Rodoreda had discovered in the Gavarres and that years before already had left written in Notebooks for the dialogue.

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