As if it were not enough to have written some of the great literary works in the Spanish language of the last thirty years, Javier Marías (Madrid, 1951-2022) still had the time, desire and enthusiasm to act as editor . After devoting himself in his youth to literary translation, always of important works, such as Life and opinions of Tristram Shandyby Laurence Sterne, which won him the Fray Luis de León Translation Prize in 1979, he never lost his genuine desire to disseminate the titles he considered significant. He then did so as editor-in-chief of Reino de Redonda, a small publishing house that he ran with his partner and life companion, Carme López Mercader, who has just ended the adventure after 43 publications.
If something characterized the Madrid writer, beyond his books, it was his finesse. It’s no secret that he wrote on a typewriter; he had a secretary responsible for transferring his manuscripts to the computer. He disdained social networks, digital modernity in general, shouting; and, even if he kept abreast of current events, as he demonstrated in his weekly column, he had no desire to intervene in political reality; He was, in the best sense of the word, a classical intellectual and lived according to his classics (Shakespeare, Proust, Nabokov, Faulkner, Benet, Conrad, John Ford, Orson Welles, Bach, Schubert).
His publishing house also demonstrated exquisite taste, both in the choice of titles – which were of course of great literary scope: Hardy, Dinesen, Auden, Faulkner, Balzac – and in the care given to each edition. ; recovered some of his translations, such as the poetic anthology return to the seaby R.L. Stevenson; I made others, like The mirror of the seaby Conrad; There were other high-level translators, prologues who were professional colleagues, such as Arturo Pérez-Reverte, Eduardo Mendoza, Anthony Beevor or Zadie Smith; He worked meticulously on editing, correction and presentation, without skimping on the quality of the paper and the binding, which were much stronger than average.
These are books with a sober, elegant appearance, discreet compared to the photographs and glossy letters that fill bookstores. He did everything in his own way, according to his criteria, not only as a selected reader, but as an expert in the publishing profession. in your column This absurd adventure (2008), where he tells the story of Reino de Redonda, he claims to pay “the maximum” to translators, in addition to giving them the possibility of charging half in advance: “It is not in vain that I was a translator at the time and I would have wanted this treatment for myself”. For this reason, he also published very little, only three titles per year; Each edition involved a long, careful and unhurried process.
He published what dazzled him, which he believed should be accessible to the Spanish public, even if it was a very small audience. Little-known facets of renowned authors with new voices here, often risky proposals, no meat of bestseller. Novel, stories, memoirs, poetry, essay, chronicle; by writers such as Vernon Lee, Janet Lewis, Gregor von Rezzori and Benjamin Harris. Modest print runs, launches without promotion, absence of noise on social networks; This therefore had, as he deplored in the aforementioned column, little impact in the press.
All this was the work of two: he, who was responsible for choosing the books and establishing the way in which the text would be worked; and his wife, the Barcelona editor Carme López Mercader, who was in charge of the editorial process, that is, the transformation of the manuscript into a book. They formed a good tandem: one for the more idealistic part, the other to make it achievable without wasting time on tiring details (because, while he was doing all this, he didn’t stop describe). The Kingdom of Redonda was something of an editorial utopia put into practice; and, of course, he assumed from the start that this would result in losses. It was an endeavor for the love of art in the truest sense of the word, and he was fortunate to be able to afford it.
The kingdom and its duchies
Why call it the Kingdom of Redonda? Javier Marías was editor and sovereign of the brand, in more than one way: like the readers of return of dark times (1998) you know, it took the name of King Xavier I of the fictional kingdom of Redonda, a Caribbean island and, since 1880, the legendary territory of English good-natured writers. It all started with British MP Shiel, who claimed to be the heir to this line of intellectual nobility. The monarchs succeeded one another and, given that the Madrid author spoke of this island in his novel all souls (1989), ended up becoming part of the lineage. Marías’ contribution as king was to launch this publishing house, inaugurated in 2000 with Huguenin’s wifeprecisely from his “ancestor” MP Shiel, fantastic stories.
Like any self-respecting monarch, Xavier I has asserted since 2001 his right to grant titles of nobility, as an honorary reward (and after deliberation of a jury), to notable personalities of the arts and letters; among them, the filmmakers Pedro Almodóvar, Duke of Trémula, and Francis Ford Coppola, Duke of Megalópolis; the thinkers Pierre Bourdieu, Duke of Desarraigo, and Umberto Eco, Duke of the island of the day before; and the writers Claudio Magris, Duke of Second Hand, JM Coetzee, Duke of Dishonor and Alice Munro, Duchess of Ontario. These rewards, in addition to their symbolic value, had a financial allocation payable by the publisher (“add a deficit, for a change”).
As a private joke made available to the reader, it was this Kingdom of Redonda, the dynasty and the publishing house; although the published books, although exceptional, have nothing pleasant about them. They were an extension of Javier Marías, his reader side: refined, erudite, with his unmistakable air. British. It was to be expected, in a way, that the project would end with him. He chose and, above all, he had this literary concern of one who lives devoted to words, to thought, to art; And it was not enough for him to write his work, but, attracted by the villains of the sector – he also defended that translating was a magnificent learning exercise for a writer – he devoted himself to the cause with passion.
A legacy for posterity
After Marías’ death in 2022, his widow and companion decided to end Reino de Redonda’s journey. He did so after publishing, that same year, Black lamb and gray balcony (1941), chronicles of the Balkans by the British writer Rebecca West, whose essay had already been published The meaning of betrayal (1949), and whose author recognized the influence of the novel The Soldier’s Return (1918) in his Berta Isla (2017). Black lamb and gray hawktwo volumes of more than a thousand pages of travels across Eastern Europe at the height of Nazism, perfectly illustrate the spirit of the stamp: expensive to produce, intended to sell little and be less read; but of indisputable value.
In addition to this last wish of Javier Marías, Carme López Mercader closes the Reino de Redonda with his own title, Duel without a compassa confessional book about what her life has been like since losing her partner. The Madrid author used to say that he was a “compass” writer, as opposed to “map” writers, that is, those who start writing with a prior plan and know from the start beginning where the story will take them. He, on the other hand, preferred to discover this path as he went along, so that at the beginning he only had an idea of what he wanted to approach, without establishing a plan.
Carme López Mercader takes up this metaphor: unlike a creative project, for mourning there is no possible compass, nor map, because, no matter how much we talk about stages, each case is different, each no one needs a tempo. She has felt lost since September 11, 2022, when she said goodbye to someone who, although she was in Madrid and she in Barcelona, had been in a relationship for more than three decades. Departing from other memoirs about grief, it recounts no reconciliation with life, offers no consolation, and has no intellectual pretensions. It’s a brutal admission: she lost her partner, she lost her way of being in the world, she lost who she was.
Torn by pain, angry at the world, at the broken life; That’s what we feel and we don’t hide it. Irritation in the face of the good intentions of others, in the face of this latent pressure to “turn the page”. The refusal to seek solace in the afterlife, even with coincidences that disconcert her. She appears raw, skeptical, rational. What is moving in the text is this emotional nudity, this fact of not pretending, of not hiding one’s suffering to be kinder or to appear poetic. It has always been linked to culture, but for this trance there is no valid literature: death, the loss of a loved one, breaks us all, brings us back to our most basic survival instincts.
And, although he collects some anecdotes lived with him, such as a trip or some of the differences that completed them, he does not fall into impudence, he does not betray this zeal for intimacy that the writer has always maintained. In fact, this explains the paradox of meeting people who, by talking to him (with good intentions) about him, believe they know him better than she does. And no. Because there was a literary character of Javier Marías and a companion of Javier Marías. They joked about it among themselves. Marías’s reader will not be surprised: even if some took his articles too seriously, his grumpy tone always gave off a spark.
Duel without a compass It is a small, unpretentious book that ends with an overview of what we can call hope: the consolation of nature, plants (different from those he kept during his life) who are reborn, taking care of something again. A discreet book, just as the couple was discreet and Javier Marías was discreet about his private life. His intimate side will always be a mystery, because he wanted it that way and his widow does not betray him; Of course, there remains the literature, that which he wrote and that which he shared throughout this Kingdom of Redonda. Anyone wishing to purchase a title from the publisher should not delay: from now on, only profitable ones will be reprinted.
Books read with devotion, admired authors to whom one returns again and again, always say something about oneself; These books will therefore be the ones that bring Javier Marías back to life for readers. The day will come when these works recovered by him will be collector’s items. Editing as Reino de Redonda did, without any commercial vision, amounted, in his words, to “working for posterity”. This may sound pretentious, but what else does a writer, a creator, do? One his size, at least. Demanding, exquisite and unique as a writer; demanding, exquisite and unique as a reader-editor-translator. An old-fashioned man of letters. This is his (other) legacy.
