Full article by Carles Soldevila (Barcelona 1892-1967) published today in Barcelona Diary (July 19, 1953). Own translation. Carles Soldevila had given it to the editors to appear in his daily column on July 18, data revealed by Jaume Fabre six years ago in Serra d’Or. Soldevila’s text contained “between the lines” – in the author’s typical tone of phlegmatic irony – a criticism of press censorship on the most important day in the Franco calendar (the regime celebrated every year the military insurrection, Falangists and curdled). The editor-in-chief, Carmelo San Nicolàs, did not publish it. In its place he put a letter praising the regime signed with the initials CS, his, but maliciously matching Soldevila’s, an ambiguity that confused readers. The next day, July 19, they published the withheld article. Soldevila decided never to deal with that daily section again. Seven years later he would return as a columnist to The vanguardnewspaper where he had already collaborated in the first months of the war while Maria Luz Morales was its director.
I found in a recent book by Jean Cocteau, an observation that forces us to reflect once more on the concepts of morality and immorality of texts and images – an eternal problem of discussion between the world and artists. You all know, or suspect, that French film censorship is far from rigorous or maniacal. However, not too long ago he vetoed the screening of a documentary that, at first glance, could not offend anyone. It was a series of episodes of plant life captured with infinite patience and then projected with sufficient acceleration so that the viewer grasped the movements developed by the plants in their silent and apparently chaste existence. What is most surprising, most unexpected, is that the said movements resulted from a notorious obscenity, although at bottom, it is clear, they were innocent, as is, or we supposed it to be, nature in its genuine spontaneity. We already knew that animal life was a hideous spectacle in which the most unbridled ferocity, the most sadistic lasciviousness combined with the most insistent and overwhelming stupidity. Do you have any idea what the loves of the “mantis religiosa” (insect: pregadéu, in Catalan) or certain spiders are? Do you know how far fathers, mothers, and children reach, in the order of insects or reptiles? Do they think that everything is gentle and beautiful in the life of colorful birds? Even if you knew and were convinced that the animal kingdom is horrible and unclean, you could use the consoling idea that the plant world, with its aerial relationships and almost always at a distance, with its enchanting flowers, with its tasty fruits, would preserve for the children of Eve and despite the fateful apple, a pure and innocent charm. And it’s not like that. They already see it. It is only necessary to precipitate the rhythm of plant life, to remove its apparent calmness, so that it reveals to us its intrinsic malignancy and shamelessness.
Source: www.ara.cat
