A Woman Unknown: Voices from a Spanish Life

Rating:
Summary: Found in Translation
Review: FOUND IN TRANSLATION

It's hard to review a book when one feels that she could have written it herself and worse yet when in fact that book has been published already. In some ways it's reassuring to read the same thoughts, opinions, even the same literary references and mythological symbols. In other ways it is almost eerie to share with it a similar structure of titled chapters which can be read independently. It all started with the cover of Lucia Graves' A Woman Unknown. Voices from a Spanish Life (Washington D. C.: Counterpoint, 2000) where I saw the familiar picture of Mercedes Formica, a writer I interviewed some years ago, but more about her later.
Lucia Graves is the daughter of Robert Graves, the English poet who lived in Majorca with his Spanish wife and children for several years. Her book is labeled as her autobiography, but it's more like a history of Spain during the almost forty years of Franco's Dictatorship and the ensuing some twenty years of Democracy. Her role is more that of a well-versed witness, a woman who has lived among three different cultures: the English of her birth, the Spanish of her adopted country and the Catalan into which she married. Hers is a well documented account of everyday life, political repression, historical events and a study of the richness of languages.
The author moved to Majorca, where a version of Catalan is spoken, when she was three years old. Despite her father's prominence, she lived a rather modest life on the island before it became a popular tourist destination. A few years of her childhood were spent in Palma, the island's capital, where she studied in a repressive nun school like any other Spanish girl, until she was almost convinced to be baptized in the Catholic Church ( to keep her from "going to hell"), at which time her parents had her first tutored at home and then send to England to receive a "proper" education.
At Oxford, although she missed Spain terribly, she became familiar with the language of her birth, her own father's work and - interestingly enough- Spanish literature which she could then study uncensored. It was her appreciation of the complexity of languages and in particular her translation class, that gave her the tools to become the accomplished translator she is now. Her reflections on language are in themselves worth the reading of A Woman Unknown. Her dilemma should be familiar to anyone fluent in more than one language: "I began to see that being trilingual meant I had never been able to focus fully on any one of my languages, that each one covered only particular areas of experience, and as result I could not express myself fully in any of them" (115).
Lucia Graves' book is full of expressions in Catalan which she carefully explains and translates into English. In fact, if anything, her careful attention to detail is superfluous to the initiated reader of Spanish culture. Her knowledge of the subtleties of the Spanish and Catalan character is commendable as is the varied tidbits of information about popular customs. Her appraisal of the repressive years of Franco's regime is equally on target as is her appreciation - only now becoming official in Spain- of the liberal Republican government.
However, for all her political openness, Lucia Graves is very coy about much of her personal information. For instance, she mentions in passing the sudden death of her half-sister Jenny (149), but doesn't bother to explain it, or we know little more than her oldest daughter's name and not even that of her other two daughters. Her Spanish mother, despite the fact that her illness opens and closes the book, remains a mystery as well. The reader is left wondering what led to her divorce from her Catalan husband and even to whom is she married now since she alludes to a second marriage, while she analyzes in depth the effects of the new Spanish divorce law of 1981. It could be argued that this lack of detail is a good thing since the reader's curiosity is peaked due to her talent as a writer and her, indeed, fascinating life.
The title, "A Woman Unknown" refers to the legal terminology given a woman in divorce proceedings. In fact Lucia Graves gives special attention to the situation of Spanish women: from the liberties of the Second Republic before Franco to the repression of the years after the Civil War, up to the new freedom we are presently enjoying. Her representation of postwar courtship rituals is as poignant as that of Carmen Martín Gaite's, one of the best Spanish writers who have written on the same topic. Her sympathetic portrait of Margarida de Prades, in the chapter titled "The Queen Who Never Was," a fifteen century Catalan noblewoman, for example, makes for captivating reading.
Lucia Graves is equally sympathetic in her depiction of the Sephardic Jews who inhabited Majorca and Catalonia. Their exile, in many ways, parallels her own quest for a homeland. But she is overly simplistic when she states that Franco was anti-Semitic. Despite all his other abuses, Franco saved over thirty thousand Ukranian Jews as it is documented in Chaim Lipschitz's book, Franco, Spain, the Jews, and the Holacaust (KTVA Publishing House, 1984). In fact Franco's own mother was of Jewish descent; her maiden name, Bahamonde, being typically Jewish.
There is no mention in the text of Mercedes Formica, the writer who graces the book's cover. This is a surprising choice given her right wing ideology - she was a sympathizer of the Falangist leader, José Antonio Primo de Rivera. My guess is that it was chosen by the editor in an otherwise beautiful, careful edition. These minor issues aside, Lucia Graves' book is a well written, compelling history of contemporary Spain from the point of view of a not so foreign woman, even when her own story is still not completely told.
CONCHA ALBORG

Concha Alborg is a Spanish writer who lives in Philadelphia and teaches Spanish literature at Saint Joseph's University. She has recently published Beyond Jet-Lag (New Jersey: Ediciones Nuevo Espacio, 2000), her second work of fiction, about the immigrant experience. Beyond Jet-Lag is available on Amazon.com ...

Rating:
Summary: Beautifully written, engaging memoir
Review: I loved this book and, as a writer, I found it very inspiring! Graves writes beautifully of growing up on Majorca and her descriptions of the place and the people there, and other parts of Catalonia, are very evocative. The book caught my eye because I am studying Spanish and this book gave me a great feel for life in Spain, particularly under Franco but also, as described to her by people she knew, during the Spanish Civil War. It also offers interesting thoughts on language and identity, because she grew up speaking English at home, Majorcan/Catalan with neighbors (at least until Franco tried to crush the language), and Castilian Spanish at school. It's no wonder she became a translator.

By the way, if you're interested in Robert Graves (I didn't know anything about him - I guess I missed the whole PBS "I Claudius" series), you won't find out all that much about him here - this is Lucia's story. At least he passed on to his daughter his talent for writing.

Rating:
Summary: Good reading before one visits Barcelona
Review: This is a fascinating perspective from the tri-lingual-daughter of a well-known poet. Lucia is caught between two identities-Britain and Spain. She tells tales of growing up-island style-off of the coast of Spain-with her Roman Catholic upbringings. All this set after the Spanish civil war where people's identities marred, hopes dashed, and properties confiscated under the Fascist Franco regime (1939-1975) which was characterized by the tight grip of church and state. Her viewpoints on women rights, religious rights, the Catalan identity and the translation profession are particularly illuminating.