Mariàngela Vilallonga, Professor Emerita of Classical Philology at the University of Girona, President of the Prudenci Bertrana Foundation, and Numerary Member of the Royal European Academy of Doctors (RAED), presents her latest book, “Retrat interior” (Inner Portrait, Proa), a collection of poems written between Girona and New York from 2003 to 2009, which she had kept archived on her computer. After stepping back from some of her professional responsibilities, the academic decided to share the fruit of that stage of her life—an intimate portrait of herself in her fifties—through a series of compositions already being praised by critics for their elegance and emotional strength.
“These are poems I kept for sixteen years,” Vilallonga explained during the presentation of her poetry collection on October 10 at the Miquel Martí i Pol Hall of the Valvi Foundation in Girona. “I decided to reread them to see whether they were worth sharing or should be discarded forever. I ultimately chose to make them public, and now they no longer belong only to me. In them, I try to reflect on life and death—on much life, and much death as well. There is love and heartbreak, essences and presences. In fact, they are filled with presences and essences—and with the communion I feel with nature, which I had already expressed in some of my previous works.”
From her New York period, Vilallonga had already published the book “Això no és Barcelona: Visions catalanes de Nova York” (This Is Not Barcelona: Catalan Visions of New York), a work that brings together the written testimonies of around one hundred Catalan authors—some anonymous—sharing their impressions of the city. The anthology begins in 1874 with an article from the editorial team of La Llumanera de Nova York, a Catalan-language magazine published in the city of skyscrapers between 1874 and 1888, and concludes in 2021 with a chronicle by Francesc Peirón, correspondent for La Vanguardia. Earlier, New York had already been the subject of Vilallonga’s study on the Juegos Florales (Floral Games) held in the city in 1956.
Additionally, on October 7, the University of Girona held a ceremony honoring the academic for her outstanding research career. The event, presided over by Rector Quim Salvi Mas, also recognized the achievements of other former faculty members. After serving as Minister of Culture of the Government of Catalonia between March 2019 and September 2020—a position for which she resigned as Vice President of the Institute of Catalan Studies—Mariàngela Vilallonga resumed her teaching activities until her retirement three academic years ago. In 2016, she was awarded the Creu de Sant Jordi, the highest distinction granted by the Catalan Government, for her research on Latin humanistic literature of the Crown of Aragon. She has also been appointed as a member of the editorial board of Grup62.
