Prudenci Bertrana

Biography

During his youth, he studied at Girona; some years after he went to Barcelona to study an industrial engineering course, city in which he definitely instatled on 1911, where he managed known magazines as L'Esquella de la Torratxa or La Campana de Gràcia. He worked as a journalist and also taught art there. Bertrana also collaborated with other newspapers such as El Poble Català, La Publicitat, Revista de Catalunya and La Veu de Catalunya.

His style is certainly distinguished in relation to the fashions of the moment. He is quite known because of his novel Josafat (1906), the book with which began his literary production, and also for his storybook Proses bàrbares (Barbain prose, 1911). He published his first stories in 1903, and some of them have been considered of an excellent quality. His works (specially short stories) are based onto three principal aspects: the landscape, the peasants and the animals. Bertrana's novels, structured from a careful and detailed observation of the world, parts from life experience itself, seen by a human and a writer at a time. It's, however, with the trilogy Entre la terra i els núvols (Between the Earth and the Clouds), formed by L'hereu (The heir, 1931), El vagabund (The vagrant, 1933) i L'impenitent (The unrepentant, 1948), where and autobiographic purpose is mostly reflected, based on the personal frustration, the hardest part of what was the death of three of his sons. His daughter Aurora's long memories (who dedicated her life to literature too), contain many references to his father.