The Lockdown Chronicles 10: Josep

Click on the image below to read the comic strip in full size. Sources and references on this post under the comic strip below.

Josep Pla i Casadevall (8 March 1897, Palafrugell, Girona, Catalonia, Spain – 23 April 1981, Llofriu, Girona, Catalonia Spain) was a journalist and a popular author. As a journalist he worked in France, Italy, England, Germany and Russia, from where he wrote political and cultural chronicles in Catalan. [Wikipedia entry].

“In 1918, when Josep Pla was in Barcelona studying law, the Spanish flu broke out, the university shut down, and Pla went home to his parents in coastal Palafrugell, Spain. Aspiring to be a writer, not a lawyer, he resolved to hone his style by keeping a journal. In it he wrote about his family, local characters, visits to cafés; the quips, quarrels, ambitions, and amours of his friends; writers he liked and writers he didn’t; and the long contemplative walks he would take in the countryside under magnificent skies.” [The Paris Review]

Text adapted from: El quadern gris by Josep Pla (8 March 1897 – 23 April 1981), entry dated 8 March, 1918.

Source images: panels 1 and 3: “Aigua Xelida (Palafrugell, Girona)”, photo by Asier Sarasua Aranberri, via Flickr., CC-BY. Panels 2, 3 and 5: photograph of Josep Pla, 1918. Via bloQG (Xarxa de Mots 2009). Public Domain (?). This comic strip CC-BY-NC-SA.

 

References

Pa, J. Arxiu per al 8 març 2008, El quadern gris, bloQC, Xarxa de Mots 2009, available from: http://www.lletres.net/pla/QG/?m=20080308 [Accessed 20 April 2020]

Pla, J. “A Vitreous Vault”. [Excerpts from The Grey Notebook] The Paris Review, March 24, 2014. Available from https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2014/03/24/a-vitreous-vault/ [Accessed 20 April 2020]

Badosa, C. (1991) “Josep Pla”. Catalan Literature Online. Available from: https://lletra.uoc.edu/en/author/josep-pla/ [Accessed 20 April 2020]

Fundació Josep Pla. “Ruta Josep Pla”. Available from: https://fundaciojoseppla.cat/ruta-josep-pla/palafrugell/ [Accessed 20 April 2020]

Miles, V. (2014) “The Weather Men”. The Paris Review, Mrch 25 2014. Available from: https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2014/03/25/the-weather-men/ [Accessed 20 April 2020]

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The Lockdown Chronicles is a series of periodical comic strips made at night (in candlelight!) adapting and reusing openly-licensed or public domain items from online digital collections. Publication and tweetage are scheduled in advance. Historical sources are adapted and updated for the current pandemic; please refer to each strip’s references on each post for further context.  Catch up with the series at https://epriego.blog/tag/the-lockdown-chronicles/.