A Collage of Experiences: Bivouac Literature and Catalan Testimony from the Trenches of the Great War

Abstract

This article analyses testimonies of Catalan soldiers involved in the First World War despite official Spanish neutrality, whose fragmented impressions appeared in a kind of collage in contemporary periodicals. Carefully interpreted to put into perspective the idealization and epicism of the combatants, they constitute egodocuments with diary-like components that are of great value for our understanding of everyday life in the trenches. They also demonstrate that the collaboration of Catalans with the Allied cause was not only human and intellectual, but also literary, through testimony of a high standard, comparable to the great European works generated by the war.

Key Words:

• First World War
• Catalan volunteers
• Trench literature
• Everyday-life Trench Accounts
• Egodocuments
• Front letters
• Joan Solé i Pla
• Frederic Pujulà

Notes

1 Among other studies cited below in this article, I highlight the works by Maximiliano Fuentes, España en la Primera Guerra Mundial: una movilización cultural (Madrid: Ediciones Akal, 2014); Andreu Navarra Ordoño, 1914: aliadófilos y germanófilos en la cultura española (Madrid: Cátedra, 2014); and A Civil War of Words: The Cultural Impact of the Great War in Catalonia, Spain, Europe and a Glance at Latin America, ed. Maximiliano Fuentes Codera, Xavier Pla & Francesc Montero (Oxford/Bern: Peter Lang, 2016).

2 I use the term ‘Catalanism’ as a political movement and ideology. Its origins have been analysed and defined by, among others, Joan-Lluís Marfany, La cultura del catalanisme: el nacionalisme català en els seus inicis (Barcelona: Empúries, 1995), as well as his Nacionalisme espanyol i catalanitat (1789–1859): cap a una revisió de la Renaixença (Barcelona: Edicions 62, 2017); Josep M. Poblet, Història bàsica del catalanisme (Barcelona: Pòrtic, 1977); and Roser Masgrau, Els orígens del catalanisme polític: 1870–1931 (Barcelona: Barcanova, 1992).

3 See August Rafanell, La il·lusió occitana: la llengua dels catalans, entre Espanya y França (Barcelona: Quaderns Crema, 2006).

4 Joan Safont i Plumed, Per França i Anglaterra: la I Guerra Mundial dels aliadòfils catalans (Barcelona: A Contra Vent, 2012), 49–50.

5 See, among others: David Martínez Fiol, Els ‘voluntaris catalans’ a la Gran Guerra (1914–1918) (Barcelona: Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat, 1991); Francisco J. Romero Salvadó, España, 1914–1918: entre la guerra y la revolución (Barcelona: Crítica, 2002); Jordi Amat & José Ramón González, ‘Las palabras de la guerra—la guerra de las palabras: escritores españoles en los campos de batalla (1914–1918)’, in Las palabras de la guerra, la guerra de las palabras (1914–1918), coord. Jordi Amat & José Ramón González, Ínsula, 804 (2013), 4–12; John Horne, ‘Réflexions pour un centenaire’, La Revue Générale, 149:3–4 (2014), 8–21; and Volver a pensar el mundo de la Gran Guerra, ed. Pedro Ruiz Torres (Zaragoza: Institución ‘Fernando el Católico’, 2016).

6 Some useful information on this topic can be found in Flames a la frontera: Catalunya i la Gran Guerra, coord. Raquel Castellà, commissariat & documentació per Maximiliano Fuentes & Francesc Montero (Barcelona: Generalitat de Catalunya-Museu d’Història de Catalunya, 2018); available online at <https://www.mhcat.cat/exposicions/exposicions_realitzades/flames_a_la_frontera> (accessed 17 April 2021). See also Fernando García Sanz, España en la Gran Guerra: espías, diplomáticos y traficantes (Barcelona: Galaxia Gutenberg-Círculo de Lectores, 2014); Eduardo González Calleja & Paul Aubert, Nidos de espías: España, Francia y la Primera Guerra Mundial, 1914–1919 (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 2014); and The Cambridge History of the First World War, ed. Jay Winter, 3 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 2014).

7 See Fuentes, España en la Primera Guerra Mundial, 15–16.

8 Among the more important studies that highlight the importance of the testimonies written in the trenches are the following: Samuel Hynes, A War Imagined: The First World War and English Culture (London: Bodley Head, 1990) and, by the same author, The Soldier’s Tale: Bearing Witness to Modern War (London: Pimlico, 1998); and Michael Roper, The Secret Battle: Emotional Survival in the Great War (Manchester: Manchester U. P., 2009). See also Max Hastings, Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War (New York: Knopf, 2013), and Alexander Watson, Enduring the Great War: Combat, Morale and Collapse in the German and British Armies, 1914–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 2008) (both authors include testimony from British and German soldiers). For Italy, see Quinto Antonelli, Storia intima della Grande Guerra: lettere, diari e memorie dei soldati dal fronte (Roma: Donzelli, 2019) and, from a broader perspective that includes various examples from many different fronts, the volume ‘From the Front’: zibaldone della Grande Guerra, ed. Tancredo Artico (Canterano: Aracne Editrice, 2017). The work of Paul Fussell, La Gran Guerra y la memoria moderna, trad. Javier Alfaya & Barbara McShane, con intro. de Jay Winter (Madrid: Turner, 2016 [1^st English ed. 1975]) is required reading, although the focus is on texts by British writer-soldiers. Finally, in Spain, in recent years, a number of studies have been published that also focus on this aspect of life in the trenches: Letras desde la trinchera: testimonios literarios de la Primera Guerra Mundial, ed. Carme Manuel & Ignacio Ramos Gay (Valencia: Publicacions Univ. de València, 2015); Carlos Canales Torres & Miguel del Rey Vicente, La Gran Guerra: grandeza y dolor en las trincheras (Madrid: EDAF, 2014); Sofia Fedórchenko, El pueblo en guerra: testimonios de soldados en el frente de la Primera Guerra Mundial, trad. Olga Korobenko, con una nota introductoria de Elias Canetti & prólogo de Jaime Fernández (Paracuellos de Jarama: Hermida Editores, 2012); and Mujeres al frente: testimonios de la Gran Guerra, ed. Teresa Gómez Reus (Madrid: Huerga y Fierro, 2012). Excellent work has also been carried out by The Imperial War Museum (Private Papers of First World War Collection) and The UK’s National Archives which holds unit war diaries (record series WO95) available in great part online at <https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/first-world-war/centenary-unit-war-diaries/> (accessed 17 August 2021).

9 See En el teatro de la guerra: cronistas hispánicos en la Primera Guerra Mundial, ed. Xavier Pla & Francesc Montero (Granada: Editorial Comares, 2019); and Literary Journalism and World War I: Marginal Voices, ed. Andrew Griffiths, Sara Prieto & Soenke Zehle (Nancy: Presses Univ. de Nancy/Éditions Univ. de Lorraine, 2016).

10 ‘Gaziel’, ‘En el frente. La ciudadela de Verdún’, La Vanguardia (Barcelona), 31 March 1917, p. 10.

11 The campaign to encourage Catalans to enlist in the French army exaggerated, for its own purposes, the numbers of Catalan fighters already at the front: during the war, the initially purported number of Catalan soldiers ranged from one to two thousand, but a figure of 12,000 was eventually claimed. This number was the result of including French citizens of the Catalan regions of the Roussillon or Vallespir, along with immigrants of Catalan origin residing in other départements, all of whom were mobilized according to law because they were French nationals. Even so, this extraordinary number of fighters of Catalan origin became something of a legend in the Catalanist memory of the war. However, data shows that the real number of Spanish nationals who were volunteers was around 800, of which very few were fully committed to the Catalan nationalist cause. See David Martínez Fiol & Joan Esculies, 12.000! Els catalans a la Primera Guerra Mundial, pròleg de Felipe Solé (Barcelona: Ara Llibres, 2014), 42.

12 Safont i Plumed, Per França i Anglaterra: la I Guerra Mundial dels aliadòfils catalans, 115.

13 Jay Winter, War Beyond Words: Languages of Remembrance from the Great War to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 2017), 94.

14 The term ‘egodocument’ is used to describe autobiographical writing, such as memoirs, diaries, letters and travel accounts. The term was coined by the historian Jacques Presser, who defined egodocuments as writings in which the ‘I’ (the writer), is continuously present in the text as the writing and describing subject. See Arianne Baggerman & Rudolf Dekker, ‘Jacques Presser, Egodocuments and the Personal Turn in Historiography’, The European Journal of Life Writing, 7 (2018), 90–110 (especially p. 93).

15 Tancredi Artico, ‘Re-thinking War: A History of Voices’, in ‘From the Front’, ed. Artico, 19–27 (p. 20).

16 See, regarding the diary’s genre characterization, Vicente Huici Urmeneta, ‘Diarios y dietarios: una formalización del imaginario cotidiano’, biTARTE. Revista Cuatrimestral de Humanidades, 22 (2000), 121–27.

17 Arnau de Vilanova, ‘Els voluntaris catalans a França’, La Nació, 22 January 1916, p. 4.

18 Arnau de Vilanova, ‘Els voluntaris catalans a França’, La Nació, 5 February 1916, pp. 1–2 (p. 2).

19 Arxiu Nacional de Catalunya, Fons Comitè de Germanor amb els Voluntaris Catalans, ‘Lletres de combatents’, M-I, 3.1.8, 381–82 (p. 381).

20 Arxiu Nacional de Catalunya, Fons Comitè de Germanor amb els Voluntaris Catalans, ‘Lletres de combatents’, M-I, 3.1.5, 119–22 (pp. 119–20).

21 Arnau de Vilanova, ‘Els voluntaris catalans a França’, La Nació, 7 October 1916, pp. 1–2 (p. 2).

22 Anthologie des écrivains morts à la guerre, 1914–1918, ed. Association des Écrivains Combattants, 5 vols (Amiens: Bibliothèque du Hérisson, Edgar Malfère, 1924), I, 714–45.

23 In 1916, all these letters were included in a tribute book to the soldier-poet (Pere Ferrés-Costa, Proeses d’amor i patriotisme [Barcelona: Rossen Ràfols, 1916]).

24 Martínez Fiol, Els ‘voluntaris catalans’ a la Gran Guerra (1914–1918), 69.

25 Pujulà was the author of the first Gramàtica catalana de la llengua internacional esperanto (Barcelona: Joventut, 1906), the first dictionary Vocabulari català-esperanto/Vortaro kataluna-esperanto (Barcelona: Joventut, 1909) and several introductory courses.

26 Francesc Montero Aulet, ‘ “Ambaixador dels catalans aimadors de França” i cronista de bivac. L’experiència de Frederic Pujulà a la Gran Guerra’, Afers. Fulls de Recerca i Pensament, 33:89 (2018), 85–106.

27 Frederic Pujulà, De la trinxera estant (Barcelona: La Novel·la Nova, 1918).

28 Winter, War Beyond Words, 94–95.

29 Jay Winter, ‘Introducción’, in Fussell, La Gran Guerra y la memoria moderna, trad. Alfaya & McShane, i–vi (p. ii).

30 Fussell, La Gran Guerra y la memoria moderna, trad. Alfaya & McShane, 233–39.

31 Rose Spijkerman, ‘ “But Courage! We Have to Win and We Shall Win!” War and Emotion: The Diary of Clément de Waele’, in ‘From the Front’, ed. Artico, 45–53 (p. 50).

32 Hynes, A War Imagined, 116.

33 Frederic Pujulà, En el repòs de la trinxera. Cartes del soldat a l’amic, ed. Joaquim Martí (Barcelona: Edicions de 1984, 2006 [1ª ed. Barcelona: Antoni López, 1918]), 10–11.

34 Sylvie Crinquand, ‘Mud Shells, and a Few Words: The Great War Told by Two British Soldiers in Their Diaries’, in ‘From the Front’, ed. Artico, 41–44 (p. 42).

35 Pujulà, ‘A Salvador Albert’, in En el repòs de la trinxera, ed. Martí, 19–22 (p. 22).

36 Joaquim Folguera, ‘Literatura del frente: Frederic Pujulà i Vallès’, La Publicidad, 5 January 1919, p. 3, included in Joaquim Folguera, Articles (Barcelona: La Revista, 1920), 131–37 (p. 131).

37 Folguera, ‘Literatura del frente’.

38 Folguera, ‘Literatura del frente’.

39 Folguera, ‘Literatura del frente’.

40 Domènec Bellmunt, ‘Llibres de guerra’, La Campana de Gràcia, 7 December 1929, p. 2.

41 Ignacio Ramos Gay, ‘El teatro francés en el frente’, in Letras desde la trinchera, ed. Manuel & Ramos Gay, 119–31 (pp. 121–23).

* Disclosure Statement: No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.