Martí Domínguez

The fact is that everything – or just about everything – is part of my literary activity. My interest in biology and history of art, my vocation as a journalist, my work as a novelist, all of it somehow links up and, from the different connections, I keep getting a written return. There is no lived "material" that doesn't somehow "materialise": the writer has a bit of the cast-iron worker in him and keeps forging a collage, here and there, of his experiences.

Right now, I'm finishing the third novel of a trilogy devoted to the Enlightenment (preceded by novels on Buffon and Goethe), which describes the last years of one of the most important writers of the Age of Enlightenment. I'm especially interested in the wavering and contradictory man but also the banished writer, hounded even after his death; in the implacable persecution suffered by freethinkers (which we Valencians understand so well) in a world marked by obscurity and superstition. It is a novel that seeks to inquire more deeply into the exile of an intellectual, the ferocious daily struggle of the outsider, of the idealist. Now I'm also working on my next novel, which is of a different nature and set in the city of Valencia, in my own time.

In the field of the essay, I'm particularly attracted to nature and its relationship with man. My articles in the weekly El Temps (now collected into two books, Peiximinuti [Small Fry] and Bestiari [Bestiary]) attempt to look into these relations in a sort of glossary of nature studded with literary perceptions, scientific discoveries and artistic nuance. Here, I'm chiefly interested in the relationship that is established between art and science, especially in the age of the Renaissance. I've been working in this domain with a series of articles I'd like to expand and turn into a book at some future date. However, in the background, more than the investigative inducement, is pure narrative aspiration. What I love is the act, the phenomenon of writing, and communicating a way of understanding life. It is this impulse – this compulsion – that incites me to write, and to live too.

It's been said...

Martí Domínguez's novels have marked out a new space in Catalan literature. In this regard, it might be interesting to compare Les confidències del comte de Buffon [The Confidences of Count Buffon] with Antoni Marí's El camí de Vincennes [The Way to Vincennes], or with Alfred Bosch's L'atles furtiu [The Furtive Atlas], which was constructed around the figure of Abraham Cresques, author of The Catalan Atlas. In Les confidències del comte de Buffon, Martí Domínguez expands on the tensions between different personalities and scientific schools, although the nucleus of the story is not so much ideas as personalities. He writes in an expository style and presents the different theories literally, nuancing them with the views of the narrator who is looking back over his life. As in a historical novel of scientific bent, he pulls together a great deal of information and news of the times, composing scenes that make one relive the moment and drawing the reader's attention towards everyday life. Rarely has this been achieved with more naturalness and rigour. Historical facts, presented with total modesty, are more appealing than great discourses and flights of the imagination. From this standpoint, Martí Domínguez's work can be read as a sort of countercurrent literary manifesto. The main character of Joan Perucho's Les histories naturals [Natural History] is a scientist who seeks security in the rational order of the world and, who through contact with the supernatural, discovers poetry. Buffon, Tischbein and Goethe are vital, passionate characters who find in observation and study a way to establish a niche in the world and fulfil themselves as men. Buffon, who discovers his humanity in disciplined, patient labour, is the best-rounded character, a new kind of hero who bases his grandeur in measurement. Tischbein introduces an element of imbalance, fear of the future and doubts as to his own ability, while Goethe appears as a creation of the painter trapped by his own contingency. Will the third part of the trilogy delve further into this imbalance to tip us wholly into modern times?
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