This preamble serves to introduce the texts of two great writers and splendid storytellers who made Mallorca their home. Anceu a l’orta dels oranges, one of the Mallorcan tales and prologue to the book El vellocino de oro by Robert Graves and the Fábula del poeta a la illa, by Camilo José Cela. Free, complex, particular characters with a great worldwide projection for their literary quality and great sensitivity in showing the uncertainties of human existence and the truth of the poet possessed by the muse. In addition to being wonderful writings, it highlights the temperament of the Mallorcans and the weight that the matriarchy has had on the islands.
I recommend the readings, they inspire and amaze, they are texts that like those of the splendid youth by the sea described by Camus and those of Ithaca dreamed of Kavafis give meaning to the Mediterranean universe and I make them prologue to The New Ithaca of the Mediterranean, the exhibition I started on the Paseo de Can Picafort in the summer of 2016 with four sculptural groups and now expanded to ten in Son Serra de Marina, Santa Margalida and Can Picafort. They are already part of the bay landscape, they smell like sea breeze, sand and seaweed and take us back to the stories of a past where heroes are humanised gods, human argonauts indebted to their social being and the source of the lifelong journey of learning and knowledge. Ithaca is the dream of the home, the desired island where man unites with man and man with nature.
Today, the strength of common sense, thought, beauty, balance and harmony is why I feel part of and share the same humanity with the past.