'What ish my nation?' This question by the clownish Captain MacMorris in Shakespeare's Henry V (Act III, Scene ii, line 136) has more than once been alluded to by the Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney, e.g., in the poem 'Traditions' from the collection Wintering Out (1972). Long before winning the Nobel Prize, Heaney was already a poet of world stature, and has an assured place in any future canon of English literature. But, as a person with deep roots in the soil of Ireland, specifically in Northern Ireland and rural County Derry, he would never describe himself as English or British, despite his somewhat rueful recognition in this poem that

Heaney is a paradigm case of the issues I wish to discuss in relation to Carme Riera. Though, like most people growing up in a Catholic and nationalist environment in Northern Ireland, he learned Gaelic as a school subject, he is not a Gaelic speaker, though he remains deeply conscious of his Celtic heritage. At the same time, however, he refuses to reject any of the influences which have made him the person and the writer that he is. His education was conducted through the English language, and his activity as a poet, together with his professional career as a university teacher and researcher in literatures written in English, have reinforced his citizenship of a larger linguistic and cultural universe. It is within this context that his Irish identity can be asserted:

Few would claim that Carme Riera is a writer of the same stature as Heaney, but her situation is nevertheless in some respects comparable. Inevitably, given the restrictions on the use of Catalan which operated during her formative years in the 1950s and 1960s, her schooling and university education were conducted entirely through the official language of the Spanish state. There was, in addition, a domestic factor. Her father was from Majorca, her mother from Barcelona, but when they met at university, they spoke Castilian so as to be able to understand each other.(3) Her first writings, at the age of seven, were in Castilian,(4) and her citizenship of the Castilian linguistic and cultural universe, and of the wider literary world, was reinforced by her choice of profession, first as a professora d'institut, and currently as Professor of Spanish Literature at the Universidad Autònoma de Barcelona: '[el castellano] era la lengua cultural, la de los libros'.(5) Though she has frequently described herself as completely bilingual, she has also admitted that she is more fluent in Castilian: even after taking the decision to write in Catalan, she has often had to consult the dictionary to check Majorcan vocabulary. There is, nevertheless, an important difference between the two writers, stemming from the different history and status of the languages in which they have chosen to write. It is much easier for Heaney to express his Irish identity through English, as the territory of 'Anglo-Irish' literature offers opportunities which, however ambivalent, are ultimately liberating.(6) There is, however, no equivalent category for Catalan writers, who, if they choose to write in Castilian, are deemed to belong to the Castilian literary universe: Mendoza and Vázquez Montalbán, for example, are rarely, if ever, included in surveys of the novel in Catalonia. Consequently, the assertion of a Catalan identity entails a deliberate decision to write in that language, a fortiori because the ending of the Franco regime, in the year in which Riera published her first collection of short stories (Te deix, amor, la mar com a penyora, 1975), gave renewed impetus to what had been, throughout the dictatorship, a normal means of communication among the majority of the population of Catalonia (by contrast with the situation of Gaelic in Ireland and Scotland), and, for over a century, a literary language of considerable vitality.
Except for critical writing undertaken for professional and academic purposes, everything which Riera has published since 1975 has been written first in Catalan. She does, however, reserve the right to move freely between both cultures, and with few exceptions all her creative writing has been very quickly re-issued in Castilian. 'When I translate something I have written, I often find that the text does not "work" in Castilian, and so rather than translate I write a new version'.(7) She has even said that one version influences the revision of the other: after the work has been published in Castilian, she can sometimes think of better ways of expressing the ideas in Catalan.(8)
Moving flexibly between both cultures also gives Riera a certain detachment, which enables her to indulge in gently humorous criticism of cultural institutions which have become fossilised and lacking in self-awareness. 'Princesa meva, lletra d'àngel', in the collection Contra l'amor en companyia i altres relats (1991), consists of the correspondence between Antoni Barba i Callicó, a returned republican exile from the Civil War, and a putative correspondent who signs herself Cèlia Callicó i Alvareda, who he believes might be a relative. In reality, however, the letters are computerised form-letters sent out by a commercial firm, Catalanitat, S.A., offering discounts on suitably patriotic but not very useful products like La Gran Història de la Sardana (in three volumes, with a reproduction of the Verge de Montserrat thrown in for a prompt reply), and an alarm clock which will play the Cant dels segadors. In 'La petició', from the same collection, an unsuccessful middle-aged writer planning to write a novel which includes scenes of prison life wants to experience the reality of prison at first hand, and applies to the relevant Conselleria for permission to spend time in Wad Ras, the Barcelona women's penitentiary. After repeated delays over several months, and interminable form-filling, she is finally granted an interview with the 'cap dels Serveis', who is described as 'ex-missacantant, militant de Coincidència i pujolista convençut fins en els tics'.(9) This individual is a typical bureaucrat, whose constant lapses into Castilian suggest that he is a leftover from the previous regime: 'Ojalá, vull dir tant de bo...'; 'Bueno, vull dir bé...'.(10) Moreover, the obstacles being put in the way of the novelist's plan to become an prison inmate stem, ironically, from the very achievement of Catalan autonomy which she had always supported:

-...Voldria saber per quin tipus de delicte hom pot condemnar una persona a presó durante un màxim de tres mesos...
-Abans, senyora, li hauria estat més fàcil. Bastava cridar: "Visca Catalunya lliure" o parlar malament del govern. Per sort, ara, amb la democràcia, les coses han anat canviant... (132).

Despite this critical detachment, however, it is clear that Riera's sense of identity, both as a person and as a writer, is bound up with her Majorcan roots. Her Catalan shows unmistakable mallorquí features, the frequency of which varies with the setting and subject-matter of her writings. They are most prominent when the narrator is someone like the uneducated grandmother of 'Noltros no hem tengut sort amb sos homos...', who uses throughout the mallorquí articles es and sa for el and la.(11) But the sophisticated cosmopolitan narrator of 'Retorn a casa' also uses features such as 'ma mare, mon pare' (Contra l'amor..., 11-22), and even in Joc de miralls (1989), which is set partly in Barcelona, partly in a fictitious Latin American country, the verb forms are mallorquí: 'No corr...el mateix perill'; 'Pens que...'; 'M'adon que...'; 'imagín que...'.(12) It seems clear that the use of mallorquí expresses the deepest roots of the writer's personality, and of her most important formative experiences, and those of her characters, where these share the same background.
Nevertheless, as a writer and literary scholar, Riera belongs to a worldwide fellowship, however strong her roots in a particular culture. She cannot therefore become fully immersed in one culture to the exclusion of others, without foregoing the insights and perspectives that other cultures can offer. This creative tension is potentially enriching, but there is a high price to pay, in a certain sense of incompleteness of the self when functioning within one or other system. Interviewed by Kathleen Glenn in June 1996, she declared: 'The sensation of being divided, split in two, has pursued me my entire life'.(13)
This is a constant theme in much of Riera's work, and is given particularly dramatic expression in the story 'Mon semblable, mon frère', in Contra l'amor.... At the end of this story, the narrator reads a posthumous letter from the other main character, who has just taken his own life:

En Rafel...estava convençut que nosaltres dos formàvem part d'un mateix ésser, d'una mateixa persona, i al.ludia al Banquet platònic i a la teoria d'Aristòfanes (61).

This is the most explicit among several references by Riera to the speech of Aristophanes in Plato's Symposium, which, as is well known, takes the form of a discussion on love. Aristophanes begins his contribution by explaining that there were originally three genders, male, female and combined, all three having two sets of limbs and organs. In time, however, humans became proud and rebellious, and tried to attack the gods, so as a punishment Zeus decided to cut each person in half. Aristophanes uses this to explain the existence of sexual love, both hetero- and homosexual: 'It was their very essence that had been split in two, so each half missed its other half and tried to be with it...Love draws our original nature back together; he tries to reintegrate us and heal the split in our nature'.(14)
The overwhelming majority of Riera's characters, with the notable exception of the protagonist of the title-story 'Contra l'amor en companyia', who is 'Enamorada de si mateixa, en pau amb el món [en] la felicitat de l'onanisme...' (74), constantly experience this sense of incompleteness, and the corresponding need to strive for reintegration of the self through a significant, though rarely happy or fulfilling relationship with another person. Even when a short story appears to take the form of a monologue, as occurs frequently in the first two collections, Te deix, amor, la mar com a penyora and Jo pos per testimoni les gavines, there is nearly always the implied presence of a listener: 'No se pensi que no li ho vull contar'; 'Vostè no sap quina casa tan neta que tenia!!!'; 'Idò jo, no és per dir-ho, de jove embellia. Vostè pensarà que no ho pareix, perquè me veu esclafada...'(15)
'Mon semblable, mon frère' brings together all the themes I have been discussing so far. The narrator, José Joaquín Díaz de Benjumea, recapitulates the story of his relationship with Rafel Recasens, in order, as he sees it, to correct the erroneous accounts which have been circulating since Rafel's suicide. José Joaquín is bilingual, but his dominant language is Castilian. Rafel, on the other hand, is a Catalan speaker: though his parents were Civil War exiles in France, where he spent much of his childhood, they returned to Barcelona in the mid-1940s, 'perquè els seus fills poguessin educar-se en contacte directe amb la llengua dels seus avantpassats' (43).
Both characters have an uneasy and ambivalent relationship with their respective cultures, and, indeed, have difficulty in knowing for certain which is their 'own' culture. When Rafel begins to develop his literary career as poet, he writes in French rather than Catalan, 'aquesta llengua que se'm resisteix, puta llengua de saltataulells i fabricants' (55). Though Catalan is his dominant language, his poetic compositions in Catalan are described by José Joaquín as 'exercicis escolars. Els mancaba qualsevol tipus d'alè poètic. Eren fets de cartó pedra' (45). By contrast, Rafel's verses in French 'eren d'una perfecció formal i d'una brillantor insòlites' (43). It is as if Rafel, in order to express himself, needs to adopt a different persona, to get outside the cultural milieu in which he now lives, and seek a sense of completion, not only through his membership of the wider cultural world, but in imitation of a specific artistic model: 'estavan escrits...en un francès excel.lent de connaisseur autèntic capaç de fer servir els girs més genuïns. A més eren perfectament escandits i es pareixien a Les tableaux parisiens de Baudelaire. Li ho vaig dir i va ser el millor compliment que haguès pogut fer-li, perquè la seva intenció no era altra que seguir el mestre, fins a poder esser confós amb ell' (43-4).
In order to reach his 'own' cultural community, by publishing his work in Catalan, Rafel needs to rely on José Joaquín, who translates his poems from French: 'Vaig néixer a la literatura com a traductor d'una llengua que si no m'és desconeguda, tot al contrari, mai no he sentit com a pròpia i que, no obstant això, me pareix més idònia per la poesia que el mateix castellà. La meva és massa dura. El fet que no tingui vocals neutres li fa perdre moltes possibilitats musicals' (46). Like Rafel, José Joaquín, in order to write, has to move out of the linguistic milieu in which he is most at home. Moreover, his efforts to write in his dominant language (Castilian) are unsuccessful, as are Rafel's with Catalan. José Joaquín's Extrarradios is a spectacular failure, selling 50 copies out of the 750 printed, and the remainder are ceremonially burnt. By contrast, L'ou com balla, José Joaquín's Catalan translation of Rafel's first collection of French poems, reaches a second edition and establishes Rafel's reputation as a writer.
At no stage, however, does Rafel acknowledge publicly José Joaquín's role as translator. In fact, he even uses, without attribution, material from Extrarradios in his own collection of poems composed directly in Catalan, Aigua passada. The similarities between the two texts place José Joaquín in a false position in literary circles, owing to the erroneous belief that Aigua passada influenced Extrarradios rather than vice versa. The culmination of this equivocal situation comes when Rafel receives several literary prizes for a poem written entirely by José Joaquín (first in Castilian, then translated into Catalan), Rafel's only contribution being the title Els miralls. The ultimate effect is to consolidate Rafel's reputation as a 'poeta nacional' ('l'obra d'en Rafel és estudiada vora la d'Ausiàs March i Espriu a les escoles' [48]), who after his death lies in state in the Palau de Sant Jaume covered with the senyera. Thereafter, it is impossible for José Joaquín to persuade the literary world of the truth about their relationship.
At one level, the story can be read as a satire on literary institutions, reflecting Riera's detachment from the Catalan cultural establishment of which I gave some examples above.(16) It shows, with sharp-edged irony, how bogus literary careers can be fostered by, for example, well-placed mentors such as Rafel's former teacher, Canals, who has influence over certain journals. The literary world is portrayed as riddled with dishonesty and cowardice: José Joaquín confesses at the outset of the story that two years previously, he remained silent when false accounts of Rafel's life were being circulated, because he was a candidate for the Premi Nacional d'Arts Plàstiques, and Rafel's cousin Lluis was a member of the jury. Cultural nationalism is shown in a very poor light, for even those who know about the mediating role of José Joaquín conspire to suppress this information, in the interests of preserving the image of Rafel as 'un exemple inqüestionable per al recobrament de la llengua pàtria' (60). Floating unseen over the whole novella is the unquoted part of Baudelaire's verse: '- Hypocrite lecteur, - mon semblable, - mon frère!' (my emphasis),(17) which characterises not only the gullibility of Rafel's putative readers, but also our own complicity in Riera's ironic undermining of the self-perception of the characters. As Francesco Ardolino has remarked, 'Tot això requereix un lector consentidor i expert que sàpiga destriar entre les trampes del text'.(18)
This portrayal of the equivocal nature of the literary profession is the expression of a deeper concern which is central to all Riera's work, namely, the ambivalent nature of human personality. As we have seen, the individual's sense of identity is dependent for its completion on interrelation with, and recognition by another person. 'Me muevo,' Riera has said, 'nos movemos muchos, entre el individualismo y la necesidad de solidaridad.'(19) The early collections of short stories are full of lonely characters constantly striving to establish human contact with another. But this need is in conflict with the desire to protect the most intimate and vulnerable parts of the self from scrutiny. The protagonist of 'Que hi és n'Àngela?', for example, takes to telephoning complete strangers asking for a fictitious Àngela 'el qual la posaria en contacte amb altres persones, preservant la seva intimitat, amb l'avantatge de no ésser reconeguda'.(20)
For the writer, the problem is doubly acute, for by definition the literary vocation involves the interplay of several conflicting impulses. Most writing is, in one sense or another, a journey of self-discovery, and the urge to disclose deeper and deeper layers of the self has an irresistible power.(21) As Rafel says, he writes 'per pura necessitat, per saber qui soc i no enfollir' (58). This is less problematic if the writing activity remains private, but the decision to publish entails exposing one's innermost being to the public gaze. The temptation to adopt a certain persona, which, almost inescapably, contains a large portion of falsehood, is strong. Furthermore, the attempt to communicate with readers who, like the writer, inhabit at least one particular cultural context, and sometimes more, imposes the practical necessity of working within recognisable frameworks, and consequently the writing persona can become parasitic on pre-existing models: Rafel's ambition, when he pens his early literary efforts in French, is, as we have seen, to imitate Baudelaire, 'fins a poder ésser confós amb ell' (44). As Riera herself has said in another context, '...todo se lo dan mascado...cada vez tenemos menos imaginación'.(22)
The problem is compounded by the fact that the writer's expressive resources are bounded by the limitations of the language in which he chooses to write. For José Joaquín, Catalan is, as he tells Rafel, 'la teva llengua fraudulenta' (57). When he finally accepts that he has no real poetic voice in his own language, but only indirectly as a translator, he finds what he believes to be his true artistic vocation in the silent activity of painting: 'El veritablement fonamental era la pintura, en la qual podia exposar un mon propi sense entrebancs de llengues' (57, my emphasis). Rafel, on the other hand, can only become a 'poeta nacional' in a language which his writing self does not fully command, by virtue of José Joaquín's translations: 'Depenc de tu, mon semblable, mon frère' (54).
The mutual dependency of the two characters, however, is merely a symptom of the inescapably incestuous and parasitic nature of the literary enterprise, which makes it impossible to develop a distinctive and original voice. Referring to another work, Qüestió d'amor propi (1987), Francesco Ardolino comments: '...els personatges estan immersos en un univers semiòtic on qualsevol acció, qualsevol pensament forma part d'una trama de referències literàries.'(23) Despite his shortcomings as a poet in Castilian, José Joaquín does achieve a modest success when he wins the Boscán Prize for his Sinfonía en gris menor, though this is made possible only because Rafel takes it on himself to publish the poem without consulting him. His title, however, is derivative, having already been employed by Marie Krysinska (1864-1908) in her Symphonie en gris, and by Monet in his 1892 painting of Rouen Cathedral, which is usually called Symphonie en gris et rose.(24) It also evokes echoes of Whistler's Symphony in White: The White Girl,(25) and of a series of works by this painter with titles beginning Arrangement in Grey and... Furthermore, José Joaquín's last work, Els miralls, written entirely in Castilian, and then translated into Catalan, has the same title as a poem by Gabriel Ferrater and a 1970 collection by Pere Gimferrer. This was Gimferrer's first collection in Catalan, and he also worked as a translator of Catalan poets into Castilian, including Ferrater, and of works in other languages into Castilian.(26)
Even knowing all he knows about Rafel's ingratitude and unscrupulous plagiarism, José Joaquín continues to translate his poems, and this suggests that he is responding to a mysterious inner urge, as if each sought to reunite with the other half of his self, to heal the sense of being split in two to which Riera referred in the interview quoted above. Throughout the novella, their physical similarity to each other is emphasised: when José Joaquín first meets Rafel, he is unpleasingly aware of 'El seu aspecte arrogant, l'aire fanfarró i com familiar, de germà gran i més guapo...' (41), a reaction which, as he learns much later, is identical to the one which he provoked in Rafel. When José Joaquín paints a double portrait of himself and Rafel, using a mirror, he tries to 'copsar la semblança, que els anys havien accentuat encara més', and to capture that 'barreja d'afecte i menyspreu, de rebuig i d'estimació, agressivitat i confiança amb què ens mirem. "Com si no fossim més que una sola persona", em digué de sobte [Rafel]...' (49).
But they are not, and can never be 'una sola persona': the split cannot be healed, nor wholeness achieved. José Joaquín chooses to take the view that it was Rafel's awareness of this incompleteness, and of his dependency on his friend's translations, that brought about his suicide:

En aquestes alçades sé que la meva capacitat literària només estigué al servei d'en Rafel, però que en Rafel, i això potser fou el que l'abocà a l'autodestrucció, sense mi no haria estat més que un versificador ignorat, de diumenge de capvespre, i en francès, a més a més'. (59)

For his part, however, José Joaquín is hardly entitled to take this posture of self-satisfied detachment. Throughout most (though, significantly, not all) of the story, he seeks to present himself in the best possible light, by projecting himself as the long-suffering and uncomplaining victim of Rafel's duplicity and manipulation, and taking pleasure in reporting the success of his career as a painter. But the ending of the novella simply confirms their indispensability to each other, and the inescapable reality that to be a writer, especially one who crosses linguistic and cultural boundaries, is to live in a love-hate relationship with both parts of the divided self: '...el vers de Baudelaire que ens agradava tant citar no era un simple pretext literari, sinó quelcom més profund, que ens estava predestinat i ens perseguia com l'ombra al propi cos' (62). The dénouement is, symbolically, precipitated by José Joaquín's sending Els miralls to Rafel to publish if and how he wishes, but with a condition attached: because José Joaquín is '[posant] punt final a la nostra col.laboració' (58), the poem will be

el seu darrer poema [i.e, Rafel's], el seu comiat del mon literari, el seu adéu definitiu. En suma, el seu testament, en el qual el subjecte poètic, desdoblant-se, passa revista a la seva identitat inventada, a les humiliacions a que sotmet el seu "adelfos", que, com ell, té la mateixa estatura, els mateixos ulls marronencs i potser, sense saber-ho, la mateixa tendencia al vici nefand. Reflectint-se al fons del mirall-com en el quadre-, superposant-se al rostre d'en Rafel hi havia el meu propi rostre i eren tambè les meves mesquineses, els pactes humiliants amb la mediocritat, les transaccions vergonyoses amb la rutina, el desagradable gust a mi mateix... (59).

The only way out of this equivocal situation, it seems, is to kill off either the writing self or the 'real'one: 'Occir un mateix el jo més literari. Renunciar per sempre a l'escriptura-a la literatura-com a ùnica teràpia per evitar un suïcidi real' (59-60). But it is precisely this renunciation which brings about Rafel's death for by giving up writing (translating), José Joaquín thereby forces Rafel to fall silent, and to recognise implicitly that as a poet he has no distinctive identity, and must dwindle to being a poor imitator of Baudelaire. Before committing suicide, he writes a letter to José Joaquín in which, after the reference to the Symposium, quoted, above, he expresses his conviction that 'Els miralls no havia fet altra cosa que confirmar el que sabia. En el meu poema es resumia tot el que ell volia aportar a la literatura, tot el que ell volia escriure' (61-62).
But Rafel did not write Els miralls, so 'tot el que ell volia escriure' has been achieved by someone else. By the same token, however, by indirectly causing Rafel's death, José Joaquín has, even while achieving a kind of vengeance for his constant humiliations, killed part of himself: his own near-fatal illness coincides with the time of Rafel's suicide, and when he hears of his death, 'Fou molt més que una descàrrega de 220 volts o un cop brutal, como es diu en aquests casos. Fou com si m'haguessin xafat pel mig' (39, my emphasis). Not surprisingly, 'noto un buit terrible que no minva amb el pas del temps i, per contra, s'accentua' (62). José Joaquín's final boast that 'en nom de tots, tinc jo, amb raons suficients, la darrera paraula' is deeply ironic, for by effectively killing off Rafel, he has removed the only outlet for his Catalan writing, and is forced to recognise that, without this, he has no poetic gift in his own language, and must therefore fall silent, which, in an intertextual world, inevitably foreshadows his own eventual death.