By Alma Deane, Library Assistant, Special Collections & Archives
As a new member of the Special Collections & Archives team here in Maynooth University, I have the wonderful opportunity to browse through our immense collection of books each day.
Whilst cataloguing a new collection of books from Pearse Hutchinson’s collection, I came across a beautiful book that took me by surprise. This book titled Quadern de Fornells by Àlex Susanna, is a compilation of diary-like notebook entries documenting the author’s visits during the summer months to the town of Fornells on the Balearic Island of Menorca.
Firstly, it is interesting to note that this book is written in Catalan, the official language of the Balearic Islands. It’s no surprise that this item is included in Pearse Hutchinson’s collection, as he learned several languages throughout his lifetime. In 1954, he travelled to Barcelona where he learned Catalan and became acquainted with well-known Catalan poets. The author Àlex Susanna is a Spanish and Catalan poet, so this book would have been of great interest to Hutchinson.
This book particularly interested me as I spent the summer of 2022 in Menorca working in Fornells bay as a sailing instructor. For this reason, I was delighted to come across this book and to read someone else’s experiences of living on the same beautiful island. Susanna writes about four summers he spent there, from 1992 to 1995, and I was amazed at how similar our experiences were of life in Fornells, thirty years apart.
As Susanna was a poet, the subjects of these diary entries vary between describing day-to-day life, to finding inspiration from the island for his work, as well as visiting friends and painters around the island.
Figure 1: Platges de Fornells, Menorca
In an entry from the 16th July 1994, Susanna describes the mornings in Mahón, the capital of Menorca, which seemed to have a similar schedule to my instructor life; “Around 8 o’clock in the morning, the ship breaks the waters.” During my time in Menorca, I lived in the town of Ses Salines, a short walk from Fornells, and I too started work at 8 o’clock each day by launching boats into the water.
While sailing around Fornells bay every day, you experience all sorts of weather, from calm seas, to violent thunderstorms. It seems Susanna, a keen fisher, also had to tackle these ever-changing weather conditions. On an evening fishing trip in Fornells bay, Susanna, heading south towards Ses Salines, explains how “The bay as almost always at this time, is calm. The sun licks the anchored sailboats for the last time.” This was a typical evening, just as the sun is about to go down, the wind dies and the conditions certainly for fishing would have been perfect.
Contrary to these calm evenings, thunderstorms are common, particularly towards the end of the summer. Menorca is known as the windy island, and Susanna captures this in his book; “It is a great coast, devastated, jagged and gnawed by all kinds of storms.” One such storm appeared on the 21st August 1994, that lasted for several days; “By the fifth day it was impossible with our boats to leave the bay,” as the “wind was not lacking and we were inevitably stuck on land.” This reminded me of my experience of thunderstorms in late August 2022, and how I was also stuck on land, unable to go out sailing. As my days revolved around being out at sea, during these storms it seemed, just like Susanna, that I didn’t know how to occupy myself.
Figure 2: SP PH 288 Front Cover Figure 3: SP PH 288 Back Cover
Regardless, these storms die down and the sea returns to its calm and peaceful self again. Sailing continues, and fishermen can be seen out on their boats once more. Susanna describes this calmness after the storm as “A sea of silver – tired of so much uproar, today it was an ironed and smooth surface.”
Overall, this is a wonderful book that gives a great insight into Àlex Susanna’s life whilst living in Menorca, which I found to be very relatable and enjoyable.
This collection of Pearse Hutchinson’s books is currently being catalogued and will be available soon to readers in our Special Collections & archives department at Maynooth University Library.
MU Library Treasures 