calador.org

A place to search, find and radiate from[1]

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As English is fast becoming a global lingua franca, we owe it to have as many examples of other literatures as possible.  

Too often books published in English mention — only too discreetly— that the author wrote the book in another language. One should therefore not be surprised if readers in English should assume that Milan Kundera and Albert Camus wrote in English...

Ultimately our aim will be to bring to English as many translations from other languages as possible.  Éditions calador.org Publishing will only be limited by the means it has.

Because the history of the Mediterranean has shaped mankind, we will start with translations of historical novels written in the languages of the peoples of the Mediterranean.   

It is argued that the Renaissance started in Italy when Dante Alighieri stopped using Latin, and started writing the Divine Comedy in Italian for “everybody”, schooled or not.  There is more to the Renaissance than just that; nevertheless the general perception still is that books in the local vernacular were the stepping stone of Church and Roman independent thinking; with that independent thinking and the contribution of the ‘humanists’, the world witnessed the Rinascimento: the “rebirth” of man.  

What is less known however, is that the first poem in a vernacular language is probably a poem by the Georgian Shotha Rustaveli (1172-1216); but, nearly a third of a century before Dante wrote his Divine Comedy (between 1308 and 1321), Ramon Llull, a Mallorcan (Catalan) philosopher and very prolific writer, had written (around 1283 AD) the, arguably, first European novel: Blanquerna.

 This means that, having opened the mind of people not schooled in Latin, one could argue that both the Georgian Shotha Rustaveli and the Catalan Ramon Llull were the first to launch the essence of the Renaissance.  

There is much more to the Catalan fact; for instance, at a time when Christendom was made very uneasy by its most threatening power: that of the Turks; it fell to the Papal States to show leadership. Who showed that leadership? Catalan Popes... Catalan Popes? The “Italian” dynasty of the Borgia was issued from a Valencian family of Aragonese ancestry. The Borgias were infamous in their time, and their lurid career has inspired numerous novels, plays, operas, and films. What is less remembered is that (the Catalan) Pope Alexander VI steered Christendom in a most able manner against the Turks who, having conquered Constantinople, pressed into the Balkans and the Mediterranean.

These facts on their own are worth knowing a little bit more about Catalan, the people, the culture, and the history as perceived by talented visionaries, because:

the difference between history and fiction is that fiction makes sense.

Contact Information

Pierre Vandelac, translator

Telephone             + 1(819) 309-0512

(Toll free USA and Canada : (888) 309-0512

Postal address 501 Papineau, Montebello, (QC), J0V 1L0 Canada

Electronic mail info@calador.org and pierre@vandelac.ca

General Information: info@calador.org

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[1] calador is a Catalan word a net “fishing ground”. “Lloc apte per calar-hi xarxes”; Source: Diccionari català-valencià-balear (DCVB) d’A. M. Alcover i F. de B. Moll. (by extensión a place to find (fish)).

calador is a Spanish word meaning “searching tool”. Source: OED Bibliography: Percival, Richard, Bibliotheca Hispanica. Containing a grammar, with a dictionarie in Spanish, English, and Latine 1591.

Cala d’Or is a resort on the southeastern coast of Mallorca. Until the late twenties the only structure was a sheep-house. An artistic visionary, Don Pep Costa, journalist and art dealer in Palma de Mallorca noticed early in the twentieth century that successful northern painters came south in winter to paint. Their studios in, say Belgium, were exposed to the north giving a softer light. In winter that light was unsatisfactory; successful artists could not afford four months holidays so they came to the Mediterranean, Ibiza notably, in search of a ‘good, light’. In January 1933 Don Pep bought the first 106,000 sq. metres of land. With a dozen equally artistically inclined friends they founded the original urbanisation which consisted of 48 lots. In 1933, three of those lots on the Caló de ses Dones (The ‘Ladies’ Cove’, now the Cala d’Or) were sold to an important Bruxelles wine merchant with an exclusive right to build a ‘hotel of at least 30 rooms’... Cala d’Or now has over 10,000 beds in 51 hotels...

And so, the Hotel Cala d’Or was built using sandstone arches to support the upper three floors. (Although steel beams existed, transport was the problem; the road was winding and most of not paved...) In any case it soon became a meeting place for (successful) artists and people affluent enough to own a second house.

Pierre Vandelac’s mother brought her son and daughter to Mallorca in 1950, aschildren were lucky enough to spend their summers in Cala d’Or from the ages of 12,. to 30 for Pierre, (his sister Loulou is still there, with husband, children and grandchild(?ren)); it was a time spent meeting and learning from people. A time that he equates with ‘finding out, discovering and learning...’

calador by extension: a place to find and search (for fish); now, the purpose of the exercise being to inform, we add radiate from.

The logo is a “radiating” Australian aboriginal sign for “meeting place” which, combined with calador, purports to express:

"A place to find, search further and radiate from”.