Maria Mercè Marçal

Maria Mercè Marçal i Serra (13 November 1952 – 5 July 1998) was a Catalan poet, professor, writer and translator from Spain.

Marçal was born in Barcelona but spent her childhood in Ivars d'Urgell (Pla d'Urgell), which she considered her home.

Her mother was Maria Serra, a woman who loved theater and songs, and her father was Antoni Marçal, who had to leave college for family reasons.

She had a sister Magda.

She went to high-school in Lleida, at the Institut de Lleida, after receiving a scholarship.

She then studied literature at the University of Barcelona, earning a degree in Classical Philology there.

She went on to become a Professor of Catalan Language and Literature.

In 1972, Marçal married the poet Ramon Pinyol Balasch.

They separated some time afterward.

In 1973, she was co-founder of the publishing house Llibres del Mall with her husband and another young Catalan poet, Xavier Bru de Sala.

In 1976, Marçal's first book of poems Cau de llunes (winning the Carles Riba Prize), introduced by a splendid poetic sestina penned by Joan Brossa, includes the poem "Divisa," which is like a manifesto summarizing what guided her activism: To fate I am grateful for three gifts: having been born a woman,

of low class and oppressed nation.

And the turbid azure of being three times a rebel.

Marçal's influential second book, Bruixa de dol or Witch in Mourning (1979), has been translated into English.

In 1980, her daughter Heura was born, an experience that she transformed into tender poetry.

In 1992 she proposed the creation of Catalan Women Writers as part of the Catalan Centre for PEN.

She translated into Catalan works by both French and Russian writers: Colette, Marguerite Yourcenar, Anna Akhmatova, Marina Tsvetaeva, Baudelaire and Leonor Fini.

Her only novel, The Passion according to Renée Vivien, was published in 1994.

Following on from ten years of work researching the life and poetry of Vivien, this poetic almost-biographical novel won several awards such as the Premi Carlemany, Premi de la Crítica, the Prudenci Bertrana award, the Institució de les Lletres Catalanes award, the Crítica Serra d'Or prize and the Joan Crexells award.

Marçal died in Barcelona in 1998 of cancer, aged 45.

Marina Rossell, Teresa Rebull, Ramon Muntaner, Txiqui Berraondo, Maria del Mar Bonet, Celdoni Fonoll and Gisela Bellsolà have sung Marçal's poems.

It was translated into English and published by Francis Boutle Publishers in 2020.