One of the driving forces of Catalan literature in the twentieth century has been the determination to modernize, the feeling that it was imperative to look to Europe and not to gaze back fondly over the glories of Spain's erstwhile empire. But to identify oneself culturally with things Catalan was to accept not only a language but a tradition and a sense of nationhood that could be restored by looking back at history. Modern Catalan culture is characterized by this push and pull between tradition and innovation. Catalan writers have had to compensate for the fact that, in living memory, their country was relegated to a peripheral and often subordinate role in a version of Spanish history and culture determined by Madrid. They have done so by committing themselves to the modern as much as the traditional. In 1906 Eugeni d’Ors coined the term noucentisme to differentiate emerging Catalan modes and styles from turn-of-the-century modernisme. Both terms bear witness to the Catalan determination to engage with all things modern.

Caterina Albert i Paradís, a writer who sheltered from the public gaze behind the pseudonym ‘Víctor Català’, published in 1905 what was to become a trail-blazing novel, *Solitud. It tells the story of a young woman, Mila, whose marriage falls apart when she realizes her husband can offer her neither material comfort nor sexual satisfaction. As it turns out, he cannot even offer her protection: when she is raped by the villain of the piece, known only by his Jungian-sounding nickname ‘l’Ànima’, he turns a blind eye to what has happened, and there is even a hint that he may have been complicit in it. The basic plot is as black-and-white as it could be: an earnest young woman, a wise old man (assassinated by the villain), a frustrated love interest, a spineless husband, and a thoroughly evil villain. Yet even today the novel has an extraordinary impact on the reader: the narrative is vivid, and the descriptions evocative. The novel begins with a physical ascent and ends with the protagonist's return to the plain below. That physical progression contrasts with the moral temper of the story which turns the climb into a descent into a spiritual hell and the final descent into the moment when the protagonist comes of age.