MALLORCA AND LITERATURE

Three works of literature situated in Mallorca, and from three different countries, have had great success: in "A Winter in Mallorca" (1842), the French author George Sand describes her stay with the composer Frédéric Chopin in Valldemossa, a picturesque village in the Tramuntana Mountain Range. Under the curious title "Jogging around Majorca" (1929), the English journalist Gordon West describes a trip around the island with such eloquence that after its rediscovery in 1994, the work was declared "travel book of the year" in the UK. Last, but not least, " The Island of Second Sight" (1953) by Albert Vigoleis Thelen is already a German literature classic.

In the 1930’s, a handful of American poets published a magazine in Mallorca, "Caravel", and in the 1950s, the legendary "Black Mountain Review" magazine was printed in Mallorca. Later on, the Nobel Prize for Literature Camilo Jose Cela and the great British poet Robert Graves also enriched the island’s cultural landscape.

A number of Mallorcan writers, such as Carme Riera, Baltasar Porcel and María de la Pau Janer, have conquered a place in international literature. But the Mallorcan author most studied worldwide is Ramón Llull, a missionary, philosopher and scholar of the 13^th century. He founded a school of Arabic language and culture for missionaries in the Miramar estate, the only institution with those characteristics that has ever existed.

Places of interest:

- Yanninck Ben Jacober Collection, Alcudia (Art).

- S'Albufera Museum, Alcudia (Science and Nature).

- Ethnological section of the Mallorca Museum, Muro (Ethnology).

- Pollentia Monograph Museum, Alcudia (History).

- Sany Jaume Parish Museum, Alcudia (Religion).

- Puig de Maria Sanctuary Museum, Pollensa (Religion).

- Municipal Museum, Pollensa.

- Archaeological site of Pollentia, Alcudia.