Mar i Cel

Happy International Kiss Day!

Have a photo of the Sicilian actor Giovanni Grasso kissing the Catalan playwright and poet Àngel Guimerà (1845-1924).

Grasso played the main character in the Sicilian version of Guimerà's world-famous play Terra Baixa (translated to English as Martha of the Lowlands). The Sicilian language tour became a big hit especially in Argentina (there was a large number of Sicilian immigrants in Argentina). Some letters between the two have been preserved, showing the very close and sweet relation between Guimerà and Grasso.

Guimerà was most likely homosexual from what we can tell by his letters, life, and his exploration of the inability to have biological children in his play The Spider (L'aranya). He is buried in the same tomb as the journalist and pro-Catalan politician Pere Aldavert. Guimerà and Aldavert lived together for half of their life and gave each other mutual powers in front of a notary on Saint Valentine's Day of the year 1910.

If you would like to learn more about Àngel Guimerà and how he was candidate for the Nobel Literature Prize 17 years in a row but blocked as part of Spain's discrimination against the Catalan language, you'll find it in my previous post linked here.

Nowadays, he remains one of the most respected and loved theatre authors in the whole history of Catalan literature.