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Jacobo Siruela has crowned eight years of effort in Mas Pou with his book El mundo bajo los párpados (The World Under Your Eyelids). He published it in the same month that Editorial Atalanta, the publishing company he founded with his wife Inka Marti celebrates its fifth anniversary. Their work in common proves that neither lacks ideas or the desire to fulfil them.
When I arrived in the Empordà I wasn’t thinking or this book, nor was I planning to found a publishing house. Yet such things don’t just shoot up like mushrooms, nor do they happen by chance. Publishing is my passion and I could not live without becoming excited about something that requires effort, precision, learning, and risk.
From the capital to Empordà
In the 90s, Jacobo led the publishing house Siruela in Madrid. Those were the days of the perverse alliance between large publishing corporations and ruthless literary agents that foretold the triumph of the market and the death of all things small, just as they now predict the death of paper. The truth is that the opposite is happening in the 21st C. The small publishing houses that have arisen in these last years have maintained track of quality and coherence through the writers they publish. The corporations that seek large market share are in crisis and are abusing their writers.
- Publishing is an art, yet I have chosen the artisan model. I am interested in the object. I oppose the electronic book. I find satisfaction in the sensuality of a book paired with the intellectual pleasure it provides. Gutenberg invented a perfect and easy to use technology. You can underline in a book, write in it, or put it in your pocket. To publish, you no longer need to be in a big city. Creativity and debate are on the web. In the countryside, you are connected through the Internet, the web, and Facebook. This cyber world permits you to specialize in whatever is of interest to you without social servitude or waste of time.
Some of the books Atalanta has published, such as the memoirs of Casanova, La historia de Genji, or the recent Jin Ping Mei are over 1200 pages long; they are well translated, perfectly designed and exquisitely bound.
Atalanta celebrates five years
Publishing is complicated. Many people take part; it’s a collective effort. The books we publish at Atalanta are rather complex. But Inka, our co-workers and I enjoy making books, that’s why we only publish ten each year. The memoirs of Casanova were a titanic effort of 3700 pages. It took us over three years to produce and emptied Atalanta's coffers for more than three months. But it was well received by the public, which is something that stimulates us and which we are grateful for.
The world of dreams
From the distance of the countryside, Jacobo Siruela has had sufficient time to investigate and reflect on the world of dreams. The result is a unique book that you read without a blink and that is full of wisdom. El mundo bajo los parpados reads like an adventure novel; it is full of the dreams of the thinkers and most important cultures in the history of humanity.
I read or consulted over 100 books during the eight years of research. Of course, the quality of what you read is more important than the quantity. The premise is different from psychoanalytic tradition. Freud didn’t invent the subconscious, although he did make it part of science. It was present in Sinesius of Corene, and it was perfectly explained in Psyche, the work of the romantic Carl Gustav Carus. Myths and popular fairy tales are strongly linked to the world of dreams. This book was made possible thanks to Inka and her dreams. Dreams are our second life of which we only know fragments.
Inka and Jacobo love the crazy and unyielding Empordà. This is a land of transients, and although part of the Mediterranean, its people are introvert and leave you alone. This is a wonderful land that made possible the transformation of a dream into a prestigious publishing house. We look forward to much more..// PEPE RIBAS FOTOS ANDREA FERRÉS
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