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The literary DNA of two Cervantes awards

2020-02-20T21:56:56.796Z


Uruguayan poet Ida Vitale and Nicaraguan narrator Sergio Ramírez discuss the readings that have always accompanied them and the presence of writers in the Latin American protests


When Ida Vitale writes poetry he likes to read novels and stories and when Sergio Ramírez writes novels or stories he likes to read poetry. She seeks the spirit of the story so that her verses run and he the precision of the verses to prop up the worlds of her stories.

MORE INFORMATION

  • Margaret Atwood, Ida Vitale and the sound of birds
  • If today is April 23, this Cervantes award is called Ida Vitale
  • Sergio Ramírez dedicates his Cervantes Prize to “Nicaraguans killed these days for demanding justice”

Twenty-one years of life separate the last two Miguel de Cervantes Latin American awards. Ida Vitale with 96 years was born in Montevideo (Uruguay) on November 2, 1923 and Sergio Ramírez with 77 years was born in Masatepe (Nicaragua) on August 5, 1942.

Two writers specialized in different literary genres but united by word searches, the readings of The Thousand and One Nights and War and Peace and for the most important literary prize of the Spanish language: he obtained it the Cervantes in 2017 and at Next year she was the eternal candidate.

The two chat in a corner attached to the bar of a bar that years ago were the hall next to the chapel of the centenary convent of the Poor Clares, in Cartagena de Indias, now converted into a hotel. This morning of February 1, they are protected from the suffocating and humid heat of the Colombian city and the joyful bustle of those attending the XV Hay Festival.

After the affectionate greetings, the two writers, invited by Babelia to this meeting, talk about the books that have accompanied them since adolescence until today and the readings that nourish their works and reflect on the presence of Latin American authors in the protests of the last months. They start talking at the same time, their words collide, and they both apologize to each other as they invite each other to continue.

"Sorry, follow you."

"No, follow you, please."

Ida Vitale. The thousand and one nights ! It is the imagination and fantasy that you always recognize. I was very young when I first read them and they censured me, but then I came back and read everything. I have reread them several times. But what I read most in adolescence was War and Peace . I was at home where there was never control of the library. I always fell in love with one person or another with each new reading, and that justified rereading.

Sergio Ramirez I return to War and Peace just as I return to One Thousand and One Nights . The first time I read these stories was in the translation of Blasco Ibáñez, from the version of Dr. Joseph Charles Mardrus, which Rubén Darío refers to. There are other versions of French, because it is the language from which it comes first. Then there is the version of Burton [Richard Francis] which is also very good. Each version that one reads is different, although one can return to the thousand and one nights as a new book, and everywhere else, that is the beautiful thing. Someone could say that A Thousand and One Nights is also a pornographic book because of its explicit sex scenes.

I. Vitale. That's why they censured me [and the poet laughs like a teenager].

S. Ramírez. As for War and Peace, it is a book where you can see the substance, the carpentry, the composition. It is a history book, it is a book of love, it is a book of customs, it is a realistic book, it is everything. The whole universe is there!

I. Vitale. The times when one reads a book make it change. With the ten or eleven readings I made of War and Peace, I was satisfied. As a teenager I was very interested in history, I saw it as a variable, tempting framework. I discovered Napoleon and, unfortunately, the first impression was what a wonder! I was fascinated by the character. Of course, it left me healed with horror for all the great characters in the story.

S. Ramírez. Then you have to keep in mind that cinema ends up corrupting books. When I think of War and Peace , unfortunately, the face of Mel Ferrer or Audrey Hepburn comes to mind.

I. Vitale. I got rid of it, I got rid of it fortunately!

S. Ramírez. There are many versions. There is a Russian that lasts 15 hours. Cinema tends to replace the spontaneous imaginary. The film that each reader of the novel makes is in the memory of the one who reads because he invents his own faces, scenarios ... When they are replaced by the face that the director chose already changes.

I. Vitale. I abhor cinema when it is something I have already read or know that I am going to read. That's another thing. It is as if a person who is willing to improve it read us the book.

S. Ramírez. The imagination has its deposit, its refuge, its main instrument in the books. The great advantage that the book will always have is that one can invent by reading. In movies or series it cannot be invented. That is why reading is a creative act. In the cinema there is no creation for the viewer, the cinema is an image exhibition. I do not reject cinema because for me it has been a fundamental part of my training as a writer, but they are two different instruments. Now the series and the cinema on television and on the network are very invasive; they monopolize people's time and, of course, also reading time.

I. Vitale. There are invasive times. I haven't been to the movies for years. I feel like a fault of mine. And yes, adolescence seems to be very easy to be captured by an image, an act, whatever ... But it is supposed to be the art of our time. Let's see how long the public endures everything as it is.

The two writers expand by talking about how the audiovisual world helps to model not only the imaginary of people but their behavior in real life. Until Rubén Darío appears in the conversation. Another common point between the two and how the Nicaraguan poet is present in them as authors.

S. Ramírez. Rubén Darío is an always current phenomenon. Especially if we see it from the perspective of the 21st century on the roads it opened. Latin American poetry of the twentieth century would not be possible without the transformation made by modernism, structures in daring, breaking everything, having no limits, besides having given way to very different poetic languages. So much for what César Vallejo, Borges, García Lorca meant, on the other hand, Machado. There would be no poetry of the twentieth century as we know it without the influence of breaking Darío's language.

I. Vitale. It fascinated me in a moment, but very soon Machado and Vallejo came. I don't know ... I think I felt that Darío concentrated the decorative of an era. Now, when Darío is right, he is successful for his entire generation! It is difficult to choose a poet because one takes a little of each. And not always one looks at a poet in what others consider the best.

S. Ramírez. The same is a redoma of the Parnassian poets and the properly French modernist poets. The phenomenon of rupture is the most important thing that modernism produces. It opens many possibilities. Darío is the music, Darío is the rhythm. He is a poet who opens a box of possibilities and it is possible to take what is most useful for each poet.

Soon those Darian echoes change in the talk because of the commitment of Latin American authors with reality and their presence in the manifestations of recent months in different countries.

S. Ramírez. That has always happened in the history of Latin America. Poets may not initiate protests or movements, but they take part in the phenomena of change and end up going outside. I insist that you can be a good poet and not get in the street and you can be a great poet and be worried about what happens on the street. I am one of the writers who care about what happens on the street, but there will be others who do not care or do not express it and that does not detract from his literary work. We have a tradition of engagement in Latin America and it has varied greatly in this century. Maybe the causes have changed. Before we had very well defined causes to fight for, today there is also confusion about flags.

I. Vitale. I think about the circumstances of the world in which the poet is; today he is a little freed from the need for Victor Hugo to be the one who tells the whole truth. Now we have the newspapers, people go to the small news. There is a replacement in a minor category, but I believe that the poet is not so obligated to be the voice of the people. I think that if it is the voice of itself, we have already advanced a lot. Today a news can shake you more than a poem.

S. Ramírez. Poetry, and especially literature in general, have their power of individual transformation. It is a gospel that will give to everyone's heart. Although less and less a collective gospel as Walt Whitman aspired to shake the masses. Perhaps because of the forms the communication has taken, as Ida said. Individual transformation remains very important. To the extent that a poetry touches you and reaches the bottom it is transforming and that is an immense task. When I read poetry I think about the ability to transform myself, to touch certain fibers that no longer leave me the same. That is the great role that poetry has today.

I. Vitale. I am almost more prose than poetry. When a book leads the reader to return and return to it, it is because there is a lot of background that is happening little by little. Perhaps it depends on the ages, that at a certain age one is not able to understand everything.

The Nicaraguan writer says, then, that he is usually attentive to new authors. Then they start talking about the books in which they currently work.

I. Vitale. I have to finish a novel. I have changed countries a couple of years ago, I have moved my library, I am in another apartment and I have not been able to retake it. I started it about twenty years ago and I have it soaking, maybe it's old fashioned.

S. Ramírez. Good literature does not go out of style, Ida.

I. Vitale. Of course there are fashions. It seems that the poet is not marked so many rules, but the novelist does. It is not written the same after Ulysses or One Hundred Years of Solitude . There are things that modify the public a lot.

S. Ramírez. I want to move on with my cycle of Inspector Morales. I work on the third novel. It has been a work with many shocks because many things have happened since what happened in Nicaragua since 2018, that fills the book with uncertainties because it is a book that follows contemporary history. But I've been halfway through work and hope to finish before the end of the year. When I write narrative my favorite readings are poems.

I. Vitale. However, when I write poetry I read more prose.

Forty-six minutes later the talk ends because Sergio Ramírez has a public conversation in the next room. When the writer approaches Ida Vitale to say goodbye they both realize that they have chatted in front of a host they admire when they discover a Gabriel García Márquez who smiles at them from the coffee table behind a bouquet of yellow roses on the cover of a book.

Source: elparis

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