Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht: "We are not experiencing a strong moment in literature, neither in the world nor in Spain"

“You can call me Sepp [Pepe], like Sepp Maier”, the goalkeeper of the Federal Republic of Germany who won the 1974 World Cup. It is not said by a footballer, but by the philosopher Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht (Würzburg, Germany, 73 years old). ).

It is the indication that he is not a thinker to use.

He has lived for more than three decades in Stanford (California), at whose famous university he is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature.

He speaks French, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish... On April 28 he was awarded an

by the Complutense University of Madrid.

An admirer in his youth of communist China and Cuba, he is an authority on the epicenter of tech capitalism, Silicon Valley.

Maybe this is why he dresses like

: black t-shirt and jeans of the same color and gray jacket with black stripes, an informality that breaks his brown shoes.

Gumbrecht is the author of books on the theory and history of literature translated into more than 20 languages.

Despite being Bavarian, he has once commented that he likes a glass of red wine more than a beer.

Ask.

Again in Spain.

What has caught your attention?

Response.

I come regularly twice a year because I have a daughter in Valencia who, for health reasons, should not travel.

The first time I arrived in 1969 in Salamanca.

Today perhaps I am surprised by the general tuteo.

On this trip, the customs officer, when he saw my passport, asked me: "Are you an American?"

I told him: "Why do you ask me?"

But the most grotesque story happened to me in Valencia, when I went to buy some jeans and since they didn't fit, I asked the shop assistant: "Do you have them bigger?"

And she told me: "With the guy you have, no."

The you and the subjunctives that it entails have been lost, I'm not saying it's bad, it's just a linguistic transformation.

Q.

Why were you interested in Romance languages ​​from your youth?

R.

In Germany I chose to study romanistics because I had spent my last year of high school in Paris and I loved French.

I had sympathy for those cultures.

Then I had a one-year scholarship from the State of Bavaria and among the four options I chose Spain because I thought I had to support the people against Franco [he affirms with an ironic gesture, with clenched fists].

I was in a socialist student organization.

I didn't know a word of Spanish and I thought that Salamanca was the university district of Madrid… Since my parents had money, I drove around the city in a red BMW.

People stopped me.

Q.

What distinguishes Spanish literature from others that you have studied?

R.

There was a German hispanist, Werner Krauss, who said that Spanish literature had stopped after the death of Calderón [1681].

The pattern of Castilian literature is, on the one hand, subjectivity, with subjects who take risks, such as the Catholic Monarchs, which is why Spain was the first modern empire.

But in the Council of Trent [1545], Spain becomes a defender of the Catholic faith, and that orthodoxy is imposed on subjectivity, although it does not eliminate it.

The example is the

, because to improve his life he is a modern subject, but when he finds out that his wife is sleeping with the archpriest, since that helps him to ascend, he says that it doesn't really happen.

The 18th century was weak, although Jovellanos and Father Feijoo are fine;

in the XIX, Clarín seems to me a realist of the Flaubert category, and in the XX,

is fantastic.

Q.

Who are your favorite Spanish authors?

A.

Teresa de Ávila, my daughter's middle name is Teresa.

I am now giving a seminar in Jerusalem on it.

Calderón fascinates me;

I recently translated Gracián into German, and one undervalued in Spain is Luis Martín-Santos, the equivalent

of Joyce's

or Proust

Today is not a strong moment in literature, neither worldwide nor in Spain.

Gumbrecht, before the interview on April 29. INMA FLORES (EL PAIS)

Q.

When did you fall off the horse of communism?

R.

I am a democrat in the American context, therefore, on the left.

Almost all Silicon Valley millionaires are.

In 1968, in Germany, a Humanities student was obliged to be on the left.

I seemed like a fierce Marxist.

Then it dimmed, but it wasn't really a conversion because I was never really a Marxist.

Marx is one of the thinkers without whom we cannot imagine ourselves in Germany, along with Freud and Nietzsche.

I had the offer to work at Stanford and that university has fulfilled my dreams.

P.

Your vision of technology is in the essay

(Deusto in Spanish)

R.

Hegel was obsessed with seeing where the spirit of the world was.

He said that he had beheld it when he saw Napoleon on horseback in Vienna.

Today, the work of computer programmers has transformed the world, imagine if we did not have computers.

However, that spirit may already be elsewhere, but for at least 20 years it has been in Silicon Valley for several reasons: chance and also because there are two very competitive universities just 40 kilometers away, Berkeley and Stanford.

Another reason is that in the last 150 years there have been incredible inventions in California, including Hollywood.

Also the fact that the region is rich.

Q.

What's going on in Silicon Valley?

R.

Look, at

A former student came to dinner last night, the best of my last years, who has just sold his

for 3,000 million dollars [2,858 million euros].

Now he'll have a good time for a couple of years and then he'll do something else.

By the way, he went crazy in Lhardy, how were the kidneys, and the dessert…!

These young people tell you that you are not going anywhere if you have a transcendental project, if you think about designing a program for something… No. You have to follow your intuition and if it doesn't take you anywhere, you stop and start something else.

The paradox of Silicon Valley is that electronics is the technology that has eliminated the importance of space, and instead it is full of people from India, who could do their work from Bombay.

Spanish literature stops after the death of Calderón”

Q.

What does the purchase of Twitter by Elon Musk mean?

R.

Musk always has crazy projects.

My wife has a

.

Before, electric cars were not very sexy.

Musk said, "Why can't they be sleek and fast?"

It sells more and more and Volkswagen and Mercedes feel threatened.

I know the millionaires in Silicon Valley, they all look up to Musk, but they don't say so.

He is a genius.

The strength of these guys is that they know how to finish something when they realize it's not working.

They don't say, "I have to prove I'm right because it's my idea."

Q.

Is Facebook finished?

A.

It is disappearing.

Metaverse can be the next revolution or nothing.

I know something about Zuckerberg and if he realizes that the Metaverse doesn't have the resonance he expects, he will invent something else.

Q.

Another of your publications was

.

He insisted to his students on the importance of playing sports.

R.

There is a status for the practice of sport in the US, not even for health, and also for universities to have a good basketball or soccer team.

This is even more important in California, where you see few fat people.

When I talk to my 11-year-old German grandson, his hero is Benzema.

They are physical figures, you identify with them.

P.

Out of curiosity, why, being from Bavaria, are you not a fan of Bayern, but of Dortmund [of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia]?

R.

My mother and my maternal grandfather were from Dortmund.

He had a restaurant where the players went after training.

Bayern are not very popular in Bavaria, nor in the rest of Germany.

The most beloved in the city is Munich 1860, which plays in third, but it was the Nazi team.

Bayern was that of the Jewish upper bourgeoisie.

The antipathy towards Bayern from other Bavarians comes from there.

The young people of Silicon Valley say that you have to go by intuition and if the project does not work, you do something else”

P.

With a war at the gates of the EU, why are there no intellectuals who raise their voices?

R.

It is a threat not only to Europe, but also to the United States. It has been a medieval invasion, which breaks the minimum rules that had been achieved in international politics.

What will intellectuals protest contribute? My protest will not be more important than what Benzema can do.

I don't feel qualified to tell people how to lead their lives.

The EU has been very peaceful, with ridiculous military investments, and now even Germany is going to invest more, sad as it is.

But I think of my grandchildren and it is sadly reasonable.

P.

And the increase in populism and the extreme right?

R.

I am from the country that elected Trump, but also the one that defeated him with a candidate as uninteresting as Biden.

For some reason these movements have emerged that are not even right-wing, we don't have a concept to define them.

Democracy is the best political system that has ever existed, but it has lost vitality.

There are many people who believe that politicians do not represent them.

P.

Will we get something good out of the pandemic?

R.

I do not think we will learn great things.

For me it has been a surprise that in Europe the two societies that best adapted were Spain and Portugal.

However, I criticize that many people like the State to take responsibility for them: to tell you “wear a mask”, and I put it on;

“work from home”, and I do.

Perhaps the pandemic will serve to rethink the relationship between the State and citizens.

It is strange that people do not feel happy with politicians, but they are comfortable in such a maternal State that perhaps in the future they will miss it.

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