In a beautiful page of his Essays, Michel de Montaigne reminds us that one can speak of oneself even if the "argument", as in his case, is "sterile" and "lean":
Yes, but they will tell me that the purpose of using oneself as an argument to write about would be excusable in singular and famous men who by their reputation have aroused some desire to know them. [...] It is not convenient to make yourself known unless you have something in which to be imitated, and a life and opinions that can serve as a model. [...] The others have dared to speak of themselves because it has seemed to them a worthy and rich argument; I, on the other hand, because I have found it so sterile and so lean that no suspicion of ostentation can arise. I willingly judge the actions of others; Of my own, I offer little to judge on account of their nihility. I don't see so much good in myself that I can't say it without blushing (II, XVIII).
It is, it is true, an elegant statement of modesty that alludes to his "self-portrait". But the words of the great French philosopher – his deep conviction to write for himself, to have produced a book "consubstantial to its author" and of exclusive "personal utility" – authorize us, at the same time, to think that any life, even the furthest from the spotlight of fame and public stages, always deserves to be told.
And if this is true in the case of humble and ordinary people ("a man like the others," to quote Montaigne again), imagine to what extent the writing of itself is "excusable in singular and famous men, who by their reputation have aroused some desire to know them."
In this volume, the author presents a series of interviews with famous women and men who, with their works, have contributed to animate, in various sectors, the debate on contemporary culture. It is not a choice dictated by a specific canon (one author is included and another is excluded according to this or that parameter) or by personal preference (this one I like, this one, no), but of a compilation that, in a diachronic vision, shows its inevitable links with the present. The publication of a book, the celebration of a birthday, the organization of an event or a show are at the origin of these conversations that, in the course of time, have been published in the cultural pages of EL PAÍS.
An interview is always an occasion to talk about oneself, a pretext to relate fragments of life and everyday life, an opportunity to clarify one's own thought or, better still, to discover clues about the mysterious relationship established between author and work ("I have not done my book so much," Montaigne sharply suggests, "as my book has done to me"). And this also happens when the interviewee himself declares, as a preliminary, his annoyance with the media or his reluctance to talk about himself and his work.
It is a large gallery in which there is room for authors from many countries (Spain, France, Portugal, United Kingdom, Italy, China, Germany, Nicaragua, Hungary, Czech Republic) and works of diverse nature (books of poetry and novels, philosophical and scientific essays, paintings, sculptures, theatrical and cinematographic performances).
As in a great exhibition, also in this volume it is possible to find some of the great themes that afflict our present. For example, in many of the "portraits" the image of hell is evoked in various forms and ways. Collective tragedies and personal tragedies overlap showing the varied faces that ruthless violence can adopt: from the extermination of millions of innocents carried out by the ferocious Nazis (Shoah) to the Soviet concentration camps (Gulag of the Soviet Union), from the persecutions of totalitarian regimes (China) to the massacres of religious fanaticism ("Charlie Hebdo" in Paris), from the death threats of mafiosi against writers and judges (Neapolitan Camorra) to the inhumane conditions in which hungry and unarmed populations are forced to vegetate (the devastating effects of terrible inequalities).
But it is enough to change the room, or to turn the page, to also find precious testimonies in which the joy of living arises in its many manifestations: the passion for artistic creation and writing, the love of teaching and scientific research, the struggle for equality and civil rights, attention to simple things and the most humble daily gestures. These are different ways to continue cultivating utopia and hope, to think about a more just and egalitarian society, to imagine a future different from the one imposed by the unique thinking of rapacious neoliberalism.
An interview is always also a body to body with the interlocutor, a way of harassing him with questions, sometimes insidious and impertinent, to invite him to say the unspeakable, to push him to show us the invisible. But in this close confrontation also those who interrogate, in turn, inevitably end up discovering their cards, revealing their vision of the world.
Collecting interviews published in the pages of a newspaper means removing from oblivion thoughts that could not have avoided the fate of obsolescence, imposed by the pressing rhythm of chronicle and novelty. But it also means ratifying, through the words of the illustrious interviewees, the importance of art and philosophy, literature and music, architecture and research, science and cinema, theatre and painting, in order to understand ourselves and the world in which we live.
Without these flashes of light, as Italo Calvino reminded us in a beautiful page of Invisible Cities, it would be impossible for us to distinguish what, in the hell of everyday life and history, is not hell, to "make it last and give it space":
The hell of the living is not something that will be; There is one, it is the one that already exists here, the hell that we inhabit every day, that we form being together. There are two ways not to suffer it. The first is easy for many: to accept hell and become part of it to the point of never seeing it anymore. The second is dangerous and requires continuous attention and learning: to seek and know how to recognize who and what, in the midst of hell, is not hell, and make it last and give it space.
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This text by Nuccio Ordine, the last published in Spanish by the Italian professor, writer and thinker, is the prologue of the book The Infinite Conversation. Encounters with writing and thought, by EL PAÍS journalist Borja Hermoso, recently edited by Siruela.