Clara Janés: "Everything is going so fast that what were answers yesterday are questions today"

Verses recited and verses read, mathematical formulations, astrophysical passions, an imprint of mysticism, successive bursts of laughter, volumes and more volumes that he never tires of teaching, a bit of Einstein here, a bit of Plato there, and the quiet and wise voice from the tenant of the place they give for a morning at the house of Clara Janés (Barcelona, ​​81 years old), a small apartment with the smell of a book in the Madrid neighborhood of Chamberí.

The appointment catches him translating

Vladimir Holan's

and Omar Khayyam's

The thing between Clara Janés and Holan is worthy of a literary investigation a la Guillermo de Baskerville.

First she met him reading

, then she fell in love (with his poems and who knows, who knows…) and then she ended up getting the Czech poet to receive her in his little house on the island of Kampa, in Prague, where he had been confined to escape the communist dictatorship and life in general.

All that process of passion, tenacity and admiration on the part of the poet towards the poet would be reflected in two moving books, one in verse

(Hyperion, 1986)— and

(Siruela, 2005).

The life of Janés, daughter of the harpsichordist Ester Nadal and the poet and editor Josep Janés, would never be the same, as she will admit in this conversation.

The academic of the RAE, one of the great names of Spanish poetry of the last half century, published in June her new book of poems,

(Galaxia Gutenberg), and Cátedra recently published an anthology yours,

.

In addition, during the lockdown, she produced and self-published an exquisite little book on the drawings and words of Leonardo da Vinci, including paintings and prints that she herself scanned at her home.

Nothing seems to stop Clara Janés.

Neither the passage of time, nor pandemics, nor inopportune visits, like this one.

We could start talking about

It seems to me an extraordinary book, extraordinary in the sense that I could not imagine it.

Why?

Is that lately I have so many things that I said to myself why would I write another book.

But I took a little notebook and started with pieces, with scraps, with things, and I saw that something was forming there.

As if it was forming itself.

But the book would have a more or less punctual genesis, a specific moment of germination, or not?

Being at the Academy next to Emilio Lledó counts.

He passed me a book on Greece, and I, who have always read Plato, went back to him.

And Plato on the table is not just anything, that takes you, makes you catch other things, the poems are formed, and then you realize that...

… that there is already something.

That, and also something that refers to another something previous.

Which in my case was my

book to put a ghost to sleep.

And here I am, with the same ghost, I still don't know who it is.

And it doesn't go away...

And it doesn't go away.

And if I try to quit, she gets mad.

Here we have almost parked poetry to talk about spiritism.

Ha, ha, ha, ha, I don't mess with spiritualism!

No, seriously, what you write takes on a reality, the reality of something that is written.

The question is whether reality is what is here in front of our eyes or is it something else, if it is what there is or what we believe there is.

Obviously, we select from what there is, and for each person there are some fundamental things.

There are things that one looks at and others that one does not look at so much.

One selects, you cannot not select, and that is what you feed on.

That mixes with the thoughts, with the dreams... To me, the dream thing freaks me out a lot.

“The dream thing freaks me out a lot.

Sometimes I look for a word and I can't find it, but in the morning it's there”. Cateriina Barjau

Why?

Let's see, for example, one day it is discovered that dark matter really exists.

What happens in my dream?

I wake up furious because Einstein has died, he had been told that this did not exist and then he had said: “I screwed up”.

And now it turns out that it is true, that it did exist.

On another occasion I look for a word, I can't find it, I can't find it..., and in the morning the word is there.

This means that the head, in sleep, works.

And it works sometimes with things attached to your will.

Those dreams in which you're having a hard time and you want to wake up, and you say: "Well, I'm going to wake up"..., and you wake up.

I don't know if

Look, it's amazing.

The will over dreams.

In any case, dreams are good poetic material, right?

Of course.

For me, finding the word that I couldn't find during sleep is something fabulous.

"A book that takes us underground to a paradise."

You write that as a prologue to

The search for the beloved.

An unknown loved one you go looking for underground.

Suddenly you arrive at a place there, under the earth, and there a union takes place and it becomes paradise.

That is where the deep writing of this book really begins for me.

“Light divides and adds shadow.

/ What is the speed of the shadow?

Is that for me the subject of light is incredible.

That only when it moves does it have matter…, it is one of the things that I know I am going to study.

The photon alone in motion has matter.

Einstein says so.

If not?

Is it energy?

But, if it is energy, how can it not have matter and not move?

Not even devoting three years to the question could answer it.

In his poetry there is science, mathematics, formulation... With them he composes verses, sometimes it is incredible.

Of course, science is essential for me.

Does one summon poetry or does it summon itself?

Both things work.

Actually, what are you summoning?

Knowledge, but perhaps that knowledge can only be poetic.

And then you look for an explanation.

I reflect on what I have done in a book and I try to keep the background of that book in a folder, because then a student or a journalist comes to me to ask me things about it and I no longer remember where this verse or that one came from. .

But, of course, if I have a folder with the backgrounds...

That is, a documentation about the poem.

Exact.

Does poetry have a theme?

Sometimes yes and sometimes they even give it to you, they ask you to write about something.

But in general the subject is being done.

Although sometimes not.

For example,

I wrote it like this, pam, pam, pam, and it came directly from a trip to Ibiza.

There will be ideas that arise more with the flash, with the outburst, and others that are more — let's say — scientific.

For you, who like mathematics so much, maybe poetry is also formulation.

Well, there you have my book

, which is a book that was born from the fact that I really wanted to do it, formulate it.

Although it is born from an image: all my snowy terrace and the tracks of the magpies on the snow.

I said to myself: "There is something here that will be a book."

And I saw it as a path, in which the music of Arvo Pärt was the guide.

And I got to the end.

The last verse is "In the seed is the flower and in the flower is the seed".

Actually, it was a tribute to Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, who at one point in her life was disappointed because she did not find the answer she was looking for.

Speaking of answers, is it possible to think that in the poetic process the answers are almost an enemy and that the questions are more valuable?

But many answers bring another question…;

furthermore, as everything evolves and goes so fast, what yesterday were answers, today are questions.

This is very difficult, of course, because you can't be following everything.

More information

A minute of poetry: Clara Janés

"The enigma surrounds the writing."

You said it in 2016 in your admission speech at the RAE.

Yes. And the enigma is within oneself.

The subconscious exists.

George Steiner said of the enigma something like: “It is a neurochemistry that one day we will know”.

Could the poetic act be spoken of as a mediation between the self and the other?

Well of course.

Because what is the other?

Is everything that is not me?

Yes, but, of course, one does not capture everything.

So, maybe poetry sometimes allows you to grasp something that you hadn't grasped.

"The other".

Everything is so enigmatic...

I know of people who, if you tell them you read poetry, make a face like they're looking at a Martian.

Oh please.

It is that, in the end, poetry is neither certainty, nor triumph, nor money…;

that is, that it does not precisely meet the values ​​that rule in this society.

Maybe that's why we like it?

But not everyone can grasp the same.

I still send this that I have written to a person I know and he tells me: “But who are you writing for?”.

But I don't write "for".

I write “because”.

Except when it's an assignment, which I'm perfectly capable of doing, of course.

I know that not everyone is capable of capturing what is inside my poems in the same way.

But I haven't even asked for them to be published!

Cioran spoke of poetry as abandonment.

Do you subscribe to that image?

Does the poetic genre require more "abandonment" than other literary genres?

Poetry can flow more naturally... but sometimes it is accompanied by brutal supports.

Perhaps a novel needs to have certain structures, some things that make the work very different.

Of course, at least in my case, writing a novel is not the same as writing a book of poems.

The novel raises a lot of questions for me.

I have three unpublished ones and I don't even plan to show them.

And

I spent 25 years writing it!

Giving the complex the appearance of simplicity, isn't it one of the most exhausting tasks for those who write poetry?

Yes. This is achieved only by enthusiasm.

And for discoveries.

In the phrase "The union in not yet being" I find a starting point that is worth exploring.

And it may seem simple, but it is not.

We should talk about the crossroads of eroticism and mysticism that occurs in his poetic work...

AHA.

What is the other?

Everything that is not me?

Poetry sometimes allows you to grasp something that you hadn't grasped..., the other.

It is very enigmatic." Cateriina Barjau

In the introduction that Jaime Siles wrote for the anthology

Yes that's how it is.

And God in all this?

LOL!

Series.

But…?

Who is God?

Which one of them?

I believe in energy.

Maybe that's God.

That's what I think.

Let's see..., I've gone through many stages, I've lived this since I was a child..., since...

Since I lived next to the Poor Clare nuns of Pedralbes, in Barcelona.

Of course.

I was a mystic from a young age.

I saw them and thought that what they did was perfect.

Locked up there... As the organist was a friend of my mother, they gave us the key to the monastery and we entered there whenever we wanted.

And there they were all the time, praying, at three in the afternoon, at five in the morning... Then they would sit in a gazebo and look at the world.

Rupture of space and time.

And I was sitting next to my mother, looking at them and thinking: "This is perfection."

Mysticism is powerful, it attracts from an aesthetic point of view.

Saint John of the Cross, Saint Teresa, certain old paintings and music...

It is that it is the total concentration on something.

You take an issue and you take it to the max.

And then, it took me a long time to start reading seriously, I had 25,000 books in my father's library, and from a very young age I could locate any volume for you, but I didn't read them to myself, it scared me.

I almost started writing before reading.

The essays I did at school were not long, but they always approved me.

I'm sure they gave it a 10.

They didn't give me a 10, but I do remember a self-portrait I wrote and they gave me a 9. And it was only half a page.

But, to return to the question, examining his work, it is conceivable that he owes a literary debt to the great Spanish mystics, Saint John, Saint Teresa... right?

Well, you have to keep in mind that I really started writing when José Manuel Blecua arrived at the University of Barcelona.

At first he taught us traditional lyrical poetry, he had us comment on sonnets by Góngora.

But then he already continued with San Juan.

And when he continued with San Juan, I already entered a delirium.

I said to myself, "This is my thing."

So I began to read all of San Juan and began to write.

But at the same time we had Riquer teaching us Provencal literature, which was no small thing, and José María Valverde, who made me read a lot, with him I seriously started reading Rilke, for example.

And those teachers, those teachings, it really is what weighs on me, in terms of origins.

All this was in the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of Barcelona.

That's it.

But then, for various reasons, my parents take me out of the house, they send me to Pamplona.

Because I was a bad girl, and let's see if they correct me…, but what I did was join all the black sheep that were there.

But she studied.

So I was taking the studies.

And in 1964, already graduated and only 24 years old, she wrote her first collection of poems,

Well, but it's that in that long silence —and I feel sorry for having destroyed it— I make two versions of what will later be my novel

.

I wanted to write a novel, and I was searching, searching.

I began to imitate Merleau-Ponty, and I wrote it as if speaking to myself.

And then Vladimir Holan appears.

Yes…, I discover Holan… How do I discover Holan?… I don't remember, he's gone.

She read his book

Yes, of course…, and then I went to see the editor Carlos Barral.

For through him try to visit Holan in Prague.

Yes, but Carlos Barral tells me that Holan doesn't want to see anyone.

And he gives me the address of his translator.

But I was sick..., or I remember being sick..., what the hell was wrong with me? Now I don't remember, it doesn't come to me, how is it possible?

Well, that whole story is in my book

.

Yes, and the fact is that Holan —you wrote this— pulls her out of the darkness.

Yes, it was six years without writing.

It's just that I thought that I, in poetry, was no longer going to make it.

But what Holan wrote was equivalent to what I wanted to say.

And then I find a master in the manner of expression.

A girl wrote in her doctoral thesis that Holan was my muse.

He was not my muse.

He was my teacher.

And he was very important in my life.

May I ask if it is a love story?

It's a love story, obviously.

Strange, but love story.

However, on your first meeting, after you had learned Czech so you could read and talk to him, Holan didn't spare you a glance...

No, our first meeting was before I learned Czech.

And, indeed, there is not even a look there, but in the end he begins to tremble.

And I have not seen anyone with more colors in the face.

Red Yellow Green.

And he kisses both my hands and tells me: "Come back"

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