Venezuelan writer, José Balza, during an interview on September 16, 2019.
With a profuse body of work in narrative and essay, José Balza (Tucupita, 1939) is one of the most respected authors of Venezuelan literature. A writer with a well-studied work, today a reference and guide for many younger authors in his country. Juan Carlos Méndez Guédez and Juan Carlos Chirinos, among others, are two well-established writers living in Spain who have dedicated themselves to glossing and studying it in detail over the years.
Winner of the National Prize for Literature in Venezuela in 1991, a frequent guest at Latin American and Spanish universities and with special recognition for his work at the Guadalajara International Book Fair in 2010, Balza republished this year in Spain, with the help of the Cátedra publishing house, Percusión, one of his most celebrated novels, and whose first edition was published with Seix Barrall in 1982. An important part of Balza's narrative work has its axis in the magical environment of the Orinoco River delta, his birthplace, a space of dreamlike beauty, a jungle environment crisscrossed by thousands of streams that form islands and the final arrival of the river's fresh waters to the Atlantic Ocean.
Question. What personal significance does it have for you to have published your work in Spain again?
Answer. I think books have something personal about them as they are written; Then each reader makes them their own and can invent the author to their liking or forget them. That's why literature exists, and the older it is, the more current it is, as Francis Bacon wanted.
Q. Your facet as a critic is well recognized, how do you appreciate the emerging Venezuelan narrative talent?
A. I'm not a critic, I've had perceptions about any writer in our language and, apparently, those appraisals were never wrong. What seems very different today has links in common with what has always been: exiles (Rufino Blanco Fombona), denunciations (José Rafael Pocaterra); Literature is autonomous, if you fulfill its nature, you can touch anything. But she will impose her demands on you.
Q. What do you appreciate about current Latin American literature?
A. It is essential to practice the rehearsal, otherwise we will continue to be naïve.
Q. Are few essays written in the Latin American field?
A. The essay arises from a rare maturity in personality and thought; It requires analysis, no matter how old you are. There are, here and in Spain, excellent and decisive essayists, but they are few.
Q. Other countries have been able to publicize the work of their writers with the help of migratory processes. Is it a personal goal for your work to be read outside of Venezuela?
A. Writing is an eternal emigration, on earth and in time. You just need smart readers to stop at them.
Q. Could the Venezuelan diaspora become a vehicle for the global dissemination of national letters?
A. It depends on your culture.
Q. How do you interpret the current Venezuelan reality? Is there room for something like a national hope in this context?
A. Juan Carlos Méndez Guédez talks about María Lionza – a popular cult of Afro-indigenous origin with a magical-religious character – and the return of the goddesses to our unconscious as a solution and response to what we have. In the case of Venezuela, María Corina Machado seems to embody that comeback.
Q. His work is highly appreciated by many young Venezuelan storytellers. Which of your novels or essays would you recommend as a cover letter?
A. I don't know myself well enough for that.
Q. How do you feel in Venezuela, do you regret not having emigrated?
A. In this country, personal autonomy and creativity are humiliated, ignored and kept silent about them. But that is not why we are going to live, I say this individually, cultivating the animality that surrounds us.
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