Entrevista a Julio Cortázar (RTVE, 1981)

It has been a bit of a start and I started.

The first line I read from this text and I broke the face against all because I can't accept that I do this Elil's love.

In fact, I've only had a few lines ahead but here the time is different.

You, for example, start reading this page and you'll get to know that I'm not agreeable and you know that way

that I do this, Elil's love, but things are not like that.

You weren't still here and the text is not here.

When I do it, it's already my lover.

I'm not here because that's not the issue of the text for now and I have nothing to do with what will happen when I do it.

I go to the cinema and have a movie of German and between two lines of publicity, barata,

I discover the legs of Elil, I join the sun and exactly as I write it, I start a full-time crystallization.

I think this is progressive but I do.

In other terms, I re-do this text where someone writes that I re-do this text.

I feel trapped, I'm old, I'm betrayed, I'm not even a person who says it but someone manipulates me and I'm regulated and I'm jaguished.

I would say that I take the hair as a key, it's clear that it's written.

I would say that I take the hair as a key.

This fragment really belongs to the truth, it would be very easy to guess it to Julio Cortazar

and in particular to his book titled, A Talluca, published in 1979.

It is a sentence of a fragment that would be very good as an example of what the writing can be understood as a game,

which is one of the ways Cortazar has to understand the writing although not the only one, as we are going to see later.

In what way would he be put into his work if we could eliminate the goalpe and if this is possible?

These aspects of his writing could belong to this particular title, the written as a game.

It would be more than a tool, I would say that it would not be a tool because I think that since I started,

the notion of play has been deeply identified in everything I have done, understanding the game,

the same thing that children understand, that is to say a very serious occupation,

that in the background there is nothing of free will.

We know very well that when children play, they give their game a much more important value than the fact that their mother pretends to be banned or they eat.

That is true, it seems quite free to children. The game is a very serious thing.

If I have a step back and try to see myself as a writer, I feel that that constant infantile that has been in me and not the same,

very contrary, has always determined the way things are being given to me, the themes, the situations,

and the way in which the plan of writing is to convey them and resolve them.

Finally, to manage the words, to make the words a aesthetic fact, is perhaps one of the highest games that can be the human being.

The highest in the sense that the use of simultaneous use of all intellectual faculties and all the sensitive faculties

and not only the reasons, but also the irrational elements, dreams, fantasy,

all that creates a kind of super alchemy, super combinatory,

which is what I think you understand when you talk about the game,

and what I have written in everything I have written has been trying to present.

That is to say that the idea of writing seriously, but giving it the word seriously the value of exclusively rational,

thinking and working, is not so natural, it would be absolutely impossible to do it.

I said at the moment that you understand the writing of several ways,

it is normal to find in your reports narrators that write in a different way.

For example, this is the short-term that abrevia cuts the sentence and leaves it as a calling,

this is the short-term that writes linear stories or with relative linearity,

stories, sentimental or eternal, as changes of light or as orientation of the cats.

There is the short-term that plants the relation as a puzzle that seems to be not going to be able to assemble,

but that finally is assembled, etc.

Well, in all these ways of writing alternate,

you know it with the name of the short-term writing,

and it seems to me that it seems like a term that has already been assembled.

But could you give a definition of what is more exact possible in literature?

No, no, I think it is a definition that has to be in hands of those critics that know my work better than myself,

but if I can try to see myself, talking a little,

and try to explain why I do things in that way and not in another.

Very, very funny, I would say that there are two stages.

I see myself at the time of going to the machine to write or to the paper block,

dominated by a force that has nothing to do with intelligence, conduct, or will.

It is something that comes from outside that has imposed me for something that I have seen,

a kind of idea that has been created and that gives me a literary issue,

or something that comes from within, for example, of a dream of a nightmare,

or of a mental association that does not have in the softwares.

Well, at that moment, I leave myself fully and I write without demanding myself,

controlling what I am doing.

I am simply facing the paper and I start to see, I am very visual,

in a way that immediately I see a character, I see a woman's hair, I see a street,

and also the name appears, the character is called Juan,

and I do not know why, but it is called Juan, there is no pre-discution in that or in any election,

and then I write.

That comes out a little like a good improvisation in jazz,

in which a great musician of jazz does not think about his improvisation as you imagine.

He does not have time, he wants it and he interests it.

There is simply something in it that takes a musical issue and turns it with his style,

with his wishes, with his personal feeling of music.

And then when I take the papers from the machine, I am talking about everything and a story,

because in the novel it works more methodically.

When I take the papers from the machine, there is a kind of paradox,

that I am my first reader,

I read that, and sometimes there are entire sentences,

in which I do not have the idea of having them written.

They are there, my hands have written them.

That would be the first stage, but the second is totally different,

that is, I leave rest a little and then I take it and that's it,

and that's absolutely implacable.

Because if you publish everything you write,

when you have a good piece of paper on the side, you have to know how to use it,

and then there are many things that have come out to you, you think that good and you leave them.

But there are many things that are like, like movies, like additional elements, like rebabs,

that you have to cut already using your critical capacity.

And that capacity, especially critical auto,

I think to have it very deep.

That is, that I have been a creature for a long time,

but at the same time, the work, the view, and I give it the aspect

that I want it to communicate with.

Well, I have not yet said that in this interview we are only talking about,

and we are only talking about your last three books,

because I have been in the meeting for three years,

you have been talking about your previous work.

In your last book, we want both to go on,

there is a story that is entitled to stories that I have been told.

Where the protagonist is the narrator, although not necessarily the author,

since as I said before, the author in this case,

invents different narrators.

The narrator tells us that he has been told about the story itself,

which he later tells to the reader.

But at a time of that time, the narrator tells us.

All that is that the stories tell me, but I cannot tell them,

so the narrator tells us that there are certain aspects of the story

that do not reach to know how he would tell it,

to tell them.

On the other hand, in your book, someone who goes there,

there is a story called La Barca, or new visit to Venice,

and there is a previous note on that story,

where you explain that the narrator was originally written in the year 54 in Venice,

that after the years, that story seemed to me to read it very badly,

and that you decided to re-scribe that story.

The question, after this long announcement, is that it is simple.

What is that that that escapes to the hour of telling a story?

Why that escape?

And finally, why that escape is a story?

There are several questions.

Let's see if I can add them in a single answer.

If you have any question, what I tried to explain before,

is that I do not have a very precise notion

of what I am going to tell in the moment when I start to tell it.

That is, I can have an idea global,

of a situation, of an argumental development,

but I don't have any conductors, I don't have the coordination,

and when I write stories, I don't have an idea of how they will end the stories.

It is, while I am doing it, that more or less,

I am looking for the end of the goal, of the goal of the goal that I have to go to,

to the left instead of going to the right.

What happens is that in those general ideas of a story,

it happens to us all when we dream.

You have a dream, then you wake up and you tell your wife,

hey, it is dream of an incredible thing, and try to tell the dream.

And at the moment when you start to tell it,

you realize the amount of things that are confused,

that do not admit to an explanation,

that you are forgetting or you are already wasting the time in another way.

So you manage what you have left,

and what you have left is a kind of chanelazo, chanelazo,

of drama, that is almost always very low,

from the enormous wealth of your dream.

Not as you remember, because you are forgetting it,

but as you want to still recover it and capture it.

I happen to that when I write,

because that phrase of the story,

that I tell, is a kind of tentative explanation of that process.

I know very well that while I am writing,

there are situations, parallels or laterals,

that maybe it would have been necessary for me to take them,

that I was able to determine my way.

Sometimes I can, sometimes I do not, sometimes there are two doors,

and you have to opt for one, that maybe it is not good.

And this takes me to your second question,

the story of that story that I wrote in Venice for many years.

In reality, I do not write it again.

What happened is that that story seemed bad to me,

every time I found it in a drawer and read it again,

and I never wanted to publish it.

But at the same time, there was something in the story

that I was asked to throw it to the canasta,

as I have thrown so many thousands of pages.

And one day I said, why not?

What is the reason that this story seems bad to me,

and at the same time I do not throw it?

And then I started reading it more carefully,

and I realized that in reality,

I had gone beyond the truth.

The story was another.

I told you one thing,

but the story has enough elements,

as to discover that what happens is another thing.

And when I wrote it, I did not realize.

Then the solution was not to re-write the story,

but to give the word to one of the characters,

which is a woman of the story,

that when when she makes quotations

and puts things in her place,

she takes it with me, for example,

attacks the author,

because she knows that I had been wronged as a author.

Of course, it is a fiction,

but in that fiction it is the truth, as many times.

That woman, with what she is saying,

along the story,

is putting it in her perspective.

And that made me realize that,

then yes, that I could publish it.

And I realized too,

why I had kept it.

And in the background I knew there was something that was telling me.

But I did not realize.

That is to say that we are still talking about literature,

understood as a game.

We are going to leave a moment that, although not of all,

to talk about another topic that you have expressed,

special attention.

For this we are going to look at a story

that is also in the last book,

we want both to go to Galinda,

that is written in the records of press.

There, in that story, there is a perfect in soundplag,

of real elements and real elements of fiction,

as there are also, for example, in both reports,

but for example in Apocalypse, in Solentiname,

or even in the book of Manuel.

For quote two reports,

with clear political intention.

We know that you are a writer,

fundamentally, of the fantastic.

But a writer of the fantastic,

that understands that the fantastic needs of reality.

That is why you do not like literature,

exclusively fantastic,

and that is why you do not like the literature of the oboe craft.

I wanted to talk about these waves,

between reality and fiction,

and more concretely in your literature.

It seems pretty that you use the word waves.

It also occurs in the word convergence.

That is, the convergence of elements in the appearance of such a heterogene,

as is the literature of such a fantastic,

purely imaginative,

and the daily reality,

especially the historical and political reality,

which is going on in every moment of our day and of our life.

That convergence of elements in appearance of heterogeneous,

and difficult to reconcile,

is, for me, a concern in these last years.

You just need to read the book of Manuel, for example.

That was a attempt to approximate the history of fiction,

without losing or losing one side or the other.

That is the difficulty of the call of committed literature,

when it is occupied by political issues.

It can be said that if the writer does not achieve exactly the exact convergence

of those two elements so decimiles,

the result is that the politician loses and literature also loses.

That is, it has not won anything.

The problem is to get that fusion, that convergence,

in which literature, as an approximation,

not only intellectual of ideas,

but as sensitivity, as transmission of passions,

gives the political message a vital, much larger force.

It does not make it as a telegram or a press communication,

but that same news, that same fact,

appears in return in a static structure

that puts it closer to the inner reality of the reader,

that it is more encarne in the reader.

In that story that you see, press records,

well, there is a faximilar reproduction of the denunciation

of one of the many lost atrocities in Argentina

since the military coup of five years ago.

I read that case as I read many others,

in some occasions I have denounced or tried to demonstrate them

with periodistic articles or denunciations on the radio on the television.

But this time, that news made me feel the possibility

of communicating through a story,

and a story that is extremely fantastic.

It was not easy until the point is achieved,

but in all ways, I think there is enough coherence

to the reader between what is worth,

like pure history, like something that has happened two or three years ago,

and then a literary involvement that tries to devolver it

to that fact, its presence, its life, its latitude.

It seems to me that it is a written task,

at least of a writer, as I am more and more attentive every day,

and that it feels more responsible

for the final destination of the Latin American peoples.

Well, I was wondering if I would have really managed to give it a different way

to that difficult relationship, I think I am aware of that.

I think that if I am aware of that relationship

from which I speak to the beginning,

which is like a puzzle that seems to not be going to be assembled,

but that it is finally going to be assembled.

I had to go back several times to re-englames back or forth,

to know if I really had lost it,

but the story is really well manufactured by Asi De Cillo.

Let's leave a little bit of the series,

as I said,

and I am going to ask you about a text that is written in a Lucas book,

called Texturologias,

where you can write six fragments,

you can write six articles of literary criticism,

you can imagine,

relational between them and that they end up forming a circle,

in this case a really vicious circle.

It is a very healthy period of literary criticism.

You who have also practiced literary criticism

and you have also a criteria of what is a period of literary criticism,

of what is a period of literary criticism,

you have also a criteria of what is a literary criticism

and of what is not a literary criticism.

Yes, I think that it is perhaps a little primary or my criteria,

but I will tell you in all the ways.

Through everything that is written over my books,

I need this because there I can see the work of the critic,

when I am talking about another writer,

it is not a dialogue but a kind of triangle,

my vision of the writer,

the vision that the critic has of the writer,

and the vision that the critic has of the critic.

In this case, when my books are about the idea,

the connection is direct and then it seems better to me to read that.

In that field, I see two kinds of criticism.

There is a kind of criticism that does not deserve any respect,

that I finally have to read,

because I have enough little pages to tell me what happens.

That is the criticism that puts you as I would tell you

in front of what you are judging.

That is to say that you have just begun reading a novel

and immediately he is doing a very serious scheme.

This novel is a realistic, magical novel or crazy,

or what is, it begins to apply more personal schemes,

it applies to the novel.

I am sorry, I think it was worth it, I am sorry I interrupted you.

I think it was Valeria who said what he should do a critic,

first is to know what he has intended to do with that book,

that author, and then tell us if he has been able to do it.

I think that is it.

I said it much better than what I am telling you,

but it goes beyond the same thing.

That is to say that with that kind of criticism,

it happens what happens with certain instrumentalists.

That pianist who plays his Chopin.

Then it happens that the poor Chopin finally remains behind,

because what he tells is the way that that Mr. Lo interprets,

that he does not have anything to do with the way that he interprets Mr. X.

The interquests of too many possessive,

that impose his own modality to a musician,

is a little the case of critics who impose their own schemes

to the books of which they are talking about.

In exchange, I have a deep respect for what they have taught me

and they teach me a lot to those critics who read the books

with all their sensibility,

and I would say with all their humility,

as we write to others without vanity, without pretensions,

and then they transmit their critical experiences,

they transmit their focus,

which can be very different from the author,

but in all this case is not forming the basic structure of the book.

Knowing your sense of humor and some of your visions

is not difficult to realize that Lucas,

the central character,

is a little your own,

although not at all because I know you have never been expelled

from a single point of view,

nor have you ever had a red and yellow hat,

and another yellow hat that is what happens to Lucas.

But something of shortcomings is that there are Lucas.

Who is Lucas and how did you come up with this character?

Well, it's a question that I love to answer because I'm back to my youth.

In reality, Lucas is the synthesis of a number of those friends

we all have had in our secondary studies and especially in our university

and that younger and younger than the first youth.

Argentine friends of good Irish,

who naturally succeeded many times

curious and funny things,

that later we told each other in the coffees.

And that little by little, I have created that imaginary repertoire

in part, but sometimes based on real facts,

that finally forms Lucas's figure.

Look at that, he is called Lucas because he is a friend and friend of good Irish,

of the 40s,

that was called Lucas Manzano, and here in the next one,

I don't know if there is time to tell the anecdote.

Yes, exactly.

Lucas arrived a day at the coffee shop and told us that his father

who had been out of his house when he was two years old

and had abandoned his whole family and had not given any more than ever.

Then he was in Italy.

And that day he had received a letter after 20 years of his father

and in the letter the father told him something like that,

and he said to me, I feel very guilty because the truth is that

I abandoned you, your mother, your sister and you,

but now I have come to life and I am the general gerent

of the work of Borsalino men.

And then I want to show you all the ways

that I do not forget you.

Inside the work, I send you a cord for you to take care of the head

and I return it because I want to give you a shadow

and I signed the letter.

He told it and I was like understand and we also,

but from laughter, well, from the episodes like that,

come out in the history of Lucas.

Yes.

Well, it is evident that if you do not know the meaning of the humor

of what you do,

you would not have written many of the stories that you wrote.

But in any way, the humor of a writer always has something

private, something subtle, something that is

deeply in very determined codes.

However, there are also some passages that you will find

in the history of chronology and fame,

or in a Lucas, and further.

Where, through the introduction by surprise,

certain grotesque elements,

comic, exagerated expressionists,

that provokes the simple and directly the laughter of the reader.

You who value me, I receive the laughter of Ravelet to understand them.

You who value the laughter of literature.

I think that laughter is the extreme form of humorous treatment

in literature or in theater or in cinema.

It is a wonderful thing, but I do not think that I am in my body.

It is possible that, therefore, there is a phrase

that can provoke a character in the reader.

But, in principle, my use of humor seeks more

the smile than the smile.

It seeks to show the most favorable angle of the possible

situations that could sometimes be unsupportable

or too thin or too tragic,

if they had no humor like a kind of rescue,

like salvation.

I mean, I do not seek comic effects, but I believe that among humor

and the comedy, there is a great jump.

For example, I believe that a character like Jerry Lewis is a comic,

and a character like Woody Allen is a man who has the sense of humor,

and respects Woody Allen much more than Jerry Lewis.

So, in what I write, humor is a constant kind of humor

because it seems to me one of the basic elements

for at least my literary creation.

Maybe that comes from my childhood,

because I remember that the eight or nine years ago

I was reading a little of the truculent literature

like the children, right, follets, vampires and things.

I fell in the hands of the Peacook, the Peacook of Dickens,

and it was the most wonderful discovery of humor in the world.

Where the things that sometimes are dramatic are always given

with that humor in a pleasant, angry,

that makes the series happen and that maintains its quality of the series.

But at the same time, I do not present it to you in a negative way,

in a tragic way.

I think that throughout everything I write,

the Peacook of Dickens, I will quote one of those books,

is a kind of module that has always been present.

Now I'm going to ask you a question that also participates

a little bit of the sense of humor as a question.

In your last book, the first book of the book,

it is a relation with cats.

You know that you had a great affectionate cat.

There are cats that are phones, cats that play the piano,

cats' eyes, cats inside a frame,

or cats that face a lila like that of the old light.

I could almost say that cats are to cut what the tigers are for the edges.

This relationship suggests you some kind of cut or cut-off,

or cut-off.

Of course, I admire the tigers because they look like

animals of an extraordinary beauty,

and understanding very well that you are admiring them,

and that also makes a literary use,

in your case, it is like a kind of great metaphor.

The tiger also passes through the literature,

like a kind of private, self-proclaimed immense.

The tiger thinks, I know, he thinks immediately,

William Blake, the luminous tiger that passes through the night's cells.

I can understand very well the fascination of the edges,

which is in the background a aesthetic fascination

because he looks at the tigers on the right side of the king,

as he looks at so many things, I said, they are transparent.

In my case, we go to the cats that are small tigers,

that we can have a direct commercial,

and they, in the measure that nature is aware,

have it with us.

I repeat, it is common, but the cat likes dignity,

the separation, the fact that you are not the one who choose him,

but the one who choose you, the one who stays in your home,

because we are very interested in it, because he wants to eat,

from then on, but it stays because he feels good,

if he does not look for another place.

In addition, they like cats because they are a kind of permanent indication

that they do not know the freedom, they show us the fabric,

the cats when they can be worn out,

and finally the fabric is the most beautiful patch of the man's house.

Before you did the illusion, you talked about music in relation to your work,

you talked about jazz,

and even here we do not talk about jazz,

but we want to have a relationship between a clone,

that makes the idea of relating literature to a literary text,

with a musical piece.

What would you like to talk about the genes of that relationship

and the later development of the same?

Yes, I think there are old literary references,

for example, the famous poem of Paul Selanne,

it is a fun of death and well, and so many other examples.

In the background, there are many references of that type,

because finally, we have sought a musical treatment of a literary text,

one of the many aspects of that that I was able to call the correspondences

between the senses and the aesthetic elements,

that is, that in the same way as an ideal writing a music based on a painting,

or painting a painting based on a novel,

in the same way, you can feel the desire to use a kind of musical scheme

and try not to say it's a joke,

but if you do a parallelism, a equivalent or analog path in literature,

that happened to me with Clon,

because it took a long time that every time I heard that piece of John Sebastian Bach,

which is called the musical offering,

which is very geometrically divided in sections,

each of which has its precise tools.

I was trying to describe a story

that if the less reference to the musical work in the body of the story,

repeated a little bit by mechanism.

That is, if the musical offering has, let's say, 10 parts,

the story would have 10 small chapters,

and if the musical offering in each of the parts has certain instruments,

in the story, those instruments would be replaced by certain characters.

Cuyapsychology, in the story, coincides with the nature of the instruments.

That is, for example, there is a man who is a little bit of a profession

and responds a little to the phagot, which is a serious instrument.

Well, violins can be women or can be tenors in a word.

It is not a style exercise,

but a attempt to make a literary combination

where the music is present.

There is a little note that gives it all the sufficient keys.

Now we are going to talk about the rice we talked about before,

about a certain feeling of sadness or of bitterness.

At the end of reading, we want to be so happy.

I do not know that feeling will have other readers,

but I had the feeling of having read a series of reports

that are added to a large margin,

because they are highly picky about a large number of instruments.

It is like if the author told us,

there is this story that is pathetic and that cannot be told,

if it is not based on being in the search for a lot of humor.

It is like saying, you cannot live without feeling of humor.

Do you agree with this appreciation of me as a collector?

Yes, of course. I have the impression that in something we have already talked about,

a few minutes ago, there have been some references to that.

I have written many stories,

and I do not think that I have written a story that can be considered as a joy.

I do not have a rational explanation when I write a story,

the topic is generally dramatic or tragic.

Above all, the stories we can call fantastic.

Because it would be said that the fantastic exige a night-saving atmosphere,

exige negative elements more than positive.

It is difficult to imagine a fantastic joy, it is conceivable,

but not for me.

The fantastic is always linked to negative elements,

to the pain, suffering, death, everything we can call a nocturnal in the plan of literature.

The incredible is not never pleasant.

The incredible is not pleasant, and also if you think about the great master of the fantastic story

Edgar Allan Poe, his great stories are all deeply tragic.

There are only one that can be considered as a joy.

Now, since we talked about humor,

I do not like being tremendous,

I do not like the light of the light itself.

I understand that these things can come very clearly and deeply to the reader,

but accompanied by how if you have a hand at the same time,

and that hand is a bit humor, a certain irony,

a certain sort of being dispegaed from certain moments of the story,

that finally I believe in you give you more strength than when you do something

that is tremendous and tragic, even the law of the fact that it ends up losing its effect.

I do not know, I do not remember what writer Eral said in the prologue

to an anthology of his texts,

that all the selections are simply a museum of sympathy and differences

and that is the time that ends up adding the best anthologies.

What would you like to do in that selection of texts now,

is that museum of sympathy and differences, giving a little why,

for each of the texts chosen?

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, I do not want to be an anthology of mine,

I think that is a theory of the reader and the critic's theory.

I have the impression that each of the readers of a writer has made its own anthology,

prefers this story, this novel or this poem.

There is an mental anthology that each of us takes with us

when he thinks about García Lorca, about Carpentier or Shakespeare.

It is just more this than that anthology is made.

And I, as a writer, I like the idea that each of my readers has their anthology.

I do not see myself calling my own paintings in the wall,

to say it like that, or choosing my own texts.

Could help an anthology that would offer me possibilities,

could say yes, I like this more than this,

but deliberately make my own anthology,

also I trust that I am a little superstitious,

and that has a little bit of a post-tum,

and I do not have any desire to die.

I feel very alive, every time.

To finish your last novel, the book of Manuel was published in 1973,

that is to say, nine years ago.

And two years ago, in some statement,

you said you had an anthology of a novel.

Are you still an anthology or have you written a new novel or have you written in the middle?

Yes, I have an anthology.

The problem is that you do not have an anthology,

and if you do not have an idea, you have to be the one who wants to do it.

In my case, the problem is simply a time problem.

All those activities that I know,

and that have to do with the liberation problems of some of our Latin American peoples,

have practically taken me all my time.

I leave time to write stories, because a story you write in a plane, in a coffee,

at any time.

A novel, no, a novel is a company,

which you have to deliver,

that you cannot jump into the page 100,

because then when you take it back two months later,

well, that is already cold,

and you would have to start again.

The way it is a problem simply, material, lack of time.

I hope I have given you that time.

Because, although I do not have an idea,

I need the dream novel.

Look, it is a very Freudian thing.

I already told you the other day in an interview.

It is very Freudian, because as I can not write the dream novel,

that is, that even dream, as written,

opens a drawer and there is a large notebook with a writing that is not mine,

signs a little cavalistic,

and that dream is the novel that has already finished.

And also, it is the novel that I wanted to do,

and you can imagine that I have a immense feeling of happiness.

Of course, at the moment when I wake up,

it is a catastrophe.

But I realize that it was no longer that.

But maybe it is a final follow-up,

to make a dream novel

dream to a novel in the paper.