Writer of the Spanish Golden Age, Francisco de Quevedo (1580–1645) was a prominent poet and politician. Much of his work is concerned with wordplay and metaphor.
HS/MB: Is it disturbing to think we have read many of our gods (James, Stendhal, Proust) in translation, in second-hand versions? Is that literature? If we spin the matter around, it’s possible we might end up concluding that words don’t have an equivalent.
RB: I think they do. Furthermore, literature is not made from words alone. Borges says that there are untranslatable writers. I think he uses Quevedo as an example. We could add García Lorca and others. Notwithstanding that, a work like Don Quijote can resist even the worst translator. As a matter of fact, it can resist mutilation, the loss of numerous pages and even a shit storm. Thus, with everything against it — bad translation, incomplete and ruined — any version of Quijote would still have very much to say to a Chinese or an African reader. And that is literature. We may lose a lot along the way. Without a doubt. But perhaps that was its destiny. Come what may.
II. “READING IS ALWAYS MORE IMPORTANT THAN WRITING”. INTERVIEW BY CARMEN BOULLOSA, TRANSLATED BY MARGARET CARSON
FIRST PUBLISHED IN BOMB, BROOKLYN, WINTER 2002
Roberto Bolaño belongs to the most select group of Latin American novelists. Chile of the coup d’état, Mexico City in the 1970s, and the reckless youth of poets are some of his frequent subjects, but he also takes up other themes: César Vallejo’s deathbed, the hardships endured by unknown authors, life at the periphery. Born in Chile in 1953, he spent his teenage years in Mexico and moved to Spain at the end of the Seventies. As a poet, he founded the Infrarealist movement with Mario Santiago. In 1999 he won the Rómulo Gallegos Prize, previously awarded to Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa, for his novel The Savage Detectives, for which he also received the prestigious Herralde Prize.
A prolific writer, a literary animal who makes no concessions, Bolaño successfully combines the two basic instincts of a novelist: He is attracted to historical events, and he desires to correct them, to point out the errors. From Mexico he acquired a mythical paradise, from Chile the inferno of the real, and from Blanes, the town in northeast Spain where he now lives and works, he purges the sins of both. No other novelist has been able to convey the complexity of the megalopolis Mexico City has become, and no one has revisited the horrors of the coup d’état in Chile and the Dirty War with such mordant, intelligent writing.
To echo Bolaño’s words, “reading is more important than writing.” Reading Roberto Bolaño, for example. If anyone thinks that Latin American literature isn’t passing through a moment of splendor, a look through some of his pages would be enough to dispel that notion. With Bolaño, literature — that inexplicably beautiful bomb that goes off and as it destroys, rebuilds — should feel proud of one of its best creations.
Our conversation took place via e-mail between Blanes and my home in Mexico City in the fall of 2001.
CARMEN BOULLOSA: In Latin America, there are two literary traditions that the average reader tends to regard as antithetical, opposite — or frankly, antagonistic: the fantastic—Adolfo Bioy Casares, the best of Cortázar, and the realist — Vargas Llosa, Teresa de la Parra. Hallowed tradition tells us that the southern part of Latin America is home to the fantastic, while the northern part is the center of realism. In my opinion, you reap the benefits of both: Your novels and narratives are inventions — the fantastic — and a sharp, critical reflection of reality — realist. And if I follow this reasoning, I would add that this is because you have lived on the two geographic edges of Latin America, Chile and Mexico. You grew up on both edges. Do you object to this idea, or does it appeal to you? To be honest, I find it somewhat illuminating, but it also leaves me dissatisfied: The best, the greatest writers (including Bioy Casares and his antithesis, Vargas Llosa) always draw from these two traditions. Yet from the standpoint of the English-speaking North, there’s a tendency to pigeonhole Latin American literature within only one tradition.
According to Bolaño, the Argentine writer Adolfo Bioy Casares (1914–1999) wrote “the first and best fantastic novel in Latin America.” He was close friends with Borges and married to the writer Silvina Ocampo. The collaborations between Bioy Casares and Borges were many and varied. In 1990 he was awarded the Cervantes Prize, the highest honor in Spanish-language literature. His major work is The Invention of Morel (1940).
Perhaps Bolaño’s favorite author, Julio Cortázar (1914–1984) influenced scores of Latin American authors. Bolaño refers to him as simply “the best.”
An early force in Spanish language literature, Teresa de la Parra (1889–1936) was the daughter of a Venezuelan diplomat. She was born in Paris and raised in Europe but returned to Venezuela when she was nineteen. Her major work, Iphigenia (1924), is a work of modernist realism.
ROBERTO BOLAÑO: I thought the realists came from the south (by that, I mean the countries in the Southern Cone), and writers of the fantastic came from the middle and northern parts of Latin America — if you pay attention to these compartmentalizations, which you should never, under any circumstances, take seriously. Twentieth century Latin American literature has followed the impulses of imitation and rejection, and may continue to do so for some time in the twenty-first century. As a general rule, human beings either imitate or reject the great monuments, never the small, nearly invisible treasures. We have very few writers who have cultivated the fantastic in the strictest sense — perhaps none, because among other reasons, economic underdevelopment doesn’t allow subgenres to flourish. Underdevelopment only allows for great works of literature. Lesser works, in this monotonous or apocalyptic landscape, are an unattainable luxury. Of course, it doesn’t follow that our literature is full of great works — quite the contrary. At first the writer aspires to meet these expectations, but then reality — the same reality that has fostered these aspirations — works to stunt the final product. I think there are only two countries with an authentic literary tradition that have at times managed to escape this destiny — Argentina and Mexico. As to my writing, I don’t know what to say. I suppose it’s realist. I’d like to be a writer of the fantastic, like Philip K. Dick, although as time passes and I get older, Dick seems more and more realist to me. Deep down — and I think you’ll agree with me — the question doesn’t lie in the distinction of realist/fantastic but in language and structures, in ways of seeing. I had no idea that you liked Teresa de la Parra so much. When I was in Venezuela people spoke a lot about her. Of course, I’ve never read her.
CB: Teresa de la Parra is one of the greatest women writers, or greatest writers, and when you read her you’ll agree. Your answer completely supports the idea that the electricity surging through the Latin American literary world is fairly haphazard. I wouldn’t say it’s weak, because suddenly it gives off sparks that ignite from one end of the continent to the other, but only every now and then. But we don’t entirely agree on what I consider to be the canon. All divisions are arbitrary, of course. When I thought about the south (the Southern Cone and Argentina), I thought about Cortázar, Silvina Ocampo’s delirious stories, Bioy Casares, and Borges (when you’re dealing with authors like these, rankings don’t matter: There is no “number one,” they’re all equally important authors), and I thought about that short, blurry novel by María Luisa Bombal, House of Mist (whose fame was perhaps more the result of scandal — she killed her ex-lover). I would place Vargas Llosa and the great de la Parra in the northern camp. But then things become complicated, because as you move even further north you find Juan Rulfo, and Elena Garro with A Solid Home (1958) and Recollections of Things to Come (1963). All divisions are arbitrary: There is no realism without fantasy, and vice versa.