By The Firelight

There is a good ten minute interview with the great Spanish writer Ana María Matute at Revista de Letras where she talks about her writing and her life. Of particular interest, she says she was the first to use children in fiction in Spain. Her contemporaries did not. Only after she gained success did they also do it. Considering how much she writes about children she probably is talking with some authority, although, I would like a little more confirmation. Fortunately, you can read her works in English. Many have been translated.

The video is also a lesson in what not to do when interviewing an author. While author interviews can be a little boring, the producers put such long transitions between ideas, complete with Jazz and hazy graphics, that it got a little boring waiting for her to speak.

The Spanish author Ana Maria Matute, the Lebanese Amin Maalouf, and the Chilean Nicanor Parra are the finalists for the Principe de Asturias prize, which will be awarded on Wednesday. El Pais has a run down on the authors. It is interesting that a Lebanese author is listed amongst an otherwise Spanish language prize. As a fan of Matute I would like to see her win.

Earlier I posted about a feature in Letras Libres that listed close to 100 books that helped define Spain in the 20th Century. One of the things you may have noticed is there were scarcely any women writers. Laura Freixas has remedied that situation with her addition of 25 women authors. I have read several and several are in English so it is useful list. You can see some of the books I am acquainted with.

This kind of lopsideness in lists shows up a lot in Spanish speaking critics. A few years ago the list of the top 100 best novels of the last 25 years Spanish had 5-10 books by women. Not a particularly representative sample.

I already know the standard answer of these critics: “We don’t apply qoatas, we only look for quality.” Quality? Acording to who? Since literature isn’t an exact sience, the quality will always be a question of taste ( tastes educated, formed, polite, of course, but in the end tastes), a question, then, subjective. Subjective factors are the ones that influence. That, for example, the Aragonese critic Félix Romeo has mentioned more books from Aragonese authors than his Catalan or Canarian college, seems to me explainable: he has more information about these works, the ones he knows, as such they are closer to him. And I legitimate, on the condition that one does not privilege other circumstances over others…that is what occurred when one only asks opinions of men (I am referring to the four critics consulted in that edition of Letras Libres).

Ya sé cuál es la respuesta estándar ante críticas de ese tipo: “No aplicamos cuotas, sólo atendemos a la calidad”. ¿Calidad? ¿A juicio de quién? Pues no siendo la literatura una ciencia exacta, la calidad siempre será cuestión de gustos (gustos instruidos, formados, educados, desde luego, pero gustos al fin), cuestión, pues, subjetiva. En la que influyen factores subjetivos. Que por ejemplo el crítico aragonés, Félix Romeo, haya mencionado más libros de autores aragoneses que su colega catalán o canario me parece explicable: tiene más información sobre esas obras, las conoce mejor, le resultan más próximas. Y legítimo, a condición de que no se privilegie unas circunstancias sobre otras… que es lo que ocurre cuando sólo se pide opinión a varones (lo eran los cuatro críticos consultados en el número de Letras Libres al que me estoy refiriendo).

The first three are available in English. The last I will be reading in a month or two. The full list is here.

■ Nada (1945), de Carmen Laforet

■ Fiesta al noroeste (1953), de Ana María Matute

■ La plaça del Diamant (1962), de Mercè Rodoreda

■ Mi hermana Elba (1980), de Cristina Fernández Cubas

There is a great interview in El País with Ana María Matute. They talk about how her heath has kept her from writing recently even though she has been completely mentally able to write. When talking about literature they discuss Matute’s works for children and how she has often written from the perspective of children. It has been very important throughout her career to write for them, in part because there wasn’t anything good and she wanted to write for her son. They also talk about how her mother supported her writing, something rare during the Franco Period, and with her help would type up her drafts before submitting them to publishers.

There was fascinating questions about her style.

You seem especially predisposed to this type of literature [sparse], since you uphold plain and straightforward writing that is not easy to achieve; en fact, you say it is very difficult. Yes. It is that I want the whole world to understand me. I don’t want to torture the reader. No. There are a lot of writers that love to torturer the reader. Not me! [Said harshly] I like that the understand me. For this reason I write. In addition, I’m not such an elitist.

Usted parece especialmente predispuesta a este tipo de literatura, ya que defiende la escritura llana y sencilla, que no es tan fácil de conseguir; de hecho, usted dice que es muy difícil. Sí. Es que yo quiero que me entienda todo el mundo. Yo no quiero torturar al lector. No. Hay muchos escritores a los que les encanta torturar al lector. ¡A mí no! [Proclama con dureza]. A mí me gusta que me entiendan. Para eso escribo. Además, no soy tan elitista.

She also talked about her relationship to the Civil War and recent pushes to investigate the past in Spain.

Undoubtedly it is a traumatic experience. It was tremendous. I still can’t stand fireworks. They have the same sound as the bombs. The bombardments here in Barcelona were terrible. By sea and by air. We lived on Platón Street and back then I saw the sea from my room and I was completely frightened. You feel so powerless…My father would say: take everyone by the hand against the teacher’s wall. And we all would stay that way…[She remains quiet, in suspense, with a face of fear]. I also remember the lines. Those of us who were bourgeois children, those that didn’t go out without one’s father [she makes a face of horror], we quickly had to go stand in line to get bread, where nobody gave a damn. For us it was great! Because we had the liberty to come and go…We looked like mice wanting to go after cheese. My older brother and I discovered freedom. We enjoyed it a lot.

I have found that many people your age reject, perhaps out of fear, the plans to recover the historical memory, to remove this part of history from the past. It is that the way perhaps the fear hasn’t gone, but yes the sadness [remains], the laceration, and the waking of hatreds. I understand that those that have not lived the war have their own feelings, but for me it makes me shiver. To return to relive, to remember. I remember the attempted coup de Tejero [in 1981]. I was with my son in a taxi and we hear the shots on the radio. Look! And I became desperate. “Not again! No, God, not again!” My son asked me: “What’s happening mama?” The taxi cab driver and my son began to talk about what was happening and I would only say: “No, not again. No I will resist it.

Indudablemente es una experiencia muy traumática. Es tremenda. Yo todavía ahora no soporto los fuegos artificiales. Tienen el mismo sonido que las bombas. Los bombardeos aquí en Barcelona fueron terribles. Por mar y por aire. Nosotros vivíamos en la calle de Platón y entonces veía el mar desde mi cuarto y pasaba un miedo espantoso. Te sientes tan impotente… Mi padre decía: cojámonos todos de la mano, contra el muro maestro. Y así nos quedábamos todos… [Se queda quieta, en suspenso, con cara de susto]. También me acuerdo de las colas. Nosotros, que éramos unos niños de clase burguesa, de esos que no salían más que con las tatas [pone cara de horror], teníamos de pronto que ir a hacer colas para conseguir el pan, sin que a nadie le importara. ¡Para nosotros era fenomenal! Porque teníamos libertad de entrar y salir… Parecíamos ratones deseando salir del queso. Mi hermano mayor y yo descubrimos la libertad. La disfrutamos mucho.

He comprobado que mucha gente de su edad rechaza, quizá por miedo, los intentos de recuperar la memoria histórica, de remover esa parte del pasado. Es que de la guerra quizá ya no te queda el miedo, pero sí la tristeza, el desgarro y un despertar de odios. Entiendo que los que no han vivido la guerra tengan un sentimiento distinto, pero a mí me escalofría. Volver a repasar, a recordar. Me acuerdo del intento de golpe de Estado de Tejero [en 1981]. Yo iba con mi hijo en un taxi y oímos los tiros a través de la radio. ¡Mira!, me entró una desesperación… ¡Otra vez no! ¡No, por Dios, otra vez no! Mi hijo me preguntaba: “¿Pero qué te pasa, mamá?”. El taxista y él empezaron a hablar de lo que estaba pasando y yo sólo decía: “No, otra vez no. No lo resistiré”.

Ana María Matute has a new book out and El País has given it a great review. If you have never read her work, she is definitely worth it. Her sparse short stories are excellent. Her name often comes up around Nobel time (although that may just be in Spain). If you are unfamiliar with her, the description from the article is a great synopsis.

Aunque perteneciente, cronológicamente, a la llamada generación del medio siglo, con cuyos más destacados miembros comparte determinados trasfondos temáticos (la Guerra Civil española, la desolación como paisaje moral de los años de posguerra, la rememoración de la infancia como irreparable pérdida de la inocencia edénica, y el descalabro humano reinante en una sociedad en la que los más débiles sucumben bajo la impiedad de los poderosos), la escritura de Ana María Matute siempre se ha regido por un talante despegado de las consignas tanto ideológicas como estéticas de la época.

Although she belongs, chronologically, to the mid century generation, whose most well know members share certain thematic overtones (the Spanish Civil Way, the desolation as moral voyage through the years after the war, the child’s memory as the irreparable loss of an Eden like innocence, and the reigning human misfortune in a society where the weakest succumb to the impunity of the powerful), the writing of Ana María Matute has always been marked by a talent not tied to ideologies but the aesthetics of the era.