|
©2009
|
El sol después
V. O. What was the challenge to write the novel El sol después? L.H. The challenge was to manage consecutive and simultaneous levels, to explore in the characters the layers of time in constant transformation, to make the reader aware of a vast becoming present thanks to the montage of the scenes. The second sentence of the novel is a key defining the tonal structure: “Scarce details, just frames that make possible verbal passages: instant emotion”. I wanted to make the macro coexist in the micro: the resonance of a society affected by war and the multiple faces of love. V.O. One of the themes of your novel is the illusion of love. What is your opinion on this? L.H. From my point of view, the most complex aspect of love is the power to resist an intimate boycott. Love is known to have a logic similar to war: it appropriates at an excessive cost what belongs only irrationally to it, denying the consequences of that violence. Well, in this novel Nicole and Jota* are facing the innumerable twists and turns of their feelings. There is neither will nor lack of will, the protagonists go from one extreme to the other: dialogue-silence, motion-stillness, devotion-escapism. They reveal a flashing memory and changing impressions triggered by partial cover-ups. The sensitive flows until it absorbs the daily routine while their interaction alerts, shocks, smashes the predictable. *Jota in Spanish stands for the letter J. V.O. Your novel has an unusual layout. What can you say about it? L.H. I wrote El sol después as if it were a composition. In music every sound is an independent unit. In prose, as in poetry, occurs something similar: the words, the descriptions, the dialogues, the voices are all instrumental variations. Therefore, the importance of the interruptions and the need of constructing a sieve that allows game instead of blind obedience. The idea was to manipulate the words of our Argentine language as if it were alien. I bore in mind that in the Serbian language don’t exist any articles and that both nouns and adjectives decline, which means using less prepositions and thus generating a greater condensation of images and tones. V.O. In this novel you are quoting verses of the song Blues for my former love by White Button/Bijelo dugme: “I will never go back/ To my hometown/ No one is waiting for me there/ And all faces are long gone from my memory/ And their names are long gone too...” L.H. The lyrics of the song are repeated by Nicole who left behind her past without knowing it. The protagonist's mother is a disappeared Argentine guerilla; Nicole grew up considering it quite normal that kids have one mother and several fathers. She was ignorant of her reality: the fact that her mother’s friends were taking care of her as if they were one large family. *Translation of the song into English according to: V.O. One of the main themes of your novel is the complex issue of identity. Why is this such an important issue in today’s modern world? Or is it a theme of all times? L.H. Maybe more in today’s world than in other decades, identity is an ever changing concept, which means it can be approached from various points of view. In Argentina during the year 2010, same-sex marriage was signed into law. This means sexual identity can be chosen and this choice is respected with its according legal rights. Something similar happens to the protagonist of El sol después when he meets Nicole. Jota choses to be no longer an engineer, carreer he adopted in his early youth after the death of his friend who used to play the drums. Jota decides to get out of his seclusion, to live his affections: he chooses to feel again. V.O. Nicole and Jota travel to Serbia where most of the novel happens. Can you explain what attracted you to place the action in the Balkans? L.H. No other setting could have hosted the protagonists in such a complete way as the Serbian setting has. Two devastated souls and their work in progress. The old Yugoslavia: a country that has gone through various metamorphoses and has been able to survive uncountable changes, exposed both to internal conflicts and to the mercy of violent international interventions. Nicole and Jota travell to Serbia -borderland with Bosnia-, they live on a barge, they are witnesses of the war’s consequences in society. There is intertextuality with Ivo Andric’s novel The Bridge on the Drina and with Peter Handke’s essay A Journey to the Rivers: Justice for Serbia. V.O. Your novel has an expressive and poetic style. How do you develop your own style of writing? Do you have any literary role models? L.H. I remember a book by Gérard Pommier, named L’exeption féminine (the female exception). The author refers to the Open that would be beyond any generic conventions, an affection attentive to sound and to its plasticity, a creation that privileges the craftwork of empty space, the abyss. V.O. What can you tell us about contemporary literature in Argentina? L.H. It’s a vast topic as every month many books of several genres are being published in Argentina: novel, short story, poetry, essay. Generally speaking, it exists a tendency towards autobiographical fiction with different pursuits: from the private diary to the construction of universes that bring together global and national political episodes, for instance the novel El mañana (The future) by Luisa Valenzuela. Last year, for the celebration of the Bicentenary of Argentine Independence, some classical works have been re-edited and several comprehensive anthologies -for instance 200 años de Poesía Argentina (200 years of Argentine poetry) by Jorge Monteleone, the author of the afterword in El sol después- have been published. |