2023-05-09 17:50:32
A pact with the devil marks a saga of women. They are dead but they continue to live in the same isolated house, Mas Clavell, on a mountain in Les Guilleries, laughing, cooking, seeing how the ones still alive look at their mobile phones today or are on their deathbeds and, above all, remembering when they lived surrounded by wolves, bandits or maquis. Is I gave you eyes and you looked into the darkness (Anagram), the new novel dIrene Solà (Malla, Osona, 1990), which arrives in bookstores today. the author ofI tell them (Documenta prize 2017) saw 2019 as the polyphonic voices of I sing and the mountain dances (Llibres Anagrama prize and European Union Prize for Literature) became a phenomenon that totaled more than 100,000 copies sold in Catalan and almost 50,000 in Spanish, was translated into 26 languages and spawned a theatrical and symphonic version.
Do you believe in ghosts?
As I was writing I knew that these women had to be ghosts and that the narrative voice had to place her on the side of the dead. And that the novel would take place between the four walls of this house and for a single day, and that the living and the dead would coexist in the house. The ghosts have a very strong presence because it is a novel that reflects on memory and forgetting. And the ghost is the great figure of memory.
But does he believe in ghosts?
On a literary level, yes. They work for me. On a personal level, I enjoy being told ghost stories. I believe in stories. In what we can explain with these. And what we can come to believe through these. This book is about believing the incredible, about imagining the unimaginable, it’s about everything that goes into stories, it explores the imaginary, the unreal, fiction, magic. And from there, one of the premises, the pact with the devil.
Joana sells her soul to the devil in exchange for a man to marry. Would you make a deal with the devil?
No. It’s a very tricky thing, you don’t know how it can end. It suited Joana. I am interested in the pact with the devil because it is part of our imagination and because of how we construct the figure of the devil from folklore and legends. The pact is this magical premise that connects my own pact with the reader, of someone telling a story that another receives, a pact that one will turn off the sensors of disbelief for a while and believe what the other explain
There are scenes reminiscent of Inferno del Bosch.
I have read different people, often mystics, describing their own descent into Hell. But I accumulate images of all kinds after meeting experts, after treading the territory, from endless hours of YouTube videos… For me the research process is linked to the writing process, which is a learning process and long and deep exploration.
Women isolate themselves in the house, but at the same time they are free. Contradictory?
There are constant dualities in the book. For example, you never know if something is lucky or unlucky. It’s lucky to see how people will die, how is it happening to Bernadeta? It’s lucky not to smell, how about Angela? The book reflects on the subjectivity of stories, family narratives and history in capital letters, on who has decided who is part of it or who is or is not relevant. It stars those women who star neither in most stories in lower case nor in most historical events in capital letters. They are women outside the canon, old, ugly, abject, dead, who tell us the story from their perspective. Most men decide to leave the house and never come back. Instead of going on adventures, to war, to see the world, they stay and end up being the ladies of the house, where they create a space of freedom, irreverence, humor and laughter . I propose other dualities: between light and darkness, day and night, life and death.
Death is omnipresent.
There is death, but there is also life. they go together And it is a very physical book. There are descriptions of preparing meals, of traps for wolves. And many parts. And it speaks of the pleasure of bodies, but also of violence and torture of bodies. And it is full of smells and stench, tastes, textures… For me, this weighs more than death.
The novel begins with Bernadette, already a grandmother, in the bed in which she will die. Are you afraid of death?
I don’t have a clear answer. Now, as we speak, I can say no. I spoke with a palliative care doctor, from whom I learned different ways of approaching end-of-life processes. I’m interested in how everyone experiences life and death differently.
The title, I gave you eyes and you looked into the darkness. Why are we so attracted to darkness?
It depends on what we mean by darkness and what preconceived ideas we have about it. I play with it. Among the layers of meaning of the title is that of putting into question that darkness is something bad, negative and scary. Here the darkness ends up being spaces of freedom, of possibilities, of magic, of pleasure. There are those who say that the title is scary and who say that they want to go into the darkness. I have looked into the darkness, in a literal sense, to describe with language its corporeality, and in a metaphorical sense, choosing to write what I want with total freedom.
The men also carry the curse, like the bandit Clavell, tortured and executed, which is a nod to a real one, Serrallonga. But he is not the only one.
Les Guilleries is a place to hide. Women hide and remain on the sidelines of history. But other characters choose to hide as well: the devil himself, deserters, maquis, the pugs and those hiding from the pugs, the last wolves, a witch… and the bandits: Clavell has inflicted a lot of violence as well as tenderness. The reader has seen its lights and shadows, which is why its ending, very violent, impresses. And Serrallonga shows how a legend is built, how a fact is transformed from the moment it is narrated.
Is society losing its memory?
I don’t know if I can speak for the whole society. The book surprises you with how little we know about our own family history. Beyond grandparents, everything blurs very quickly, people’s character… We live in places and pass through streets where we don’t know most of the things that have happened there. I am interested in reflecting on what we remember and what we choose to forget individually and collectively. And about how we transform the memory and sometimes turn it into what suits us.
In the novel there are maquis, deserters from the Civil War, allusions to Nazi camps and exile in France… It does not forget historical memory.
I’m interested in stories and reflecting on history and who wrote it. Bernadeta tries to explain to the women who have lost the war what she knows has happened to their loved ones. I do not understand those who say that it is necessary to forget. There is much to understand and to explain.
Would you say that the novel has traces of magical realism?
I am very interested in what is done from Latin America and the authors who wore this label, which had to do with a time, a place and a context that is not mine. But I wouldn’t use that label for what I do.
It is defined by its way of using and playing with language.
I imagine the narrative voice as another ghostly presence that wanders through this house and approaches the characters. During the investigation, with the prescriptions, the judicial processes for banditry… this language appears very organically from the perspective of the dead women, who were born many years before and for whom a mobile phone is a magic mirror.
#darkness #afraid #space #freedom #magic #pleasure