The journalist and writer presents her new novel, a dialogue between a father and his daughter, a fiction that has a lot to do with her relationship with Fernando Sánchez Drag
Ayanta Barilli poses during the interview at the Hotel de Las Letras
Opinion Fernando Snchez Drag, contradictory and free
Planet Finalist Ayanta Barilli: “Choosing one’s own death is sacred”
gets emotional Ayanta Barilli (Rome, 1969) at some moments of the interview. It is normal. Barely 15 days have passed since the death of his father, the writer Fernando Sánchez Drag. “I start crying at any time for anything, even for things that have nothing to do directly with this. I’m in that phase,” she confesses.
The writer, finalist for the 2018 Planeta award with a dark purple seapromotes his new novel if it didn’t dawn (Planet). A work that, as she describes, is the dialogue between a father and a daughter. The fictional characters are called Manuel and Anita. But in the conversation, many times, it is Fernando and Ayanta who inevitably take center stage. The line that separates them is very fine. “I’ve been writing this book for four years and it’s a long goodbye to the father, of course he is,” she says.
The title, ‘If it didn’t dawn’, evokes in Anita the desire and I quote ‘to go back to the beginning, relive what was lost, heal what has been lived’. Was that your feeling as a writer too? What have you wanted to convey?
if it didn’t dawn It is the story of a father and a daughter, one chapter the father and one chapter the daughter. actually this if it didn’t dawn is exactly what you said. She is a prayer of the daughter since the story takes place in 24 hours in which 100 years of history are told. And it is the wish, the prayer of this daughter that she does not wake up. Because when she dawns her father will be dead.
A father, a daughter, face to face you said in a tweet. The inevitable question is… How much of your father is there in Manuel and how much of you is in Anita? It seems to me that a lot.
Man, there is a lot, there is a lot, Being a fictional novel. What is the background of this novel, beyond what it tells or who are the characters? Well, they are a father and a daughter who love each other deeply and their relationship changes over time. I really wanted to reflect on this and obviously I write this novel, although it has happened that it is published 15 days after the death of my father and that belongs to the mystery in which we are all involved. This is inexplicable. But I have been writing this book for the last four years and it is a long goodbye to my father. Of course he is.
You recently commented on the radio that the book is deeply dedicated to your father and that he came to read the galleys. Did he get involved in the book? He told you what did he think?
Never. My father and I were always very loose, being so united also by the literary fact, which obviously has been something very strong that has kept us in a permanent debate. He never gave his books to read before they were published to anyone but the publisher. And I didn’t either, because the writer is usually a very manic person. In this case, fortunately, I gave him the galleys, because Holy Week was starting and I had already received the book and I didn’t have time to go to his house. I was going to go on vacation, he too and such and such. And then I gave him the galleys and he read them.
You complained in another interview about the superficiality with which many media have dismissed your father. Where do you think not enough emphasis has been placed?
Look, I don’t even know because I haven’t read or seen anything. This is the reality. I have enough with this duel that I am going through and with having to face a book promotion. Those of us who are the children of people as famous as my father, in this case someone as scandalous as Snchez Drag, have lived with this noise. That is to say, this circus of the last 15 days I had already imagined. What happens is that of course, one thing is to imagine it and another thing is to live it. The only thing I have experienced, I can tell you that, is that the day of the funeral the whole family was locked up, literally locked up in their house in Castilfro, because there were 100 television photographers outside who prevented us from leaving the house. And when the unfortunate moment came to accompany the coffin to the church, well, they accompanied us there and all that little noise from the cameras, that “click, click, click” really seemed like a riddling of my privacy and that of the whole family. and the friends who were there.
During the recent speech at the Castilla y León Awards where you gave voice to a text from your father: What kind of sensations ran through you inside?
Look, I’m glad you asked me this. This prize for letters from Castilla y León had been awarded before, that is, it is not a posthumous prize. During Holy Week he and I were talking on the phone. I was really into writing this speech. And he told me: ‘it’s too long for me’… And I told him, ‘dad, send it to me, send it to me, I want to read it’. And he told me: ‘Not until it’s finished. You’ll read it. You will read it. This was the last conversation I had with him. Then he died. And then, well, after his funeral, at the end, when they all left and such, with my children, with my brothers, we were reading some parts of this speech at home, but I really didn’t have the arrests to read it whole. So, I went to Valladolid thinking to myself ‘I’m not going to be able to do this’. In other words, simply this, five days after my father died, is implantable. And yet, something happened to me that I think has been, mind you, one of the most beautiful things that has happened to me in my life. Because even being in the state of mind that I was in, I got up and took those papers and it was as if I read it, that is, from head to heart, to mouth. It has been the only half hour of pause from this pain that I feel, that I have, that grips my chest in all these days, in these 15 days since he passed away. I really came back to have him inside. It was a very spiritual experience.
I saw the speech on video. I had the feeling that while she was seeing you, she was seeing him too.
And everything came out like when everything is easy. And that speech is a testament. And at the same time I managed to have my emotions controlled, but I was very excited, because in fact my voice cracks only at the end. But it was a moment of enormous joy. And it has to do with that connection with literature that he and I had. It was a moment of enormous connection between the two of them.
It all seems to fit, the book, the story of the speech. It’s all very premonitory…
It’s just that everything fits, Israel. It is so.
In relation to all this media noise that we have been commenting on, we are at the height of the cancellation of authors. We’ve seen it with Roard Dahl, JK Rowling. What do you think of this phenomenon?
Well, it’s horrible.
Did it affect your father?
My father, of course, never assumed any type of censorship, he did and said what he really wanted, always, even getting into notable trouble. Also in relation to his entire first stage, because we must not forget that my father spent several years in jail for being an anti-Francoist, precisely for doing what was forbidden to do or, rather, to say what was forbidden to say.
Words are used very badly. In Spain you don’t know how to speak. Spain is a very special country in that sense.
Linking to what you say, today people who were in prison are called ‘facha’, quite the opposite. What reflection do you do?
Words are used very badly. In Spain you don’t know how to speak. Spain is a very special country in this sense, which has a recent, very complex history, where there are still people who lived through the civil war, even if it was in its infancy. This use of language, this “facha” and “red” thing, is very hard and I think it does not belong to reality.
We are in an election year. How do you think culture is going to be used in this electoral referendum that is coming our way?
Culture doesn’t interest anyone, neither do books. The writers less. They are used only when you can get some kind of medal. Politicians, in general terms, do not seem to me to be very close to culture, neither in what they propose, nor in how they speak or in the things they say. The culture is also polite. And courtesy is conspicuous by its absence in politics. And I never talk about politics because at home, in the Italian part, they taught me as a child that talking about politics was disrespectful.
I really wanted, after the previous novel, to enter the masculine world. That is to say, I really wanted to write in the first person masculine
Going back to the book. I think your ability to alternate the double point of view between Anita and Manuel is an achievement. How did you come up with it?
I really wanted, after the previous novel, to enter the masculine world. That is to say, I really wanted to write in the first person masculine. And one of the wonders of writers, like actors, for example, is being able to be many things. And suddenly I wanted to enter the man, the father. And I began to write the novel in which there was only that one voice, that is, a novel written in the first person by Manuel. But at 100 pages or so, I realized that a counterpoint was absolutely necessary. In other words, it had to be like a conversation, let’s say metaphorically, between father and daughter.
Was it more difficult for you to get into the role of the father or the daughter?
It is very subtle, but I have worked a lot on the type of thinking that I have believed that Manuel could have and also on the type of thinking that Anita had, even in the literary style. That is to say, I have varied the way of counting, the way of seeing the world, because I believe that they are two ways that can be very similar in some things, but also very different, not only due to a matter of gender, but because they are two generations. different people who have experienced different issues. So, once I understood the structure, it hasn’t been difficult for me. What has been difficult for me in this book is fitting the puzzle. For me it is very important that reading be easy, joyful.
And, finally, a controversial issue for you to position yourself, Ayanta. Only… With accent or without it?
Always with accent Accents are… How to say?… They are part of the music and the beauty of writing. A paragraph without accents or without commas or without capital letters, it is missing the pauses, it is missing the notes… So, everything that is removed, it seems to me that it is subtracted. In fact I was very happy because just before I printed this book, the news came out from the Royal Academy that it could be put back with only tilde. And I asked the publisher to put all the accents.
