2024-01-30 21:08:58
To talk about Sergio Ramírez (Nicaragua, 1942) is to talk about one of the most important voices in Latin American literature and the only Cervantes Prize winner born in Central America. The political history of his country and the personal experiences surrounding it as a key piece of the Sandinista Revolution have marked many of his works. However, he who was one of the great names of that revolution now looks at his land from exile and denationalized, but without leaving aside his literary style and way of seeing the world. Left behind is his renowned character, Inspector Morales, whose last appearance we could see in Tongolele didn’t know how to dance (Alfaguara, 2021), a portrait of the repression experienced in Nicaragua since the 2018 uprisings.
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Now, the Nicaraguan writer immerses himself in The golden horse (Alfaguara, 2024) surpassing the limits of imagination. It is a plot full of trips, adventures and geographical spaces that range from a village in Siret (Romania) in 1905 to a Managua occupied by the United States in 1917. However, the primary element of the work is the carousel or merry-go-round that He believes he has invented a horse-sculpting hairdresser who knows a princess named Maria Alexandrovna. In this novel, Ramírez appears fantastic, humorous and experimental, capable of mutilating that idea of a writer of political plots in which many only pigeonhole him.
Could we say that it is a very Cervantine novel? In the sense of homage to stories and adventure novels.
Of course, it is a novel that has an itinerary behind it and The Quijote Follow a surprising and surprising itinerary. The path exists so that adventures arise along it. So, that is the purpose of this novel, to surprise at every turn of the corner. I believe that I have sought to erase the limits that may exist between creativity and using imagination as an exercise of freedom. It is Cervantina in the sense that it has an adventure novel, there are fairy tales, romantic or police novel and mix many genres. There is also a parody of those fairy tales, right? My princess is a lame princess who lives in a poor palace with a drunk father. Not like Rubén Darío de Swans, gold and glass palaces.
Political plots are always expected of you due to the situation that Nicaragua is going through, which has cost it exile. What has you been to write for The golden horse?
Among other things, to erase the impression that I am tied to the wheel of an issue. For me that is the most terrible thing that can happen. That I have to be spinning that same wheel of the political novel. I respect the country’s political atmosphere very much because it is the one that touches me, right? To the extent that there is oppression, imbalance and inequality in Nicaragua, there will always be cause for a novel because that source is there. However, the world of imagination is very vast and I do not have to stick exclusively to that subject, but where the imagination takes me.
However, in this book there is a political feature that is the liberal dictatorship of José Santos Zelaya and the military intervention of the United States in Nicaragua.
Of course, he always returns to reality. That is, there is no period in the history of Nicaragua that abnormality does not arise. Even in the famous period of the conservative 30 years there are also abnormalities. So, the dictatorship of Zelaya is the first lasting dictatorship in the country. However, in the novel what is narrated is the fall of the dictator. The princess arrives in Nicaragua in the carousel the day the dictator moves away and goes into exile.
He began writing this story in 2014 when he was still in Nicaragua and finished it years later in exile in Spain. Has it been easy to find ways out of the plot axis?
I started it as a first attempt and, as often happens with a creative work, I abandoned it because I couldn’t find the way out or I couldn’t follow the path at that moment and I continued with another project. I took it up again and the same thing happened again. Until I found the final connection, which was the transfer of the action to Nicaragua across the ocean. Entonces es ahí donde sabía que la historia tenía que terminar en mi país, pero no el cómo.
The story ends in Nicaragua, but the geographical space where it is located is striking: the Carpathians, Bucharest, Istanbul. What were the reasons for putting the focus there?
Yes, this novel begins in places where I have never been, like Romania or Istanbul, for example. Playing with imagination is one of the primary features. I believe that in the imagination there are no known territories, but to know and one can know them through simply imagining them. And even without having been there, I did an exercise of having been because I studied the place, geography and time. If the characters have to travel by Bucharest near train, I studied the rail networks of that time, how they were built, where the trains were going. What happens is that when you’re going to lie, you have to really give a sediment to the lie. That is, a novel cannot be fantastic to the extent that everything is invented. If you are going to build imaginatively about reality, that reality you have to know and be able to touch it.
Furthermore, the book is full of notes, fragments from newspapers, magazines, dialogues that do not end, stories in between that assault the development. Would you say that it is one of his most multifaceted novels?
Yes, definitely. I would say that it is the one that uses the greatest variety of procedures. Not only linear narration, but dialogues in the form of radio scripts, film scripts. Instructional manuals, letters, bureaucratic letters or interviews.
I believe that humor is a very important defense shield in life. We must not be intimidated by circumstances and bitterness
Have you learned, like one of your characters, to “make fun of the misfortune” that life proposes?
Yes, because if not life becomes too dramatic to endure it. The way to face life is with humor, even in the worst of situations. And the only way to achieve this is with the ability to make fun of yourself and your own misfortune. I believe that humor is a very important coat of defense in life. Do not let themselves be amylrated by circumstances and bitterness. The worst thing that can happen is to fall into bitterness and laughter saves us from it.
It is a novel where the importance of the carousel or merry-go-round cannot be ignored. In Nicaragua, the famous ‘mobile neighborhood circuses’ are characteristic. Is the carousel figure a representation of returning to your childhood?
Yes, one of the things that was most suggestive to me as a child was that when I traveled from my town to study in Managua or León, I would find the same carousel that arrived in Masatepe. [su municipio natal] Because it was portable. It was mobile and meeting it was like meeting a friend with a surprise. He saw the carousel with its canvas stopped. Then, when I went to study in León, the deterioration of the carousel impressed me a lot because it had been years and then I was old, dispatched and the music box did not exist. He had speakers and cables had been replaced by fiberglass animals such as elephants and zebras. It was not the same anymore. For this reason, at the end of the novel an already deteriorated carousel appears.
There is a contrast of the carousel when it is transferred to Nicaragua and appears inserted in the political situation of the country
How does a carousel become a literary element?
There are many ways to see it. The fascination of the carousel as an artifact is the one that has the hairdresser who is inventing what is already invented. However, he is sculpting the horses, wondering how they will go around. It’s an artifact of civilization, right? It is of play, but of civilization. He wonders if he is mechanical, electric, if he has lights. Then there is a carousel contrast when he is transferred to Nicaragua. It is a state gift that these cocoa producers, the Menier family, make Zelaya because it is a novelty. They are giving him technology and carousel appears inserted in the political situation of the country. Tan es así que el presidente Estrada prepara una conspiración usando el carrusel y él es sorprendido por los alzados en armas que lo capturan montando uno de los caballitos.
It is a story with a lot of intertwining. The real seems fictitious and then the fictitious seems real.
Yes, there is an intersection of reality and imagination. So the idea is that the reality of the imagination overlaps so that the weld of that overlap cannot be seen: what is real? What is imagined? All the documents are apocryphal, but they have this substance of reality because they are based on facts.
En una Nicaragua contemporánea convulsa y en constante cambio. How could Inspector Morales return?
He could return, only now he will have to act in exile [sonríe]. We don’t know if it’s still in Spain or in Costa Rica. All cards are open.
Having a style frees you from imitation. Stopping having my own voice to assume another is a loss of literary quality
As a good novelist, you have your own style. And this novel shows that he did not want to stay stagnant. What happens if a novelist does not get a style?
The style depends on constancy, language and the search in a way of expression that is not easy to achieve. Once one becomes the owner of a style he can use the freedom and go down any path because he has a key in his hand. A key that is the key to the style. Have a style frees you from imitation. For me, parody is a game and is part of literature. Stop having my own voice to assume another is a loss of literary quality. It is what our teacher Rubén said: “I pursue a way that my style does not find. There is the great fight. ” And as Machado also said: “I distinguish I stop the voices of the echoes.” It is one thing to be of someone and another thing is to have your own voice.
Once the novel ended. What teachings did she let him write? The golden horse?
That one can experience, whatever age one is or how many years one has dedicated to writing. One should not stop experimenting because the novel is open experimentation. You don’t have to be afraid of novelty. Literature is that. At this age and height I feel safer because I own the trade and more insecure, precisely because of that. Because every time I finish a page I review it again. That is, because I have no terror of err. Soy muy meticuloso para corregir, pero no para imaginar. When I imagine I leave the fingers flying on the keys to write what the imagination tells me, but then the adjustment comes. In that adjustment you realize that words are very treacherous and you have to know how to work with them, be patient and submit them to discipline.
How long do you think you will continue experimenting?
I have no literary farewell date. My mind will tell me that. As long as I retain my memory and imagination I will continue forward. For me it is a very distant date [sonríe] and I don’t have the view of the end point.
#sought #imagination #exercise #freedom