2023-04-26 14:12:43
This book by Ayanta Barilli, if it didn’t dawn (Planet), which goes on sale today, is conceived as a creature of fiction and reality by a woman who, in writing, has taken four years. History itself, where the tragedies of life and death are breathed, only twenty-four hours pass. Although neither one nor the other have boasted of the close relationship that unites them, it is relevant here to say that Ayanta is the daughter of Fernando Sánchez Dragó, who recently died of a heart attack, and therefore in unexpected circumstances that can be associated with dramatic reality. what brand if it didn’t dawn. When she sent her father her manuscript, he said to her daughter, “I see that you are accompanying me to a good death.”
In the midst of the worst recent threat, that of covid, the fictional father of this leading woman, Anita, falls into the darkest disease of recent plagues. She seeks help until she finds her ninety-year-old father in mortal danger. The fear passes from the writing to the reader as if that trepidation were also the look of the one who attends, reading, the drama that Anita lives through and, who knows, the writer who invents or conceives it. It is impossible to read all this without imagining Sánchez Dragó in the novel, fiction and reality at the same time, and the truly bitter daughter in the face of a fact that is not in writing but in the reality of life.
This story that whose writing alternates the compelling reality of death or its threat it is now an expression of what chance does with the imagination: it envelops it and returns it as the bitter result of what life does with the imagination.
Now reading, including the origin of writing, reaches the value of an autobiography. Although the details are different from those that could be assimilated to the life of the royal father, the truth is that that trepidation now becomes a metaphor for what has happened to Ayanta herself in her family.
She is 54 years old, she was finalist of the Planet in 2018con a dark purple sea. Other books of his are A year of love, Blood pact (written with his father) and A woman and two cats, autobiographical, appeared in 2021. He has made movies, theater and has a literary program on esRadio. She is also a producer and dancer. She is strong and soft at the same time, as if she were being the Anita of the book and the one who has suffered the stories she tells, including that night that is now a transcript of the impact she has on her as a result of her father’s death, which occurred as if fiction and reality coexisted in the hazardous climate of literature.
Q. Where does the story come from?
R. I received a film from my daughter’s father that he made from when she was little until she was 18. It is a well-made film, edited, with music, in which my daughter’s growth was seen. When I saw her I was very moved and then I saw her several times, and then I began to remember everything that was behind her: us as a couple, friends, family and the house. And that was the spark that ignited the story of this book, the story of a father and a daughter who relive situations through a movie.
Q. The fear of losing the father is something that is very present here.
R. Yes. It is something that has accompanied me throughout these years. I guess it happens to all of us. That is the reason why this novel takes place in 24 hours, in which a father and a daughter remember their entire lives again. That is to say: in 24 hours 100 years of history are reconstructed.
Q. It’s all more dramatic because it coincided with the death of your own father.
R. My father said that in life there were no coincidences but causalities. I believe that when we write we remove energies, things that are light or that are in the darkest part. It took me four years to write this novel and I gave it to my father a few weeks ago. He read it and… notice what he told me: “I see that you are accompanying me towards a good death.” And… then he passed away. In other words: it is something that has no explanation, right? There are things that happen that belong to the mystery and I accept them as such.
Q. How did you feel about the news?
R. It was a very spiritual experience. The other day, at the Castilla y León awards, I read the speech he had written for the Literature award they gave him. The fact of his death was very recent and I did not read those pages before reading them before the audience. So, as I was reading it, his words were coming out of my chest and out of my mouth and… it really was a joyous experience. And I felt completely at peace. In other words: it was something very spiritual that I am grateful for.
Q. It’s like everything becomes a kind of concrete rain, right?
R. Yes that’s how it is. And I see it as something very bright.
Q. Even healer?
R. Yes Yes.
Q. What did your father find in the book to make him tell you that with it you gave him a good death?
R. Well… I guess a long farewell, the serenity of understanding that sooner or later we’re leaving. I think my father was very aware of that.
My father was a captivating man, against the system by definition, who played, even if others thought he was serious.”
Q. Due to his death, a lot has been written about him. What is real and what is made up?
R. I haven’t read anything. Because I’m not here to read the press right now. My father was a public figure and I imagine what must have been said. But he doesn’t interest me. I am not interested in flattery or insults. Right now I’m interested in who my father was to me. Nothing else. My father was a captivating man, against the system by definition, which he played, even though others believed he was serious. I know that many did not understand it, but I remain with the person that he was, a person who is partly within this novel.
Q. Aren’t you surprised by the parallelism between this novel and real life?
R. Well… there are things that one cannot rationalize. But when writing a novel, or in literature in general, it is not that you write what has happened, it is that you write what is going to happen.
Q. When you heard the news, did you notice the novel?
R. I lost my mother when I was ten years old. So, when I found out, the first thing I noticed was my little brother, his son, who is ten years old. Then I tried to understand what had happened, because it had been so sudden, and I started receiving thousands of messages… Then I thought about the story the red slippers, by Andersen, which has always obsessed me, and then I looked at my novel and… I began to look at it with some fear. But I like that he read it.
Q. How was the book raised? Because it is not easy to have a whole day with that strength of combining reality and fiction…
R. It is that 24 hours can be nothing or can be the whole life. I am very interested in time. To write this book I have even read essays on physics that talked about time. When writing I realized that there was the desire that those 24 hours did not end.
Q. That makes you think of the photo your father uploaded with a cat stroking his hair hours before he died.
R. Yes. That’s something that could have been in the novel as well. Also that I called him on the phone and he did not answer, as it happened…
For me, writing is an act of faith, something that is not organized at all. I write very slowly, I need real life to run through the pages I write”
Q. Is this the first time that this time frame has been imposed?
R. Yes, but… I just can’t explain it. I started writing, without knowing much, and then I said: this has to be developed in 24 hours. But I didn’t think so at first. It was something that came up. For me, writing is an act of faith, something that is not organized at all. I write very slowly, I need real life to run through the pages I write, but… I’m also very impatient. That’s the truth. So: I need to create something that engages, that has rhythm, that leads the reader. A music that accompanies, right?
Q. And landscapes.
R. Yes Yes.
Q. And autobiography.
R. Yes. Obviously I am not a dancer and my father is not a shoemaker, but… all fiction is autobiographical, right? Look: I heard the story of the football stadium that appears in the novel in a bar. I’m a gossip, I listen to other people’s conversations, and one person was saying that during the war he lived in a football stadium and that’s why he had a shower and privileges that weren’t common during that time. That fascinated me and that’s why it slipped into this book.
Q. Were you not afraid that the things you recounted would be attributed to you?
R. No, nothing. I am used to misunderstandings, prejudices… about my father or about my family. I’m already cured of all that. Let each one think what he wants.
Q. How is Anita like you?
R. In the passion for dance. When I was little I wanted to be a dancer and then I wasn’t. But with literature you can be anything. Anita girl is a dreamy girl, like I was. Anita woman is capable of reconstructing her past and… that’s what I tried to do. So… I am the two Anitas.
#father #accompanying #good #death