ABOUT LITERATURE AND POLITICS
"Well, of course it bothers me to be called upon to give political opinions more than literary opinions, because I am a literary animal. Just as the French often refer to someone as a thinking animal or a philosophical animal, I am a literary animal. I was born for literature, and I only assumed this ideological commitment that you've seen in me after a very slow, very difficult and sometimes very painful process. Because, since literature is my true vocation, there are times when political circumstances – having to come to this Conference, write articles with political content, attack the Argentinian or Chilean Junta, deal with cases of missing, dead or tortured people, or answer some of the enormous amount of correspondence I get, because people think that I can always say something helpful – well, there are times when – I admit it because it's true – I become greatly discouraged. Because I say, 'Well, will I ever be able to write a novel?' Ideally, I would like to have a year or two of tranquility, to write a novel that I've been playing with in my head for a long time. That's why I'm becoming more of a short story writer, because that's something you can write on the plane, at home, on the street..."
EXILE CAME ALL THE WAY TO FRANCE
"I've lived outside Argentina for 28 years, but I had never considered myself an exile until the Videla coup. I had never considered myself an exile because for me exile is a compulsive thing, and I was living in France because I wanted to. Because it is a country I like, where I feel good and where I could write without any difficulties or problems. And suddenly, when the military coup happened, I realized I had become a true exile. So now I have this feeling that all exiles have, where the negative side is very strong, it's a heavy weight. This led me to reflect on the problem of exile for the first time. That's when I realized that if I or any other exile fall into the stereotype of exile being essentially negative and devastating, we are letting the dictatorship that exiled us win. So I set out the issue very clearly - it's crazy, it's illogical, it can't be scientifically applied, but instead of moving forward, I move backwards, I reverse the motion and understand exile in positive terms. I said it in Paris and it made many people smile: I said that it was as if Videla, having exiled me, had given me a grant to write outside of Argentina. And the best way for me to respond to that exile is to give the most that I can give as a writer, and that's what I'm trying to do.
But when an exile arrives completely broken, either because he himself suffered - even physically - before he could leave or because there are a lot of dead, disappeared, tortured people around him, you cannot ask him to begin his life in exile with a smile, saying "This is alright." No, because it's horribly wrong. I urge all men and women who haven't lost their senses, when the time comes to think about the new life that is beginning, at that moment I urge them not to fall into stereotypes and say, "I am a victim, I am an exile, I have been unjustly thrown out of my country," which will gradually lead to bitterness and to an overwhelming nostalgia. I urge them – when that first traumatic shock is over – to feel like a full man or woman once again."
THE SOUTH, THE WALL AND BEYOND… (1)
"Yes, because what is the point of five nostalgic Argentines getting together, grilling meat, drinking mate, listening to Susana Rinaldi, Mercedes Sosa or Gardel (according to taste) and indulging in nostalgia for a past that we want to revive? I do that too, but that does not stop me from waking up in Paris the next day, and getting in touch with a lot of people who are not Argentine and carrying out my work.
So this is a subtle matter, it is not very simple and, of course, not all people are equally equipped at a mental or intellectual level. And a blue-collar worker, who is more limited from a cultural perspective - because, due to his status, he hasn't been able to study – that man is really the one who is most at risk in exile. If a worker has to live in Sweden, just the language problem is like a death threat. And that's when nostalgia, Gardel, memories and photos become his only defense. And I think all of us can do a lot through publications, events, meetings, to make them feel they are not alone."
(1) In reference to verses from the famous tango “Sur” (South). For this interview, south means Argentina, wall means execution walls, and beyond means the concentration camps and death flights by the Argentine dictatorship.
CULTURAL EXILE
"For me what is and has been traumatic is a phenomenon which not everyone considers and which, in the case of an exiled artist, is fundamental. It's what I would call the cultural exile: it's terrible to realize that in your own country there is a barrier of censorship that means, for example, that I cannot publish any more books in Argentina. So you realize – and this is what's most frightening for me – that you are exiled, but on the other side, in your country, there are 26 million people who are exiled from you. I am separated from my readers, but my readers are separated from me: my last book of short stories in Argentina could not get published because there were two stories that annoyed the Junta. And, for me, this is not just a personal matter: there are 150 magnificent Uruguayan, Chilean and Argentine writers that cannot be published in our country.
In Chile, starting on September 11, 1973, a generation of young people was taken by the Junta and enrolled in fascist schools run by the military. Six years have passed and they have lived their critical years (between 12 and 18) under that regime, thousands and thousands of Chilean boys and girls who, right now, believe in the Junta, believe in National Security, believe that all of us are traitors. They believe that Chile is a country which is unjustly attacked and threatened. It's not their fault, poor things, because in six years they have become the same as what Hitler did with the Hitler Youth, or Mussolini with the "Balillas". Well, that is for me one of the most frightening things, and we can do nothing, intellectually. Because here I can tell you this, but no one will listen to me in Argentina, nobody will read it. You can publish it, but unless someone takes it there by carrying it in their pocket, no one will be able to read it there."
A WRITER AND HIS COMMITMENT TO THE REVOLUTION
"I keep an open mind regarding writers' work. I think there can be pure writers who don't introduce any political message into what they do. I think that's possible, and that their work can be revolutionary if it is a creative, refreshing work, a beautiful work. All that I demand in such cases is that the person making pure literature show in their personal conduct that they are not an escapist. That if they do not include politics in their work, it is only because their vocation is for example to write sonnets, in which politics have no place. But they have to prove, through their conduct, through their personal responsibility, that they are entitled to write those sonnets.
Look, I have so much fun writing pure literature... Next year I'll publish a book, which I'm now finishing, where there are one or two stories with political content; all the others are fantastical tales. And I think I'm entitled to write them, because my readers know who I am. So why should I feel compelled to bring politics into everything I write? If I did, my literature would be very bad - I am well aware of this. Not every man is born for action, not every man – how should I put it? – has the physical skills to dare to play a role at the action level. Not every man is born to be a soldier of the revolution. There may be a man with an interior life, with a shy nature, which leads him to write a work that only sings to the revolution. But I do not think you can demand active militancy from everyone."
VIETNAM AND INFORMATION MANAGEMENT BY IMPERIALISM
"I think that denouncing human rights violations which occur in socialist countries is a positive thing, as long as you're absolutely certain about what you're denouncing. Because, when it comes to human rights violations in those countries, I on principle examine the record very carefully, because I know very well how much information from imperialism alters, changes and modifies things.
I do not forget that, for example, following the last stage of the Nicaraguan revolution in the Herald Tribune in Paris, you could find a discussion of how the Yankees prepared the American reader to be against the victory of the revolution. They referred to Somoza as a tyrant, a dictator, but when they spoke of the advancing columns, the spoke of 'the Marxist columns.' Every eight or nine paragraphs they would drop that word, so that a good lady in Minnesota or Detroit would say: 'My God, the Communists!' So, when it comes to Vietnam, I am waiting to see García Márquez, who was there doing a survey, so that he can tell me how things are. I do not trust press releases. But when in Russia or the other countries of the socialist sphere there are flagrant violations of human rights, I speak up."
A UNITED LATIN AMERICA: REALITY OR UTOPIA?
"I'll say it in a sentimental way, almost like Rubén Darío would: in my heart, Latin America exists as a unit. I am Argentine of course (and happy to be), but essentially I feel Latin American. I feel at home in any country in Latin America. I perceive local differences, but those are differences within unity. That's on a personal level. In geopolitical terms, we have this pernicious divide-and-conquer policy, one that Americans have long applied. Promoting nationalism and rivalries between countries to better dominate them, destroying Bolivar's dream of the "United States of South America" and encouraging the creation of different countries which are proud, self-confident, and ready to go to war for reasons that do not stand to serious analysis. This is a reality.
And I think one of the major duties of the political left, of revolutionary writers, is to try by every means to fight this chauvinism, which makes an Argentine child in school learn that he is much better than a Chilean or Paraguayan child. Indeed, in my previous visit I spoke with ordinary Venezuelans and their idea about Colombians, their contempt, their hatred terrified me. The same, of course, occurs on the other side. This proves that ‘divide and conquer’ works, that the Yankees continue to promote it because it works to their advantage, and local dictatorships are happy to help them."
THEN HE SPOKE ABOUT LIFE AND DEATH
"A day in my life is always a very beautiful thing, because I'm really happy to be alive. I have no intention of dying, I have the impression I'm immortal. I know I'm not, but the idea of death does not bother me, nor does it scare me. I deny its existence, so that helps me to live in a way… how can I put this? Under the sun, in a solar way.
I am very glad to be alive. And there is something few people think about: it is such a marvel that we all are human beings, that we are at the top of the zoological ladder by purely genetic chance. Because you are not responsible for being who you are. We come from a very long genetic chain, and when I see a chicken or a fly, which were born within the same genetic chain, I marvel at being a man and not a chicken. I am a man, with all its good and bad aspects. And I'm glad that I have had a conscience, that I've been able to see as much as a conscience can see of this planet. And I'll stop speaking."
He uttered those words after spending more than half an hour with us, telling us anecdotes and smiling, sometimes like a child. Yes, he is a human being like you and me, he needs to move his mouth in the same way you and I do in order to speak. But he is Julio Cortázar.
©Viviana Marcela Iriart
Semana Magazine, Caracas, September-November 1979
© Photographs by Eduardo Gamondés
Translation: ©Luciana Valente
