Writers ask themselves over and over again what is the use of what they write. Everyone has their reasons, of course. There are those who find them a supernatural function. rapeseed Delphine Horvilleurauthor of the essay live with our deadAccount in ABC that “sacred stories open a passageway between the living and the dead” and explains that the storyteller’s role is “to stand by the door to make sure it stays open”.
Álvaro Pombo, as he confesses in Vozpópuli a Vidal Arranz, also sees a supernatural function in writing. He assures that in his last book he focuses on the idea of God from a text by Petrarch, who says that “poetry is theology and theology is poetry (…) There is a direct connection.”
“To be Russophobic is to be, in some way, anti-European”
The Turk Orhan Pamuk recounted in Canary Islands 7 how he met fate while writing. She had been preparing a book on the plague for forty years. Everyone asked him “why did he write about the plague when it no longer existed, and suddenly the coronavirus broke out”. He considers that his obligation as his writer is to go into “situations different from mine and understand everyone. I have tried to do it with fundamentalists and terrorists (…) Human uniqueness lies in that empathy”.
For Laura Daveas he confessed in woman today, “writing is a conversation (…) While I write, I read my work out loud to try to listen to it as any reader would. Then, thanks to book signings or comments on social networks, I have come to get an idea of what things they like and what they don’t. The conversation must have been fruitful, because Dave’s latest book has already been read by a million people in the US. But she is modest: “if five people read my novel and are moved, it will be worth embarking on in search”.
To explain why he devotes himself to literature, Bernardo Atxaga remember in Deia a quote from Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio. “Ferlosio said that he did not intend to make a sweater, a scarf or a jacket, what he wanted was to weave, that is, to write”.
the biographer of Anton Chekhov Donald Rayfield revealed in Free lyrics a Daniel Gascon an essential necessity for everyone who dedicates himself to literature: freedom. “He demonstrated how to be free of ideology, how to exercise the right that Camus claimed to contradict himself. That gives writers the courage to resist ideological pressures or political correctness.”
“The novelist or the essayist with a sad face drives me crazy, with a grimace of extreme seriousness”
Regarding the freedom of the author, Bernat Castany Account in Global Chronicle a Anna Maria Church that “the rehearsal goes hand in hand with the error: the rehearsal implies, like musical improvisation, accepting to coexist with the fact of being wrong. If mistakes are not tolerated, it is impossible to think freely and without barriers”. Regarding the freedom of the writer in the face of the cancellation movement, he explains that he has in the United States “many friends who always fearfully and privately tell me that there is a fear of saying certain things. Somewhat absurd extremes have been reached.”
There are less important concerns. Laura Revolt remember in ABC an article of Ignacio Echevarria in which “he mocked the taste of certain writers (non-writers) for allowing themselves to be photographed in the most extravagant poses”. Revuelta adds that “to this photographic modality (…) I add another that drives me crazy: that of the novelist or essayist with a sad face, with a grimace of extreme seriousness that is unkindly repeated in reports, interviews or Twitter profiles.”
P.S. War has a lot to do with culture. Arturo Perez-Reverte explains it to Anthony Lucas in Zenda. “For me, Russia is Europe, not the East or the Iron Curtain. If you have read Tolstoya Dostoevskya Gogola Chekhov… If you have listened to the great Russian music… If you know how to recognize what that country has added to Western culture, you cannot say that it is not Europe. Let’s say it’s another part of Europe. To be Russophobic is to be, in some way, anti-European. I am a militant of Europe that goes from Homer to today. So this other consequence of the war must be considered one more tragedy”.
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