Colombian and originator of a profound and deeply felt discourse, the well-known writer Manuel Giraldo, or Magil, speaks to the Prisma about different aspects of his life.
Cesar Amaya Sandino
When he finished writing “Conciertos del Desconcierto” (Breakdown Concerts) he was in Barcelona: it was there, in the place where he wrote the first book that made him famous and won him the Plaza & Janes prize, one of the most prestigious international awards for literature.
That romantic city where he lived for almost 2 decades, where he found love and where he also fatally and painfully lost it, gave him the opportunity to meet writers like Julio Cortazar, Onetti, as well as to have unforgettable moments such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez, ‘Gabo’ celebrating with him and Luis Fayad – at that time two promising young writers – the Nobel Prize he had won for literature with A Hundred Years of Solitude.
Magil remembers Gabo and other literary figures as ‘the most sensitive and humble people’, who showed themselves friendly and open towards a young writer as he then was. He thought the same about Julio Cortazar with whom he shared long conversations and interminable wines, while they talked about Rayuela.
He said that the first present that Europe gave him, was to have had his first breakfast, sharing the same table with the Argentine writer, without realizing it.
He was across the table from him the whole time but he only realized who it was when the waiter began to clear the remains from the table. Obviously he approached him later and got to know him personally.
He also remembers that other occasion when they came to greet the Mexican writer Juan Rulfo at the end of one of his conferences at the University of Toulouse. Rulfo said to him and the Honduran poet Eduardo Paredes: “All these big-shot diplomats can wait in the office and we’ll go for a tequila”.
Also an admirer of Latin-American writers like Macedonio Fernández, Juan Carlos Onetti, Jorge Luis Borges and Leopoldo Marechal among many others, he says nowadays that “an artist without a political conscience is doing something egoistic or hedonistic: what he offers is not committed he just sells”. This conscience is what commits him to the history of Colombia, in spite of the distance, and that is why he wrote “Crónica oculta del conflicto” (The hidden story of the conflict), a book which analyzes the Colombian conflict and received good reviews, although it also made his return to Colombia difficult.
A native of a remote Colombian village called Líbano in Tolima, one of the areas most affected by the violence, and which claimed his father, he went to Bogotá with his mother and thousands of other displaced peasants.
There he had the chance to grow, immersed in literature and art in the company of the theatre group La Candelaria, fore-runners of this kind of art in Colombia, awarded the Casa de las Américas prize for Guadeloupe in the 50’s.
Today, still committed to literature he has launched his latest book “Viaje insurrecional por Latinoamérica” (Rebellious journey through Latin America) a different view of history told from the other side.
And he is preparing for the publication of what he considers the most important work of his career: “La saga fantástica de Valmiki” (The fantastic saga of Valmiki).
You say that literature is in crisis: what is happening?
What can be called commercial literature, the kind that doesn’t stand a second reading or being analysed, and now is being made rather strangely fashionable; the kind that poets have turned to in order to become novelists, as if being a novelist was simply a matter of filling pages.
What is the novel then?
It is a responsibility as great as that of an architect when he is designing a building; and poets have a great command of the poetic image as such, but handling structure is a very serious business. I would say to anyone who has got into this, to take a look at semiology, at what its great master Ferdinand de Saussure, or Umberto Eco, have to say about using signs and what they mean in the context of artistic work.
Tell us a bit about your novel “Conciertos del desconcierto” (Breakdown Concerts).
It is a novel which tells the story of a phenomenon that happened in our country with a whole generation of musicians, who during the 70’s and 80’s organized concerts in the parks, in squares, in villages. They were free concerts that were attended by the groups that were then in the process of getting together. There were about 40 groups, and about every third day, twice a week, they put on concerts in different parts of Bogotá, as well as in Cali and Medellin.
What were the groups like?
They were protest groups. The words of their songs were quite rebellious, their names were irreverent. For example there was a group that called themselves “The apostles of morbidity”, or “The great society of the state”, or else poetic names like “Clod of dreams” and “Aeda among others”.
How did the prize change your life?
More than changing it, what it gave me was a great impulse to carry on writing. And since then 30 years have gone by, and I am still writing with the same passion as I did at the beginning. The only difference is that today I do much more work on my books, with more rigour, making more demands, and above all with more love of literature, because for me literature is like …. like the breath of life that still keeps me alive.
Cronica oculta is a book that brought you problems. Tell us a bit about it.
It is a book that is still developing. I planned to write the book when I made my trip to Caguán ( a village in Colombia) , when the round-table dialogues had begun and they were holding public hearings in Los Pozos. Personally I saw a great desire from the insurgents for a peace dialogue in Colombia, they brought very serious proposals. This 10-point discussion summarized all the important issues of the country.
What happened?
Señor Andrés Pastana stopped the discussions and in less than 12 hours, not even 5 hours, they were bombarding the whole area of Caguán and all the areas surrounding Los Pozos.
If we look historically at what happened with the different round-table discussions we can see that the insurgents never, neither the ELN nor FARC, left the negotiating table. The discussions were always broken off unilaterally by the government side.
How did the idea of the book come about?
Really, I dedicated myself to the theme of Colombia because at one particular moment when the dialogues began in Caguán, in a dialogue with myself I said: “I’m going to leave this world and my country is going to continue in the same war during which I was born, and I’m not doing anything to end it”. Then I set myself to write Cronica Oculta. I knew that it was going to close all doors to me in Colombia, but even so I have learned something very beautiful.
It is said that the Colombian guerillas have been weakened during the most recent governments in Colombia. How do you see the situation for negotiating peace at the moment?
The truth is that a peace process in Colombia needs international support before everything else, from the beginning of a process until finally a peace agreement is arrived at. I don’t say a surrender of arms because I don’t believe that the insurgents, after almost 60 years of armed struggle, and with all the precedents there are, are going to capitulate like that. The only guarantee they have is their arms and the government knows that too. So the big obstacle that will always exist will be that.
And what do you think of the Insurgency?
Alfonso Cano said in an interview he granted me for “Cronica Oculta”, that if there were so many obstacles in the way of a cease-fire, there will be many more in truly reaching a peace process with social dialogue
. And the insurgency is not thinking of taking power through armed struggle. They accept that that is a utopian path these days, and they have said so. But what they are asking for is peace with social justice, and that is what the Colombian people have been crying out for – for decades.
Must a writer have political commitment?
Onetti and Cortazar wrote with a conscience and made all their literary work with a commitment to their countries. We can recall the case of Onetti, who was imprisoned because he won a prize for a story criticizing the Argentine government. He came out and later received the Cervantes Prize and died in Madrid, after 10 years during which he didn’t go out in the street because he considered that the street was being eaten up by commerce and consumerism, and he was one of those who detested that: consumption and everything it means to be a commercial writer.
What do you remember of Onetti?
He was so radical that on one occasion when I did an interview with him, I said: “Maestro, your latest novel “Dejemos hablar al viento” (Let’s talk to the wind) is selling very well”. He thought for a moment and said “That’s what worries me, because good literature doesn’t sell”. With that example he said everything.
What is the story of Rebellious journey through Latin America?
More than anything it makes is a historical review and it’s an invitation to the historical academies to revise the history of their countries. But not through the eyes of the colonizer, nor of those who took power, the government.
That is to say those awful oligarchies which for a long time have governed Latin America, and continue to govern Colombia.
The revision must be from the point of view of the people, of all those popular heroes who have given their lives for the cause of freedom.
I believe that the liberation of Latin America is happening bit by bit. Personally – and this could seem utopian – I believe that it is being established since ALBA, and that in some way it is being re-established in Unasur, the review of our history will come sooner rather than later.
What is “The fantastic saga of Valmiki”?
It is a book which I have spent years researching, I’ve compared the different versions and I have found out something very interesting, which is that the “Ramayana” exists in 377 versions. My approach to work is through thinking it, not by making a plan, we can say that is too intellectual, but rather by making it accessible to young people. The Ramayana is perhaps the most fantastic novel ever written in human history. It is a novel where you find characters who have superhuman powers and make the world go mad, they can make the earth lose control, they can do all sorts of things. But the West, in a way I would call dishonest, has historically wanted to show it as a purely mystical book, without the marvellous epic which lies behind the beautiful saga that the Ramayana is.
So the “Ramayana” is a unique stage in its literature….
When this book came to me I felt that a fortune had arrived in my hands, come into my awareness.
And I started to work on it with immense love. And today I think that I have been very fortunate to have the opportunity to turn such a difficult book into a series of adventure stories – because there are 7 volumes.
I respect the structure of the original of the Ramayana, but above all what I have extracted from it is the fantastic and the social that exist in all history, which personally I consider the most marvellous experience in literature. (The Prisma memoirs)
(Translated by Graham Douglas – Email: ondastropicais@yahoo.co.uk) – Photos: Pixabay
.jpg)
