When we started this series we told Jorge Semprun, the English intellectual with which we started, the names of those who were to be interviewed in it. And to get to Claudio Magris, his Italian counterpart, Semprun said, "Ah, that's a true European." And we went to see this "true European" in early January. Stayed with him in habitual coffee in Trieste.
in the literature (almost all his work is published in Spain by Anagram) Magris is a celebrity, but in this cafe that is now populated with the fog that clouds Europe and is the prelude to a storm ( real, not just metaphorically), the author of Anubi The D is just a client but, as is noted here, is the most beloved of all who frequent this quiet place. Like his books, he's a breath full of intelligence and rigor, its ability to associate some other references make The Danube above all, an orgy of pleasure intellectual, an unforgettable trip.
Traveling with him is to come to know almost everything he knows. It is, without hyperbole, a sage. Perhaps this ability to learn, moreover, has given the air of a young student who is also a teacher, lecturer (just talk to the Fundación César Manrique, Lanzarote), writer. But above all, a man who learns. Which enables us to learn from him. Here is part of what we said at the corner of the San Marcos Café gives him when he goes.
Question. Semprún said you are a true European. What is a true European?
Response. Semprún I think speaks more from the generosity of friendship with the rationality of justice. I think someone has to be true without programming it because it is not an ideological agenda. I always repeat that I can think of to Europe what happened to St. Augustine with time: "When you ask me not know what it is, when you ask me I do not know what is." The same will happen to you if you ask what is Spain: you feel uncomfortable because you would not know where to start ... Today, political or social problems, such as unemployment and immigration, have a European dimension. If Germany, Italy and Spain suffer an economic crash, it affects each of the remaining countries. I dream of a European federal state, decentralized, because when there is a material reality, it must correspond to a reality too formal.
P. What characterizes Europe that would like to see turned into a federal state?
R. From the cultural point of view, apart from the language problems that force me to read some things and other original language translated, the novel has long been European, with its diversity. I have the feeling that this is my world does not make it better or worse than others ... If we define traditional lines of what can be characterized as a European culture, first of all discuss the emphasis should be placed on the individual. Unlike other great civilizations that emphasized the whole European religions, ultimately, Judaism and Christianity, raised the issue of individual salvation. Today, in spite of believing or not a substance, the protagonist is always the individual ... Even in philosophy, Kant proclaims the individual as the end and never as means. In the literature the individual is the protagonist of every story ...
P. So the individual is European ...
R. is a very European feeling. The relationship between the individual and the state is very different here from which it has in the other West, the United States. The concept of welfare is establishing the European mentality is never individualistic anarchism total wild. It is not exactly stock, but it is something that belongs to us as Europeans. If we move to a more particular, it is clear that the reaction to a book I'm more interested if it occurs in France or Spain than anywhere else. Because this is my field, I'm European, European sensibility leads me to what I do. No there is a European club, but I feel well, needless to say.
P. In this series, Hans Magnus Enzensberger said something similar back to Europe and is a common air.
R. It feels like home. And not just by distance. Between New York and Madrid is at last nearly as much distance between Madrid and Trieste, changing planes.
P. Mind you, as a boy, and he imposed the vision of a Europe possible and impossible at the same time. Borges would say, you will draw Europe in the face.
R. Europe is extremely differentiated, it is obvious that between the Netherlands and Sicily there are huge differences, but there is a common context, a certain ironic consciousness. Years ago I wrote a eulogy of the copy, from a story featuring a professor from Milan who forced the boys to write hundreds of times they would not copy. An American friend of mine remarked to me that if I wrote this eulogy in the U.S., have accused me of being unserious, and would have ruined me. This European civilization at the same time it teaches you to love and laugh at what you love, and to continue loving him. This is a fundamental fact. In Europe, perhaps there is greater correspondence between learned in literature and everyday life. In England, where there was always a tradition of humor, I attended years ago at a conference of literary criticism, and there arose the problem of identity and self. Cité St. Augustine and his problems with self accidental, that I define as psychological. And I got a long letter from the person making the records in asking me to explain better the use of the word psychological. This never happened in Spain, because they would have understood that I was not referring to me at that time who may be sad and happy, I had to explain. And that has nothing to do with the intelligence of the people, but with a kind of culture. It's like when you are asked to explain a joke: it becomes a disaster.
P. You quote a sentence of Novalis about utopia ... "Where you going? Always home." Is the utopia can play in Europe?
R. Utopia's speech is very complex. When I wrote those things was the other Europe, which was ruled by Soviet rule or the Western contempt toward communism, which he considered a second-class part of the world. When the great utopias fail, those who have a world view, there is always a great crisis. I think this crisis will be liberating because no utopia is true when seeking to have the recipe for creating paradise on earth. With communism has been that it was true that he could be a perfect world ... But that does not mean we should not give up this utopia as European, liberal and democratic, to push for change. The world must be truly improved, changed, without attempting to why someone has the magic key to make this evolution toward utopia anxiety that mark. If there is an attitude opposite to mine is one that many revolutionary militants held 40 years ago believed that the revolution was to create a perfect world, and saw that it did not happen and all creatures became reactionaries. One of the happiest days of my life was when Toni Negri, who had been one of those revolutionaries, declared his solidarity with Berlusconi, for being both persecuted by the judiciary. It was May 5, 2003. It felt like a theoretical physicist who sees his first confirmed.
P. How do you see now may European utopia?
R. I am very pessimistic over the medium term and still believe it will be very difficult to reach a true cohesion. It will be necessary to abandon the principle of unanimity because democracy is not unanimous, democracy is decided by majority. Only totalitarianism or fascism assume that everyone agrees. There will be enhanced autonomy, in a concrete sense, technical. Unfortunately, Europe, after being threatened by totalitarianism, is now threatened by individuals. Is a closed stance because they see only the interests of one ethnic group. Particularism must be safeguarded. But not at the expense of face. For example, why defending against the Castilian likely? It offends him making an ideological banner. I always speak in dialect sad, and I do spontaneously, not ideological, and not inimical to the Italian. There is a frenzy of fragmentation now. In Italy there was a proposal replace the national anthem by local anthems. And I thought then Chairman of Trieste would be greeted with the song of drunkards, "Ancora hangs a liter of bon ..." [One liter of good wine ...]. This is a poison, because it's a wild way to reject the other. And if the other starts on the outskirts of Trieste, why not take place between France, Italy or Spain! Imagine if we add Iran to that list!
P. those individuals are evidence for some time in Spain ...
R. I know. At this time in Spain is emerging that certain peculiarities are organized. Obviously, I do not support the Francoist centralism, but the reaction does not allow for moving forward. If a region only to look within itself, not only damage to Spain, but that hurts all over Europe. Each one has its own identity, which can be Trieste or Aragon, to be taken into account without the delirium of isolation that goes against integration and dialogue. I always intervene to defend immigrants, but once a parent wanted Islamic classes reserved for Muslim students. If I had asked only for Catholic students classes until the janitor had me kicked out! ... I do not want to be misunderstood: I wrote about many microcosm, I visited villages where they live no more than 800 people. But you have to put in value without doing the detriment of others.
P. Do you suppose these particularities a brake on European state that you encourage?
R. course. Is an obstacle that prevents, or at least more difficult, big politics, big designs. The big political realities of the past have always had a creative moment. Europe, of course, born into a democratic era and thankfully not through conquest, but of covenants, thanks to the spirit of negotiation. We are going through a moment of weariness. But although we are taking two steps forward and one step and three-quarters back, I think a lot of small steps.
P. You live in a town that has many borders. You have to cross borders, you say, but not an idol. There are no borders in Europe, but do you really have crossed the border?
R. No, I think there are now other borders. When I was a child had boundaries that could not cross and were six or seven miles of this cafe. Today there are other types of borders: social, cultural. In Trieste, for example, there is no a border with Slovenia and the Slovenes, but other newcomers who do not know exactly where they live. For example, the Senegalese are invisible boundaries that separate us from them. Blood are not borders, but rarely exceeded. I've never truly entered his country, in homes, in basements where they live. They never come with their children, but the Chinese do come together ... There are also moral boundaries to be moved constantly because when faced with other cultures we need to talk, find out if any of our borders is to be demolished. But there are other frontiers to be defended vigorously. For example, if someone calls into question the right the women's vote, it is clear that this boundary can not pass ... I care a lot these discussions about borders. I have been in Peru, and I could not cross the border of the favelas, because I did not really there. On the contrary, when I went to Romania because I get really entertained me peasants. In that sense, I wonder if what was visited Lima, Peru, or the Italian Cultural Institute in Lima, the Universidad San Marcos and the Plaza de Armas ...
P. I have noted many of your phrases related to the road, with the trip. He says: "The road is a hard master." There have been civil wars, global ... Menudo way. And there's disappointment ...
R. I end, I've taken sympathy to disappointment, which is the melancholy of maturity. Discover that life is not perfect does not mean not to love, to discover that in any love story, even in the most perfect, there are difficult times has to be experienced as something that enriches us. Similarly, in the history of Don Quixote, a book full of charm, it is the ability to continue believing that there is something beyond what you see ...
P. Quote you much to Augustine: "I am who I am." It also said Don Quixote. And Europe knows what it is? Are you going to itself or is a new Europe?
R. That's a big problem. The tradition of making Europe the only cultural, but sometimes we see it only as a bureaucracy. An Italian politician I admire, Segni, spoke of a Europe of the soul and not just currency Europe. If we give this word "soul" a particular value, because I believe in the soul, we say that the soul is one way in which we used the currency in which we live. The soul is the way to understand the currency if it becomes a false spiritual abstraction. The danger for Europe is believed to be only done with the cultural debate, Europe is done with coins and laws. The spirit Europe believe it when you make a law, for example, a law on the wines that come from other countries. If not well conceived, there are two Europes, one of the false prose and a false spirituality. In this sense, the work of Cervantes's masterpiece Don Quixote only because history does not even makes Sancho Panza. Are the two that make history.
P. Collect you from Rilke this sentence: "It's not thinking about winning, but simply to survive."
R. The old wisdom Habsburgs. In The Radetzky march, Joseph Roth makes you say the emperor Franz Joseph I did not love las guerras porque las guerras sí se pierden.
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