Profile.Edna O'Brien, the woman who challenged Ireland
Latest novel: an 89-year-old writer on the trail of the lost girls of Boko Haram
At 90, writer
Edna O'Brien hasn't lost an ounce of defiance
.
He maintains a red alert to the impostures of the present and displays his intelligent indiscipline without fear.
You know what it's like to be in the spotlight of the well-
thought-out
.
Meet the outrage of censorship.
She even got a taste of repudiation when her first books appeared in the Catholic Ireland where she was born in 1930, County Clare, where she was
a banned author
.
Some unscrupulous burned
in a square copies of his first novel,
Country girls
(1960).
The next five were banned in Ireland.In the pages of his trilogy (completed with
The girl with green eyes
-1962- and
Happily married girls
-1964-) there are convents of nuns, denunciation of moral papanatism, escapes, divorce, maternity ... And, mainly, a literary and civic voice of high insurgent weight.
Edna O'Brien escaped any schematism (biographical, Catholic, feminist) and strode in the opposite direction as a creative and vital norm.
One of his most celebrated books is
Mother Ireland
, from 1976, now published by Lumen.
An intense text in which he intertwines his
disobedient biography
with the evocation of a land of myths, poetry, superstitions, ancestral customs, popular wisdom and extreme beauty.
Her country.In her London home, Edna O'Brian does not fall into the temptation of nostalgia or shepherd pale memories.
She prefers to remain attentive to the general rampage of the world.
And challenge it out loud.
You wrote 'Mother Ireland' in 1976, how has your relationship with Ireland changed since then, if anything?
Is it a territory almost alien to time?
My relationship with Ireland has changed, as has your relationship with me.
For a time, because of the nature of my books and that they were perceived as obscene and even as an act of treason against the nation, I was the object of many reproaches.
That is over.
I am Irish to the core, my proclivities, my passions, my desires and my fervent love for the language.
The territory is not alien to me, although of course many things have changed: television, tourists, and the news from abroad have changed Ireland.
For good?
Mostly yes.
But the changes occur little by little, and I still recognize many of the things that surrounded me as a child.
My childhood was dominated by religion and by the idea, not very explicit at that time since I was still a child, that my country was being conquered.
The shadow of the enemy was always present.
Living like this, with that fear ...
We had a farm a mile from a small town and, although it was not the typical dream place that appears in travel guides, for me it was beautiful, of a wild and very particular beauty.
I have not forgotten anything.
The sights, the sounds, the wind blowing through the chimney, the trees covered in leaves and then stripped of them in the winter.
All that, as well as the secrets and sorrows of the people around me, has remained.
There was no library and few novels were available to him.
I remember one, written by a priest, which presented a somewhat simplistic and nondescript view of nature.
How do you remember then?
I was obedient and also very religious, but inside me the storm raged, my inner life, my desire to rebel.
And that marked the theme of his work.
A lot, because stories were not lacking and the landscapes around me were truly inspiring.
The theme of my work has always had to do with injustice, private and public.
The injustice that today dominates our civilized world dragging it to its wildest forms.
It has been the subject of my last novel,
The girl
, where I tell the story of a girl captured by Boko Haram.
I could not have written the book at that time, although it is the story of two girls fighting against the different forms of repression and trying to flee from it all and head towards the lights of the city.
In his youth, censorship was strong in Ireland ...
And so much.
My novel
Country girls
it was unceremoniously banned.
My mother was very ashamed of it, as did all the townspeople, and her way of conveying her dismay to me was through an old saying she had heard, "paper holds everything."
The irony was that not having access to literature gave me more strength to do whatever it took to find it.
Literature was the Holy Grail for me.
In
Mother Ireland
Although it is a non-fiction work, I continued to explore that rich, conflict-ridden world to which I feel umbilically attached.
There is a kind of spell in this book, in the way it examines the glory and cruelty of Ireland, the contradictions of that land, but is there also some praise?
The attempt to bewitch is inherent to all literary work.
It is what makes the reader feel attracted.
Just think about the first pages of
Quixote
,
Desolate house
or the
Ulises
makes you feel captivated.
The spell is the signature and omniscience of the author.
It seemed to me, with the anxiety that characterizes me, that I had celebrated many things in my country and I would not have been honest if I had omitted its cruelty, as you call it and, above all, the power that the Catholic Church has exercised over the written word.
Church and State were inextricably linked.
Besides, you were a woman in that Ireland.
There were few female writers when I was growing up, and the impression in my prose that I treated the reader as my confidant earned me even more criticism and led to the inevitable ban on my work.
I was trying to capture some of the emotions, the feelings that Ireland had instilled in me and which, I hope, are still there.
There is a lot of ecstasy, shame, humor, and good literature in this book.
Is writing also a way to find things you are not looking for?
Writing is a complex craft.
When we say something we are also looking for what cannot be found.
It is what gives any work that important tension, and also an additional dimension.
Beckett says, "Fail again, fail better."
And although his work seems to me as perfect as the
Book of Job
He was convinced that he was not saying what he should, that he was not using the most appropriate words.
Do you feel that same difficulty?
The difficulty is that when writing we start with awareness, but a novel, a poem or a play has to have a solid foundation and, later, to be fantastic, to be explosive and innovative, but at the same time respect tradition , it is necessary that they give room to the conscience.
Consciousness must penetrate that membrane so that the finished work has the necessary mystery and ancestry.
A good book must have a dreamlike point.
His work, through which he has examined so many aspects of his own life, flees from narcissism, which is one of the main characteristics of our century.
Do you agree?
Narcissism is certainly one of the fundamental characteristics of contemporary literary prose, and I would say it does it a disservice.
He is very seen, he is selfish and cowardly.
It usurps the power and primacy of language.
It is also boring.
Sometimes a book written in the first person can mislead the reader into the impression that it is somehow telling a true story.
Writing in the first person is a device that can be persuasive, but the author is only the messenger.
I am thinking of Roberto Bolano, whose work impacts and confuses us.
Night in Chile
It is, for me, one of the masterpieces of the 20th century.
Makes you want to reread it.
Did you like it that much?
Yes. Rereading is the 'cotton test' of literature.
It is unusual for someone to want to reread a superficial and narcissistic book, intended for self-talk.
We are hungry for books that explore the human condition in its many manifestations.
A work can only come to life through the alchemy of words, combined with shrewd reflection and meticulous work.
Long live literature!
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