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"Salman Rushdie is in the writing and the permanent creation"

Victim of a brutal attack, Salman Rushdie publishes this November 2, 2022 "Languages ​​of truth", a new collection of essays comprising prefaces, speeches, articles and various writings, with the themes of literature, creative freedom and threats to our lives in the city.

REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski

Text by: Tirthankar Chanda Follow

12 mins

On the occasion of the release of Languages ​​of Truth, a collection of essays by Salman Rushdie, interview with his official translator, Gérard Meudal.

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Languages ​​of Truth

which appears these days is a collection of essays by British writer Salman Rushdie.

The forty texts brought together in this volume, written before

last August, offer a fascinating reflection on our world through analyzes rich in intuitions and insights into literature, politics and the and misfortunes of our time.

RFI: How is Salman Rushdie?

What can you tell us about his physical and psychological state of health?

Gérard Meudal:

As

's translator , I corresponded quite regularly with him mainly on questions of language and vocabulary.

When I learned that he was the victim of this horrible attack, I obviously wrote to him immediately, but I am not at all sure that he is in a position to answer me or perhaps even to read my couriers.

I therefore have no direct information on his physical condition, even less on his psychological condition.

I pretty much know what everyone knows, which is to say what the press announced.

I saw his agent Andrew Wylie's recent interview with

announcing that he would have lost sight in one eye and be disabled in one hand, as the nerves in his arm were severed.

Loss of sight, severed arm nerves… These are serious after-effects.

It is reasonable to wonder if Rushdie will still be able to write?

This is indeed the question we are asking ourselves.

The press spoke of these two handicaps, which are already enormous.

It must be remembered that he received a very large number of injuries elsewhere and which are probably not without consequences either.

Let's not forget that he is a 75-year-old man.

It is indeed to be feared that his physical condition will be very affected by this attack.

Following the attack on Rushdie during his conference in New York, the press had reported a relaxation of security surveillance in recent years.

You who often met the writer, had you noticed this relaxation?

I don't know if "relaxation" is the right term.

You should know that Salman Rushdie obviously had a very bad time during this period of clandestine life during which the

condemned him.

He considered it a great victory to return to a normal life, as normal as possible.

I think this is one of the reasons for his moving to the United States where he believed he was more easily forgotten, or more secure.

Police surveillance was imposed on him.

He took it pretty badly.

He knew it was a necessary evil.

When, for example, he came to France, there was always protection, which gradually became discreet.

One of the last times he came to Paris, I remember having lunch with him in a restaurant which was just opposite the former premises of Actes Sud, his publisher.

In the courtyard of the building housing the publishing house, a car was parked, engine running and driver ready to quickly exfiltrate the writer in the event of a problem.

With Rushdie, did you discuss the

 ?

We talked about everything except that.

We acted like it didn't exist.

You should know that this man, who could have been psychologically crushed by his death sentence, continued to write in the same vein as before, with the same creative freedom, with the same inventiveness, when the circumstances of life would have could silence him.

He could also have started writing books by presenting himself as a victim.

He didn't do any of that.

He continued to write as normally as he could.

He also explained that his first great victory after the

was to have written

, the book he wrote for his son Milan in this fantastic vein that characterizes Rushdie's work.

Over time, we ended up thinking that the threat was forgotten.

Without having completely lifted the

, the Iranian authorities had made it known, quite precisely, that calling on Muslims to carry out the sentence was not their priority objective.

But obviously, time plays against the writer, since we are always at the mercy in these cases of fanatics, who take the condemnation at face value.

This was done, for example, by the aggressor in

, New York, who was not even born when Ayatollah Khomeini issued the fatwa.

The collection of essays which appears this November 2 in France is the ninth book by Rushdie that you have translated.

Is it more difficult to translate Rushdie compared to other authors you have translated?

I have been translating Salman Rushdie for fifteen years.

I started with his novel

, published in France in 2008. When I started translating Rushdie, I was very impressed, especially by the build of the character.

It is all the same an enormous responsibility to translate this man who imposed himself as the conscience of the world.

Is it easy or difficult to translate it?

I do not know.

Still, he's the author I've translated the most.

Our partnership goes back, in fact, to the 1980s when I interviewed him – I was a journalist at the time – on the occasion of the publication in French of his novel

which made him known.

This long companionship has finally created a familiarity and today I feel at ease in his universe.

However, I wouldn't say that Rushdie is easy to translate.

He is someone who plays a lot with language.

His books are full of references.

It is complicated to translate, but this translation work has become a very important activity for me and which I take great pleasure in.

Can you tell us a few words about the organization of this new Rushdie essay

and the topics covered in it?

Rushdie has already published two volumes of essays,

in 1991 and

in 2003.

is his third collection of essays bringing together his articles and speeches which cover the period 2003 to 2020. Like the previous two volumes, this new collection is characterized by its very wide variety of tones and entrances.

Some of the articles were written for newspapers and magazines of the Anglo-Saxon press, others are more autobiographical, like the last article of the volume devoted to Covid-19 which the writer contracted at the very beginning of the pandemic.

The volume also includes texts of admiration for the authors he loves [Joyce, Beckett, Cervantes, among others, editor's note] as well as for contemporary painters and artists [Amrita Sher-Gil, Bhupen Kharkar, Francesco Clemente, Sebastiao Salgado , etc., Ed].

When Rushdie speaks of an author, he does so with great insight, as can be seen in his article on Beckett, which is without doubt one of the most striking analyzes I have read in a long time on the author of

.

Often, the essays are also an opportunity for Rushdie to come back to his own relationship to writing or his coming to writing, as he does magnificently in the text he wrote on his meeting with the writer American feminist Eudora Welty, titled "Another Writer's Beginnings".

In a way, these texts are also self-portraits and that is very touching.  

Languages ​​of Truth by Salman Rushdie.

© Editing RFI / Actes Sud

What does the title of the volume mean to you:

?

“Languages”, “truths” are themes that we find from one book to another by Rushdie.

The novelist wonders what the words mean, whether in politics, economics or other fields, when language is often biased.

From the pen of the novelist, the "language of truth" is perhaps precisely synonymous with fiction.

The author reminds us that works of fiction say things that may not be objectively true, but they allow us to approach truths more surely than all the so-called “languages ​​of truth”.

Rushdie believes that fiction is the best tool we have for trying to understand the world, while we, his readers, tend not to take fiction seriously.

For many of us, novels are nothing more than made-up stories, fables, good for children.

To be interested in truth, in reality, is to be an adult.

We do not take fiction seriously, even less the magical realism that characterizes Rushdie's stories, when it is enough to have read them to see that behind their exaggerations, their fantastical aspects, the Rushdian work is in direct contact with the most contemporary reality, the most authentic, if I may say so.

The essay he devoted to Hans Christian Andersen in

says the same thing.

If, for us, Andersen is a children's author, for Rushdie the author of

 or

 is an immense writer and the fact that he can be read by young readers does not detract from the human qualities of his work.

You are currently translating Rushdie's latest novel, which he had spoken about a few days before his attack last August, in New York.

What is this new novel about?

It is a very fascinating book, which has the title:

.

The plot takes place exclusively in India, which is very new since his first novel,

.

It's a kind of homecoming for Rushdie, who perhaps wanted to come full circle.

The novel is inspired by

by the 11th century Indian storyteller, Somadeva, a book the author holds in high esteem.

is the story of the rise and fall of an ancient empire whose traces the narrator finds in a chronicle.

This is the classic process, starting with the discovery of an ancient manuscript, from which the narrator claims to draw his story.

Through this fable of ancient times, Rushdie is actually talking about contemporary times, as usual.

The idea for this novel was born, Rushdie told it in

, during confinement while watching his favorite films, in particular French New Wave films.

This gives a unique blend of ancient and modern.

It is an important book, because Rushdie is here in the great maturity of his writing.

Literary critics agree that Salman Rushdie is the author of an exceptional work, rich in a dozen novels, collections of short stories, essays, books for young people.

His name is often cited for the Nobel Prize for Literature, but supreme recognition has eluded him so far.

Considering the influence of Salman Rushdie, it is difficult to believe that this is an oversight.

Is it a lack of audacity on the part of the Nobel jurors?

No, it's not an oversight.

I remember that at the time of the

already, in 1989, the Swedish Academy was shaken by a violent dissension, with a part of the jurors deciding in favor of Rushdie, while the others questioned the relevance of award the prize for extra-literary reasons.

The dispute was so violent that half of the Academy resigned.

Literally speaking, Rushdie amply deserves the prize, both for his work, but also for his pioneering work in postcolonial literature.

Since the success of his novel

, he has established himself as the leader of this great movement that has been called " 

 " ("The empire counter-attacks, feather in hand ").

For the former colonists of the British Empire in Asia and Africa, it paved the way for the reappropriation of the English language, which led to the renewal of the corpus of Anglo-Saxon literature.

Rushdie has become, against his will, the founding father of these extraordinary literatures which have been flourishing for decades now.

This is a major contribution: this explains why this year, following the attack of which he was the victim, great voices were heard, in France as elsewhere, demanding that the Nobel Prize be awarded to him finally granted.

But, obviously, the Swedish Academy, which is very proud of its prerogatives, does not want to be dictated by influencers, regardless of the relevance of their arguments.

In fact,

Talking about his novel

, which you are translating, you said that Rushdie is now at the top of his game.

Do you believe that he would one day want to stop writing because he would have said everything?

No, I don't think he can.

It is in writing and in permanent creation.

He could not stop writing, unless unfortunately his physical condition forbade him.  

Languages ​​of Truth: Essays 2003-2020,

by Salman Rushdie.

Translated from English by Gérard Meudal.

Editions Actes Sud, 393 pages, 25 euros.

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