Andres Seoane
Updated Friday, February 16, 2024-02:00
"When I was 18, I was walking through Athens thinking about what to do with my future and it started to rain. I took refuge in the porch of a cinema, and then, while I was waiting, this trilogy, the characters, the plot, appeared in my head. And I told myself,
one day I must write this book
," recalls
Theodor Kallifatides
(Molaoi, Greece, 1938), who chats with EL MUNDO elegantly sheltered in a large room at the Spanish Embassy in a Stockholm covered by the recent snow. The reason is the launch in our country of
Peasants and Gentlemen
(Galaxia Gutenberg), the first volume of
one of the great trilogies of the European 20th century
that narrates the long decade between the 40s and 50s in which Greece suffered the Nazi occupation and a bloody civil war.
Due to this turbulent history, the writer's literary epiphany would take almost two decades to materialize. "Then, my father lost his job, and I went to drama school and became an actor. I wasn't very successful, it wasn't my thing, so I had to emigrate to Sweden. My father, with immense pain, I guess
, He was forced to tell me that there was no place for me in my country
, that I had to leave to find a future," he explains.
Thus, as he has narrated with delicate and poignant sensitivity in books such as
Mothers and Children,
A New Country on the Other Side of My Window
or
Love and Homelessness
, the writer, without ever having left Greece, emigrated in 1964 to Sweden, the only country that then it accepted emigrants. But
the history of his country, of his childhood, was still lurking in his memory
. "There I graduated in Philosophy and worked at the university, got married and had my first child, until one miraculous summer, I started writing this book and I couldn't stop.
I wrote day and night, as if swept away by a river, until that after a month my wife called the doctor
and told him I was crazy, and he gave me something to sleep with," Kallifatides jokes.
The importance of narrating
When the book was published in 1973,
Dagens Nyheter,
Sweden's largest newspaper, gave it extensive and laudatory coverage. "That's how
I became a writer, because the book also sold more than 200,000 copies
and was later translated into English and French. Of course it made me very happy, but I never fully understood it. You see, I had always dreamed of writing, but "I never wanted to be the typical author from a family of writers whose father teaches at the university or is a literary critic.
My only ambition is to narrate, to tell stories, because I think I have a story to tell. And it remains that way
," says a smiling Kallifatides. that emanates an aura of goodness and wisdom capable of turning into novels of emotional simplicity and that effectively keep the aroma of oral narratives.
"The Nazi occupation taught me that someone can be an angel with their dog and a devil with a Jewish girl"
Through the pages of
Peasants and Gentlemen
parade, with fluid naturalness and a rare mixture of brutality and tenderness, all the vicissitudes of a conflict:
summary executions, denunciations, betrayals, arbitrary violence, but also heroism and compassion
. This makes Kallifatides recognize that, just as all happy families are alike, the same thing happens to all occupations and civil wars. "Absolutely. There is nothing fictional about the events, they happened as they are.
The machinery of Nazi violence knew no limits. They executed people for nothing
, Greek collaborators sprang up like mushrooms, the black market flourished, children died of starvation" , summarizes the writer. "Did I learn anything from all that? Yes, that the human soul is unlimited, that the same person can be an angel with his dog and a demon with a Jewish girl."
The aspect of witness is fundamental in Kallifatides' vast work (more than 30 books)
, which is divided into autobiographical novels, inspired by the classical world, and contemporary history novels like this trilogy. "I think it is essential to remember this important part of European history, the Second World War, the civil wars and the dictatorships such as the Greek and Spanish.
If I, who by age lived through all that, do not narrate it, who will "
Who will maintain that memory for young people?" asks the writer.
"This has been and
is one of my great motivations, I write to preserve peace, justice and memory
, once again in danger, because in places like Russia the idea has been reborn that solving problems with war is correct. This shows "If you create an unjust society, sooner or later it will explode. And
I continue to defend that, now in stories and articles, because I no longer have the strength to write a
300-page novel," he confesses.
Spain, a great culture
Authentic phenomenon in Spain, where Galaxia Gutenberg, which has obtained its international rights,
began publishing it in 2019 and is already on its eighth novel
- the next installments of the trilogy will also be published this year, in May (
The Plow and the Sword
) and in October (
A Cruel Peace
), respectively, Kallifatides confesses to being passionate about our culture and our literature:
"the best in Europe, above the English and French, and full of very powerful young voices
," he says, although he confesses to being mainly a reader of
Julio Llamazares
,
Antonio Soler
(both translated into Swedish) and
Luis Landero
.
"I write to preserve peace, justice and memory, once again endangered by visions like that of Russia"
And he sprinkles the conversation with anecdotes of all kinds, such as when he worked with the filmmaker Ingmar Bergman or
when he played left winger for Panathinaikos
. "A long life goes a long way," he smiles. Or his many stories full of girls he liked. Waiting in front of a theater to which he never arrived,
he met Lorca at the age of 17, a love that he had for life
.
"Seeing me there waiting for two hours, the doorman invited me to come in. The play was
Blood Wedding
, and it was like a punch. Not just the story, the scenery, especially the words," recalls the writer.
"
Moon nails melt us/my waist and your hips
," Kallifatides recites in enviable Spanish
. "I was demolished by the power of his poetry. I have been passionate about it ever since. And recently, while visiting Spain, I discovered that he has no tomb. That there are many theories, but that his body has never been found. And it
seems terrible to me that "The greatest European poet of the 20th century does not have a grave
. This shows how cruel civil wars are," laments the writer.