The child who forgot to grow up .. Al Jazeera Net interviews "The Library Man" Alberto Manguel

When you read the books and novels of the Argentine writer Alberto Manguel, and discover his miraculous creative world closely, and his biography that resembles the stories of Sinbad, you will guess that this flying, dreamy, ghost, who nests between letters, pages, books and libraries and who gave his life to read, write and travel, is an imaginary being Mythical, fantastic, linguistic, inky, paper, that does not belong to our distorted real world.

In this dialogue, Mangwell spoke to Al-Jazeera Net about the role of Arabs in introducing the world to Aristotle's writings, and he dealt with the experience of contemporary Arab poets and writers such as Mahmoud Darwish, Adonis and Naguib Mahfouz, who said that he is not the most important Arab writers, and he dealt with the political discourse and hope for change related to the Arab Spring and the Palestinians' right to their land.

In this dialogue with him, Manguel really appears to be a fictional character, linguistically miraculous, colorful, out of the minds of words and stories, a disguised figure who jumped from one of the many novels, manuscripts, and volumes that inhabit his library and memory.

Great ability to mummify time, forget age, cling to innocence, autism in childhood, and a greater magical ability to invent dreams, mock reality, predict the future, smell the fragrance of letters, the fragrance of words, and the hidden secret of books, qualified the writer Alberto Manguel to be called "the man of the library." And "Don Juan Libraries", as described by the American critic George Steiner.

And this is not so much for a writer who was born from the cloud of language and fed Ghaith al-Maani and weaned on the ritual poetry of the poems and fell from the rain of letters.

A writer settled in libraries, became a proficient reading, and devoted his life to travel, discovery and knowledge.

The two consecutive years he spent in Buenos Aires, Argentina at the beginning of his life, reading books to his blind professor Jorge Luis Borges, had a profound and great influence on the orientations of the rest of his literary and intellectual life.

The first results of this influence were his adoption, translation, and realization of the dream of Borges, who had always imagined paradise in the form of a library, where Manguel created an earthly paradise, and his own paradise that contains more than 40 thousand books.

He is a lover who is fond of reading details, reading that gave him many lives, prizes and a prestigious position in the world of literature and culture, and he is inhabited by the spirit of all the ages and eras and the wondrous myths that passed to him from the infection of beautiful books.

These many souls that inhabited him enabled him to enjoy a rare encyclopedic culture, and fly with more than one wing in the sky of literature, writing and knowledge, such as the translation, novel, thought, journalism and travel wing.

The fate of this press meeting, which Al-Jazeera Net conducted with the writer Alberto Manguel, was to be in the "Saint-Germain" neighborhood in Paris, steps away from the Sorbonne University, a scientific and cognitive symbol, and a few libraries from the Latin Quarter, the bastion of art, creativity and freedom, and the home of the cultural movement that Its climax came during the French student revolution of 1968, led by John Paul Sartre and his comrades.

This meeting was also in the same hostel that loved Manguel's ethereal friend Mahmoud Darwish, and who had always stayed in it and sat in the lobby sipping his morning coffee to the rhythm of the last tango in Paris.

Throughout this meeting, Darwish and Palestine were strongly present in more than one question and answer and comment, as well as several other issues and incendiary problems, such as the relationship of identity with globalization and the challenges that are presented today to the organic intellectual in his relationship with his surroundings and power.

The meeting also touched on the development of the concept of reading in our current era, and the role of the latter in raising awareness and ridding contemporary man of domestication and marginalization.

And without forgetting, of course, to talk about the creative miraculous worlds of Manguel in writing, reading and traveling, and his adherence to the spirit of childhood and his first dreams, then to dialogue.

- In most of your books, such as "The History of Reading", "The Art of Reading", "The Library at Night", "The Reading Diary" and "With Borges", you talk about reading in its meaning and its classic classic equation. Don't you consider that the concept of reading today has evolved and changed a lot?

Is it not possible to consider the moments of extreme contemplation in travel, to be amazed in front of a wonderful exhibition of plastic art, to enjoy a distinguished evening of poetry or a unique piece of music or an original song, or to the delicious state of emancipation that a movie or theatrical film creates in us, is not all this a deep modern state of reading?

The act of reading has many connotations, and the most popular at the moment is reading texts either in print or on screen.

But the verb of reading has also had many other meanings since ancient times.

As humans, we can read landscapes, read eyes, and read and scan other people's faces to understand their reactions.

All of these worlds are a way of reading, just like contemplating a painting or enjoying cinema, theater or music as well.

But there is a clear difference and an important difference between reading the text and reading other forms of creativity that the world presents to us.

The most important difference is that reading texts involves a deep dialogue with the language we speak.

This language, which arose to name things visible and invisible, becomes in texts a kind of repertoire of living experience.

The best way to transfer the experience from one person to another is through the act of reading through time and space, where I can be in dialogue with Abu Nawas through my civilization and my time, but this dialogue will be and remain contemporary and current.

- There is an important Arab poet, his name is Bashar bin Barad, who says, "And the ear loves before the eye sometimes." Could the sense of hearing not be a good way to love reading, as well as the sense of sight?     

You know that the Arabs were the ones who returned to the world the writings of Aristotle, which were later published, and in Aristotle's thought the most important tool for man is the eye and sight.

And this sense is the one that opens us to the world, unlike the other senses that only give us information, but they are all, according to Aristotle, controlled by the eye, so the act of reading the eye remains distinctive and profound.

This is the other important aspect of human thought that interferes with the act of reading.

Borges says, "The book is the most astonishing among all the tools that man has invented throughout his history. The rest of the tools are an extension of the body. The microscope and the telescope are an extension of the human vision, and the phone is an extension of his hearing, the plow and the sword is an extension of his arm, but the book is an extension of something else, an extension of memory and imagination." ".

Manguel: I hope before my death I can find the intimate place my soul dreamed of, to settle in the company of my library forever (Al Jazeera)

All art passes through words

- On the occasion of the context of talking about music, theater, dance, plastic art and cinema, which of these arts is the closest to your heart and enriches your creative experience, artistically and intellectually?

- All of them, I love music, dance, cinema, painting and theater, but as a reader I believe that all these arts pass through the language of words.

I mean, to think about a play, a movie, a plastic art, or a piece of music, I have to translate all these creative experiences into a narration and a story, and for all of that, I need the words.

Consequently, the birth of any artistic creative work must pass and be translated through words, and thus through reading.

A lot of successful international fictional works have been transformed into cinematic films, series, and theater pieces. Have you received offers to convert some of your fictional and creative works into cinematic films?

In fact, many proposals were presented to me to quote my work, but they were not serious enough to be completed on the ground.

My book "Reading Story" is the only one that has been converted and produced by Canadian and American television, and it was broadcast in 6 or 7 episodes under the title "Empire of Words."

Regarding the novels, I had a serious and important suggestion to adapt my novel "News from a Foreign Country" and turn it into a movie by the great Italian actor and director Marcello Mastroianni, but after his death the project evaporated.

I also had another suggestion from a Scottish company to adapt my novel "Stephenson Under Palm Trees" but the project was unfortunately not finished.

So I am still waiting for a good and serious proposal, because I would very much like to see my stories and novels in the cinema.

Reading in the face of globalization and domestication

Do books have souls like human beings?

Of course, books certainly have souls as well as human beings only. We, as readers, loot these souls for books when we read them, love them, and transmit them to our ardent ones, and enter into a dialogue of ideas with them.

 - In the time of giant multinational corporations, and a time of globalization that is trying to domesticate people and turn them into a mere commercial number, a silent robot, and a machine in a factory, can the book, reading, literature, creativity and culture be the last bulwark, and the last bulwark with which the human being fortified to defend his humanity and unique culture And his authentic identity?

Frankly, I don't know.

I don't even know if we hope for that, I am really pessimistic at this point, I think we are living in a very bad and disastrous era.

Despite all this, we can coexist cautiously with the prevailing violence around us, and we can coexist cautiously with all the natural disasters that we see today, but we cannot live with this systematic destruction of ourselves and our intimate lives.

Today we see these politicians who rule us, destroying the world and destroying beautiful principles and values.

Starting with Donald Trump, passing through this dictator in Brazil, reaching the disaster president in India, this moron Netanyahu, and finally with this Syrian monster Bashar.

All of these people drive the world to suicide, fuel conflicts, wars and violence, and destroy our lives and our beautiful little details.

What definition does Alberto Manguel give of an identity?

Has the concept of identity and its defense become urgent today, in a time of decay, division, multiplicity and overlap of identities as a result of the temptations, temptations and constraints of globalization?

I think there are two definitions of identity.

One imposed on us from the outside and imposed on us by society.

It is, for example, as if we say I am a white Canadian Argentine sheikh ... etc, and there is a second identity which we choose and create ourselves.

This is the true identity that we must preserve and strive to preserve and develop.

But the forces surrounding us and society do not let us act freely, and we are not satisfied with developing this identity as we would like, because it is often keen to confine us to certain molds that it affixes to us since its inception.

And this image is often not what we hold of ourselves.

This is what poses a great danger, especially for young people, who must not yield to this reality, this society and this world, which is trying to mummify them and strip them of life, creativity and freedom.

Young people should be aware of their true identity and strive to sculpt and develop it day after day.

- Latin American literature is considered the best expressive, and the best resistance to the dictatorship stage that this region lived through, where great writers have emerged.

This applies to Argentina and what it lived during the military rule, so how did you live these deep creative literary manifestations, and how did you describe this sensitive stage?

How do you compare it to what the Arab world is experiencing today in terms of liberation and revolutions against injustice and dictatorship?

- At the beginning it must be clarified that I returned to Argentina at the age of seven and that was in 1955, when I stayed there until the year 1969. I left it when the dictatorship began.

I did not leave the country of origin for political reasons, but because I wanted to travel.

I say this to distinguish me from my friends who suffered from dictatorship, paid a heavy price, were imprisoned, tortured, exiled and displaced.

I wanted this clarification so that I would not appear as a fighter, and not to take the place of the martyrs who sacrificed their lives for freedom.

Contrasted with that in that period, the situation seems clearer from outside Argentina.

From Europe and France in particular, we can know what is happening in Argentina more than those who live in Argentina at that period, and the reason is simple because the military dictatorship tries to cover up all crimes, and tries to hide all secrets and hideous practices.

This military dictatorship stirred deep things and dissonant emotions and prompted me to write my first novel, "News from a Foreign Country."

Among these contradictory things is that I knew at the time that the French soldiers who participated in the Algeria war and practiced torture there were the same ones who went to Argentina to teach the origins of torture and dictatorship to the Argentine soldiers.

The second reason I was compelling to write the novel is this very special story that I will tell.

As I told you before, many of my friends were subjected to torture, imprisonment, displacement, murder and exile.

Among them was a dear and close friend who was exiled in Brazil and whom I had not met since my early childhood and school years.

And when I met him in the eighties, after the dictatorship had vanished.

As we recall memories and talk about our professors, he told me that our distinguished, sensitive professor who has always encouraged us to read and love of poetry and literature, is the same who transformed in the period of dictatorship into an informant inciting soldiers and soldiers to arrest his students, and to violence and torture them.

Out of my horror and shock at what I heard, I wondered, how could a teacher encourage me to read and read and love poetry and novel and rooted in noble values, how could a person with such high sensitivity incite soldiers against his young victims?

From the womb of this shock, surprise, these questions, and my attempt to explain all these contradictory feelings that haunted me, and to answer these confusing questions, from the womb of all this, my novel "News from a Foreign Country" was born.

The main character of the novel was a French soldier sent to Argentina for a specific mission that the novel does not reveal except in the latter.

I wanted this soldier to be sensitive, sensitive, loving reading and literature, and loving his wife and child.

He is a distinguished person in everything and bears most of the characteristics of my teacher who taught me literature.

But in the end, we discover that he came to Argentina to teach torture and dictatorship.

Palestine and the Arabs

How does the writer Alberto Manguel view the oppression and displacement of the Palestinian people, and the dark tunnel that the Palestinian cause has reached under the American peace plan?

Advocacy and support for just causes of liberation in the world, is it the goal of every freelance writer and creative in your opinion?

- I do not know if you know the Israeli journalist Gideon Levy who summarized the Palestinian issue in a brief and condensed speech where he said, "There are no solutions without returning the land to the Palestinians."

As a result, the only thing we have to do is start with returning the occupied lands to the Palestinians, and then we can engage in discussion, dialogue and negotiations for hours, days and months.

But before returning the occupied lands, we cannot build dialogue, debate, negotiations, and solutions.

In his book "Amazing Figures in the World of Literature", Mangwell demonstrates the ability of his imagined characters to break out of literary books to guide us in our lives (Al-Jazeera)

What about the US peace plan?

Today everyone knows that Donald Trump is an idiot.

The most dangerous thing is that this man is an evil fool.

You know there is a class of kids who enjoy torturing innocent dogs and animals.

Trump is in this class of bad kids.

I believe that bad, bad people, born in a righteous and progressive society, are eliminated and uprooted as any serious disease is eradicated.

I have a friend who likens Donald Trump to the dangerous AIDS that has afflicted our global community.

Ultimately, this plan will never succeed.

 How do you see, as an educated person, the Arab Spring revolutions and this movement and the demonstrations against dictatorship?

I think that the Arab Spring revolutions have proven that there is hope for a profound change from within, and perhaps there are some preliminary results and fruits of these experiences. In Algeria, for example, women were able to participate in this movement and advance more towards political life.

In Tunisia, there is a cultural movement and an attempt to change one way or another, but unfortunately there are some experiences that have produced a new dictatorship, whether through the military or political Islam, and these two options will necessarily lead to either religious extremism or violence extremism.

And it will be impossible to rule that through a balanced and fair political system.

Despite all this, it must be emphasized that the Arab Spring proved that there is a large group of people, especially the youth, who are capable of change, and they bear the seeds of hope and the fervor of ambition.

It is these young people who are trying to open the windows of hope and change.

There is a will that passes, something changes, and a seed grows, so let's try to leave the windows of hope open, and let's try not to close these windows at all.

Literature and exile

Do you consider exile and imprisonment two necessary experiences for every writer and creative person to deepen his ideas and innovate more?

No, this is a very dangerous idea that came with Aristotle who believed that spiritual suffering was necessary for creative action.

And that wisdom is born from the depth of suffering.

And I think that bourgeois societies have exploited this thinking, to leave the artist and the creator to suffer and not pay him his rights.

Therefore, we must give up such thinking in order to be able to produce more serious literature and creativity.

- The autobiography, the diaries, the journeys, the novel, the critical study of your writings are intertwined, so what is the symbolism of that?

Do you believe in the overlap of literary races in modern writing? 

A: Yes, I believe in that, and this is a truism, because literature was born without these modern classifications.

Proof of this is the Qalqamish epic, which is a mixture between poetry, novel, article and historical document, which is all this mixture and more.

I believe that the author of this great human text did not decide and did not declare when he wrote his book for the first time, that he would write a poem, novel or article, but the text came automatically like this.

Then, as literature developed, academics and librarians tried to distinguish and separate literary genres, although this separation is not always valid.

Despite this, there are many writers who remained throughout their lives trying to mix poetry, prose, novel, essay, research and stories, in order to break all these barriers and reach one sophisticated creative mix.

And I think today we are going back to this deep freedom in literature, which tries to disavow all categories.

- What do you want to end this dialogue, leave you the closing word?

Finish with Gustave Flaubert's quote, "Read to live."