Isabelle Allende: "... the fulfillment of all desires brings great misery"

 

Isabelle Allende: "... the fulfillment of all desires brings great misery"

Editing by Konstantinos Syrmos

"Workers of my country, I want to thank you for the continued dedication and trust you have shown me. I was only the one who expressed your long wait for justice. Long live Chile! Long live the people! I ask the workers!" When
"House of Spirits" was released in 1982, the world was looking to Chile; because of the coup, because of Salvador Allende, there was interest in Latin America; if the book had been released ten years earlier or ten years later, it would not have known the same success; it hit a target at the right time from circumstances that I don't control myself. Why do I live today in this wonderful place?
But I wrote a book.

desire for independence

In my life, the primary element was the strong desire for independence and freedom. I was born into a society with many limitations in the 1940s in Chile, in a highly conservative Catholic environment and I always wanted to get away. I've never been able to accept the authority of my grandfather, my stepfather, of all this masculine structure that surrounded me. When I was a little girl, the word feminism didn't exist, but I think I was already a feminist even though I didn't know the word. My mother was married to the wrong man, my father. The wedding didn't go well. Separated. There was no divorce then in Chile, the marriage was annulled and my mother became a single woman with three illegitimate children. Our house was sad. My grandmother was dead and my grandfather painted the furniture black, dressed in black, removed the flowers, the music, the sweets, the parties. There was grief at home because my mother was almost always sick. Father, I didn't. The atmosphere was heavy. But there were books. And there were stories. People were telling stories and I was living with stories. I am grateful that I had so many problems in my childhood because I had to react against them. I always tell my grandchildren that with happy childhoods you don't do anything in life. So I'm trying to cause misery. Their parents don't really appreciate it!

to feed your imagination

There is, you know, a theory, I don't know whether it's true, that we're all born with the same or almost the same creative ability and imagination. Some people are cut from the root when they're children. In some cultures, in some families, in some cases, it does not cut and begins to grow. Sometimes it feeds and grows even more. That's what happened to me, I think. I don't think I have more imagination than my brothers, but I was a girl and no one cared what I thought or did. My brothers had entered the box of the good student, the professional, all that is required by a male. No one cared about the female, so I was alone. Alone with books. I created my own world, my own games, without any interference. Nobody cared what I was thinking, and that was good. I realize that my life, as I live it here, is just one aspect of reality. But there is also the reality of dreams, the reality of emotions, passions, memory, fear and all that happens without us realizing it.

by pure luck

I was 39 years old and I started writing a letter to my dying grandfather in Chile. The letter was growing and at the end of the year I had written 500 pages. That was my first book. But I didn't know I was a writer, and I kept not knowing until my third book, Eva Luna. That's when I knew I could make a living writing, but I didn't know I had talent. No, I always thought that out of luck I'd been able to find this story and write it and that it wouldn't happen again. So every time I sat down to write a new book, I felt it was a gift that wouldn't happen again. 

history chooses you

In my case, I need to tell the story. I have a very bad memory. I don't remember people, names, locations, dates. But I remember a good story. And the good story stays inside me, turns inside me and changes. Like a pregnancy or an animal. And there comes a time when I have to take it off. My way of giving birth to history is by writing it. I don't choose, history chooses me. There are stories that haunt you, stay inside you and concern you because they are connected to something that happened in your life, something that matters to you or something you desire. And then I have to write this story. I get a lot of letters from people who want me to write their story. I can't, I can't. Because it's a very nice story, but there's nothing connecting me to her.

remember what others have forgotten

The author's job, most of the time, is to resist oblivion, to overcome the fact that we forget everything. That's the whole point: See what others don't see, remember what others have forgotten, talk about those who don't have a voice. If you look at most writers' work, you'll see recurring themes all the time. It's the same obsession you reverse. My obsession is strong women, freedom. In my books there is always political, social elements. There's love and violence and sex. I think these are my obsessions, and that's why I write about them. constantly. Even if the story is completely different from the last one.

history is built on its own

I'm starting to write with an idea, some characters. And I'm always afraid it won't come out. But then comes a moment, a couple of months after I've started writing, where the characters do something unexpected. I didn't think about it and it happened and then I know that the book has its own substance; Now I have to sit on my computer every day and give him time to make it happen. I wrote a story called "Two Words." It's the story of a woman whispering two secret words in a man's ear, and he gets obsessed and thinks about it all the time, until he feels the need to look for it. She catches him on her hook with those two secret words. People keep asking me what those words were. The German translator of the book thought it was the words "I love you", which in German is three words. So they changed the title of the book to "Three Words" instead of "Two Words". And I said 'no, you can't do that because you don't know if those words are!'. That's what's amazing about a story built on its own. He decides how and when it's over.

a bunch of pages becomes a book

My question is always: "Why?" Why did this happen? Why is this man doing that? Because we love or fear or torture or kill or wage war. Because we destroy, build or build. It's the "why." When I was a reporter, I kept asking "what happened?" The question was "what." Now I'm asking why. So by repeating the questions, expressing them, I ask the reader to help me find the answer. And through this exchange it is that the reader and I create the book. For me, the book becomes a book when someone reads it. Before, it's a bunch of pages that don't matter. But when there is a reader, then he and I create a new world. I don't know what kind of world it is. In this world half the book has been written by the reader. I often wonder what the hell you're reading in Greece. Because I don't know what translation is like, I don't know what Greek culture sees in my books. So what are you reading? Maybe something completely different from my intention.

talent or genius

Talent is an extraordinary ability to do something. There's a difference between talent or genius. I think talent is a product of skill and work. Genius is a natural gift. You look at Mozart's work and there's nothing to fix it. She wrote endless scores, and they were perfect all along. That's genius. In order to be able to create great art, Guernica, say, in order for Picasso to exist and create Guernica, there had to be millions of painters and millions of paintings created and disappeared. Art must be spent to create a work of art.

revolution and power

There are people trying to save nature, people trying to stop war, trying to prevent destruction in Africa; there are women trying to change civilization; half the planet is rebelling against something; without the natural instinct of the revolution we would be in the Stone Age; every change comes from a group of people or a man who sees something and says, "No, I don't like that, we have to change it." When
you gain power and you don't answer for it, there's impunity for your actions, you become very corrupt.
"To take over the people of power and corrupt it!" Not even the most perfect constitution, then, will escape the corruption of power. It was already in the seeds of the constitution that the rich in the long run would take power and not really represent the voice of the people.

success - failure

People are the medium, I think; art happens in our absence and we simply channel it in inexplicable ways; I have often met poets who have written wonderful poetry and are close to being bad, selfish, not generous; I recently wrote a book: "My Dreamland" and realized by writing it, that in my life there is consistency between my ideas, the way I have lived and my writings. There's no distance, no separation, between my mind and my heart; the gain is that you do what you want on your own terms; you don't have to work for someone else; you've lost your peace, and there's a risk that you'll start believing in your own success and become arrogant; the best way to destroy your laurels is to sit on them. to many successful people. They consider themselves superior in some way and most of the time due to the favor of luck. The moment, the opportunity creates this success. It doesn't mean that the play will stand the test of time and be read by the next generation. no. It's just a matter of time, and we need to know. Personally, I am very aware of the fact that my success is due to luck. When
you succeed in something you don't stop to think about why it happened; if you fail, then you think; as much knowledge as I have gained from losses, breakups and failures; growing up one gains in experience and knowledge and loses in innocence, passion, the ability to take risks, courage; sometimes courage is just madness, madness of youth; and growing up you think about the consequences and become more careful. In my life I try, I know that age is witnessed by the body, there is no way to hide it;

life and death

I've been very lucky; I've lived a full life of ups and downs, ups and downs; a very interesting life; I have no complaints; as at every moment of life we have to make choices and choose something we've rejected something else, So every next minute ends his precedent and hope afterwards. , but not scary. A few months after my daughter died, my granddaughter was born in the same room. When my daughter died, I was holding her. When my granddaughter was born, I pulled her from her mother's body. In both moments, I had the same sense of mystery, a very intense feeling that didn't scare me though. Both moments looked a lot alike. There was stillness and silence. And effort. That's a lot of effort. And pain. In a very natural way, though. So I'm familiar with the idea that life and death go hand in hand. What makes life nice is that it's temporary. Everything in nature changes. The whole essence of life is change, and that makes it nice. Can you imagine living in a picture? Don't move forever, without changing? horror!


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Production: Thanasis Lalas, ET.1 2008 Broadcast: "The Dance of Answers"