“Each poet is only a heartbeat in the river of language.” Octavio Paz
I am always impressed with Mexican writers. They are brilliant writers that encompass a wide field of interests. Often they travel widely with open eyes and yet, reflect on their own culture and history. Sergio Pitol falls into this category.
At 85 Pitol died in 2018 and was widely praised for his writings. Like other compatriots Octavio Paz and Carlos Fuentes, he served as ambassadors in Europe, spending almost thirty years abroad. While in Europe, he met with many writers, playwrights and artists, keeping abreast of what was current in all the countries he lived. The breadth of who he knew astounds me.
In 1988, he returned permanently to Mexico. He moved back to his home of Xalapa in Veracruz state where he wrote these reflections on his life.
“Writing comes like the wind, it is naked. The ink, that is what I write. It passes like nothing happens in life. Nothing, except that this is life.” Marguerite Duras
His topics cover the personal, such as how Mexican politics in the early 1960s, along with his fellow writer and friend Carlos Monsiváis, got him into working as an ambassador. He begins translating the Polish writer Witold Gombrowicz and meets the Italian writer Antonio Tabucchi along the way.
After the incidents of Tlatelolco in 1968, he ends up in a seedy flat in Barcelona trying to write his first novel. During this time he meets Beatriz and Oscar Tusquets, where he does some translation of The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford for Planeta, then in turn meets Carlos Barral (Seix Barral) and Carmen Balcells, all of whom publish the Latin American Boom writers. What revelations!
He covers writers as Galdos, Borges, Chekhov, Joseph Conrad, Thomas Mann and a host of lesser known writers like Czech writer Jaroslav Haskek and the Polish author Jerzy Andrzejewski. There is something interesting in all. He reflects, quotes and tells anecdotes. One of things that interested me was his reflections of his own trilogy of books consisting of El desfile del amor, Domar a la divina garza y La vida conyugal were influenced by Max Beckmann’s trilogy Departure. It was painted from 1932 to 1935 in pre-Nazi Germany and is now in the Museum of maiden Art in New York. His thoughts on the painting and in particular, how he created El desfile del amor are an enlightening look into the writer’s mind.
He includes several essays after his recollections, one of which is on Tabucchi’s “Sostiene Pereira” or “Afirma Pereira” in Portuguese, which I had read recently. The story tells the story of Pereira, whose wife had died, himself suffering with health issues, and the country is embroiled under Salazar. Life in 1938 Portugal was challenging to say the least. Pitol’s focus was on the challenges of dealing with death just as the young man Montero Rossi wrote obituaries for the paper. Pure symbolism in 1938, a year before the big war.
Finally, the last essay was on the uprising of Chiapas state under Subcommander Marcos in 1994. He personally made a trip to the state and was very moved by the sad state of the people living in such poverty in his own land, and of course how the government dealt with this uprising. His moving account where at first he thought of it being some Leftist propaganda switched to a more empathetic mind shows the power of “being there” really matters. In our maligned world today, these are powerful reminders that we all need to keep an open mind about the others.
The title of this book, the art of escape, reveals Pitol himself. He was very good at leaving things behind, escaping his country, the issues and dwelling in the world he found solitude in, the world of literature.
Anyone who is interested in literature, how it is written, it’s effects and why we write, should read this book. I was so impressed.
And the Malevich cover...woah!
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