Gonzalo Silorio (Mexico, 1948) recounts his life in his latest book, Those piles of broken mirrorspublished by Tusquets, her publishing house. It appeared on the shelves (I bought it Olafeda library with Argentine roots in Madrid) before being awarded the most important award, Cervantes. His books are embraces of the past, among them Amor Propio, Tres lindas cubanas, El metal y la escoria, Los apóstatas or Mentideros de la memoria… I sent the questionnaire to Mexico, its roots.
– Many years ago I asked you about your own questions. First, what are you going to do with your mother? Then you told me it would be difficult for you to ask him a “current question.” After time has passed, what do you say to him to tell him the most important news of your literary life?
– It is a pity that you have not been here for many years, but, nevertheless, at an inopportune time, I say thank you. Thank you that your love trumped the fairness that was the basis of the motto that governed the behavior of the twelve children you raised: “All my children are equal.” You discovered early on that your eleventh child’s unique weakness may lie in his strength. You would very much like to know the happy result of that special sensitivity which has led me to attain that immense appreciation the reward of which I have not yet fully comprehended.
-And about life itself? How would you describe the state of the world now?
– I can only answer your reductionist question in an equally reductionist way. I feel that the common denominator of the world is a radical polarization that eliminates the interregnums in which humans wish to live and pass.
-You are a man with a great memory. Your latest book, That Pile of Broken Mirrors, is profound and comprehensive. What is the most difficult thing for you to say about everything you remember here?
– Make my clothes out of the nudity that all autobiographical literature assumes.
–These are your first love stories and also your first story, as well as the authors who came to you. What do you remember of the writing that was born then?
– Difficulty in writing and the urgent need to do so.
-Name the people who first filled your passion for writing. Gabriel García Márquez, Alejo Carpentier, Cortazar. They are still among the greats. In what order are they now? Who followed them?
– This question is as broad as some of the previous questions, and therefore I can only answer it in a synthetic and simplistic way. The three I mentioned still have similar merits, but the reasons for their persistence are different: García Márquez for his remarkable ability to tell a story and the fast pace of his prose; Alejo Carpentier for the useless but abundant richness of his language, and Julio Cortázar for the infinite bridges he continues to build for his readers, who, by crossing them, become co-authors of his works. From Latin American literature, he followed, primarily, Jorge Luis Borges. I realized that he is the writer I most often turn to and quote from, both in prose and poetry. The title of my latest book, That pile of broken mirrorscomes from a poem of his in which he defines memory, just like the poem titled El metal y la escoria. After, before or at the same time, Juan Rulfo, Juan José Arreola, José Lezama Lima, Severo Sarduy, Carlos Fuentes, Juan Carlos Onetti, Mario Vargas Llosa, Augusto Monterosso, Alejandra Pizarnik, Jorge Ibarguenguitia, Luisa Valenzuela, Leila Guerrero… from Spanish, Luis Martín Santos, Antonio Muñoz Molina, Rosa Montero, Javier Cercas, Carmen Riera, Jesús Marchallo…
Let’s not even talk about world literature. Doesn’t fit on this page.
– Cortázar had a passion. It seems to me that you have never met him. How do you imagine talking to him now? And with Jabu? How have your conversations been in recent years?
– I did meet him, although I saw him only on the occasion of his visit to Mexico in March 1983, when I introduced him to UNAM, and spoke to him briefly on that occasion and the next day, in the large square of Coyoacan. But I met him in his stories, in which the most intimate Cortázar inevitably comes to light, the story of his childhood, the story of his persistent imagination, the story of his eternal rebellion against all conventions. If I could talk to him now, I probably would ask him what he thinks of the current situation in Cuba and whether he will continue to defend his revolution, as he did when Fuentes and Vargas Llosa withdrew their support after the Padilla affair. I’m afraid your answer will be negative. My conversations with García Márquez in recent years are recorded in my book Mentideros de la memoria.
Your books are your voice, that’s what you say in your book of memories. The sound is part of the beginning of those memories. What does pain mean in your life?
One of the most severe pains that I suffered from was losing my voice after removing a cancerous tumor in one of my vocal cords. I believed then that writing could say everything that voice had to silence. Fortunately, after a while, I regained my voice, although it declined significantly and did not last long. But I suppose your question is not limited to the literal meaning of the word voice, but to its value in self-expression, and to this, to the expression of one’s voice, I have devoted all my writings. It’s not just about style, it’s about identity: who I am, and how I’ve overcome that my mother’s adage that ruled my childhood: “All my children are equal.”
The feeling for those of us who knew you as an academic, a well-known man and a reader, is that you never ceased to be sad. When this comes, how does Silorio’s sadness disappear?
– When I was reading your question, I thought you were going to say that I never stopped feeling joy, and this is true. I have bracketed grief, but when it occurs, always out of loss, I banish it through the discipline of writing, which, by my interpretation, is appeased, at least for a time.
— In my memory as a reader, the adventures of that child who was asking himself questions when he was an adult at the age of five, remained deep within me. Is this child still around?
– Of course the child is present. Since my childhood, I have preserved the remnants of my imagination and naivety, without which I cannot write or remember, but what adult would a child be who was not alive? The adult questions I’ve asked myself since my early years come from living with my older siblings. One of its results was that since I was a child I had been using highly cultured words that I did not understand, inspired by Miguel, my older brother, who when he said them earned me uniqueness and approval.
At one point in the book she says, “I lost my childhood.” Now you’ve just hit the jackpot of letters. Maybe it will help you bring back that boy who helped you write this phrase: “Play is the most dangerous thing a child can do.” Is this vision of the past still valid?
– Yes, the child I used to live in my adult writing. Writing is still a game that must be taken seriously. In game, writing is characterized by unpredictability, opportunity, and challenge.
I said: I never imagined what writing would reveal to me. Recently, after that statement, what was a revelation that surprised you, about your life, about the life around you?
– In my case, writing serves the function of investigation. I give the novel I write a series of data that the novel itself “processes” and reveals to me, its author, what I did not know before writing. I became a fascinated reader of the novel I had written myself. What surprised me most about these discoveries was who this stranger really was, and who he was, too.
