If poetry is music, sometimes exuberance, metaphors and powerful images, it is present in the novels of Juan Manuel de Prada (Barakaldo, 1971). Before participating in Cosmopoeticsthe ABC columnist talks about his relationship with verse, which he cultivated when he was young.
-We must question the narrator of a festival like this about his relationship to poetry. Is your style full of images a poetic expression?
-Certainly. Certainly, like almost everyone who feels a literary calling, I began writing poetry as a teenager. In my early youth, I wrote a lot of poetry and then I abandoned it, because I considered that it was happening to me as Cervanteswho said that heaven had not wanted to grant him this grace, and that therefore working and staying up late did not make much sense, and I turned to prose. But I continued to be poetry readerand I think that’s present in my writing. They say that it’s very baroque, that there are a lot of images, and that has to do with the survival of what is in me as a poet and the poetic readings that I continued to do.
-Are these images that appear in your prose similar to finding the exact names of the things that Juan Ramón said?
-This must be the guide writer. He must try to ensure that his words are capable of mentioning, of scrutinizing this area of reality that he has set out to explore. There is no doubt that the search for the precise word, the necessary word, is fundamental in the writer’s work. In any case, the necessary speech also has to do with the truth of the writer. The writer must tell his TRUE and this truth can only be said in a certain way. This is why the author of “bestsellers”the prostitute writer resorts to formulas, but this has nothing to do with true literary expression.
-In addition to music, form, beauty, should we think?
-In all writing there must be both music and thought. When it’s just music, you can create high-quality pages verbal talentbut empty of substance. When there is only thought and no music, rock lyrics result. I think there must be an alloy: the great poets, and let’s think for example of San Juan de la Cruz, Quevedo or Lope de Vegashow the conjunction of music, language and rhythm with thought.
-Who are your poets, those who have accompanied you the most?
-In general, the poets who really dazzled me, shook me, made me think, changed my life, are usually poets of the Spanish tradition, because I believe that when you really taste poetry, it’s in his own language. . I would put in the foreground Saint John of the Cross, who, I believe, is the poet of the sublimeof the ineffable, and which has the capacity to penetrate the human and divine mystery in a more prodigious way. Quevedo, Lope, Bécquer, Lorca, Miguel Hernández and in a mysterious way, with a slightly damaged music, I would also mention Unamuno, who was a great poet precisely because of his ability to name the deep human truth with the precise word . Also Claudio Rodriguez and many others, and among the last generations, I will particularly remember a great poet from Córdoba, who is Joaquín Pérez Azaústre. Friendships are born here from elective affinities, common tastes and close visions of what literature and poetry should be. He had the courage to stay in poetry, even if he later turned to prose.
“Saint John of the Cross has the capacity to penetrate in a marvelous way the mystery of the divine and the human”
-Does this exuberant and personal way of writing come naturally to the writer, or do we have to stop and look for this expression?
-When the writer is not imposed or puppeteered, I would say that it is something natural. The style belongs to the man and the writer has his own voice. Once he finds it, it’s the voice that comes natural to him and he doesn’t need to force it. In my case, my baroque styleor grotesque or full of images, it’s a style that comes completely naturally to me. Anyone who knows a little about literature perceives this. There are people, either a little profane or a little stupid, who think that I am starting to look for words in the dictionary, or that I’m racking my brains and not. Normally, beyond the fact that literature requires dedication, in the authentic writer, his style is a pure segregation of what he is and comes naturally to him. It will be another matter to find it: especially in youth, we are somewhat hesitant to look for this personal style, but when we find it, it arises naturally.
-How did the return to the character of “The Masks of the Hero” go? While writing “A Thousand Eyes Hide the Night,” did you notice a lot of changes compared to who you were almost thirty years ago?
-No, not much has changed, there has been a natural evolution. I am a writer who evolves in the same tradition, in the same style. Another thing is that you have delved into certain aspects of literature which, perhaps at the beginning, were still barely suspected, unformed, only sketched, and you evaluate or consolidate them. One is written by a young man in his twenties and the other by a man in his fifties, but I think that “A Thousand Eyes Hide the Night” is a natural continuation of this novel and , in general, I think it matches all my literary work. There are aspects in which I have changed. “The Masks of the Hero” is a novel in which many characters appear and disappear without much dramatic content. To use the cinematic term, they make cameos. This doesn’t seem fair to me, and in “A Thousand Eyes Hide the Night”, each character has their story, more or less important, but they have their story. Is this a change? No, it’s a natural evolution. The writer as mature you have more knowledge about human soul.
