With an attentive ear, he listens to our questions and then to the interpretation of his translator, Dominique Nédellec. With a quick hand, form words on a piece of paper: “Bible”, “Biology”, “Carnage” –, circle them and then draw lines to connect the terms with each other or with obscure symbols. As we leave our meeting with Gonçalo M. Tavares, in the Paris offices of his editor, Viviane Hamy, we regret not having stolen the diagrams that summarize our conversation in a kind of scientific language. But this feeling dissipates. Unlike the Portuguese writer, son of a mathematics teacher and an engineer, we do not have a facility for mathematics. It is best to stick to his words and his books, whose evocative power and profound clarity are akin to fables spanning centuries.
For about twenty years, the professor of epistemology at the University of Lisbon has built a prolific and protean body of work. It is built around two cycles: the kingdom, an exploration of evil in the 20th centurymy century, began with A Man: Klaus Klump and The Machine by Joseph Walser (2003 and 2004; ed. Viviane Hamy, 2014), and The Neighborhoodopen with Mr. Valéry and logic (2002; reed. Viviane Hamy, 2008), who was soon joined by a dozen residents, including Mr. Brecht AND sir calvin (2004 and 2005; ed. Viviane Hamy, 2009 and 2010). Tired of noticing, from the lively Lisbon café where he works, how “everyone thinks the same, even in democratic cities where there is freedom of thought”Tavares wanted to create an imaginary city populated by “real people”. In 2021, they are gathered into a total of 800 pages (The Neighborhooded. Viviane Hamy).
“By leaps and bounds”
Stories, poetry, theater and publications revolve around these two novel cycles that the former Physics, Sports and Art student does not associate with any literary genre. “What interests me, and Roland Barthes talked a lot about it, is the idea of writing as an intransitive verbadmits. To the question “What do you write?”, the answer is a reduction of language. » He often works at the same time on a fairly scientific book, a work of art or a collection of short stories. “I am currently teaching a course: “Body, culture and contemporary thought”, I am making leaps and boundsconfess. My relationship with epistemology is perverse, because I really like contradiction and ambiguity. There lies the power of thought. »
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