| |
Rubén Palma
EXILE - IMMIGRATION - LANGUAGES - LITERATURE
Conversation between Alexander Taylor and Rubén Palma
YOU BEGAN WRITING AT THE AGE OF THIRTY-ONE IN DENMARK. HAD YOU EVER CONSIDERED BECOMING A WRITER WHILE YOU LIVED IN CHILE?
I grew up in a poor Chilean barrio with a strong, old-fashioned macho culture. I would not say that I found writing feminine. In fact, I always found writing an interesting activity. But I just did not consider it to be masculine enough. As a boy, and later as a teenager, all I wanted was to be a football player or a boxer. With those images in my mind, I do not think I would ever have become a writer in Chile.
HOW DID DENMARK INFLUENCE THIS DECISION?
The idea of writing began taking shape after I had been in Denmark for eleven years, when I realized that maybe I was never going to return to Chile. At that point, I understood that Chile was left behind, and that Denmark was no longer a transitory place in my existence. It sounds paradoxical but I felt a kind of emptiness which nevertheless liberated a lot of new feelings. Suddenly I was able to look back and ahead, to look at myself in a new way.
COULD YOU SAY A LITTLE MORE ABOUT THESE NEW FEELINGS?
From early childhood we are conditioned by the attitudes and expectations of our family, friends, neighbourhood, social class, level of education, religion, and so on. Becoming a foreigner among new people gives you the chance to discover new sources of potential. You can reinvent yourself a little or a lot. You can even become someone you had never expected to be. There are many immigrants who say that in the old country they would never have done what they are doing now, or never been what they are now in their new reality. Adjustment to a very different society can be tough... but, on the other hand, it can also free new energies. After all those years in Denmark, I felt, at last, really far away. I felt nobody was watching me or pushing me to fit into any preconceived plan. I always liked to tell stories. Why not write them? Why not begin writing?
BUT WHY NOT WRITE IN YOUR OWN LANGUAGE? WHAT MAKES A LATIN AMERICAN BEGIN HIS WRITING IN SUCH A DIFFERENT AND DIFFICULT LANGUAGE AS DANISH?
The choice of language has a lot to do with this new understanding of my life in a no longer temporary, but permanent, Denmark. The necessity of going into exile made me become an immigrant. It was a kind of second arrival, and learning to write in Danish was a second way of discovering my host country and the mentality of its people. The geographical journey had reached its end, but a new, inevitable journey into the realm of language had begun. My future was in Danish. But...apart from great feelings there are also lesser ones, which is perfectly okay. We humans cannot go around being great all the time. When I communicated my writer-in-Danish ambitions, most Danes intimated, in polite but very explicit ways, that literary Danish was not for an immigrant. You know, a smile full of "understanding" can hit stronger than a fist. I will say that the people who encouraged me were in reality not as persuasive as those who had no faith in me. In Chile they say Indians are obstinate and hardheaded. It may have been the Indian part of me that reacted by taking up the challenge.
CHALLENGE IS TEMPTING... BUT YOUR DANISH MUST HAVE BEEN VERY GOOD FOR YOU TO TAKE IT UP.
My speech was fluent. But literary storytelling is much more demanding. I was not aware of the many difficulties which awaited me. I was 20 years old when I began learning Danish, my first foreign language, word by word and sound by sound. Even today, after almost thirty years in Denmark, I can still meet words and expressions I have never met before. My speech still shows syntactical errors. And I have never managed to master the Danish language's terrible pronunciation. But, you know, writing gives you the chance to rewrite many times until you make it right. It is important to mention here that the turning point was an anonymous literary competition in a major Danish newspaper, Politiken, in '86. I won one of the three first prices. That early stroke of luck was decisive. Enthusiasm can compensate for the difficulties inherent in the lack of abilities.
THIS QUESTION MAY SOUND PROVOKING TO YOU: WHY KEEP ON WRITING IN DANISH IF IT IS SO DIFFICULT?
Well, I gradually discovered the enormous magnitude of the task. Every advance I made showed me more difficulties ahead, more that I needed to learn. But this also turned into a form of motivation. When I was a boy I sometimes engaged in street fights with guys bigger than me. Even if I lost to a bigger and stronger opponent, I won anyway. In some sense I transferred this to my writing in Danish. It is a long battle, where the participation itself is synonymous with winning the battle. Writing in Danish I also register a kind of physical effort, like moving heavy things, like climbing mountains. And, as I do not box or play football anymore, I enjoy it.
YOU HAVE JUST SAID, YOU ARE STILL SURPRISED BY ENOUNTERING WORDS AND EXPRESSIONS IN DANISH WHICH YOU´VE NEVER MET BEFORE. ARE YOU NOT SOMEHOW HANDICAPPED? IT IS USUALLY TAKEN FOR GRANTED THAT A WRITER MUST MASTER THE LANGUAGE HE WRITES IN.
I do not entirely agree with that conception. You can in fact build a house with very few tools. It may take longer, but strictly speaking you do not need a whole ironmongery. You can also make a wonderful meal without the access to an entire supermarket. What is really important is the optimal use of what you have. I'm convinced that every limitation in some way generates its own opposite freedom.
I UNDERSTAND THAT DIFFICULTIES MOTIVATE YOU. BUT AREN'T THERE ANY, OR EVEN ONE, WHICH ARE VERY TOUGH TO OVERCOME?
From a technical point of view, the use of Danish prepositions is a true nightmare. But the most difficult is adjusting your own way of thinking to the new language. Language is also mentality, idiosyncrasy. I know that today the whole world is getting more and more uniform, but I still find Latin Americans tend to be flamboyant and Danes more phlegmatic, generally speaking, of course. A good example is the difference between the discourses of politicians. Latin Americans are more abstract, more rhetorical; for them saying too little is bad. Danes are concrete and measured, for them saying too much is bad. Danish is a very practical and precise language, with a many composed words which remind me a great deal of the Lego game system created in Denmark. It took me a long time to find the right tone, the right writing track, so that I could show pieces which would be acceptable to Danish publishers. There is no doubt in my mind that if I wrote in Spanish, I would produce different stories told in an entirely different way.
WHAT ADVANTAGES DO YOU SEE IN WRITING IN DANISH?
The most obvious advantage is freedom from the influence of other writers or literary trends. I began writing without great Danish, Spanish or Latin American literary figures and their works in mind. Spanish literature was far away and I was ignorant about Danish. There was nothing to avoid, nothing to emulate. It was just me and this new language. It was, I guess, a very un-literary beginning. And in spite of lacking the natural knowledge of the language that natives have, I felt free to write in any way I wanted to. As my Danish became better with every word and line I wrote, I had a strong sense of building something very personal up. I still feel that way. This, too, can be very encouraging.
IN WHAT LANGUAGE DO YOU THINK WHILE YOU WRITE, SPANISH OR DANISH?
I do not know the experiences of other writers in my situation. All I know is that in order to develop the narrative in grammatical and literary terms, I have to think in Danish. The story is a conglomerate of sensations, feelings and images. This somehow diffuse conglomerate is organized and carried out by language, which acts as a vehicle all the way from the brain to consecutive sentences on paper or on a computer screen. This vehicle does not accept supplies from other brands. You can not use the carbureter or the steering gear from a Mercedes in a Ford. Of course language is more flexible than a car. But language has also, as all systems, its own inflexibilities and demands. Thinking in Spanish would disturb my process of writing in Danish.
BY THE WAY... HAVE YOU READ ARIEL DORFMANN’S BOOK: HEADING SOUTH, LOOKING NORTH?
Yes. There are some very good observations about bilingualism in that book. Ariel Dorfmann is fluent as a native in both English and Spanish, languages he learned before he was 14 years old. That is not my case. While reading that book I came to see his situation as having two houses, in two different places, and both are solid constructions. I have built little by little a second house on top of the existing one; a construction that needs attention and maintenance. If I neglect this second house, it begins to fall apart... so all the time I have to repair walls, roofs windows, doors and so on. In the first house, the solid one, I feel very comfortable, but I miss all the effort demanded by this never ending second house on top... and that is why I am there most of the time, writing in Danish.
A CONSIDERABLE PART OF YOUR PRODUCTION HAS BEEN DEDICATED TO THE ASPECTS OF EXILE AND EMIGRATION.
A violent, more or less permanent change of environment is a strong experience that influences the sense of direction we need in life. Suddenly you are living a kind of unexpected life that is contrasted to the one you had imagined you would have lived if you had stayed in your homeland... and never had came here, to this new country. It is as if the original master plan for your life is replaced by another or is just broken. You do not belong here. But neither do you belong to the place you came from anymore. It is a dichotomy, a kind of in-between existence that will always be with you. Other strong experiences can induce the same sensation of living a life that is not chosen among other possible lives, but I believe no experience is so decisive as long term exile or immigration. It would be very strange, if such a situation did not motivate one to write about it.
IMMIGRATION IS A RELATIVELY NEW SOCIAL PHENOMENON IN DENMARK AND THE OTHER SCANDINAVIAN COUNTRIES. HOW IS THIS IMMIGRANT LITERATURE RECEIVED?
A number of refugees and immigrants in Denmark have written about this enormous, psychological zone between what was left and what they are trying to fit into. I do not know what the situation in the USA, the land of new comers par excellence is like, but in the Scandinavian countries, mainly in Denmark, theirs is considered a second or third class literature... in fact it is mostly considered a testimony or documentary, not literature.
MAYBE THAT'S BECAUSE IT IS SEEN AS A SORT OF PERSONAL THERAPY? WHAT DO YOU THINK?
Yes, it is also considered as therapy. But I see a degree of personal therapy in all literature, in all art for that matter. It happens that well known Danish authors can write extremely personal poems, or about terrible breaks in relationships or about incredible detectives solving intricate murder cases, and nobody says this is testimonial, documentary or therapy, even when sometimes the needs, ambitions and the melodrama are all too obvious. Not only in literature, but in art in general, there are some standards for natives and other standards for immigrants. If a Dane does something original or just different, then he is creative, innovative. If an immigrant does it, then he is ethnic, picturesque and has not understood the way things are done in Denmark.
ARE YOU DESCRIBING SOME KIND OF DISCRIMINATION?
No, I will not call it discrimination. It is more a sort of ethnocentrism, to call it something. I do not want to be misunderstood; the Danish people are generally kind and helpful. And I feel gratitude for what they did for me, when they received me as a refugee. Besides, after thirty years, a part of me is Danish. But my experience tells me that Denmark must be one of the toughest countries in Europe for an immigrant artist. I believe in that philosopher who said something like: We only understand things that are already inside us. What I am saying is that in Denmark, the literature of immigrants is judged from the standards of people who are remote from the experience of exile and immigration. Denmark is a small and culturally very homogenous country. There is not a trace of publishers or literary critics with immigrant background. Given ths situation, their attitude may be-you may come from far away and you may have a lot to tell, but that does not automatically make you a good storyteller.
APART FROM THE PLEASURE OF TELLING STORIES IN DANISH - DID YOU HAVE OTHER MOTIVES FOR WRITING THE TRAIL WE LEAVE?
Well, as in all of Europe, a heavy and sometimes fierce political debate about immigration is going on in Denmark. I wanted to show the human side behind the political arguments, the news and the statistics. Some stories are based on personal experiences, others on events that I witnessed or were told to me. It is not a book for or against immigration. It is a book about people and their ups and downs in this strange land in between what once was and what they hope would be.
|
