By Alicia G. Arribas | Malaga (Spain) (EFE) .- Ida Vitale, one of the most important poetic voices in the Spanish-American world, explains that as a child she liked to read the Bible “because of the mythological figures.” “It was very funny, my ‘Harry Potter’”, the Uruguayan writer, star of a documentary presented at the Malaga Festival (Spain), confesses to EFE.
The film reviews, in an alphabet of moments, the most intimate experiences of Ida Vitale (Montevideo, 1923), who has spent a few days in Malaga accompanying the granddaughter of some friends, María Arrillaga, a film director.
“Sometimes my grandmother would look for the Bible where she had left it and I had it hidden in my room. It seemed unfair to me that such a funny book was exclusive to my grandmother, ”she shares between singsong laughs.
A gift
In November he will be one hundred years old, but that does not prevent him from being interested in everything. He looks around at the clothes of the girls around him and chooses: “Look, Maria, what a beautiful dress with those black half moons.”
And he puts a lemon blossom flower to his nose, an aroma that he likes and that he associates with the streets of Malaga.
Member of the generation of 45 and representative of essentialist poetry, he does not like digital newspapers, he prefers the others, he says, the usual ones, the paper ones, because “you take it where you want: to bed, under a tree ; luckily, in Uruguay, they still exist”.
And although she has already seen the documentary a couple of times, she points out that it still “does not take shape”, she sees it as something alien to her, a “gift” from Arrillaga that she is quick to deny: it was “mutual”, points out the filmmaker.
The film is a legacy where, from each of the letters of the alphabet, the poet loosens a word, suddenly, that connects with one of her vital moments.
He laughs at the idea of what he may have left to write, or tell: “I only have to count the friars,” he says, and immediately afterwards he breaks into a loud laugh.
“Doesn’t it say here ‘send someone to count the friars’? Well, it must be a Spanish inheritance, that the Church left us well in, ”she ironically.
The phrase, which is usually completed with “that they say one is missing”, is often used by parents when their children insistently ask for something.
Ida Vitale’s childhood
The joke takes him back to his childhood: “In Uruguay we don’t want priests, nor did my grandmother, who was a simple woman, even want to see priests. No, our background was religious. And my grandfather was a Freemason,” she adds.
He jumps to his school bench where he had a classmate “who was very religious and sometimes tried to capture me, like that, very subtly (he laughs again). Sometimes I felt a little diminished, because I thought that there was a part of that companion that I was missing.
He makes a play on words with one of the phrases he pronounced in his speech, when he received the Cervantes Prize at the age of 95, that “well-disposed lion” to launch his very thin hands in the shape of a claw while saying: “well-disposed lion”. Nothing is taken seriously, look for the joke, spread laughter, radiate life Vitale.
He goes back to his childhood and one of his greatest sorrows, which was not having a pet, “no dog, no cat. I did have children, not many. I had the male left over, ”she says, provocatively, but she doesn’t mean it either.
When asked if she was always a feminist, Vitale denies: “When I was young it seemed out of fashion to me.”
“You see, my aunt was a director of a school, the other aunt (…) was a teacher. All the books I had that I liked had been hers. In my family all the women were important, they had all studied. But that happened in my family, it is not worth generalizing, ”she warns.
a traveler
She only gets serious to confess that, if she hadn’t been a writer, she would have wanted to be a “traveler”: “But I didn’t want to dream of possibilities either, it seemed dangerous to me, it’s better to accommodate what was happening nearby”.
“I was never rebellious, nor did they ever put a limit on me, I suppose that rebellion catches up with you when they start to prohibit you; They just wouldn’t let me do things that were wrong, like stick my finger in the soup,” she says.
And he says goodbye with a hug, strong, warm. Ida Vitale. Forever and ever.