By Javier Castro Bugarín |
Buenos Aires (EFE).- Irene Vallejo still lives in a “state of disbelief.” His masterpiece, “Infinity in a Reed”, an “unusual book” about the origin of writing and the evolution of books, has sold more than a million copies around the world, giving him wonderful experiences and increasing an exhibition media that, he admits, is very “demanding”.
“This exhibition has been demanding and I admit that it found me inexperienced and having to learn quickly. When they ask me if there is pressure for the next books, obviously there is, but that type of pressure is more bearable than the previous one, when I dedicated myself to literature at a lower level”, affirms the Spanish author in an interview with EFE in Buenos Aires.
Writer, philologist and inveterate lover of the classical world, Vallejo (Zaragoza, 1979) is visiting Argentina to participate in the Buenos Aires Book Fair and present her second novel, “El silbido del arquero”; a recreation of a passage from Virgil’s Aeneid that, like her favorite books, is “unclassifiable”.
“I have always had a weakness for unclassifiable books (…). I tend not to take divisions and labels very seriously, because I always move in border territories, ”he asserts.
Universality of the classics
First published in 2015, and republished by Random House in Argentina last year, “The Archer’s Whistle” begins with a shipwreck, that of the hero Aeneas, who flees from Troy after ten years of war and lands in Carthage in the company of his most loyal men.
Adventures, romances, war conflicts and legends coexist in this reinterpretation of Virgil’s classic, where he reflects on uprooting. On that “mysterious phenomenon” of memory as an individual and collective story. And about the absolute validity of some characters that help to understand the great issues of the present.
“I am interested in going back to that past that links with our present and insisting that we contemplate the classics taking them down from that pedestal and thinking that they were human beings, with the weaknesses, passions and fears that we continue to have and that are universal and timeless. ”, Vallejo assures.
This novel, in fact, contains a scene that “clearly points” to “Infinity in a reed”, one of the literary phenomena of recent years. Translated into more than 40 languages and recognized by multiple awards. “Infinity in a reed” confirms for itself the “universality” of love for books.
“I still can’t quite believe that a book as unusual as ‘Infinity in a Reed’, which did not have any of the starting ingredients to attract a wide audience, is giving me these vital opportunities. I did it convinced that I was writing about my eccentric passions, which would hardly find an echo among readers, ”she humbly underlines.
Continuing the magic of “infinity”
As an “omnivorous” reader who read “even the leaflets of medicines” as a child, Vallejo also has an eye on contemporary literature, especially in Argentina: Mariana Enríquez, Hernán Díaz, Dolores Reyes, María Gainza, Tamara Tenenbaum and César Aira are among his favorite authors from this country, whose literary output exhibits a “profound vitality.”
“What I regret is not having more time to read, because I am very interested in what is being done right now and what are the paths contemporary literature is advancing; also to make these hybrid books, which are the ones that fascinate me”, says the essayist, interested in Latin American traditions and myths, despite the fact that, for reasons of specificity, they could not be present in “El infinito in a reed.”
“That is one of the aspects in which now, personally, I do self-criticism; not because they didn’t interest me, but because my academic specialty is the Greco-Roman world and my own publishers asked me not to spread too thinly. Now I regret not having put it in communication with other civilizations in which writing and the book were also invented”, says Irene Vallejo.
A firm advocate of writing without labels, Vallejo is already “thinking, planning and reading” with her mind set on her next project. A book that will continue the creative “exploration” of “The infinite in a reed”, where the narrative tools of fiction will once again be at the service of the transmission of knowledge.
“I think that literature is the last bulwark in which we defend the complexity of the world, that reality cannot be reduced to a number of characters or a headline, but that it is something that needs a broader story and a deeper breath”, concludes the writer from Zaragoza, committed to the dissemination of classical culture from the tenderness and warmth of exact words.
Irene Vallejo trusts in working with artificial intelligence
As an “optimistic person” that she is by nature, Irene Vallejo is far from joining the skepticism caused by recent advances in artificial intelligence. She is very interested in incorporating these types of tools into her work as a writer.
“I think what interests me is how we writers are going to use and work with artificial intelligence, the advantages it can have for our daily work and what we can contribute,” Vallejo said in an interview with EFE in Buenos Aires, where he traveled to present his second novel, “El silbido del arquero”.
For the author, the rejection caused by artificial intelligence is not very different from that unleashed by other technological milestones in history.
“Everyone thinks that it is the end of culture, of literature and of books: it happened with the invention of writing and with the invention of the printing press, which now seem like great milestones to us, but at the time great intellectuals thought that it was going to end. to put an end to knowledge or culture as they had known it”, recalls the Spanish philologist, winner of the National Essay Award in 2020.
In the words of Irene Vallejo, what actually happened in previous revolutions is that they transformed the ways of creating, writing and relating to the literary fact, “but the figure of the creator or the reader has never disappeared, although they have been modulated from different way”.
For this reason, the writer from Zaragoza is open to incorporating artificial intelligence into her daily work. Since this tool, for the moment, “is only capable of reproducing, not creating in the strict sense”.