Juan Goytisolo

Juan Goytisolo
(http://www.egrupos.net/grupo/joseignacio/archivo/indice/918/msg/1095/)
no copyright infringement intended

He got the 2014 Miguel de Cervantes Prize: cuando me dan un premio siempre sospecho de mí mismo; cuando me nombran persona non grata sé que tengo razón (when they give me an award I always get suspicious of myself; when they decalre me persona non grata I know that I am right). Born in Barcelona in an aristocratic family in 1931, rebelled against family and joined in his youth the Communist Party, left for France where he stayed for long years; after his wife passed away in 1996, he moved to Morocco. Él había llegado a Marrakech por primera vez en 1976 para estudiar árabe dialectal y allí surgió en 1980 Makbara, una novela escrita en “verso libre narrativo” que mezcla con toda libertad voces, tiempo y espacio, escatología y erotismo (he had arrived at Marrakech for the first time in 1976 for study the Arabic dialect there and it was the place where in 1980 came Makbara, a novel written in "free narrative verse", mixing in full freedom voices, time and space, eschatology and eroticism).  How could that be, to mix novel and poetry? La novela es un género omnívoro, puede incluir la poesía, pero la poesía no puede incluir la novela (the novel is an omnivorous genre and can include poetry, while poetry cannot include novel). Speaking about his radical positions for the immigrant, for the poor, tanto en París como en Nueva York me había acostumbrado a una sociedad heterogénea; el barrio del Sentier me procuró una educación que ninguna universidad me podía proporcionar: el contacto con migrantes de todas las partes del mundo (in Paris as well as in NY I got accustomed to a heterogeneous society; the neighborhood of Sentier gave me an education that no university could give: the contact with immigrants from all over the world). His best known novel is Count Julian (that takes sides with the man considered conventionally as the ultimate traitor in Spanish history; I have to come back to it some day: the novel challenges the Spanish traditional values). Here is a column about Goytisolo in El País (I quoted from it):

http://cultura.elpais.com/cultura/2014/11/24/actualidad/1416836556_584716.html

• Novela, música y poesía
• Goytisolo, a Writer in the Sartrean Way (Vargas Llosa)

(Una Vida Entre Libros)