Interview Catarina da Ponte, taken from the "revistapremio" portal
After the book, "O caçador de elefantes invisíveis", a collection of short stories published less than a year ago (in October 2021), Mia Couto returns to the historical novel, in a narrative that goes back to the period before Portugal's participation in the First World War (1914). In an interview with the award, the Mozambican writer and biologist, who won the Craveirinha prize in the year in which the centennial of the poet's birth was celebrated, tells us about this new literary project of his, recalls what it was like to be left without the "ground" of his last novel after the passage of the idai cyclone, and the need to build a space to share with the "listener" so that the stories are worth telling.
Do you still remember what you wanted to be when you were a child?
My parents say that I started out wanting to be a cat. There were dozens of them on our balcony, coming to eat leftovers that my mother kept for them. I mingled with the animals, lying among them, unaware of any border between human and non-human. Hence the name, this Mia, that I invented for myself. Later, and I remember this now, I wanted to be a fireman. To save people. Maybe it wasn't just an altruistic motivation. There was in firefighting a narrative that corresponded to the Christian environment in which I grew up. Fire is the very stuff of hell.
Writer Ken Robinson says that "school kills creativity". Mia has also mentioned that it worries him that young people don't have the capacity to create their own stories, even more than not reading them. Do you think that the practice of writing and, perhaps, of biology has allowed you to nurture spontaneity and this poetic and renewed look on life?
One of the great lessons I learned in school was to not be where my body was. Those were years of refining distraction as a false absence. The principal of the elementary school inscribed the same assessment in my report card for all four years: "The student was never absent, but he was never present. It is clear that this gray atmosphere corresponded to a school model that seems to me to be outdated. A lot of water has flowed under that bridge. Today the school is, in general, brighter and better able to nurture the restlessness and wonder of the encounter with life and with others. But we must remember that for millions of children in our world the problem is not the school model. It is that there is no school at all. In Mozambique, this still happens in dramatic proportions. There are regions where, because of the war, school is suspended for thousands of children. And there is still a prevalent idea among rural families that girls are more productive if they stay at home. Most girls do not make it to the third grade.
"I tried to say what I knew always truthfully, clearly, in the most positive way and without conveying fear, panic or anxiety."
Almost anything and almost nothing are good pretexts for starting a blank page?
There is no blank page. What is blank, what is missing, only exists within us. In my case, I need to invent someone who, on the other side of the page, listens to me. I need to invent that listener in order to feel that a story is worth sharing and to practice that vein of thinking that it is worth creating that sharing space.
Mozambique has always been the scene of several extreme weather events, the most devastating was in 2019 with Cyclone Idai that left the country destroyed. At that time, did you fear you had been left without the ground and without the imagery of your childhood stories?
My latest novel ["Mapper of Absences," 2020] is centered on my childhood, a childhood converted into an invented place. That place is my small town, the town of Beira, in center of Mozambique. I call it "small" in the same way that I look at my children as if they still fit in my lap. The city where I was born and lived until I was seventeen has grown immensely and hardly corresponds to that image that I keep of it. Since 1972 I have been living in Maputo. While writing the novel I started to visit my city more often. I was already at the end of the book when the cyclone happened. Days later I flew over the city and cried in the plane, seeing what was the ground of my childhood submerged. I thought that something of me had sunk, had sunk hopelessly. Can you be an orphan of a land? I asked myself before landing. On the next visit, the people of Beira were already rebuilding the city. Now they use an unbearable term: "resilience". But what was happening there, this ability to face the ends of the world, was vital for me to understand myself and thus understand how I would close my novel.
Still about your "land", where the oral tradition is markedly stronger than the written one. Besides the words you collect on the streets, what other sensibilities do you like to keep to later transform into words?
More important than the exercise of writing, in the case of Mozambique, is the availability for conversation. This conversation is a kind of vital food to keep alive the social networks of affection and sharing. There is a kind of permanent re-fabrication of an extended family. People stop in the street, tell stories and talk about intimate things without knowing each other. Fortunately, a rigid notion of the boundary between what is private and what is public does not persist. Whenever I can I walk around the city and it takes me hours to go around the block because in every corner there is someone who is eager to talk and listen. In this way I maintain the illusion of living in a small village.
You have a curious writing process, what you write last often becomes the beginning of the book and vice versa. Do you feel that in life, and in your relationships, some beginnings are also provisional?
One of the most important lessons that Mozambique gives us is the absence of fear of what is provisional, what is uncertain and unpredictable. There are many people around the world on psychological support because they live in an environment where the absence of certainty brings the anguish of insecurity. A kind of wisdom prevails in Mozambique that accepts chaos and mystery as something that is not synonymous with a cosmic threat. In the African narrative there is no beginning or end. The great mystery of the creation of the universe does not arise: the world has always existed. And the dead never die. They will be alive as long as there is life.
Is it important for languages to be plastic?
I begin with the most obvious: languages are always plastic and there is no language that is more plastic than another. Languages are historical constructions, with ancient paths and unpredictable future horizons. They are all plastic constructions because they are the voice of our creativity. I will give you an example: in the South of Mozambique there is a very curious verb: "magaivar". It means to manage, to improvise ingenious solutions. Where does the verb come from? From a television series called MacGyver in which an American agent solves the most intricate problems by inventing solutions with materials that are close at hand. The word caught on because it corresponds to a deeply rooted culture. For centuries Mozambicans have survived on their inventiveness. Most people who use this verb have never seen the series and are completely unaware of the etymology of this neologism. The word was adopted by life. No one remembers the character of a series that aired when television existed only in a few neighborhoods in Maputo. He survived what was needed. And just as well, because this MacGyver was just another secret agent at the service of American interests.
How would you characterize African literary production in the contemporary world?
I am not qualified to speak about African production, which is a very vast area. But we are experiencing a good moment and last year proved this strength: the major international literature prizes were almost all won by Africans. Including our Camões prize which was awarded to my friend Paulina Chiziane. This is not just about repairing a historical injustice that has been done to a part of humanity that has been made invisible and only seems to have a right to exist in times of war and natural disasters. It is about doing justice to a culturally rich territory, home to the greatest cultural and linguistic diversity on the planet, home to stories of resistance and the incorporation of deeply heterogeneous heritages of wisdom.
Do you always make a point of launching your books in Mozambique first?
Yes, that is the principle. My books are from a time and a place. It is a matter of respect.
Are the digital age, namely the social networks, allies or enemies for the dissemination of literature and the Portuguese language?
They are both. They help to see the world in a global and instantaneous way. Information networks provide a false idea of proximity and convey a reductive and impoverished view of reality. But I am optimistic. These digital tools are not, in themselves, good or bad. Everything depends on us.
"I tell stories to give voice to my ghosts." With age, do ghosts multiply? What about writing, do they tell themselves or do they expand?
In my case, and I can only speak about myself, the following has happened: I have been learning the art of restraint. And I realize that beauty is not the result of a construction. But of a revelation. Beauty happens, and it is this making it happen that should challenge the artist. I also learned not to want to say everything, not to write on a page what can be suggested in a single sentence. However, I have lost the spontaneity of adolescence. Sometimes I miss that boldness.
What's next for "Invisible Elephant Hunter"? and "Absence Mapper"?
I am preparing a new novel set in 1914 on the border of the Rovuma River, in the period before Portugal's participation in the First World War. I am still collecting historical information. There is a lot of information about that period and I would say that this abundance of sources is currently getting in my way.
Fwas recently awarded the José Craveirinha Literature Prize, precisely in the year in which the birth centenary of the poet who gives his name to this award is celebrated. Does it have a special meaning for you to receive this award?
I personally met José Craveirinha and enjoyed a long conversation about what the role of poetry could be in a nation yet to be born. Receiving the award in the year of his centennial is not for me a mere coincidence. But it is a reunion with this extraordinary man who helped me to see a country through ruins and to maintain a dream of a house that is also made of words.
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