By: Demian Paredes
Chilean writer, performer, and intellectual critic of notable performances, Diamela Eltit is constantly active. Meanwhile, the Spanish publisher Periférica has started publishing his complete works, beginning with the novel El cuarto mundo, published by Planeta in Chile – recently landed in the country – still under Pinochetism. In this interview, the great Chilean storyteller recalls the circumstances surrounding the publication of this book and reflects on the way her books work, which is characterized by the development of original voices from history, society and the fringes.
A writer of remarkable narrative voices, Diamela Eltit is a Chilean author of incisive, imaginative, surprising works that are uncompromising in their themes, explorations and forms. Performing artist and co-founder of the group CADA (Art Actions Collective) since the late 1970s, in the midst of the Pinochet dictatorship, with a political-cultural activism that led her to visit brothels, prisons and hospitals. Her first book was Lumpérica (1983), followed by Por la patria (1986) and then El cuarto mundo (1988), the beginning of a literary path that includes twenty other books, mainly short stories but also literary and political criticism, and in process. Also a university professor, she has seen some of her works in theatrical versions, has been a screenwriter and currently, slowly but surely, the Spanish publishing house Periférica, based in Cáceres, is recovering and publishing Complete Works de Eltit: The Fourth World was published in 2022, a novel which has already had several editions – such as the famous “Ayacucho Library” and the Fondo de Cultura Económica, within the volume Three Novels – including one in Argentina.
Eltit’s work has received many awards, has been published and translated and has been read, commented on and studied in numerous seminars, congresses and colloquia and books, including Multiple Valuation on Diamela Eltit (2021), edited by Mónica Barrientos and published by Casa de las Américas and the Autonomous University of Chile, it’s just the latest and most comprehensive volume.
The author of El cuarto mundo, whose novels such as Vaca sagrada and Impuesto a la carne are known in this country in addition to her most recent reading autobiography El ojo en la mira, develops original voices in her story: the first part of the novel entitled “Die Defeat will be irrevocable” is the speech of a child who reports from the womb on about his pregnancy and that of his twin sister the next day, the uterine coexistence of the two beings. and her first lusters of postpartum life, among other strange micro-enclosures, connections, and “family” climates. The second part, “My hand is terribly stiff,” contains the sister’s story, and towards the end a third voice will be added, who, in the words of the critic and essayist Nelly Richard, will introduce the same novel that has already been written (and therefore “born ‘) as the ‘Sudaca girl’ who will be ‘a commodity offered for consumption and the metropolitan paradigm of the hegemonic culture that regulates the literary judgment of the market’. Through the deconstruction of roles and sexualities, gender and institutions, change and fragmentation, The Fourth World treats issues in the manner of a mechanical or literary puzzle in which materialities (physical and socio-ecological), idealisms (psychological and ideological), feelings and sensations (eroticism and rides) shift and change, in bets, incidents and violence, in countries, cities and deserted, isolated, bare lives.
How did this novel come about? Notes and interviews report that the names that appear there come from the true story of the medieval Inquisition. What other elements emerged or appeared to you or did you look for in constructing the text?
– While thinking about a possible novel I had the idea to write about the couple, but at the beginning of the book I realized that the couple is made up of twins, so I found the space, the writing and it was all organized. On the other hand, I had read the book Las brujas y su mundo by Caro Baroja and from this text I took the names of two women burned by the Inquisition, it seemed appropriate to me to name two characters, María de Alava and María Chipia their names sounded with me and was a sign I had to build in as a political gesture, of course no one needed to know, but of course it gave me non-literal context because I could think about isolation and implications of extreme religious phobias towards women (to date). In a different sense and aspect, the title of the book came from the phrase “Third World” used as a classification to place us in the category of denizens of a lower world, “underdeveloped” as I thought, as a Title, in a fourth world, that of the novel he wrote, as a rather subversive sign against the terrible classifications. As for the classifications, I thought about the fact that anyway “sudaca” is the term used in Spain to designate Latin American bodies. But the most important thing, of course, was to establish a poetics, and to achieve that I had to let flow the energies or currents of meaning (or nonsense) that the novel suggested to me.
Her literature (whether in El cuarto mundo or Lumpérica, Los trabajadores de la muerte or Sumar) deviates from classical realism, from the representational, in a kind of “breakdown” of the material and the corporeal, the subjective, ideological and instinctive. How did this style of writing come about? How much was conscious, searching and how much imposed from “outside”? It seems that you have always tried to “explain” the dissolution of the social and economic by the dictatorship and the neoliberals through writing that borders on the margins.
– Actually, for me as a writer, the big task was to find free writing, or freed from more conventionally established and new requirements. Literature is constantly rethinking itself and pushing its boundaries. I was a great reader, I studied literature, I was always concerned with writing and the density of the letter, aesthetics and poetics. I had to break my own imitation with other literatures I admired, find a “letter” that would lead me on a literary path, and that has been an intense and very uncertain task to this day, because every novel is always like for me a fresh start, facing an unfamiliar text with the same amount of uncertainty. But I allow myself all the twists and turns the text needs and even break the literal to let the novels flow. My first novel, Lumpérica, on the other hand, took place in a square, an open but at the same time limited space. It happens to me, the space of several books I’ve written is limited, it’s a challenge. I don’t have a writing program, what happens is that I let the imaginary unfold with the lyrics and of course the space I access is always the same because for some reason novels slide to the edge more than the middle. My literary task is to address or find the other in the same, because this margin is very wide and in one way or another never ends due to the great dimension of the worlds that inhabit it, I mean the margins, the peripheries .
What was the context of the release of The Fourth World? The dictatorship was still in force, the book was published by an important publisher (Planeta) and it is conceivable that since it was a “subversive” text there was a risk: it was an attack throughout its “history “. all kinds of values and institutions: incest and adultery, family and parental authority are thrown into crisis and dissolution, all kinds of “good” sensations, feelings and thoughts are hybridized and “perverted”, conscious and semi-conscious violence arises.
– Yes, when I was writing The Fourth World, Planeta installed local production in Chile and started publishing Chilean literature. I took this novel to the publisher and met with its director, who had recently arrived in Chile. It was an important meeting for me because it was the Argentine director Ricardo Sabanes, he accepted the novel without expressing any difficulties that happened 34 years ago and of course when I look at it today it was amazing because that Book ventures into the family and its disorder, it delves into complex sexual identities, in fact, María Chipia is the brother, I worked on situations where there were shifts. But as I said, I was lucky enough to meet Ricardo Sabanes, who left the novel as it was, without the slightest change. To this day, I publish in Planeta, Chile. Well, the truth is that it was the third novel that he had published under the dictatorship, the previous two published by another publisher, valuable of course, but more dedicated to the social sciences, Ediciones del Ornitorrinco.
What is it about and what does it mean for you that the Periférica publishing house has taken over the publication of your complete works as a project? Did it make you read it again and eventually correct it? Have you made a review or an inventory of what has been done?
– The truth is that I dedicated myself to writing, that was my horizon. I think writing is associated with pleasure and of course work, but for me personally it’s a privilege, really, I mean, to leave the assigned place and immerse yourself in other realities and then of course get back to everyday life. In this sense, I have not dedicated myself to the management or distribution of my books, which can be a bit negative, but the truth is that it suits me to leave it that way, I have never had a literary agent who publishes books in other countries was surprising, unique, interesting. I would like to remind here of Julián Rodríguez, director of Editorial Periférica, together with Paca Flores. I received an email from Julián, a very good author, inviting me to take part in the editorial, years later I met him, he was an exceptional person, intelligent, kind, the horror is that he died too early, it is very tragic, I keep working with Paca, she is great. The truth is that I do not rewrite the books for other editions, suddenly there are details of details that the proofreaders point out to me, in general they are right, but nothing that implies a new twist in the novel. I know I’ve been publishing for centuries, but I haven’t taken stock, I prefer not to because I’m quite insecure literary and my balance for myself could be pretty bleak.
Do you have plans for new books? What are you writing right now?
– I’m writing a book and I still can’t finish it, it’s nocturnal, I think it’s kind of dark, and it was difficult or very difficult to structure. But in between I write essays, I present books, in short, literary life doesn’t stop despite the many years that go by and don’t stop.
How do you read or perceive current Chilean and/or Latin American literature? Are there any authors, writers or works that particularly touched or surprised you?
– Yes, it is a very important period for the Latin American literary world, especially for the Chilean one, there is a group of writers who have already outlined what could be called a “work” and in this sense it is possible to express their obsessions to read and his literary ways. The naming is so complex, but when I think of already established local works, I think that Nona Fernández and Matías Celedón are already a benchmark.
Taken from page 12