Hablemos, escritoras: Episode 389

The Spanish writer Irene Vallejo has moved us with El infinito en un junco (Siruela, 2019; Vintage, 2021; translated into English by Charlotte Whittle as Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World), which tells the story of the book over more than three thousand years, has been translated into more than thirty languages, and has over forty reprintings. A philologist by training and a researcher of classical literature, she holds a doctorate from the universities of Zaragoza and Florence. Her work centers on the study and popularization of classical authors, and she has collaborated with various newspapers such as El País, Heraldo de Aragón, and Cadena SER in Spain. Other books of hers include Alguien habló de nosotros (Contraseñas, 2017), El futuro recordado (Contraseñas, 2020), and Manifiesto por la lectura (Siruela, 2020).

This is an adapted excerpt from her interview on the podcast Hablemos, escritoras, hosted by Adriana Pacheco.

Adriana Pacheco: Welcome, dear Irene, thank you for accepting this invitation.

Irene Vallejo: It’s a great pleasure.

A.P.: I want to begin by thanking you. Thank you for having written all these books—not just El infinito en un junco, but your entire magnificent body of work. Let’s start with your education. Why study philology? What would you say to those who want to pursue it?

I.V.: Well, I would say that we make a mistake when we relate too literally and directly the degree or major we choose with the professional opportunities that may arise from that decision. I have a broader perspective. I believe our studies are a way to prepare our minds and nourish ourselves. There are some jobs that, yes, logically require prior specialization, but most do not. Our path is something we construct ourselves every day, not a kind of pre-set, well-trodden route. So I think it’s important to fight against—and sometimes even resist—social or family pressures. But it’s rewarding to choose what interests us, what we’re passionate about, what excites us.

A.P.: Of course. One of the branches you’ve also taken up within writing is as a columnist, and you write for several newspapers and magazines. How would you describe the rigor of writing every week and writing for a newspaper readership?

I.V.: Well, Adriana, I would say that for me, column writing is like a writing gym. It’s that weekly discipline of exercising the muscle so as not to get out of shape, and it has also been a learning experience because journalism comes with the challenge of speaking to an audience you can’t define or anticipate. Any kind of person might pick up a newspaper. I don’t know—in literature, you can already assume certain interests or affinities; journalism puts you in contact with a much broader audience, one that’s impossible to define from the outset.

A.P.: Let’s get to your books. El futuro recordado, whose title I absolutely loved—because from the very start it sort of winks at you in that it’s an oxymoron with which to remember the future—displays one of your greatest strengths: that you are a great observer. Where do this dialogue and your observations come from?

I.V.: I believe everything goes back to childhood. I was lucky to have parents who stimulated me a great deal—both were avid readers who told me stories before bed. My entry into the world of the classics and Greco-Roman legends had nothing to do with their status as cultural cornerstones. No, no—those were the stories my parents told me when I was a child, which completely fascinated me because of their adventurous, imaginative elements. Instead of fairy tales, I veered straight into Greek legends, which captivated me far more than any other type of story. And ever since then, I think I’ve always looked at the world through those universal symbols—that network of universal symbols that the classics provide us, and which have been present and used throughout the centuries to interpret the human experience. Our complexes are those of Oedipus, our downfalls are those of Icarus, our labors are those of Hercules, and when we demand that the dead be buried, we’re recalling the voice of Antigone.

A.P.: El infinito en un junco is an example of those readings and of your education. A book that could have been dry, yet your way of telling the story makes it a watershed in the literary conversation. How would you describe that watershed moment in your life?

I.V.: The truth is that the book was born at one of the hardest times in my life. I had just become a mother, and my child had many health problems—he had to spend almost the entire first year of his life hospitalized in intensive care. And so I thought my dream of working professionally as a writer had come to an end. I had spent over a decade trying to make it, trying to move forward through small rural book fairs, reading clubs, circles, schools—that is, in what we might call the literary trenches. And everything was very difficult, very uncertain, unstable, with little income. And when that personal misfortune struck, I thought, well, this is the end, because if it was already hard before, with a situation like this in my daily life I would lose my freedom of movement—I wouldn’t be able to travel, I wouldn’t be able to accompany my books—this is the end of everything. And so I wanted to allow myself one last book, a kind of farewell and an act of gratitude for everything that literature and books had meant to me since childhood, while also giving a literary form to the academic research I had done at the university on the history of books and reading. I was very optimistic in thinking I could finish it in a year, since the bulk of the research had already been done for my thesis—but I wasn’t able to use a single word. So I turned it into a story, a kind of One Thousand and One Nights of books, and it truly became a refuge for me—a kind of therapeutic treatment that no longer had any market ambition, no sales goals, no plans for publication. It was simply saving me while I took care of my son.

A.P.: Well, I’m so sorry about your child, and how wonderful that something came out of that great trial. Irene, tell us about the poetic side of language in your essays.

I.V.: Well, honestly, Adriana, I wanted to explore the borderlands between fiction and nonfiction. Obviously all the data, all the hypotheses, all the theoretical construction is based on research. But the way it’s communicated has a lot to do with the tools that fiction has taught me—writing novels and children’s and young adult literature. So perhaps I could define it as a rebellion, because when I was writing my thesis, my professor, my advisor, was constantly trimming the metaphors out of my texts, saying that it wasn’t scientific language. And so they would say to me: “Don’t write with essayistic prose, don’t write with essayistic prose.” I think that stuck with me, like a kind of need—now I am going to write a book with essayistic prose, and I’m going to go even further; I’m going to hybridize it with fiction and I’m going to start with those mysterious horsemen searching for something—hunters of a most precious prey. It almost feels like the beginning of a suspense or adventure novel.

A.P.: How many years do you feel this whole journey took to reach publication?

I.V.: First, there was nearly a decade of academic research on the subject. Then a pause during which I dedicated myself to journalism and fiction writing, and years later, with another outlook on life, even a certain distance from academia, I decided to take up the project again—but from a different perspective and with new challenges. Then came another four years of very intense writing, under the circumstances I mentioned earlier—taking care of my son, living in that world of hospitals and caregiving. And then another year working with my editor to polish it, even removing a portion and focusing more on the ancient world.

A.P.: Let’s talk about the aspect of gender in the book. I think of quotes like the one you include from Telemachus, when he says: “Speech must be the business of men.”

I.V.: That was very important to me, because during my university years I was presented with a landscape where there were practically no women—only the poetess Sappho. The only one, the poetess, mentioned within a canon made up entirely of men. And I always asked myself: had women really not written? What were the reasons? Where were they? What were they doing? When we talk about readers, are we including women or leaving them out? I had many questions, and so I decided to reread the sources while specifically questioning them on this aspect. I was obsessed with knowing where the women were in the intellectual world of antiquity, which, as we know, was particularly hostile to female creativity. And what I came to realize is that, in the end, speech is a matter of power, evidently. And the moment writing is invented—that great breakthrough—this new technology is fiercely guarded by the powerful, the privileged, the elites, who define themselves as those who have accessed the power granted by the written word. And the world of orality becomes an eminently female world. So my book is also a tribute to orality. There are great storytellers, great artists who never learned to write and yet were accomplished creators. And then I tried to trace the paths through which some women, generally of high social standing, managed to sneak into that forbidden territory, and how they developed their own creativity, their careers, and how later on they were, in general, systematically forgotten or cast aside. But those who made it, including Enheduanna—who is, moreover, the first person to inaugurate the literary “I,” something as important as that—she too has been pushed aside from textbooks, from curricula. No one talks about her.

A.P.: I think your book is going to cause upheaval, Irene—you’re already creating an upheaval, and now that it’s been translated into English by Charlotte Whittle, even more so.

I.V.: And a special chapter: the relationship with my translators, many of them women translators whom I adore with devotion. I always insist, moreover, that every translator is an author, a creator, someone who deserves full recognition. They deserve applause, we should remember their names, we must be aware of the debt we owe them, because otherwise we would only be able to read the books written in the languages we know. Our lives would clearly be far, far poorer. So El infinito en un junco—Papyrus—is also a tribute to translation.

A.P.: Now for the final farewell question. You also write children’s stories. What does writing children’s stories mean to you?

I.V.: I return to children’s and young adult literature as a return to the roots of my passion for books and literature, because I was already a reader from early childhood—even before I knew how to read, through my parents’ stories—and I have always loved those tales where imagination is perhaps forged in those crucial years when we shape our way of seeing the world. But there’s something I especially enjoy about children’s and young adult literature: the absence of pretension, which brings a kind of relaxation while writing that allows you to embrace that playful aspect I so enjoyed as a reader, and that now becomes a challenge—to be able to construct that voice, the voice of someone who invites children to play.

A.P.: How wonderful. El infinito en un junco, and really all of your books, inspire us, greatly expand our vocabulary, make us ask questions, shed light on so many things we’ve kept in the dark. You have truly illuminated us. Thank you so much, Irene.

I.V.: Thank you for the invitation—it has been an infinite pleasure.

Listen to the full interview on Hablemos, escritoras.

Translated by Andrea Macías Jiménez

Photo: Spanish philologist and writer Irene Vallejo, © James Rajotte.

Irene Vallejo es filóloga y escritora, licenciada en Filología Clásica, con un doctorado por las Universidades de Zaragoza y Florencia. Su labor se centra en la investigación y la divulgación de los autores clásicos. Ha colaborado con los periódicos El País, Heraldo de Aragón o Cadena Ser en España, y en México ha publicado en Milenio y Laberinto, donde mezcla temas de actualidad con enseñanzas del mundo antiguo. Gracias a esto ha publicado dos libros que recopilan sus columnas semanales, El pasado que te espera y Alguien habló de nosotros. En el 2019 se publica su enorme ensayo El infinito en un junco, que ha recibido una extraordinaria acogida entre crítica y lectores, convertido ya en un éxito editorial internacional. Esta publicación ha alcanzado 45 ediciones en España, se ha traducido a más de treinta y cinco idiomas y se está publicando en más de cincuenta países. Entre los reconocimientos que ha recibido se encuentra el Premio Nacional de Ensayo, siendo la quinta mujer que se galardona con este premio desde que se creó en 1975. Durante varios años Irene combinó la escritura con la enseñanza. Actualmente se dedica a la literatura, y participa en proyectos sociales como Believe in Art, que recrea el arte y la literatura en los hospitales infantiles.