César Aira Interview: Literature is the Queen of the Arts
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- Опубликовано: 24 июл 2024
- “Literature is the queen of the arts - the greatest of them all, because it embraces them all. When you write, you are making music, painting, drawing, cinema.” Meet the unique, secretive César Aira in this rare interview.
"You will have to travel to the south of Argentina to find the most original, the most shocking, the most exciting and subversive Spanish-speaking author of our time" Spanish newspaper El País wrote of César Aira.
“I write every day because I take pleasure in it.“ Argentinian writer César Aira, called 'the Marcel Duchamp of Latin America', talks about his love of literature, and how he sees himself as a “reader who also writes” and how he prefers to write in secret, while hidden away in his home.
César Aira was very inspired by the early avant-garde. “I think it is the function of the writer, the artist, to always create something new” he says, but adds that he does not see himself as true avant-garde, since he is not a nihilist. His interest is in creating stories, using his imagination, his writing to create pictures to be seen.
Aira is is loved by many fellow writers, such as Roberto Bolano, Patti Smith and Nicole Krauss. In this interview he explains that he decided to be a writer, because he couldn't paint, play music or make movies. As a mature man, Aira realized that literature is the greatest art form of them all, because it embraces them all. "When you write, you are making music, painting, drawing, cinema” he explains.
César Aira (b.1949) has published over eighty books of stories, novels and essays, half of which contain less than twenty pages. Since 1993 Aira has written two to four books each year. Aira has taught at the University of Buenos Aires (about Copi and Rimbaud) and at the University of Rosario (Constructivism and Mallarmé), and has translated and edited books from France, England, Italy, Brazil, Spain, Mexico, and Venezuela.
César Aira was interviewed by the Danish writer Peter Adolphsen at the Louisiana Literature festival 2012. Adolphsen also translated Aira's words into English in this video.
Edited by: Kamilla Bruus
Produced by: Christian Lund
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2014
Supported by Nordea-fonden 
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Magnificent interview. A great writer, Cesar Aira is a must for every spanish fiction reader.
Excellent interview, thank you. Great questions and wonderful responses.
Excellent interview and a nice translation by Mr. Adolphsen. I would like to suggest a small modification, though. At 5:08, Aira uses the Spanish adjective "desbocada" to refer to his imagination. That adjective comes from the horse riders' lingo and means that a horse has broken or lost its mouthpiece and it's running out of control. So, instead of "devoted imagination", I would have written "wild imagination" or "unleashed imagination".
My English is far from good and I might be missing an idiom. If that's the case, I apologize to Mr. Adolphsen. But nevertheless I wanted to make this clarification because that "wild imagination" is at the very center of Aira's literature and it's one of its most distinctive characteristics in my opinion.
Perhaps we could translate it as 'letting one's imagination run wild', my English isn't that great too.
4 years later... We sometimes use the phrase in English "unbridled imagination", which Google translates from English into Spanish as "imaginación desenfrenada", which wouldn't be far off your explanation of the origin of the phrase. A "bridle" translates as "brida" or "frenillo". Hablo solo un poquito de Español.
@@atranscriber1766 Well, better late than never, right? I agree with your translation. In Spanish, "desenfrenada" is basically the same as "desbocada" so "unbridled imagination" seems to be the perfect choice
fitting that it would be a wild horse due to the fact that this adjective is chosen in connection to dada, a word which, apart from its nonsensical denotation, if one could be allowed such a phrase, has also the meaning of a hobby horse
@@justinloke6038 Or giving one's imagination "free rein"
A great writer!
13:47
No leí nada de Aira, lo leeré por curiosidad. Realiza muchas críticas a grandes autores, él estará a la altura para ser tan crítico? Quién es el entrevistador?
@Sebastián Cretón Gracias por tu aporte, todavía llevo sin leer a Aira. Seguiré tu consejo y comenzaré a leer a Lamborghini. Cuál de sus libros me recomiendas leer primero? Sé que no ha escrito muchos...
¿ quien es Aira ? su estrategia es hablar mal de los pesos pesados Latinuamericanos ( Cortazar , Llosa, Borges, etc)
@@gabrieleliasguevaralarru8989 De Borges não fala mal. Dos grandes autores hispano-americanos do século XX, parece considera-lo o maior, numa altura que só pode ser alcançada, talvez, por Lezama Lima.
yo lo leí y leí entrevistas de él. Para mí, no lo está... muy lejos de estarlo
No es por defenderlo pero, ¿No será que el tiene gusto distintos? ¿Acaso tiene que gustarle esos autores "intocables"? He visto en entrevistas que admira a autores como Kafka, Borges, Proust, Laiseca...
For me the queen of the arts is music. It is the most massive, the one that we can all understand regardless of language, religion, or social class. But... nowadays we have to say amen to everything the Argentines say. They are the favorites of the North Americans and that has benefits
Aira desearía ser ciego y bibliotecario.
a falta de erudiciòn alcanza con "aplomo y hablar cavernoso y pausado"...
Ayra, primero antes de opinar boludeces
Y llamarse Jorge...
@@rambealien4777 Es posible que sea inútil hacer este comentario porque las conversaciones en YT no suelen llevar a ningún lado y porque ya han pasado dos años, pero Aira es una persona extraordinariamente erudita, pese a lo que su figura de autor parece sugerir. Y la forma en la que habla no es una pose, al menos no para la entrevista. Yo lo he tratado varias veces porque tenemos amigos en común y así es como habla en la cotidianidad.
Todo quisieran.
Que fea manera de entrevistar, pobre Ayra
He killed Borges and he knows
Hahaha, Ok.
Ya le gustaría 😄😆😂🤣🤣🤣🤣
Qué horrible que ponga toda la pose de Borges al momento de hablar...
Jamás note tal pose, y he leído a muchos diciendo eso. Es llamativo.
No tiene nada de pose borgeana. Borges solía citar mucho a autores, hablaba bastante de sus antepasados, recurría mucho a la ironía y por momentos tartamudeaba.
Well, if he is seeking the same intellectual honesty as Borges then it's natural they will resemble one another, i.e. it's not a pose at all, it's a similar self-fashioning. I was struck by the lack of a pose, by the sense of his responses being the product of a life's work, which was why they were deep, clear, and concise. You can repeatedly see him realizing he is embellishing an answer out of politeness and how he then tails off into silence.