The postmodern Italian travel writer, novelist and playwright Claudio Magris was recently in Delhi to participate in a three-day venture on the changing patterns of narration and writing in conjunction with some of the Indian writers. Magris in his writings has pondered on the questions of history, politics, travel and many other areas of global scenario. In an interview with ET, Magris explains his concepts and concerns for Europe and the East. Excerpts.
Your celebrated travel writing Danube is a conglomeration of different time and spaces. This book has all the qualities of a historiographic metafiction. You are also a novelist. Would you tell the circumstances that made you write a text like this?
I was born on the frontiers of Italy. Therefore, I had always cherished an ambition to know the histories and frontiers of all countries in Europe. Danube is not a river that flows just in one country or from one to another. The social and political dimensions of this river are immense. I always considered Danube as a representation of the contemporary Babel. The whole of Europe owes a lot to this river. Though it is travel writing; the concept of history used in it, as you pointed out, owes a lot to fiction. Europe is getting exposed by this river.
Since you mentioned that the river Danube is a symbol of the contemporary Babel, could you be more specific regarding the constitution of this Babel in connection with the Roman Empire and other historical sites?
This is interesting. I will tell you that the old Babel is a historical site kept in the text books and memories. In contemporary times, the notations of historical sites have changed profoundly. You can read that many times in my book.
For instance, you always seem to venture into an area or a particular site to know what had happened there. There is a mention of Weininger who committed suicide in the room where Beethoven had died...
Yes. Danube is a submerged novel. There are big and small things in our lives. I always value the midnights of history. Always in historical writing, great people and celebrities are valued and respected. But my attempt is to figure out the relatively unknown; yet important people in history. They also share an equal role in our civilisation.
When you approach history, you do it differently and not in a perspective of totality as Hegel has seen it. For example, in this great narration of Danube, you talk about the sanatorium called Mattliary wherein Kafka had his last days. How did you approach and study such places?
Certainly. One never can study big histories and live in them. That���s too shallow a notion. The small histories are very much contained in the big ones. You can understand this if you carefully look at the history of the erstwhile Czechoslovakia and Soviet empire. Take the case of Philology. The root of Philology comes from Philo.
I always attempt for such a thing. Now let���s come to Kafka. When Kafka was suffering from tuberculosis, his last days were spent in Mattliary. While he was fighting with death, he was invited by the green leaves and lush of outside ������ the outside he saw from his narrow window. He wrote immense letters to Milena from this sanatorium. All those letters were about the rejuvenating life. That was a really wonderful experience for me in that sanatorium.
Similarly, there are descriptions about Ernest Bloch and the concept of melancholy in the text...
I wanted to narrate the changing patterns of melancholy. The idea of melancholy as you think is not static. Bloch was a great writer and an art historian. Melancholy sometimes works against time and hence it can be an irony. In the context of my book Danube, the many places that figure in there are all associated with this.
You have devoted pages for Elias Canetti. But what surprises me here is that you are only looking at Canetti's novel ������ Autodafe and not his study ������ The Crowds and Power...
I knew Canetti personally. We had a very good relationship for many years. He had stayed in my house as a guest. If you look at the aesthetic quality, I would say Autodafe is a brilliant book of the last century. The Crowds and Power is also a serious study. One can definitely see the sparks of a genius in that. The idea of the crowds itself is very fascinating ... that also in the context of Europe.
Canetti tells in one of his autobiographical volumes that Thomas Mann never approved him and he had difficulties getting recognition because of that. Was this true for other German writers too?
Very true. Robert Musil is another example. Musil never got recognition at the appropriate time.
Let���s look at The Microcosms. In this book, the place has a definite importance. Many instances of this book are written in the hotel San Marco and this reminds me of Jean Paul Sartre writing Being and Nothingness in the coffee house.
I think The Microcosms is a continuation of a European tradition. This tradition is very common with many travel writers in Europe. I am also a product of this tradition. My immediate worry is how to tackle the present. When I sat in San Marco, I never wanted to leave anything that I saw. The idea of the microcosms itself tells us that the minute details shouldn't be left out. I���ll tell you a similar thing. Yesterday, I went to see the Humayun���s tomb in Delhi.
A flock of bats flew over my head the moment I stepped into this monument. That historical site still is an example of a great heritage. There���s no doubt about it. But what about the people who constructed it and come daily to see it? I watch people in San Marco ������ people of various places and cities. All lives are diluted. It's the other side of writing.
In your first novel, you spoke about the history of the Cossacks in the Second World War. Were you influenced by Cesare Pavese at that time?
How can I get influenced by Pavese? I haven���t seen him at all. He committed suicide several years ago before I began my writing. I think when I was eleven when he might have died.
Of the many German Philosophers who had attracted you, I think Nietzsche would be the most important one. Any others?
Please don���t get disappointed if I tell you that I don���t like Nietzsche. That���s entirely my personal opinion. But I believe that it was this Nietzsche who had opened the eyes of Europe to many things including the questions of language and races.
Let���s come to your collection of plays in English titled Voices. Could you speak about how did you start writing these plays?
I always liked plays. They have a world of their own. I value monologues inside the plays very much. The Argentine writer Ernesto Sabato had mentioned that writing is a ���nocturnal activity���. I seek my other in these plays. In my play Voices, I had attempted to portray whose voice is the real.
This enquiry springs from my own experience with a woman and a telephone. One day I had to call a woman whom I knew personally for some important job. She wasn���t there at her place. The answering machine kept on telling in a peculiar musical sound that she isn���t there. I was fed up. After many hours when I tried her number, the poor woman who just had arrived at her place picked up the receiver and asked very pompously, ���who���s that���? That further irritated me. I felt the whole world is a telephone exchange.
You were born in Trieste in Italy. What were the reasons for picking up the German language and later to teach that language in the university?
Many people in my generation began to learn German only in the schools. My parents were from the parts of the Austrian empire. We all shared a commonality with Germany. In my school, my language teacher took a special interest in me and gave lessons to me about German culture and its literature. That turned me specifically to master the language more and more and later to teach that. When I started learning the language, I never thought that I would become a teacher in that language. But my deep sincerity with the culture and language made me an academician in German.
Is this your first visit to India? What are your oriental experiences?
I am coming to India for the first time. I had been to Vietnam, Japan, Iran and China. I had good oriental knowledge though I never claim that I am one among the best in Europe. I have read Classical Indian literature. I have gone through three different versions of Ramayana. I am also familiar with the writings of Tagore and many other Indian writers. In Italy, I have a friend who can recite the Bhagavad Gita completely. Italians, particularly, have a good taste for Indian systems of knowledge.
What is your impression of writers-in-exile? We recently faced the issue of Taslima Nasrin which you might be aware of?
This is a very important issue in our time. I am aware of the Taslima Nasrin issue. But I have no direct comments on it now. In Italy, no one has become an exiled writer recently. Italy is a country that welcomes writers-in-exile. There is a minority community of Pakistani and Chinese writers in our country. There is another group of writers who had settled in our country who had come from the former Yugoslavia. Some of them are my friends.
Your celebrated travel writing Danube is a conglomeration of different time and spaces. This book has all the qualities of a historiographic metafiction. You are also a novelist. Would you tell the circumstances that made you write a text like this?
I was born on the frontiers of Italy. Therefore, I had always cherished an ambition to know the histories and frontiers of all countries in Europe. Danube is not a river that flows just in one country or from one to another. The social and political dimensions of this river are immense. I always considered Danube as a representation of the contemporary Babel. The whole of Europe owes a lot to this river. Though it is travel writing; the concept of history used in it, as you pointed out, owes a lot to fiction. Europe is getting exposed by this river.
Since you mentioned that the river Danube is a symbol of the contemporary Babel, could you be more specific regarding the constitution of this Babel in connection with the Roman Empire and other historical sites?
This is interesting. I will tell you that the old Babel is a historical site kept in the text books and memories. In contemporary times, the notations of historical sites have changed profoundly. You can read that many times in my book.
For instance, you always seem to venture into an area or a particular site to know what had happened there. There is a mention of Weininger who committed suicide in the room where Beethoven had died...
Yes. Danube is a submerged novel. There are big and small things in our lives. I always value the midnights of history. Always in historical writing, great people and celebrities are valued and respected. But my attempt is to figure out the relatively unknown; yet important people in history. They also share an equal role in our civilisation.
When you approach history, you do it differently and not in a perspective of totality as Hegel has seen it. For example, in this great narration of Danube, you talk about the sanatorium called Mattliary wherein Kafka had his last days. How did you approach and study such places?
Certainly. One never can study big histories and live in them. That���s too shallow a notion. The small histories are very much contained in the big ones. You can understand this if you carefully look at the history of the erstwhile Czechoslovakia and Soviet empire. Take the case of Philology. The root of Philology comes from Philo.
I always attempt for such a thing. Now let���s come to Kafka. When Kafka was suffering from tuberculosis, his last days were spent in Mattliary. While he was fighting with death, he was invited by the green leaves and lush of outside ������ the outside he saw from his narrow window. He wrote immense letters to Milena from this sanatorium. All those letters were about the rejuvenating life. That was a really wonderful experience for me in that sanatorium.
Similarly, there are descriptions about Ernest Bloch and the concept of melancholy in the text...
I wanted to narrate the changing patterns of melancholy. The idea of melancholy as you think is not static. Bloch was a great writer and an art historian. Melancholy sometimes works against time and hence it can be an irony. In the context of my book Danube, the many places that figure in there are all associated with this.
You have devoted pages for Elias Canetti. But what surprises me here is that you are only looking at Canetti's novel ������ Autodafe and not his study ������ The Crowds and Power...
I knew Canetti personally. We had a very good relationship for many years. He had stayed in my house as a guest. If you look at the aesthetic quality, I would say Autodafe is a brilliant book of the last century. The Crowds and Power is also a serious study. One can definitely see the sparks of a genius in that. The idea of the crowds itself is very fascinating ... that also in the context of Europe.
Canetti tells in one of his autobiographical volumes that Thomas Mann never approved him and he had difficulties getting recognition because of that. Was this true for other German writers too?
Very true. Robert Musil is another example. Musil never got recognition at the appropriate time.
Let���s look at The Microcosms. In this book, the place has a definite importance. Many instances of this book are written in the hotel San Marco and this reminds me of Jean Paul Sartre writing Being and Nothingness in the coffee house.
I think The Microcosms is a continuation of a European tradition. This tradition is very common with many travel writers in Europe. I am also a product of this tradition. My immediate worry is how to tackle the present. When I sat in San Marco, I never wanted to leave anything that I saw. The idea of the microcosms itself tells us that the minute details shouldn't be left out. I���ll tell you a similar thing. Yesterday, I went to see the Humayun���s tomb in Delhi.
A flock of bats flew over my head the moment I stepped into this monument. That historical site still is an example of a great heritage. There���s no doubt about it. But what about the people who constructed it and come daily to see it? I watch people in San Marco ������ people of various places and cities. All lives are diluted. It's the other side of writing.
In your first novel, you spoke about the history of the Cossacks in the Second World War. Were you influenced by Cesare Pavese at that time?
How can I get influenced by Pavese? I haven���t seen him at all. He committed suicide several years ago before I began my writing. I think when I was eleven when he might have died.
Of the many German Philosophers who had attracted you, I think Nietzsche would be the most important one. Any others?
Please don���t get disappointed if I tell you that I don���t like Nietzsche. That���s entirely my personal opinion. But I believe that it was this Nietzsche who had opened the eyes of Europe to many things including the questions of language and races.
Let���s come to your collection of plays in English titled Voices. Could you speak about how did you start writing these plays?
I always liked plays. They have a world of their own. I value monologues inside the plays very much. The Argentine writer Ernesto Sabato had mentioned that writing is a ���nocturnal activity���. I seek my other in these plays. In my play Voices, I had attempted to portray whose voice is the real.
This enquiry springs from my own experience with a woman and a telephone. One day I had to call a woman whom I knew personally for some important job. She wasn���t there at her place. The answering machine kept on telling in a peculiar musical sound that she isn���t there. I was fed up. After many hours when I tried her number, the poor woman who just had arrived at her place picked up the receiver and asked very pompously, ���who���s that���? That further irritated me. I felt the whole world is a telephone exchange.
You were born in Trieste in Italy. What were the reasons for picking up the German language and later to teach that language in the university?
Many people in my generation began to learn German only in the schools. My parents were from the parts of the Austrian empire. We all shared a commonality with Germany. In my school, my language teacher took a special interest in me and gave lessons to me about German culture and its literature. That turned me specifically to master the language more and more and later to teach that. When I started learning the language, I never thought that I would become a teacher in that language. But my deep sincerity with the culture and language made me an academician in German.
Is this your first visit to India? What are your oriental experiences?
I am coming to India for the first time. I had been to Vietnam, Japan, Iran and China. I had good oriental knowledge though I never claim that I am one among the best in Europe. I have read Classical Indian literature. I have gone through three different versions of Ramayana. I am also familiar with the writings of Tagore and many other Indian writers. In Italy, I have a friend who can recite the Bhagavad Gita completely. Italians, particularly, have a good taste for Indian systems of knowledge.
What is your impression of writers-in-exile? We recently faced the issue of Taslima Nasrin which you might be aware of?
This is a very important issue in our time. I am aware of the Taslima Nasrin issue. But I have no direct comments on it now. In Italy, no one has become an exiled writer recently. Italy is a country that welcomes writers-in-exile. There is a minority community of Pakistani and Chinese writers in our country. There is another group of writers who had settled in our country who had come from the former Yugoslavia. Some of them are my friends.
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