A whole life devoted to the Spanish language, mostly outside our borders, Juan Goytisolo has received the National Prize (Premio Nacional de las Letras) from the Spanish Ministry of Culture with a cold attitude. His work has been at last recognized with 40,000 €.
Apart from novels, Juan Goytisolo has written essays and travel books, and is also well known for his opinion articles in El País newspaper, where he expresses his anger against injustice, for he is seriously compromised with improving our world and uncovering hypocrisy. Above all, he fights against crimes committed against immigrants in Europe, for, as he says, «una cultura es la mezcla de las influencias externas que ha ido recibiendo con los años. Y yo, personalemente, de la mezcla cultural he aprendido tanto como de Cervantes».
Finally, Juan Goytisolo maintains that «más que nunca, en estos tiempos difíciles y de crisis, la cultura es un asidero para la gente. Hay muchas causas dignas de ser defendidas, podría estar toda la noche enumerándolas».
7 comments:
Hi, my name is Nuria.
I've never heard about this writer, but I couldn't agree more with him when he says -"en estos tiempos difíciles y de crisis, la cultura es un asidero para la gente"-. I'm of the opinion that in hard times people gather and get closer to each other in order to feel supported and express a shared feeling of concern. People from different cultural backgrounds mix and hold on to their beliefs and cultures, at the same time leaving their marcks on our.
In my view we should deep more in our cultures than in our hate and fear.
I like your blog.
Carlos
Portugal
Juan Goytisolo was born in 1931. He is a well-known writer and an intellectual rebel against the Franco system. When he was seven, his mother died in Barcelona while the national air forces executed a raid, which is probably one of the reasons for his rejection to the system. 1963 Franco censored his work and he decided to live in exile in Marrakech and Paris.
He is one of the most influential writers and he usually contributes to “El País”, where he used to work as a war correspondent in Chechnya and Bosnia.
The composer José María Sánchez-Verdú adapted Goytisolo’s novel “Las virtudes del pájaro solitario” to the opera “El viaje a Simorgh”, to which was given a first performance on the 4th of may 2007.
November 2008 he has been awarded the National Prize in gratitude for his work.
As teacher Inma Garin said we should write many phrases about our classmate’s Irene comment concerning Juan Goytisolo, that’s exactly what I want to do now in this space. Although in general I’m agree with the comment’s content, I would like to discuss two points about it, with all due respect to the author.
With regard to the first, I think is better to avoid using the word “national” in order to mention Franco’s army, because both Franco’s and republic’s army were national; in fact, both of them belonged to the Spanish nation. In my opinion, this is the ideological game that winner army wanted to play in textbooks about history of the Spanish civil war, and it’s better don’t keep on playing at all this game no more.
Regarding the second, I think to say his mother’s death in a Franco’s air force raid is “one of the reasons for his rejection to the system”, it’s a psychoanalytical hypothesis type, but not causal one, and so it seems too much speculative. Perhaps he had other strong reasons to adopt his rebel attitude against Franco’s political system.
For instance, he grew in a social and historic context in which war winner’s side unleash a very lengthy, painful and widespread repression against loser’s one, including countless assassinations, summary executions, political imprisonments, rapes, disappearances, children’s kidnappings, and a lot more besides. Not to say human right’s limitation, or political and civil liberty’s inexistence.
Maybe those facts mainly caused Juan Goytisolo’s rejection of the Franco’s government and political system, and not only the circumstance of his mother’s death in a Franco’s air force raid, which undoubtedly also deserves to be considered.
It’s only a personal opinion to share with you, friends, and thanks for your attention. Bye.
Vicent, from Valencia (Spain).
I have never read a book by Goytisolo, but I used to read his opinion articles in the newspaper and I think he has a clever mind with clear thoughts
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