‘Dictatorships are literature’s natural enemy’ –Vargas Llosa

Mario Vargas Llosa, 2010 Nobel laureate for literature, flanked by officials of De La Salle University at last Tuesday's conferment of doctor of literature, honoris causa. Vargas Llosa was educated at the De La Salle Academy in Bolivia and Colegio La Salle in Peru.

At age 80, Mario Vargas Llosa, 2010 Nobel laureate for literature, described his relationship with the brothers of La Salle as “quite ancient.” His memories of these brothers, who taught him how to read and write, are “rich, vivid and moving.” There is one particular brother, a Spaniard named Justiano, to whom he owes a debt of gratitude for “the most important event in my life” –learning how to read.

At the recent conferment of the honorary degree of doctor of literature at De La Salle University in Manila, he spoke extemporaneously and called this skill “a magical operation” that transformed the letters of a book into “images and a living experience.” He felt his world enriched and transformed. Each time he discovered a book, reading remained magical after all these years.

He respects the invented life created by writers. His role as story teller was born in those early years “as a result of the extraordinary pleasure I had in reading.” But Peru then had a limited literary life so his “vocation wasn’t integrated with life. I felt eccentric and marginalized.” He was consecrating days, months, years to his writing with great difficulty in finding a publisher, “but I persevered.”

At one point, he supported his studies and writing by taking on seven jobs, among which was as a radio man and a journalist for the Agence France Presse.

He said writing has fulfilled his life “in an extraordinary way” and at the same time added that “it is difficult to demonstrate how books change the lives of readers for the better. Sensibilities, desires are stimulated. This shows the importance of books in daily life.”

He continued, “Good books are the best defense against prejudices, distorted views of people in different languages.”

Vargas Llosa signs a copy of his novel for short story writer-journalist Amadis Ma. Guerrero. The latter approached the Nobel laureate and introduced himself thus, "Yo soy Amadis Ma. Guerrero. Buenas tardes" and showed his copy of The Green House, a 1982 pocketbook edition well-preserved by a thick plastic cover. Pleasantly surprised, Vargas Llosa grabbed the book, scrawled his signature and said, "Mucho gusto!" After which others followed with assorted books and publications for autographing.

Despite these differences, the common denominator that is of utmost importance, he said, “is we are all humans challenged by the same obstacles” in order to continue to live.

By reading good stories, he said, “we make more accessible to us certain values” like the “freedom needed for societies to become modern and prosperous. Good books develop in us a kind of dissatisfaction with the world as it is. We hope that life will change, that we create societies that are more fair and nearer the worlds we create with our imagination.”

Vargas Llosa is convinced that reading good literature “is not only a great pleasure but also fundamental for the training of citizens in free and democratic societies.”

He warned that “all regimes that try to control human life have suspicions about literature. They try to control this activity and eliminate spontaneity. Dictatorships are literature’s natural enemy.”

He praised reading and writing of good books for helping “develop natural criticism of the world as it is.”

And he returned to Brother Justiano for having started all this with the young Vargas Llosa as he learned how to read and write.

He bemoaned how for some sectors of society, litearature is considered as “just entertainment.” Society pressures the youth to go into what he called “practical skills”

Yes, he said, literature is “the best entertainment but at the same time, it is a kind of knowledge of the world. Literature is able to make us feel we are having living experiences.” Through literature, he continued, “we enter into an intimacy with a culture, know the most secret personality of persons.”

Reading, he concluded, is not just for pleasure but also for the shaping of “better citizens to face the challenges in our existence.”

He thanked DLSU for the honorary degree conferred on him, quipping, “I will try my best not to deceive you.” -- Text and photos by Elizabeth Lolarga

This article and the photos accompanying it were originally published in www.verafiles.org, Nov. 14, 2016.

Vargas Llosa

And in keeping with his oft-repeated philosophical belief that novels should enhance and amplify life, not merely recount it, he has taken some liberties with history. But he quickly adds that 'with essential facts, I have been loyal.'"--interview with Mario Vargas Llosa in January Magazine, 2002.

It is a fact of literary history that Mario Vargas Llosa, this year's Nobel laureate for literature, visited the Philippines in the 1970s at the height of martial law and spoke before an audience of mainly Filipino writers at the annual Philippine Center of International P.E.N. conference at the Cultural Center's main gallery.

I was sent by my managing editor Neal Cruz to cover the conference and the guest speaker's talk, and it was one of the few times my account made the front page of the Philippines Daily Express. But the next day at the same venue, I received a gentle reproach from my former professor in stylistics, Nieves Epistola, who explained that I had wrongly referred to the Peruvian writer in subsequent paragraphs of my report as "Llosa." His complete surname is "Vargas Llosa," she said, the way Gabriel Garcia Marquez is "Garcia Marquez."

I have no copy of that report; I vaguely recall it had something to do with language, and the then dark-haired Vargas Llosa, garbed in a suit like the one in the picture, was, at some point, at a loss for words. He paused, gesticulated with his hands till he exasperatedly threw them and called English "this terrible language."

Later, at lunch, Rosalinda Orosa went up to him and engaged him in conversation in his native Spanish, and he felt more at ease.

I would read his books many years later when they became available. Two stand out in memory: In Praise of the Stepmother and The Feast of the Goat. The first was, for me, an eye-opener on how a novelist can push the envelope in terms of choosing a permissible subject--here we have a madrasta engaging in torrid sex with a minor who is actually the seducer.

The second had me thinking in many parts while reading, "This is so much like what happened to our country." The interlacing of sex and brutal power (South American dictators or many strong men have a reputation of being ladies' men or just run-of-the-mill rapists) has been noted in that novel, and I can't help recalling the short story "When Dovie Moans" by R. Zamora Linmark from the recently published anthology Mondo Marcos as I write this.

I'll have to visit the archives one day to look for a copy of that old news report on the dark-haired, pomaded man who came a-visiting and went on to win the Nobel.

In photo: this year's winner of the Nobel prize in literature