Vanessa Springora: "Literature has helped me unmask impostors."

BarcelonaA few days after publishing Consent (Empúries), Vanessa Springora (Paris, 1972) received a call from the police asking her to identify the body of her father, who had committed suicide. In the apartment where he lived, which had belonged to her grandparents, they found a pile of dirt and two photos of her paternal grandfather with Nazi symbols. From there, Springora, who had not spoken to her father for years, began an investigation to understand who her grandfather was and, as a result, a pathological liar and lacking in empathy. She shares it with readers in The name of the father, translated by Marta Marfany and published by Empúries.

In the maelstrom of the publication ofConsent [The writer recounts the sexual abuse she suffered when she was 14 at the hands of a renowned writer, Gabriel Matzneff, who was 50.] Her father took his own life. When she emptied the apartment, she found photographs of her grandfather, and many questions arose. When did she decide to investigate?

— My father died four days after the book was published. He was going through an intense moment because of everything that had happened with the publication ofConsentA judicial investigation had been launched, and I had to give my testimony. I also ran a publishing house. At that time, it was impossible to start anything. Two years later, I began investigating. The documents were extraordinary, and I longed to know more. The idea for the book emerged while conducting the research.

In both the first and second books, she shares everything with the reader and is very personal. She's very brave.

— Readers can easily identify with this, because everyone asks questions about their family's past, and there are always shadows. I wanted to be honest and explain the progress of the investigation: the obstacles, the people who have helped me. On the other hand, I wanted to maintain the bond I had created with the reader afterConsent. I like to share my intimacy. I don't think it's about courage, but rather about trusting others.

Yes, but it exposes itself a lot.

— I exposed myself much more in Consent, The worst is over. In this book, I talk much more about my grandfather and father. At one point, I considered writing a fictional novel, but I thought a novel wouldn't allow me to tell the truth about the search, the questions that will always remain open about who my grandfather really was. An adventurer, a deserter, or a Nazi criminal? In a fictional book, everything should be more defined and coherent.

Silence and the damage it can do appears in both books.

— Yes, I'm going around the same theme. There is silence, but also the falsification of the truth. In his books, Gabriel Matzneff told stories of predation with very young adolescents as love stories. That was his version. I didn't reveal anything new, because the abuse was right in front of everyone, but I gave a different interpretation. I presented another point of view. In this new book, I talk about the falsified history that has been passed down from generation to generation. The grandfather's version, who also changed his name, is that he fled Nazism and Stalinism. In fact, he had a Nazi Party card. Literature has helped me unmask impostors and is a tool to counteract silence. Sometimes silence can protect us, but it has very serious psychological and psychosomatic consequences. There are always those who argue that it's better not to stir up the past because it's too painful. But if we don't look back, if we don't investigate or prosecute the criminals, they will continue to be active. This is how fascism resurfaces.

How do you think France has dealt with its recent past?

— As in Spain, in France there has been a pact of forgetting. Not enough has been said about collaboration, Vichy France, or the deportation of Jews. The party that until recently was called the National Front and is now called the National Regroupment was founded by former French SS officers. When I asked my family, my maternal grandparents, questions, they were never keen to talk about it. At first, I thought it was because it was too painful for them, but later I understood that they felt guilty for having been complicit. There is still much work to be done on issues of memory, and there is revisionism on the part of the far right that insists on minimizing the crimes of World War II.

At the beginning of the book, your portrayal of the father is quite appalling; it inspires no sympathy, not even pity. Did your view of him change at the end of the investigation?

— It ended quite badly: with Diogenes syndrome, a failure in every way... When I started investigating, I was distressed, but I didn't feel sorry for him. With the investigation, the weight of guilt shifted toward my grandfather as well. I understand him a little more, because before being a father, he was a son and had to face my grandfather's demons. It's changed my perspective, and I'm sorry I couldn't share this research with him, although, unfortunately, I don't think I would have been able to talk about it because it would have been very difficult to have a meaningful conversation. I don't like the word. sorry because it has a Catholic connotation and I don't identify with it, but now I understand it more.

You talk about Dad's backpack, but you have your own baggage too...

— We all carry a backpack. There are people who have suffered terrible stories, without a doubt, and in this sense, writing helps me see clearly. I'm not talking about the therapeutic virtue of writing; I don't believe in that. To heal, I go to therapy; I've been doing psychoanalysis for years. But the process of writing and sharing can be healing. It already happened to me with Consent. I wasn't cured, but perhaps I helped other people. It gives me confidence to think that what I write has some social utility. The truth, as unpleasant as it may be, has allowed me to fill in many gaps I had. Now I'm a more complete person. I have an elderly man who had a Nazi party card. I'm not responsible, but it has helped me understand how Nazi ideology seduced so many people, especially at a time like the present, when fascism is returning.

Have we tended to put ourselves in the shoes of the victims, in the case of World War II, but not so much in understanding how easy it is to become a perpetrator?

— For there to be victims, there must be an executioner. And where does this executioner come from? It's interesting because it brings me back to the question of sexual violence. In the end, it's the same debate we had about the interpretation of Lolita by Nabokov. He wrote the novel from the point of view of the rapist and not the victim. Although the book is called Lolita, the narrator is Humbert Humbert, who is the sexual predator. This was very controversial, to the point that feminists complained, and there was a lot of pushback. In the end, it was understood to be a statement against sexual violence. It's always very complicated to approach certain periods in history from the point of view of the executioner, because it can give the impression, especially in fiction, that they are magnified or given too much importance. I remember that Neige Sinno wrote a very nice text, Sad tiger (Anagrama), in which he talked about incest. He began by saying: "I try to put myself in the head of a man who is in charge of a six- or seven-year-old girl, his stepdaughter, and asks her for fellatio. How is that possible? What happens in the brain of a man so sick?" And we can ask the same question about a Nazi executioner who enjoys a massacre or the silent accomplice. This whole range of complicity with crimes seems very interesting to me. It's very important, in fiction too, to talk about executioners, as long as it's done intelligently, not in a caricature-like way, showing that a genocidaire can be someone absolutely ordinary. Someone who returns home, who has children, who takes care of them, who can be a charming husband and a perfect grandfather. All of us can be executioners.