On the death of António Lobo Antunes

For him (these are his own words), writing was an encounter of love, of knowledge, and what he intended was to transform the art of the novel. The essential thing was not the story, and plot did not seem to him to be the most important thing. What António Lobo Antunes, who died this ThursdayHis wish was not only that they read him, but that they live each of his books.

He said that when writing, he kept Bach's music very much in mind because it requires relentless efficiency, almost mathematical precision. That's why he revised obsessively and had such a highly personal style. Despite constantly battling words, the resistance of emotions, he considered this the charm of his work. "You can't just suffer when you write; you must feel joy and happiness," he affirmed.

Sometimes, he dreamed of phrases, fantastical ones, which he forgot upon waking. In his creative process, he said he lost the first three or four hours, and it was only when he was already exhausted that the writing began to flow. "I think the last chapters of my novels are the best because I'm closer to this state, although I never quite reach it, and there comes a point when the book rejects you. You want to keep revising it, but it doesn't want you to touch it anymore."

When he started a book, he already knew how many chapters it would have, he knew the main characters, but he didn't see them physically, he didn't know what their faces looked like. A good book, he asserted, is one that seems written for you, that you feel is yours, as your own, and when someone talks to you about it, you get jealous because you think it's only yours.

He acknowledged that writers possess a certain exhibitionism, but above all, a desire to be read and loved. A segment of Portuguese society never quite warmed to him because they felt he wrote against the country and its history. Moreover, he could sometimes be considered provocative: "I understand," he quipped, "the readers who buy Paulo Coelho because they work too many hours, and when they get home there's their family, the television... and they need escapist books." His books aren't escapist, but if you make the effort to delve into them, you end up mesmerized.

A psychiatrist by profession, he worked at the Miguel Bombarda Hospital in Lisbon until the success and sales of his books allowed him to dedicate himself entirely to literature. "My pace is infernal; I work twelve hours a day. When I travel to present a book, I make up for lost time at night and write until two or four in the morning. (...) I have to write every day; I need it so I don't feel guilty," he said. "A novel must be relentless, and you must ensure, just like with music, that the reader follows you, accompanies you page after page," he added.

I have done so for years, seduced by the musical magic of his Portuguese and the absorbing atmosphere of his works.

Among perhaps the best of his literary corpus, I would like to highlight those that have already been translated into Catalan: The Inquisitors' Manualby Xavier Pàmies, and The splendor of Portugal, Exhortation to the crocodiles, Don't rush into this dark night and I didn't see you in Babylon yesterdayBy Joan Casas.

In his novels, as he himself acknowledged, there is always an autobiographical element, and his melodious verbal architecture is often based on many of his personal experiences. This is especially true of the colonial war in Angola, in which he participated as a non-commissioned officer doctor, and it is a recurring theme that appears (only available in Spanish translation) in Elephant memory, In the middle of nowhere, Knowledge of hell, Commission of Tears and Alexandrian Fado.

In his latest book, The last door before nightThe novel delves into the minds of five defendants in a trial for the death of an industrialist dissolved in sulfuric acid, but for anyone wanting to explore his world and style, I would especially recommend his books of chronicles, which compile articles published fortnightly in the press for years. A diverse and fascinating collection of topics, notes, reflections, and stories, all masterfully written.

A committed writer who was beginning to understand that "we cannot live without a political awareness of life," and who considered his work a kind of "lyrical epic," confessed: "I don't believe I have any talent and that I've achieved everything through great effort, with a lot of work." Work and effort dedicated to a passion that will no longer be lived: the rigorous writing of a prose that, according to María Luisa Blanco, author of the book Conversations with António Lobo Antunes, "It is breathtakingly beautiful and of unfathomable depth."

For him, writing was also "an attitude towards death, you write against death," he declared, but death never dies and now it has just taken him.

It is a literary comfort to his grateful readers to think that great works, great books, do not die either, and his are among them.

And they will endure.