Carles Rebassa: "To think that the reader will not be bothered because I speak to them in Catalan is self-hatred"

BarcelonaThe Majorcan poet and narrator Carles Rebassa (Palma, 1977), won the Sant Jordi prize with Prometeu de mil maneres(Univers), a book that shows the violence of the world of work and, at the same time, a stormy relationship that ends in tragedy. It is the second novel by the writer and poet, who in 2016 debuted in narrative with Eren ells (Angle) and in 2018 he already won the Carles Riba poetry prize with Sons bruts.

The main character is called Prometheus, a myth that symbolizes the challenge of power and also of knowledge as liberation. Why this name?

— It's a strong enough name for someone with a lot of personality and it served me to explain many things. Prometheus, in the book, is a rebel who confronts the ancestors to please strangers and is punished for it. It is the personal conflict of a person who lives life as if they were the hero of a tragedy, knowing that whatever they do, whatever the choice, it will always precipitate them towards catastrophe. And in a way, he lives with this awareness and that's how he develops.

The tragedy is there from the beginning. We know there is a dead person and the phrase is repeated "there is a popular outcry demanding a violent act in life". Is violence sometimes necessary?

— Everything must be contextualized. Violence is not one thing, but many things, and sometimes it is a necessity. Peace is good, but not all peace is good. Sometimes violence is the only answer because many times it is not just an aggression, it is defense, it is survival.

There is another curious name, that of the mistress, Kiss. She is also a person who desires to be loved, but who uses power to gain attention.

— It has been 25 years since these characters were called Prometheus and Mrs. Kiss. At that time I didn't even know what this book would be. I kept writing things down and thinking about where it could go. There came a point when I had the atmosphere, I had the characters, but I didn't know what would happen to them. With Kiss, there is also the desire for a certain provincial cosmopolitanism to use names from another language. There is also a Juan José.

It has been 25 years since the idea, why has it taken so long to crystallize?

— I have been working all these years. 25 years ago I was not capable of writing this. At first I didn't know if it would be poetry, if it would be narrative... And then it started to take shape.

In his previous novel, Eren ells (in 2016 he won the Pin i Soler and Ciutat de Barcelona awards) portrays a group of adolescent boys. In Prometeu de mil maneres, the protagonists are approaching thirty. Is this an intentional evolution?

— To them they wanted to talk about this moment in life lived in a quite extreme way. In this case it is different, they are a little older and, there is another novel, which I have not yet published, in which they are even older. The characters have today, but they do not have a project or a life plan. There is a character who has a daughter, but who if he could would not be married. And there are those who have their workday and do everything they can to escape.

Most people are quite disgusted by work. They even hate it. Instead, they pour all their energy and strength into desire and love.

— They work and live in pain, but they have hope of realizing themselves in these spaces where they feel safe, which can be drugs, going out for a whisky, fucking... They are spaces in which there is truly an individuality that emerges from the role they play at work.

Speaking of desire, the novel has a very rich lexicon around sex. Even so, many barbarisms and Anglicisms are used on the street. Why aren't more Catalan words used?

— I have had conversations about this topic, and there is the fear of sounding old-fashioned. It is the classic self-hatred of Catalan, you cannot reach a reader because you use one lexical choice or another. I always try to work a lot on the lexicon, even inventing expressions or words because the language invents and reinvents itself. To think that the reader will not get angry because I speak to them in Catalan is self-hatred. Since I have no self-hatred for being Catalan, nor for being homosexual, I write this.

Prometeu is a waiter in Palma, and many things happen to him at the Cafè. Has his work experience inspired him?

— This book is not an absolute autobiography, because I have never lived like Prometheus. Even so, I was in my twenties and worked in Palma as a waiter, there was the atmosphere of violence that I describe.

When he has a microphone, he expresses himself and claims without any self-censorship. Do you think he is exceptional within the Catalan literary scene?

— Unfortunately, a little. Catalan literary society lives with an inferiority complex because Catalan is a minority language that cannot develop normally. Furthermore, there is a certain provincial division, and a certain reluctance to express certain things for fear of being pigeonholed. And in this country, if you say certain things, you are banned.

Have they banned him/her/it?

— Yes, I have been systematically banned and I have responded forcefully.

In the novel, social inequalities are also very present. Sometimes, it is said that talking about social classes is outdated. To what extent do you think it is important to claim them and how can they mark personal relationships?

— I think they should be claimed, because if someone is not aware of belonging to a social class, then they are easily manipulated. And more so now, when we live in this space of advertising magical realism, where it seems that anyone, at any moment, can earn money, increase their economic capacity, or raise their standard of living, when in reality there is a problem of personal development caused by the problem of economic development. The real estate market is catastrophic. I think this should be claimed. They condition personal relationships, because when this border between the rich and the poor disappears, I think a part of identity disappears.

There are moments when Carles and Prometheus are afraid of being discovered, afraid of showing themselves. Do you think it is still complicated today to show oneself if one has a different sexual orientation?

— As long as a sexual orientation is considered different, there will be a problem, because it means that there is one that is paramount and then a series that are peripheral. And behind sexual orientation there are many things: there is sex, which continues to be taboo. Because the fact that you walk holding hands with a man or a woman implies that with that person you do a series of things that cause internal scandals in many people; or that you do it with a man, or with two, or with three. These are things that are not normalized. Therefore, there is indeed fear of showing oneself. Moreover, we live in a moment in history when people show themselves in a very virtualized way, very filtered by aesthetics. Consequently, I believe that the more virtualized you show yourself, the harder it will be for you to show yourself in an intimate and personal way. I would like to achieve being a person without intimacy, because it would mean that I am already a completely free person, but I suppose I will never achieve that.

The book says several times that love is American. What does that mean?

— It's an idea taken from a poem by Miquel Bauçà which says that love is American, because of the way love has been constructed from infatuation and all the conditions it has: a space of sublimation, of ecstasy, of fire, of a blaze that ignites and then goes out. Many times, when this space of infatuation disappears, then one moves to a space of cohabitation without infatuation. I think the idea of American infatuation is also closely related to the perpetuation of the family as an organization of the State and to monogamy as a necessary space for the system, so as not to have to manage barbarism. Since monogamy is something I don't believe in, then I think love is American.

He has received several awards. Has it made your life as a writer easier?

— In an economic sense, yes, because when I have applied for an award —except when I applied for the Carles Riba prize, which was a dream I had of winning it—, I have almost always done it for economic reasons, because I needed the money. Currently, I have a good job, but I come from a family of working people, and both my partner and I come from the same social status; we have not had a cushion that has made things easier for us. I think an award is a public competition for work that you have done, because the award is not given to me, but to the work I have done.

In September, will we be able to read the biography about Blai Bonet?

— Yes, it is a work of years. In fact, it is a kind of literary biography, because it is not exactly a documented biography in the usual sense. There is a lot of documentation and a lot of research, but the idea is to travel through the entire adventure of the writer Blai Bonet, knowing that the writer is one thing and the person who writes is another. In literature, the ethics of an individual is often higher than the personal ethics of each one. Precisely Blai Bonet, who is such an imaginative and fantasy-filled author, has often been treated paternalistically because of the way he explained the world. I have tried to do him justice and, above all, to provide enough elements to argue that Blai Bonet enters the canon of 20th-century literature, because he is not yet there.

Why do you think we don't have it in the canon?

— For two reasons. The first is that, at the time he had the opportunity to reveal himself as a great writer, when he published El mar,Judes i la primavera, L’evangeli segons un de tants, he had two very clear drawbacks: he was homosexual and he was poor. This conditioned him completely. Later, this paternalism that has always treated him as a kind of eccentric, a rara avis who never quite settled in, and the fact that he wrote so much — poetry, novels, art criticism, memorialistic prose — have meant that his work has not been read globally, as has been the case with other authors, such as Joan Brossa.

Does it identify itself in any way?

— With his life's adventure, not much, because he was sick his whole life. But Blai Bonet was the first poet I read in a very intimate way when I was fifteen or sixteen years old. Later, when I met him, the whole relationship and the very long conversations were very important to me. When I was nineteen, he represented the model of writer I wanted to be. I didn't want to be Blai Bonet, nor do I want to be Blai Bonet, but he is part of my DNA as a writer, and it doesn't bother me to say so.