Màrius Serra: "I have ten puns running through my head and I only say one; I don't want to be the annoying guy."

BarcelonaThe voice and linguistic wit of Màrius Serra (Barcelona, 1963) are part of the Catalan cultural landscape. 18 years of Enigmàrius On Catalunya Ràdio, 35 years of crossword puzzles The Vanguard, five thousand articles and thirty books are some of his calling cards. Now he has just published an updated reissue of Verbàlia, the country where Màrius discovered the pleasure of playing with words. The first time this book was published, in 2000, his son Lluís had just been born, whose severe encephalopathy prevented him from speaking or walking for nine years.

The last I heard from you was that you were going to become a doctor...

— Yes, yes, I was going to be a doctor and fortunately for humanity I did a twistI think it was a little family pressure, in the sense that no one at home had ever been to university, and I was the annoying kid who got really good grades. I started studying medicine, was the first-year class representative, but I only lasted a term in class. I hid it from my family, devoted myself to playing the piano and studying jazz, until I finally said I wanted to study philology.

Your approach to the Catalan language hasn't been so much that of a doctor, someone who wants to cure it, but rather that of a trapeze artist, someone who jumps and plays from word to word.

— Clearly, and I also claim it: language should be a source of pleasure. It also has to do with the fact that my language, Catalan, was taken from me. I'm the last generation who didn't study Catalan for a single minute. The discovery of my language was more phonetic and bar-like. Catalan was the lover, while Spanish had been imposed on me, like a forced marriage.

Do you have any information on how many words there are in Catalan?

— When I started doing crossword puzzles, I bought the database of a recent PhD graduate who had compiled a dictionary for his thesis, which had 52,000 primitives. What does this mean? 52,000 words, which, including all their forms, feminine forms, verbs, etc., amounted to 800,000 words. This is a thing of the past, and we're probably talking about a variability of over a million words. But the thing is, every word evolves: when I started writing, the word mobile I meant what they put in babies' cribs. Go out on the street and ask what a crib is. mobile.

And of all these words, how many have you said?

— I don't know, but it's a high percentage. I've tried to keep my wardrobe very broad.

What is a word for you?

— For me, a word is a step toward understanding the world. It's the beginning of comprehension. Without language, I wouldn't understand anything.

In the last year you have published four books. In the updated reissue of Verbàlia You explain that practically the last thing you did before your son Lluís was born was to hand in the original to the publisher.

— We had been given an appointment for a cesarean section on March 14, 2000, and on March 12, I arrived with the motorcycle and 600 sheets of paper to deliver to Edicions 62.

Surely you've often imagined the wonderful thing about a child arriving with a book under his arm.

— Lluís's birth was a joy, but five weeks later, we received bad news when he was sent to the emergency room and spent a long time in Vall d'Hebron because he was having epileptic seizures. At first, your world falls apart, and then you start to ask: "But will he walk? Maybe he has mobility problems. Will he talk? Probably not." And then the paradox begins: you've been in the lush jungle of verbal play, I who don't shut up even under water, and now they're telling me that my son will probably be illiterate and won't say a word.

What last memories do you have of those moments?

— Screwed by that paradox. We tried to live life as normally as possible, even though there was nothing normal about it. I remember going to book launches I was really looking forward to, talking about palindromes and anagrams, and in the background seeing that blank page I had at home. Paradoxes are much more common in everyone's lives than they seem, but this one was pretty brutal.

Everyone says you never recover from the death of a child, that it's the worst thing that can happen to you.

— When I wrote about it, the book QuietIt was when Lluís was seven, and he died when he was nine. I began to find in language—again in language—the playing field to verbalize a pain, a pain that wasn't without joy when he was discharged, we went out into the street, and I saw a ray of sunshine. As time went by, you look back and see that Llullu and I went through several micro-griefs. It didn't come to us suddenly. I can't imagine what it would have been like if Llullu hadn't had any problems, any disabilities, any illnesses, and suddenly at nine years old, due to an accident or a sudden illness, we had lost him.

And I've seen that in this last year your mother died, just as she was about to turn 100.

— I have to say that life takes many twists and turns. I built myself up against my mother; she had an extreme temper, and we'd had a difficult relationship. I'd left home when I was 14, then returned, anyway... However, starting in the 90s, she asked me to find her a nursing home, and we started getting along...

Did the good vibes with your mother start after you turned 90?

— Yes, literally. Let's say there was civilized coexistence, and from the 1990s onward, it was spectacular. I'm grateful for having had this extra time. We had a long and difficult match, but it didn't go to penalties. In extra time, we understood each other very well. And he died at 99 and a half.

Let's get to the word games. Are you familiar with the latest predestined surname, that of Lieutenant Colonel Balas of the UCO?

— Ah, yes. Antonio Balas. I've written articles about this wonderful scientist, director of the European Union's Erasmus Environment Program, who's always talking about the evils of climate change. He's an Italian who speaks excellent Catalan because he lives in Terrassa, and his name is Carlo Buontempo.

I remember Josep Campreciós, who laid the grass at Camp Nou.

— And it just didn't work... It's funnier when they're antonyms. Some are circumstantial, like Premier League player Drinkwater, who tested positive when they made him blow with his car.

Also that time when in the Department of Agriculture there was a Peix and a Miralpeix.

— And Miralpeix was someone who was beneath Mr. Peix. There are people who handle it well and others who don't. The first time I noticed it was when I went to a dermatologist named Dr. Gratacós. I told her I was already sort of predestined, and she wasn't pleased.

Perhaps nothing in your life has given you as much pleasure as words.

— Yes, certainly. For me, the great discovery was seeing that the mechanisms of verbal play are the same for the most cultured and elevated, like a Baroque poem or a palindrome from the ancient Greeks, things that are studied at university, and for the latest tavern joke or the latest popular saying. Do you know that those from Granollers and those from Mollet cannot see each other? Why? Because they have Parets [walls [in Catalan] in the middle. Or a sports newspaper cover with the latest Golandowski. What makes Rupit stand next to Pruit, and which are two anagrams, turns out that the ancient cabalists gave it truth value. This opened up a world for me, which I ended up christening Verbalia. And it's true that it can become an addiction, and a rather unhealthy one at that. We've all had an uncle who made a lot of puns; I hope I'm not one for my nieces. I mean, you have to hold on to him.

Do you hope you're not the annoying guy who makes puns?

— The guy and the puns, yes. That's the point. heavy No... I try to make one pun out of every ten that come to mind.

But ten things are going through your head.

— Yes. And I'll just try to say one. It's a learning experience.

Has there ever been a time when you wanted to quit your addiction to word games?

— Addiction starts when you play and can't stop, and especially when you start closing the types of games you like. And I'm a polydrug addict; I like them all. I'm a polydrug addict, to wit.

Your brain doesn't stop.

— No human brain ever stops. Sometimes it's more unconscious, and I've tried to reflect on that.

Who do you find yourself holding back on puns more with, people who know you or people who don't?

— With people who know me, especially those who love me, I try to reciprocate. Out of respect, I hold back with people I love.

When is the last time you thought about the word retirement?

— I hear it around me every day, because everyone in my generation is retiring. I see this and it's like when I see marathoners: what are those people doing running? I don't come from a tradition of fixed hours; I've been self-employed since I was 24, and I aspire to keep doing it as long as my brain works.

Is Catalan on its last legs?

— I'd like to believe not, but it's in serious difficulty. There are many languages that are on their last legs. According to forecasts, half of them will disappear within this century, but Catalan isn't one of them. Now, it's true that the conflict, which we've denied through the discourse of apparent normality, which I experienced happily in the 1980s, and which throughout the Pujol era was the dominant discourse, in which only positive messages were conveyed, swept under the rug the real conflict that has existed and continues to exist over the great influence of Spanish. This influence has been growing for various reasons. Obviously, newcomers and immigration, but also cultural hegemony. For example, reggaeton. I studied English philology because of the influence of Anglo-Saxon music. Today, the primary language of expression for reggaeton is Spanish. And then, globalization, social media, and, ultimately, the political problem. The hijacking of the image of Catalan by a particular option and the independence movement's resignation from defending why we want to be independent. If we want to be independent, it's because of who we are, and language is constitutive of this way of being. "No, let's broaden the base..." There have been many factors that have led to our being in a critical situation. I think we're now aware of this, and the first rule for resolving a conflict is to accept that it exists. We've stopped denying it.

The last two are the same for everyone. A song you've been listening to lately?

— Muriel, by Tom Waits. I like that worn voice.

The last words of the interview are yours. End however you wish.

— It's a true pleasure to be able to converse, because culture is conversation. The only way we have to avoid falling into fanaticism is to converse a lot. And conversing means using language in all its nuances, being curious, listening to others, and this, these days, seems like a luxury. We're in a time when everything is monologues and stabs in the back. Therefore, we reclaim the word. conversationA good conversation always turns into something new, which is better.