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| José Pulido. Photo: Vasco Szinetar |
José Pulido was part of one of the
most beautiful and beloved traditions in Caracas: Sunday, buying the papers,
having breakfast at the bakery, going up the Ávila, enjoying the blue
butterflies and the singing of Quebrada Quintero, spreading the papers among
the stones and then… José Pulido and his interview completed the happiness of
the day. It did not matter who he interviewed, because the real pleasure was
reading him. And my friends would go: what does Pulido say? Have you read what
Pulido said? Pulido is so wonderful! Pulido was the main character. Then came
the person being interviewed. Because reading José Pulido is good for you. It
gives you joy. It makes you think. Because José Pulido writes with humor,
tenderness, compassion, intelligence, love. José Pulido the poet, the writer,
the journalist. The interviewer who created a new style. The kind, simple and
tender man who creates bridges for people to meet, to cross, to discover the
other side of their side.
José Pulido, who does not deserve to
be exiled like he is today, walking around Genoa while he goes around Caracas.
And José Pulido is also Carlos Giménez, who he and I
love so much, and that beautiful article he wrote: Carlitos sin olvido (Carlitos
without oblivion). And he is that marvelous interview he just
made to another wonderful and beloved figure from Caracas: Rolando Peña. An
interview that is like a story written with four hands. An interview
that is like a love letter.
And José Pulido is this poem of
his, which I find while I'm writing this and then I'm out of words.
THE OLD SONG
Before antiquity arrived
the birds that died
turned into carnelian and tourmaline
John claimed in the Book of Revelation that the face of
god was made of jasper and carnelian
birds probably made one of their best graveyards in
that face
All mountains have been built out of birds' ancestors
From a yellow, blue and green bird
who dies when put in a cage and sings in beautiful fury
the mountain of Caracas was born creating ripples of
water and branches
the Ávila of stones and roots, spit with Pleiades
is our most concrete mountain
I wish I could sweep its pathways with a broom of
dreams
clean them up of all miseries
It is so big it could only fit into the universe once
when the heavens dilated
so that mangos could bloom
hummingbirds in the Ávila seem as if they were invented
by Borges:
they fly backwards because they care more about the
beginning than the end
the Ávila is huge but it is not so hard to carry in a
bag
it is completely portable when carried as a feeling
especially if you have looked at its mermaid-like
curves,
its crests resembling a resting animal
Or if you have ever heard the waters talk in Quebrada
Quintero
about how to go down to the Caribbean Sea without
having to ask for
directions in the valley
In the afternoon the mountain opens its eye made of sun
An eye that falls asleep on the voracious head of dry
trees
at night it crouches with its breath of burning plants
ready to jump again on the fearful valley with its
rabbit heart
this is the mountain that feeds on looks
that on the beach side is the Ávila of Reverón
deranged by light
and on the Caracas side is the Ávila of Cabré
borrowing the iridescence of the sparkling hummingbird
and all Pleiades sneeze with love when molasses grass
stirs,
the delicious herb
and at the top and the bottom it is the Ávila of
everyone and no one
a mountain that is like the Virgin of Coromoto and the
Virgin of the Valley
like La Chinita and the Divina Pastora
because you do not have to know its pathways
to believe it represents our customs
The mountain was a bedroom for clouds a million years
ago
and it still is.
The mountain was there making guacharacas
before anyone even thought of building the wall
that we would call town;
this ancient air is what comforts me.
The Ávila is a bird with apple mint in its wings,
it is the pain of fires kept within a case made of
roots.
The Ávila is like saying amen when you pray for
Caracas.
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| José Pulido, Salamanca, España. |
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| Carlos Giménez, Barbarito Diez, María Teresa Castillo, Pablo Milanés,Miguel Henrique Otero, José Pulido... "Macondo", María Teresas`s house |
José, how has
coronavirus treated you? What did you do during the quarantine?
I don't think coronavirus has
treated anyone well. Fortunately I haven't got it because I'm always shut in
writing and I only go out to walk up to the nearest mountain. I visit populated
areas when I have to read poetry somewhere.
What was the
first thing you did when the quarantine was lifted?
For me, it hasn't been lifted. I go
out to walk but I wear a mask. Here you are fined if you don't wear it in the
street. I haven't had any plans for when we get to the end of this. Beer tastes
as good at home as it does in the bar.
Are you writing
anything? What?
Poetry. I do some interviews for
amusement. Poetry is my constant passion.
What are your
plans for the mid-term?
Not dying yet to see what things
have changed.
When did you leave
Venezuela and why?
In 2017. Because violence in the
country has become institutional, completely institutional.
Did anything in
particular happen to you or was it only tiredness after so many years?
I spent 17 years enduring the
decay, the humiliations, watching so many friends and relatives die. Criminals,
who have the green light in Venezuela, killed two of my nephews and a grandson.
I no longer had any useful medical insurance for my wife and me. Neither did we
have any medical insurance for our younger daughter and her daughter, the
little granddaughter that we raised. It was tiredness but also a bit of common
sense. We would have died really soon there. You would not be making this
interview.
Had you ever
imagined you would have to leave Venezuela?
Never. All the things you can miss
are there where you were born and raised.
Why Italy? Did
you choose it or did it choose you?
Our older daughter has been living
in Italy for 15 years. And the poets from the International Poetry
Festival of Genoa have encouraged me a lot. I've been invited to the event two
years in a row.
What hurts you
most about Venezuela?
That Venezuelan people suffer and
suffer and there's nothing and no one that can do anything to stop it. That so
many citizens still believe there's nothing wrong going on there, even when
they see people eating out of trash and they constantly come across corpses,
misery and injustice.
“Anita laughs
with fear halfway between unconsciousness and reality.
A guard said he
would make gloves with the skin from her buttocks
and she answered
that she would not stand that,
that she
preferred to know they would bind books with her skin.
She wants
to smoke and she wants to die.”
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| José Pulido and his brother Arnaldo |
What do you yearn
for most?
Family, friends, my routine in
Colinas de Bello Monte. My cat who died.
Are you
optimistic about Venezuela? Do you think you'll be able to return in the not
too distant future? Do you expect to return forever?
I'm not optimistic because my age
does not allow me to. I shall forever cherish the hope that Venezuela will
someday be a country where decency and justice are something basic.
Is it a long time
since you've been there?
I haven't been there since I came
here. I only talk with friends and family on the phone.
I don't know any
city where people love a mountain so much as Caracas. What is the Ávila for
you? When did you begin to love it?
Going up the Ávila is like gaining
a bit more life. When you're up there, you breathe differently. And then you
look at the valley, the vastness. Everything looks so harmless and beautiful.
In the 70s we already went up there when very few people did.
Anyway, I'll answer your question
with an extract from a long poem I wrote to the mountain:
This ancient air is what comforts me.
The Ávila is a bird with apple mint in its wings,
it is the pain of fires kept within a case made
of roots.
The Ávila is like saying amen when you pray for
Caracas.
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| José Pulido and his wife Petruska Simme, journalist |
I remember María Teresa Castillo opening the
doors of the Ateneo in Caracas (and her home) for Chávez, and how he stole it
from her some years after that. Did you fall, like her and most of the
Venezuelan people, for his seduction and his anti-corruption narrative, or did
you distrust him from the beginning?
If you read what I wrote during
that whole time, you will know I was one of those who never believed in all
that. I was disappointed early on with totalitarianism, with the contempt from
both the left and the right for decency, justice, creation, critical
consciousness. And it wasn't María Teresa who formed an alliance with Chávez -
it was her son, Miguel Henrique. He made a mistake like so many others, and
it's difficult to imagine how people can make mistakes with something that is
so obvious... María Teresa was already affected by age and loss of memory. She
was an extraordinary lady.
Don't you feel
outraged by the lack of support from left wing people having political power in
Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Chile, who were exiled in Venezuela in the 70s, who
received support from the Venezuelan people and who now turn their back on that
same nation? Four million Venezuelan people living in diaspora and those
previous victims don't breathe a word; they keep supporting the Venezuelan
dictatorship. As if Maduro was better than Pinochet or Videla. As if "El
Helicoide" was better than the National Stadium. Does it make you feel
outraged? Disappointed? Sad? Or nothing at all because you never believed in
those victims? (Personally, I feel outraged)
I'm not outraged - I'm grieved by
the lack of nobility and solidarity. But I don't understand how a murderous
right-wing dictatorship can be any different from a murderous left-wing
dictatorship. I stick to Human Rights. I'm not moving away from them.
Elisa Lerner
said “Solitude is the writer's homeland” (wonderful
Elisa). Is that your homeland?
My homeland is the memories of what
I have lived with other people and the landscapes I have loved and still love.
Mother tongue is
also a writer's homeland. And when you live abroad, you reach a point when you
begin to lose it, when you start to think in the language of the country you
live in and then... what language should you write in? Has it happened to you?
Are you already thinking in Italian?
I only speak Spanish. I only write
in Spanish. Translations are done by poet friends who help me. I can't drift
away from Spanish even for a second. I'm like a castaway clinging to his
tongue.
Don't you speak
Italian? How do you manage to go buy bread, have a coffee, ask where a street
is?
What I mean is that I shelter in my
language. That doesn't mean I don't speak other languages. But I don't allow
them to change the way I express myself. Of course I handle myself normally in
the street, I can communicate with others, but I can't allow myself to forget
or confuse words. Not at this stage.
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| José Pulido, Jorge Luis Borges & María Kodama, Caracas “An almost
transparent little crab, one of those that take on the yellowish color of sand, stops
just between the thighs, on the round corners of the
buttocks. It is shaking with fear, or who knows what, at the bottom of a cliff and if
by any chance its view is wide enough and it can see beyond what its tiny size
would allow, who knows what it would make of that part up there,
where a pair of seashell lips open up revealing a cavern. The little
crab and other creatures skirting the body rush away when footsteps
gather round. It is an unsettling morning, with ants looking for
rotten honey and human flesh flies, buzzing on
every corner about the bad news of a woman who the morning
found naked, raped and dead in the
self-absorption of the beach.”
El Bululú de las Ninfas (The
Nymphs' turmoil) (extract)
|
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| Carlos Pérez Ariza, Isaac Chocrón, Edward Albee & José Pulido, Caracas. |
The important thing for me is the
pleasure I feel when I write what I want to write. What I value most is a
reader who can understand what I do. Even if it's only one. The massive, what
represents a lot of money and little sensitivity and consciousness holds no
interest for me. I don't even dream about a municipal award. I think I could
become the only reader who is connected with me. That does not guarantee
creative quality, but I'm relieved by the certainty that I'm producing
something that will someday be useful for others who feel like me.
Did you have a
happy childhood? What were your mother and father like?
My mother raised us alone. Well -
with her huge family close by. Ours was a happy childhood because there was a
lot of honesty and humility. I had tuberculosis and lost one year of primary school,
but it was a very nice time - they gave me books and brought me comics.
At what age
did you begin to write? And what did you write?
When I was eight years old. I
haven't stopped ever since. I wrote poems. I learned to write sonnets, very
outlandish, but they were good practice. Then I filled several workbooks with
tall tales. I got a poem and a short story published in national magazines when
I was a teenager.
How did you get
into journalism? Why journalism and not baseball, for example?
I wanted to stay within writing and
journalism was the ideal job for that. It's very hard to write something truly
valuable if you're a professional baseball player, for example - you have to
put all your energy into the game, you can't do anything else. You wouldn't be
able to work on your writing, to master the writing skill. And you wouldn't be
a good baseball player if you were not passionate about it.
Did you study in
the School of Journalism or did you learn by working in editorial offices?
I'm a member of the professional
association, one of those who started to work in newspapers in Venezuela before
the School of Journalism was created. I was a national and local executive at
the National Association of Journalists.
Did you decide to
work full-time in journalism, and not in poetry and prose, because journalism
provides economic stability, and poetry and prose don't, or because you truly
loved journalism?
No. Working in journalism as a
trade to support my family never prevented me from writing poetry and prose.
Actually, it nurtured them in many aspects because in journalism you go through
all social misfortunes and connect with the great source of reality itself.
You're one of the
greatest interviewers in Venezuela and the rest of the continent. Did you have
any teachers? Or did your style emerge on its own?
The truth is I read a lot of
journalistic chronicles written by some of the Irish American journalists who
later gave rise to what was known as New Journalism. But my main education was
reading the greatest writers. My style was a reaction to cliché, to routine. I
wanted to move people and to feel I was doing something moving for me.
From all the
people you have interviewed, who were the men and women who impacted you most
and why?
The man who impacted me most was a
gentleman that was so nice and modest I could not believe it: I interviewed the
spy who deceived Hitler. The spy who serves as an inspiration for so many
novels and movies. It was a lesson on humility. García Márquez was also one of my
favorites, because he tried to understand my interviewing style, and I took it
as a friendly compliment.
Once I interviewed a woman who had
been raped several times, in different years. She was like a magnet for rapes.
Very painful.
I also interviewed a theater
actress, a red-haired Polish woman - she was gorgeous, one of the most
beautiful women I had ever seen. I was very young. And she received me in her
dressing room. She was completely naked putting on her make-up and she demanded
that I should ask her the questions right there because she could not waste any
time. I was in a cold sweat. And I asked her the questions trying not to look
at her. I stared at a wall. I interviewed a wall. And her answers were
extremely smart. I admired the intelligence of this actress. And I'm still
consumed by the frustration of not looking at her directly, even though she
never forbid it.
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| José Pulido & Lindsay Kemp |
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| José Pulido, Italy |
When you worked
in the media, did you have enough time left for poetry and prose?
I've always got up at four o'clock
in the morning. I still do. I used to write from four to seven and then I went
to the paper. Spending time in the job you need to survive doesn't mean you'll
cut or curb your poetry and prose - they're too powerful and vehement. Now that
I can write without having to work I really yearn for newsrooms.
What distresses
you most, a blank question in an interview or a blank page in a novel or poem?
Or are you not distressed by anything?
I'm not distressed by writing. As
Heraclitus would say, thinking is a sacred disease. All this is a sacred
disease. What is truly distressing is not having enough time to keep reading
and writing until you find something glorious that can shake humanity. Although
humanity is already shaken.
“When its time
comes the mist descends so much that it brushes the coffee trees.
Spiders,
reptiles, beetles, scorpions, mice, rabbits
and all
bugs go back to their nests and their caves when they hear
the hissing
of leaves being pushed aside: something subtle but overwhelming
is going through
the thicket.”
Los Mágicos (The Magic Ones) (extract), José Pulido
How is a poem
born in you?
I feel something and I look for a
word that will make it visible. Every word contains a civilization, a history,
a universe. With a single word like water or stone or beer or bell you could
write a whole book. Just think about all the things you know and you can think
of with the word water.
How is a
novel born in you?
I come up with a story which then
becomes only an excuse.
How is an
interview born in you?
The moment I become interested in
an interviewee.
How do you write? Do you
sit in front of the screen and wait for ideas to rain down?
I'm full of mediocre ideas, like
all humanity, but I constantly search for something stunning, which very often
lies in simple things. Sometimes I'm asleep and I come up with something in my
dreams, so when I wake up I write it.
Juan Carlos
Onetti said that there are writers for whom writing is like being with their
wife or with a mistress. For him, it was a mistress - he only wrote every now
and then. What is it for you?
There's no point of comparison -
I write every day. It's like breathing for me. It's an existential mechanism.
Like those who get drunk and can't get away from liquor. If I had loved my wife
with the same intensity and persistence and resistance with which I write, I
would have made her very happy.
Are you writing
your autobiography?
Never in my life would I write
something like that. Poetry is enough for me.
Are you a
believer? A religious person? Do you believe in reincarnation?
I believe that life is extremely
beautiful and that death does not care because it has a different job. I
believe that in everything you do, you should always start from a moral point
of view. Fantasy and truth, fiction and reality contain beauties, and that is
enough for me. I believe that language has made us what we are.
When you're not
writing, what do you like doing?
I like reading loads of poetry and
strange writers. In Venezuela I was fascinated by horse races and going up the
Ávila. Here I walk, I go up the mountain and I wonder why they don't love
racetracks in Italy. Watching a race with a beer in your hand is something you
cannot beat. I like baseball too.
Poets and also
many writers are often quite tragic or pessimistic or nihilistic or arrogant -
they believe they are above the average just because they write, and some even
dare to say that writing is a punishment: “When God hands you a gift, he
also hands you a whip. For self-flagellation”, said Truman Capote, such a
beautiful phrase but... really?
Without tragedy, we are done for.
And what Capote said is a truth that many do not face. It's about being humble
to be able to write something important. Because when you're humble you know
where you fail, where you make mistakes, and how big you really are. A good
creator, one that masters the art of writing, knows that only a reader who does
not understand his inner level could take offense. Sometimes a book is too big
for the reader, and the reader has to grow in order to enjoy it or understand
it. Sometimes the book is too small and the reader has to make the writer grow.
Poetry is something different. It's a way of being and living. It is very high-level and requires the reader to have enough humility to accept that he has to climb a slope and that this is not a sacrifice.
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| "With my love", wrote José Pulido: his wife Petruska Simme |
You write with
humor, compassion, tenderness. In your writings, you always seem amazed by
life. Curious. Reading you is good for people. It gives them hope. You seem
like a kid astonished by the big and small things of life. Are you a
74-year-old little kid?
Yes. I'm 74 on the outside but,
strangely, I got stuck at 18 on the inside. Sometimes I can't understand why I
get tired, when not long ago, in 1970, I used to run 20 kilometers every
day...
I admire the great things of life,
like everyone else. Starting with life itself and with language, which reaches
its highest point in poetry. But I believe that all the small things I have
valued and still value have improved my existence and I'm thankful for that.
Being able to look at a beach. Having a mango in my hands. Listening to Myriam
Phiro or to Marlene Dietrich singing Lili Marleen with her dark voice.
In the pictures
from the last years, however, you look... melancholic perhaps? Sometimes you
look at the camera annoyed, like saying “But girl, when did Caracas become
Genoa?” However, your look does not show the defeat or sadness of exiles - it's
defiant. But there's no joy. Your face is the opposite of your
narrative. José, how do you feel? Is it hard to live in Genoa?
You're right. You know how to look
and you know me. I'm an unrepentant melancholic. But I'm not unhappy. Anything
can make me feel joy. A soup, a beer, a coffee, a conversation. I have always
been like that because I was raised by women and a simple, large family. I
never stop being me, even if it's not much.
How would you
like to be remembered? José Pulido, the poet, the writer, the journalist, the
humanist?
I'm a poet. But if they can forget
me without resentment, I'll be satisfied. Being remembered is the most relative
thing. When all the people that ever knew me have died, it will be difficult
for someone to remember me. Unless they come across any of my poems or writings
and feel there's something interesting there.
What question do
you wish I had asked you but didn't?
I just like questions from friends.
Like you. There isn't a particular question I would like to hear. Things happen
and you cannot stop them. I believe in what I do but I can't make people
believe in me.
In 1979 an exiled Julio Cortázar said in
Caracas: “A day in my life is always a very
beautiful thing, because I'm really happy to be alive. I have no intention
of dying, I have the impression I'm immortal” (wonderful Cortázar). Would you
like to be immortal?
I'd like to be
immortal just not to give a fuck about days. But I'm mortal and that makes
every day worth its weight in kisses.
Thank you so
much, dear José, it was a pleasure talking to you. And let's have the next
interview with a cup of joe, either black or with milk, at any Caracas bakery.
With a cachito, of course. Stunned by the car horns and the heat. And
the Ávila, always our Ávila. In Caracas. Next time, in Caracas.
That would be so beautiful and
wonderful I could make it one of my dreams. Thank you, my dear and admired
friend.
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| Photo Garcilaso |
“He saw her vanish, like a headless
pink patch among the crape myrtles and the acacias in the street, and he
realized he had no horse or money, just his boots and a classical guitar which
already had a spider living in its sound hole.”
“The postman slows down the bicycle
by braking the rear wheel with his left foot. Smoke comes out of the worn shoe
sole. He finally manages to stop by setting his big shoe on the sidewalk.
The house in Vedado is inserted in another dimension, that is why he cannot
even capture the details and he feels glad - though he does not show it - when
the door opens and a girl from this time appears to get the letter. He breathes
a sigh of relief to the point that he returns sweating to the daily heat and
dares to look squarely at the smiling inhabitant before getting on his bike and
pedaling as if in a black-and-white film that breaks against the sun and the
reverberation of the sea.”
La canción del ciempiés (The Centipede's Song) (extract).
“He pulls a face, practices a
nervous dance and moves back like a dwarf joking around in a circus, although
in the substratum of his memory he is only a child poking at his mother to make
her love him. He lets himself fall on the soft wrinkled leather of the long
couch and rests on the woman's shoulder. She straightens her breast and the
trembling of her roundnesses sticks out, moved by an earthquake which starts at
her blinking.”
“The cold of winter, of this winter
in particular, which hits the Oranienburg concentration camp mercilessly, has
started its task of chapping lips, burning ears and getting into bowels like a
needle.
The Sturmbannfuhrer in this camp is
a middle-height man who looks tall, with strong bones and white hair, and white
eyebrows and eyelashes. He is a quiet albino who pushes the air with his jaw,
and everyone repeats his rank and name with bitterness and unease: Colonel Von
Dussel.”
“To this date, El Yimi has killed fifty-two people he did not
know. He might have exchanged looks with some of those victims, at an X moment,
market, bar, traffic light, bus window, but most certainly it was like visually
bumping into someone, because senseless, distracted looks are what crowds are
made of.
—Freaks me out, that shit... gotta get cleansed...”
Los Héroes son
villanos tímidos (Heroes Are Shy Villains) (extract)
Source for biography and book extracts: José Pulido