Ferreri, N. L., & Aiello, F. (2022). Entrevista a Laura Alcoba
¿Para qué sirven las historias?. HYBRIDA, (5), 186–202. https://doi.org/10.7203/HYBRIDA.5(12/2022).25584

Par la forêt is the latest novel by Laura Alcoba (La Plata, 1968), published by Gallimard in January this year. In this novel, the author relates in French a story that borders on the unspeakable: a double infanticide, several suicide attempts and the experience of exile. Griselda, mother of three kids, kills her two youngest children. Flavia, the eldest daughter, survives not only the early death, but also the silence that, for years, shrouds the events that cannot be explained with words. In Par la forêt, a first-person narrator meets the protagonists of this story, listens to them, takes notes and then writes some words that perhaps could not have been said before.

This interview, which took place at Le progrès café in Paris in July 2022, shares Laura Alcoba’s intimately human and writing experience in the creation of Par la forêt. From this novel, in retrospect, Alcoba traces her novelistic writing, reveals her link with translation and her mother tongue, and offers a look at what to tell, what stories are for.

Par la forêt is the sixth novel published by the author in Gallimard’s Blanche collection, preceded by Manèges. Petite histoire argentine (2007), Jardin blanc (2009), Les passagers de l’Anna C. (2012), Le bleu des abeilles (2013) and La danse de l’araignée (2017), winner of the Marcel Pagnol Award. In Spanish, her work was published by Edhasa (Argentina) and Alfaguara (Spain).[1] The translation of Par la forêt will be in charge of the Argentinean novelist and journalist Eduardo Berti, and will soon be published in Spain by the publishing house Alfaguara.

Natalia L. Ferreri & Francisco Aiello: When did the project of writing this story come about? What motivated you to write this book?

Laura Alcoba: It had been on my mind for a long time, but in a very confused way. In 2010, I went to watch Scorsese’s Shutter Island. It was really strange to me to watch that film, because I left the Bastille cinema with the feeling that I already knew the story it was telling, it was a trublante kind of feeling. Because, of course, at the centre of the film is the madness of the main character, which is linked to the triple infanticide committed by the woman. That image was troublante, because in the film they are a girl and two men. I came out of the cinema and I thought: ”I’ve heard this, I’ve heard of this story, how is that possible?”. Then I realised that yes, I had heard of a very similar story and that, strangely enough, I had hidden it myself. I did a lot of digging in my memory, but I worked more on earlier elements that I remembered. I realised that, in fact, my father had told me a very close story and the memory was reactivated when he told me that the person, who in the book is called Flavia, had come into contact with him. Then he told me the story again and I remembered it. I was able to do le lien. At that time, 2011, I told my publisher about it, but then I wrote other books, and I said “if one day I get the courage, I’m going to write a terrible story that happened in the Argentinean community. But I don’t know how to do it.” Some time later, I made up my mind: I started in 2018, 2019. I don’t know when I got in touch, it was all very quick and then also very troublant because I said: “Well, I’m going to try to see what exactly happened, to get back to these people”. I felt like I had been in her house, because my father had lived there for some time and then the bridges were completely cut off simply because of the terror of history. But I didn’t know how to do it and it was all very quick, also very strange because I didn’t know if I was willing to approach such a terrible story, if I was willing to listen what I was looking for, I wasn’t sure. Specifically, I wrote an e-mail to my father asking him if he remembered those people and if he had the possibility to re-establish contact. The next day, on my phone, and the whole thing was very strange, I got a message from Griselda’s character, let’s say, from the person called Griselda in the novel. It was very strange because my dad didn’t tell me that he was going to give her my phone number. Besides, I though I was going to get in touch with the daughter, Flavia, not with the mother. I got really scared, then my father told me that he had sent an email giving my number to Flavia – I’m saying the fictional names –, not Griselda. Flavia had given it to the mother, who called me the next day. At that moment I had the impression that they were waiting. They were waiting for me. I even got scared. I didn’t know if I was ready and they were all over me. Griselda wanted to see me. I went to their house, at first, and there were my books in the library. I said to myself: “Well, that’s it, one day I’m going to do it and, suddenly, I was there”.

N. L. F. & F. A.: How did the process continue after that meeting?

L. A.: My books were there on the back – it was very strange. First I was in contact with the couple, I went to their house, but at that time it was not possible to talk, because what was clear to me was that I could not talk to both of them at the same time. They knew I was going to write a book, but I didn’t really know how to approach the subject. So they started to tell me about their exile, about the two of them. I took notes, but I knew it wasn’t what I was going to write. Then I saw Flavia, and that’s when I felt I had to write that book, let’s say, that I had to write it. Interviews with the two of them followed, but separately, and no longer in the house.

N. L. F. & F. A.: The Boucheron café.

L. A.: Of course, as it appears in the novel, in the café in front of Saint Paul metro station. It was all strange, it was as if the book was being written, the situations were coming together. Then I tried to take a bit of distance, and I put Medea’s story in. But the book, in a way, was written with the people there, who were handing it to me at that moment.

N. L. F. & F. A.: At the same time, the story was your own story. Points of contact arise. We see that a little bit in Les passages de l’Anna C., first of all to get to know situations that you had not lived through, because you had not been born, and then to remember others, to evoke the memories of others in order to write from there. That is why we asked ourselves what connection you find between this book and your previous novels, especially with Manèges, Le bleu des abeilles and La danse de l’araignée.

L. A.: In a very deep way with Manèges, but I don’t think just with this novel. Par la forêt is made up of the memories of others, but at the same time it has connections to my other books. Its as if there were a series of events, within their narratives, at a level of dramatic concentration and concentration almost in the sense of excerpts, which gives it another dimension. But it’s true that there are a number of connections that are very strong, of course. I think in the reconstruction of history. I felt a strong connection with Flavia, I think that this is noticeable in the book and that this girl surely has something to do with the girl from Manèges, even though that is another story.

N. L. F. & F. A.: In the case of Flavia, you talk about the closeness you felt. That is why, in the encounters with her, there is a line of dialogue that incorporates your own voice in the exchange. In Griselda’s case, on the other hand, we notice that this instance of dialogue is absent: there is a monologue to which the narrator listens, takes notes and nods, but does not speak.

L. A.: Yes, indeed. With Griselda I listened to the story, I tried to listen to it and to tell it; but there is something to do with fear, with madness, which left me out, let’s say, but I tried to listen, to receive as much as I could, I don’t know how far I succeeded. At certain moments, I felt my limit, although I tried to respect as much as possible the pain that could be there. There is something, of course, that has to do with an extreme experience that is alien to me and which, however, I didn’t try to explain either. At some point I asked myself what was I doing with this story, with a woman that drowned her kids. How does this continue? It’s to approach this horror and, at the same time, to investigate how to survive this horror, but without explaining it, because it was not a question of explaining. There is something inexplicable that has to do with madness, which I don’t want to put into words, or reduce. I think that helped me not to get into something that would have been extremely reductive from my point of view, like falling into an explanation like ‘it’s a drama of exile’. I didn’t want to get into that. I tried to avoid that. That’s what I tried to do with the re-reading of the myth of Medea, thinking that there could be something there, in Griselda’s story (and in so many other stories), that refers to another dimension. That is the reading proposal. But without closing it.

N. L. F. & F. A.: Of course. Without giving a diagnosis.

L. A.: No, because I don’t intend to give it.

N. L. F. & F. A.: Moreover, we see that you do not close off other meanings, because other readings or explanations for considering Griselda are also suggested, including the relationship with her mother.

L. A.: Absolutely. Yes, there is a series of blows that Griselda receives. She breaks and, finally, she ends up breaking. That’s how I tried to follow the story, to read it. That’s how I see it. A person who receives blows, from childhood, and at a certain point, she kind of breaks.

N. L. F. & F. A.: The way in which the events are presented is interesting. At the beginning of the book we learn about the infanticide, we see it as detached from everything that surrounded Griselda. But then this character gains density, we get to know her life through a series of experiences that mean that every time we read the horror again, in some way, it forces us to read it in a different way, to give it other meanings.

L. A.: Yes, at the same time I was very surprised, to the point that I said to myself: "That’s it, I’m going to go to the end". I marked a pause, finally the book found its shape. I keep receiving messages from readers who are very moved, like: “I never imagined that I could be so moved by a story like this.” Constantly, lots of returns, that’s a pleasant surprise. That’s what I get from readers.

N. L. F. & F. A.: What other surprises did the investigation unearth?

L. A.: What was very surprising was the whole final part. First, the meeting with René and Colette, who is the teacher who saves Flavia, the older sister, from infanticide. That was fundamental, I think, for the second part of the book – without the second part I wouldn’t have written it, that’s for sure. The encounter with them was very strong and that’s what gives the book its title, and that for me gives it all its meaning. That is, how a story that cannot be told to a six-year-old girl ends up existing, in spite of everything. Somehow, the couple’s steps towards the forêt made, by chance or not, the story build up – that fills the gap. For me, it’s the most important thing in the book. And I found that with them. When they were telling me, it was very troublant. They told me that they went to Coye-la-forêt, which is the place where Colette and René find a way to tell Flavia what happened to their brothers. So, for me, that’s where the book takes a different path. Finally, the double infanticide is there, of course, I evoke it in the pages, but it’s not the object of the book. On the other hand, it’s important how storytelling and literature are needed to fill this void. I found this whole dimension by talking to them and they themselves became aware of how enormous this episode was. Another moment that was also denué – as one would say in French – resolved in the course of the investigation, and which is in the book as it is, is the realisation of the proximity of Flavia and the brothers’ grave. And when that happened, the book was already written. In other words, the book was being made, I was getting closer to the story and that was very strong. Something of the same impression I had had when I wrote Les passagers de l’Anna C. Once I decided to get involved, looking for things worked out and things happened that made sense and made sense of it all. What happened in Coye-la-forêt was incredible, because of course, what nobody could tell Flavia, in a certain way was told to her in this symbolic way. And there was another dimension for me that had to do with “what the stories are for”.

N. L. F. & F. A.: What you say resonates with this fragment of the novel, from page 153: ”Voilà qu’à l’intérieur de l’histoire j’essayais de reconstruire et de comprendre, une autre avait l’air de s’écrire toute seule”.

L. A.: Yes, it says that. In short, I was detaching myself from the circumstantial aspect of the drama which, in the end, is not so terrible, because what for me is at the centre of the book is the possibility, through this terrible story, of reaching another form of truth in the literal sense.

N. L. F. & F. A.: It’s something that is also present in other of your texts. That questioning of the purpose of writing. There is always an intention that goes beyond the anecdotal, strictly speaking.

L. A.: Yes, of course. That’s why, for me, the second part of the book was necessary, although it was very hard to write the first one. I finished the first one and I was exhausted, empty, and I needed what came after it to be a book, because otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to stay at the bottom of the absolute well. For me, in fact, René and Colette are the most extraordinary people I have ever met in my life – that relationship was very strong.

N. L. F. & F. A.: In relation to what you said about Colette, we were struck by how the role of the teacher is vindicated in the novel.

L. A.: Yes. She was able to see, and that is where the loss ends. Griselda’s depersonalisation ends in that “no”, when Colette refuses to allow Flavia to be taken out of class early. Because from then on, Griselda loses consciousness and then the reconstruction begins. Finally, Colette’s “no” is like a cut, it puts an end to that state and to everything it entailed and to the horror. And, from there, she herself, Griselda, begins to monter à la surface, a slow reconstruction.

N. L. F. & F. A.: Throughout the novel, the task of the researcher appears, and as an indispensable device for this research process, we find the writing itself, the note-taking and the interview. These procedures place us in front of two stories: that of infanticide, but also that of the writing of the book. We have already detected these procedures since Manèges, but in this novel the writing process itself is much more present.

L. A.: It’s clear to me that before I start writing I don’t know what I’m going to write, or what it’s going to be like, or what path it’s going to take. Here I was aware that there was an enormous amount of material, and I didn’t know if I was willing, if I could, if I was capable… and I went towards that. Then, in fact, during the exchange, as I walked, as I walked through things, I found the way and things began to make sense. First, the meetings with Flavia at Café Boucheron, which I chose simply because it was practical, despite the fact that some people thought there was some kind of cipher. Then came the story of René and Colette, and everything began to make sense. I thought I was going crazy – that’s exactly what the book shows, because I saw signs everywhere, like all of a sudden everything meant something and I just put myself in that situation. And people gave me the meaning of everything, even the name of the Boucheron, but it was both a literary and a human experience, and I had the impression that the book was being written. And, at a certain point, I felt that I myself was reading what was happening, interpreting what was happening. It happened at the moment when Flavia started to cry, because I was telling her that the brothers were next to her house, which she was not aware of at the time. Then I said to myself “My book ends here”. We had another meeting, we went to the cemetery, which gave the book a form and a meaning. It was written by events, but in the way I may have read events. It was very strange because that’s really how it was told, I tried to transcribe it.

N. L. F. & F. A.: And because of this need to keep listening and interpreting in yournotebook, did you not consider a tape recorder?

L. A.: No. I recorded only one person of whom I wrote almost nothing, Janine, Claudio’s first wife. She was the only person I recorded, and I didn’t use what she told me for many reasons. There are things that I took out, I was interpreting and at the same time I was polishing. There is a whole dimension that I had written that I took out. It’s related, but it was too much. It has to do with the story of the brothers, of the previous couple, especially Sylvain.

N. L. F. & F. A.: We see elements that refer to the detective genre: the investigation, the crime. At the same time, other aspects resonate with us: this research goes in some way towards autobiographical writing, which allows us to link it to other readings, for example, Dora Bruder by Patrick Modiano or Texaco by Patrick Chamoiseau, where the interview is the backbone of one’s own life. Also, we see resonances with Exercices de survie, by Jorge Semprun, the novel he was writing when he died, not in the same tone because it’s not a detective story, but that staging of the writing. It’s an unfinished narrative, in which a narrator returns to the places and tells the story of his return from Buchenwald.

L. A.: It’s quite impressive, because I have a link with that history. I was in contact with Jorge Semprun at the end of his life. I translated the speech he gave in Buchenwald to the refugees, or Spanish prisoners. He delivered it in Spanish and I translated it into French. So we were in contact by telephone. I keep that speech at home, typed with handwritten annotations. Later, I translated a script he wrote, I don’t remember if it was in French into Spanish or Spanish into French, just at the time Manèges was published, and I sent it to him. Some time later, the director of the Maison d’Amérique Latine told me that Jorge Semprun had spoken to him about Manèges; he had thanked me, but I thought it was just a formality. Shortly after, I learned that he was ill.

N. L. F. & F. A.: In the story, the temporal separation serves Semprun as a pretext to talk about the experience of torture: the past, when torture was still something abstract – and the present, in which he explains the consequences of torture in one’s body. We saw similarities in this sense: in Par la forêt, the time of the story and the time of writing are present, superimposing the same identities at different times, after that experience which has undoubtedly turned their lives upside down. We see, as we have been saying, interesting crossovers with the detective genre, but also with the autobiographical.

L. A.: From the beginning it was an intuition that I had to go towards this story, but I didn’t really understand why. I was writing and living what was happening that I understood, because I’m aware that it resonates in a very strong way, for many reasons, but I understood it while I was writing it, while I was living it, while I was listening to them. I began to understand how some of my own history resonated, but I may not have fully grasped the extent to which this was the case. But I was aware, as I listened to the people interviewed, that there were a number of elements that concentrated, on another level, things that I had experienced or that had revolved around my parents’ story.

N. L. F. & F. A.: Of course, what we notice in the reading is that there is a narrator who puts her body, her own experience in listening and writing all this story. In that sense we say that these autobiographical elements appear, not that your life is there, but that you are there as a writer, you even mention Manèges at one point.

L. A.: Yes, I also think that Griselda trusted me, and she told me this several times, although it’s not in the book. At one point, she told me that an Argentinian university student had wanted to interview her, which she refused. She said to me: “I’m telling it to you, because it’s you”. By that she meant something like: “You can understand or you can listen”. There is a relationship of trust that has to do with what is shared, not so much by me, but between Claudio and my father, like a shared wound, that makes it possible to share something so particular.

N. L. F. & F. A.: But you were also part of that shared experience, because Griselda tells you at one point that you had to remember what it was like.

L. A.: At one point I had hidden a number of things myself. I remember that my father didn’t tell me this story at the time it happened (he was already living in Barcelona), but at the time of the trial, when he found out. I have a blurred image of what my father told me. The truth is that the protagonists were somewhat segregated within the Argentinean community here, because of the horror of the story, and he cut them off: he never saw them again. Not just because my father was in Spain, but because, in a way, the horror put distance. And slowly, when Flavia went to see him in Barcelona, she too was trying to understand what had happened to her mother. My father resumed such a long-distance bond, but a very tenuous one. In other words, for me she had disappeared – that’s very surprising – because of the unbearable nature of the story, and with her disappeared the images. I only kept something in a very blurred way because of the gêne that it generated in me.

Some time later, a series of articles appeared in the newspapers that deal with part of the moment of the trial and not with the events. Then I was looking for the articles; there is a whole part that is not in the book, because I also wanted to have the “police dimension”. I knew the date of the events, I had been looking for all the articles about them. So I spent a lot of time at to the Bibliothèque Nationale. After much searching on the site, I learned that Le Monde articles are digitised, but it took me a while to realise that it was actually relatively easy to find the materials. So I spent a lot of time going to the national newspaper library to read. Libération are not digitised, so it was the whole year. In that newspaper I found a very good article, very useful.

N. L. F. & F. A.: Did these articles help you in your writing?

L. A.: I quote barely a sentence, taken from Le Monde, although I don’t say it. It served me very little, but for some reason, I needed to do it. Perhaps to have another éclairage. I also wrote to the courts, but they never replied: I wanted access to the file, but I didn’t get it.

N. L. F. & F. A.: Regarding other discourses that appear in the book, we noticed resonances of literary antecedents linked to infanticide, and we wondered if you evoked or if you had in mind any literary text, regarding the traumatic relationship between mother and daughter, which is so present.

L. A.: Let’s see, literary antecedents, yes, I read Medea again, quite a lot of Ovid’s version of Medea, in Les métamorphoses; then Seneca’s version. I read several books on psychoanalysis, but where there were papers, conclusions on the subject. That’s all, that I had in mind.

N. L. F. & F. A.: We were thinking of the mother-daughter theme, which is very strong in recently published French or Francophone novels, such as Amélie Nothomb; Rien ne s’oppose à la nuit by Delphine de Vigan; also Chanson douce by Leïla Slimani.

L. A.: Well, yes. Rien ne s’oppose à la nuit. It’s my Delphine de Vigan’s favourite book, and it seems to me that I kept it in mind. As a reading that had a great impact on me. In fact, I sent the book to her, as I also sent it to Annie Ernaux, who answered me in a very strong way, immediately; she loved it.

N. L. F. & F. A.: These themes are also present in Agota Kristof’s narrative.

L. A.: Of course, Le grand cahier. Yes, those are books that had a big impact on me, so maybe there are echoes. That was, for example, the mother, who refuses to be called the mother, which had to be with a capital letter. I don’t know if it’s an unconscious souvenir de lecture of something, maybe. In Le grand cahier isn’t there something like that?

N. L. F. & F. A.: In Le grand cahier nobody has a name. In the first work of the trilogy they are la mère, la grande-mère, but Kristof does not use capital letters there.

L. A.: Yes, but there are roles. They don’t have names, the characters are la mère, la grande-mère, that’s it. I think that’s something that had a big impact on Le grand cahier.

N. L. F. & F. A.: Making a more global reading of the whole book, we were reading Una intimidad inofensiva, los que escriben con lo que hay, by Tamara Kamenszain, which gave us an idea. The six novels you have published revolve around Argentine political history, Latin American political – that is, in relation to the dictatorship, exile. And in Kamenszain’s book there is a chapter called “Políticas del testimonio inofensivo”, where she takes up the story of Félix Bruzzone who gave a performance in Campo de Mayo about his parents.

L. A.: Yeah, I didn’t see that one. But I know him.

N. L. F. & F. A.: Kamenszain refers to a way of thinking about art and literature that made us think of you even when we had not yet read Par la forêt. It took us there, It says: ”In this regard, Bruzzone alludes, not without irony in relation to the children of the disappeared who write ’texts on memory and politics that they ask us for, believing that we are special for that, that our memory is magnificent’. In this sense, it could be said that neither forgive, nor forget, a slogan that synthesised the objectives of an entire era, would now be tamed, in this process that goes from the hater to the lover, by a kind… – and this is what interests us – of active amnesia that neither forgives nor fails to do so, but seeks clues far from the war zone, taking a peaceful detour but not at all passive. "[2] We read this sentence and we resonate with your literature that touches on Argentine and Latin American history; it’s not a militant literature in the pamphlet sense, but it’s not passive at all, it makes us talk about these issues.

L. A.: Well, yes, obviously, I go around, but I’m surprised by what they say because I met Félix a long time ago in Germany, when Argentina was the guest country at the Frankfurt fair. Well, Felix is younger than me, but I remember him saying to me: “We, with our particular history, with what we live, we are free to say what we want”. I remember that conversation I had with him, he said to me: “They’re not going to reproach us for anything because we’ve suffered enough to be more free with regard to the way we tell this story”. Maybe there is something there. In any case, it’s true that, for example, when I embarked on Par la forêt I didn’t have in mind how to narrate, what to narrate, how far to narrate, how far I could narrate. How it resonates with that whole story, at a certain point I thought, someone might read it as ”look what a refugee does”. I was afraid at certain moments and then I thought I didn’t want to reduce or limit myself. Of course it resonates, and at the same time I ask myself how to tell that story. I try to make sense of it, but without inserting it into a particular historical-political discourse. This echoes the conversation I had with Félix, when he said "you and I are freer than the others". I don’t know if it’s true, but in any case I don’t feel limited in certain ways of telling or things that I’d have to censor myself, to censor.

N. L. F. & F. A.: Moving on to other aspects of writing, we are interested in knowing how the editor intervenes in the process, does he give you advice, does he guide you, how do you work on a book?

L. A.: He didn’t intervene directly. In any of my books, but I did comment to him: ”I have this story and I don’t know what to do, I don’t know if I can tell it”. More specifically, for example, when he was reading, he suggested that I expand the part of Medea, which was shorter in an earlier version than the final version. So, things like that, but he didn’t intervene directly, he never intervened in the text. In fact, at Gallimard they never intervene in the books, they don’t work like at other publishing houses, where they do intervene a lot.

N. L. F. & F. A.: How does your task as a translator intervene in the writing? Have you thought about or tried self-translating?

L. A.: For me it’s essential, I’m conscious of writing in French but with a very particular connection to Spanish, constantly emotional. In Par la forêt, Griselda’s entire story is in Spanish, I wrote it in French; the exchange with Colette and René was, of course, in French. In other words, sometimes I have the impression that I walk on a thread between the two languages, so for me translating is very important. It has to do with working on something that will help me later on. And in fact I have translated several Mexican authors that interest me, but I feel that something very particular comes into play when I translate Argentinean authors, and in particular female Argentinean authors. I translated Selva Almada and Camila Sosa Villada. They were very important translations for my personal writing, connecting me with my mother tongue and reaching out to my language of writing, with a form of vitality of current Argentinean literature; it’s something that nourishes me. I’m very happy to have had the opportunity to translate them, in fact I’m going to translate another book by Camila Sosa Villada now.

N. L. F. & F. A.:¿Soy una tonta por quererte?

L. A.: Yes, Métaillé proposed it to me. I accepted, so I’m happy to continue. Ana Marie Métaillé is the publisher for whom I translated all of Selva Almada’s work and now that of Camila Sosa Villada. I particularly like working for that publisher.

N. L. F. & F. A.: And how do you respond to the fact that The Rabbit House is being published as a trilogy? We ask ourselves this question because, although the link between the three works is remarkable – the same narrator, a story that continues – you have published other novels in the middle of the novels that form it, very powerful, very singular ones, such as Jardin Blanc.

L. A.: Yes. It was like an editorial circumstance, but I didn’t write it as a trilogy. What simply happened is that, in effect, there is a unity, although each book came at the time out of necessity, and then it turned out that they could be published together. In other words, I didn’t set out to write a trilogy. It turned out, afterwards, that it could be published as a trilogy, which is not the same as writing it. And then I changed the translation: it’s not the same as the one that was published at the time, nor that of The Rabbit House. The new translation is not exactly new, it’s still by Leopoldo Brizuela, but I’ve changed it a lot. That is to say, the joint publication of the three books was made after the anniversary edition that Edhasa put together, in which it had already made many changes to the translation of The Rabbit House. That was a particular experience because we had done it here a long time ago with Clara Bauer, who is a metteuse française or Franco-Argentinean; Argentinian actually, but who works a lot in France. We had done a reading of Manèges, a musical reading. She had proposed a series of découpages of the text in French and we did a few performances, very few, with a musician with whom she usually works, Jean-Jacques Lemêtre. It was a very nice experience, even though I’m not an actress at all. I was invited to do it a couple of times. Clara usually stages Daniel Pennac’s texts.

N. L. F. & F. A.: Who wrote the prologue in the Trilogy.

L. A.: Yes, later I met him through Clara Bauer, because we have the same publisher. That’s how we all met, through my editor, who read Manèges to Clara Bauer, knowing that she is Argentinian. Then, he was very moved by Manèges and wanted to do what he does constantly with the books of Daniel Pennac, who is a writer and an actor; he loves the stage. I said “on va essayer”. And we did it, in French, it was very nice. Then it turned out that there were a series of possible dates in Argentina and Clara Bauer proposed to me to do the same production in Argentina, but not in French, but in Spanish. There, Jean-Jacques Lemêtre did a whole new score, for something that no longer exists now, it was done many years ago, it was called "El festival de la palabra” (the Word Festival), in Tecnópolis. “El festival de la palabra” consisted of musical readings or a kind of very light mises en scènes, something theatrical, but literary theatrical. And we started rehearsing here with the same découpage that I had read and I couldn’t read the text in Spanish. Clara said to me: ”Yes, it sounds different”. Then I asked myself what to do. That was several years ago now, Leopoldo was still alive. I called Leopoldo, because I knew there were things I didn’t quite agree with in the published translation. But when I said the text, I couldn’t incarnate it: it was my text and I didn’t feel anything. Nonsense, for example, I say in French it was mon père, ma mère, but that’s normal. I had told Leopoldo to put mamá and papá instead of madre and padre, but he didn’t agree. So we had some arguments, and at one point Leopoldo even got upset. I ended up accepting his criteria. However, from the moment I had to read them, I wasn’t able to read a text that didn’t make me feel anything, suddenly it was like an adult voice and I said ça colle pas. And then Clara Bauer suggested talking to Leopoldo to make some adjustments to the translation of the fragments I was going to read. Luckily, Leopoldo gave his authorisation; some time later he told me: “It’s your text, do what you want.”

N. L. F. & F. A.: But does the revision itself appear in the translation?

L. A.: I’ll tell you how it went. I spoke to Leopoldo again and I told him: “What I did for Tecnópolis about some fragments, I’d like to do in the whole book”. And he told me to do whatever I wanted. This story is from 2016, 2017 and the first edition of The Rabbit House was from 2008. So I told Fernando Fagnani, who is my editor at Edhasa, that we had to re-edit The Rabbit House, because I wanted to retouch it and I already had Leopoldo’s permission. At first, Fernando didn’t agree: “No, Laura, how can we say that we sold so many and that it’s wrong”. And I explained that I didn’t want to leave the text like that. They were details, such as moi-je, which in translation corresponds to the pronoun yo everywhere, although it’s not always necessary in Spanish. Some things that didn’t fit: details, a word. And that’s when it occurred to Fernando to do an anniversary edition, which was the one that came out with the preface by Daniel Pennac. It was all about Clara Bauer. Fernando thought of a different edition, which warranted touch-ups for the ten years that had passed. Afterwards, the anniversary edition was republished, and I went back to retouch it a little. All with Leopoldo’s authorisation, I didn’t want to get angry with him because I owe him a lot and, besides, I felt that he was the writer. Sometimes I let slip a few Gallicisms, but at the same time – especially when I had to say the text – some little things didn’t fit.

N. L. F. & F. A.: Especially when you had to put your body into it.

L. A.: Yes, to put my body into it and feel that the text wasn’t mine. The text I read in Tecnópolis I did feel it was mine, so I retouched it and had it read to see if I had missed a Gallicism or made a mistake. Later, when it was published jointly by Alfaguara, first in Spain, I read it all again and wanted to do the work of ajustement. I did it on the three books. They are little details: suddenly it’s punctuation, but they are important things.

N. L. F. & F. A.: However, it’s rare here because the target language is actually the mother tongue.

L. A.: Of course, it was simply, I, Laura Alcoba, read my text and I don’t feel it’s mine, something doesn’t fit, so I don’t read it. Putting the body on it was like la preuve. That’s when I felt that something wasn’t right and Clara, who had heard me speak French, also felt that it wasn’t the same, she – like me – wanted it to sound the same in both languages. And I had to be able to feel it as mine, because otherwise I couldn’t say it, so it was like a revelation that something wasn’t working. So the text is a bit different, but I don’t feel capable of translating myself; in fact, many times I use Leopoldo’s translation, then I make touches, but there are things that I thought: “Oh, it’s good that he thought of this, it’s good that he came up with it, because I wouldn’t have thought of it myself.”

N. L. F. & F. A.: It’s also not a common practice, self-translation is not a widespread practice among authors who change languages. Copi, for example, did self-translate some of his works, but I think that out of the forty he wrote, there were only two or three. Nancy Huston also translated herself, but it’s not common.

L. A.: For me, the ideal is to be able to give my opinion and to be in dialogue with the person translating. Sometimes Leopoldo didn’t take my suggestions well.

N. L. F. & F. A.: You told us that the setting up of a trilogy was not your original project.

L. A.: Yes, first I wrote Manèges. Then there were two other books. Le bleu des abeilles came from a circumstance; Leopold – precisely at the time when I published The Rabbit House said to me: ”Now it’s your turn to write about exile.” But if I wrote about exile, I did it indirectly in Jardin blanc. At one point I wanted to detach myself from the story, from my story. However, I was left with what Leopoldo told me ”you should write…” And that remained pending for a someday, until Daniel Mordzinski (an Argentinean photographer who has lived in Paris for many years and essentially takes photos of writers) took a photo of me in Bastille on a day when it was snowing, which is not so common. It turns out that he wanted to publish a book with photos of a series of writers and asked me for some text about my relationship with Paris to accompany my photo taken in the Bastille. And I started writing for it, but he hadn’t told me how many lines; in general people write four lines, but I wrote about five pages. He was embarrassed to ask me to abbreviate and I found it strange that my text was so much longer than the rest. And that anecdote was the beginning, in the sense that I realised that there was something; in the text for Daniel’s book was the germe of what became Le bleu des abeilles. His words had awoken something in me and Le bleu des abeilles was born. I thought that was the end of it, but during a presentation with students I was asked questions. I came out of that meeting with some girls who were in their last year of high school I think (they were 17, 18 years old) and, through that exchange, I realised that I hadn’t finished. I became aware that I had left the narrator’s father in prison, even though there was a date on which he had been released. Then I decided that I had to get back to writing. Each book came at its own time, I felt it was necessary at its own time, and Le bleu des abeilles was from Mordzinski’s order and there I said, I felt I had that book inside, then it turned out that it was a unit.

N. L. F. & F. A.: Well, thinking about the intertexts, there was also the correspondence of the father and daughter.

L. A.: Yes, of course, then there was that too. There were two things going on at the same time: on the one hand, Mordzinski’s request; and, on the other, a journalist’s question when Les passagers de l’Anna C. came out. He asked me how I had got into writing, to which I replied that I didn’t know, although I immediately thought that the correspondence with my father had played a role. I have those letters, but I never read them again. I thought, then those two things, I had those letters and then Mordzinski’s request. And so it was, I went back to read the letters but it’s true that the germe is in Daniel Mordzinski’s book. Later, of course, it became a trilogy, but I didn’t write it as a trilogy.

N. L. F. & F. A.: We are curious to know if you are thinking about a tetralogy, or if you are writing something else now, do you have any projects?

L. A.: I’m working on two books at the same time, but I don’t know. One will have to do, and one won’t. I don’t know. But I don’t know: until I write I don’t know what I’m doing. One could be a book about the 80s, 90s.

N. L. F. & F. A.: We look forward to it. Thank you very much, Laura.

Natalia Lorena Ferreri

National University of Cordoba (UNC), Institute of Humanities (IDH), Research Centre of the Faculty of Philosophy and Humanities (CIFFyH), Faculty of Philosophy and Humanities (FFyH). Argentina.

Francisco Aiello

Centre for Latin American Studies (CELEHIS), Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences (INHUS), National University of Mar del Plata (UNMdP) / National Council for Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET). Argentina.

Footnotes

[1]. Spanish editions: La casa de los conejos (2008), Jardín blanco (2010), Los pasajeros del Anna C. (2012), El azul de las abejas (2015), and La danza de la araña (2018). In 2021, Trilogía de la casa de los conejos (2021) appeared, with a foreword by Daniel Pennac. (↑)

[2]. Kamenszain, T. (2016). Una intimidad inofensiva. Los que escriben con lo que hay. Eterna Cadencia, p. 102. (↑)