Camilo José Cela is a Spanish writer, considered to be one of the greatest in Spanish novel. He was born in 1916 in Iria Flavia, a hamlet in La Coruña, Galicia, Spain, into a wealthy family descended from Italian and English immigrants.
In 1925, he moved with his family to Madrid. His first work is a collection of poetry titled ‘Treading the Dubious Daylight’ which came out in 1936, the year the Spanish civil war broke out. After being wounded in service, Cela spent a brief period of time during his convalescence as an official censor.
Then in 1942, within the panorama of despair and chaos of postwar Spanish life, he secretly printed his first novel, ‘The Family of Pascual Duarte’, in a garage in Burgos. The novel sold out before the authorities were able to confiscate it, and met with immediate acclaim both by readers and critics alike. The event was so spectacular that today it is accepted as the starting point of Spanish postwar literary history.
As a novelist and writer Cela consolidated his reputation by producing a few other works of great merit—including ‘Those Passing Clouds’, ‘The Galician and His Crew’, ‘Rest Home’, ‘New Wanderings and Misfortunes of Lazarillo de Tormes’, and his first travel book, ‘Journey to the Alcarria’. He also proved himself to be a multi-talented artist, producing a series of paintings and drawings and appearing in a few movies. Some of his books’ cover pages were designed by Pablo Picasso, the genius in painting. In 1989, he won
the Nobel Prize for Literature, and died on January 17, 2002 in Madrid.
Cela’s art of fiction and writing tips are best presented in an interview conducted by Valerie Miles for Paris Review. Following are quotes from that interview:
What matters to a writer
Every writer receives comments from people. Some of them are praises, some are mediocre and others are attacks. But should he consider those responses when writing another novel?
“I believe that literature is always a subterfuge, it cannot matter to a writer what others say of him.”
“One cannot be dependent upon these things, or one wouldn’t
be able to show one’s face in public. The writer—well, I speak for myself, not for others—writes according to what he thinks he wants to say. Later, if he is correct or if he is mistaken, well, that is another problem. But you cannot take the attitudes of the reader or the critic too much to heart or you will lose yourself. It’s very clear.”
Consideration for himself
Should a writer learn to harden himself to such commentaries?
Cela’s opinion on this is:
“
No, it’s just the way a person is. I don’t think it’s a matter of hardening yourself. It’s an attitude. What matters to me more is the consideration I may have for myself. That worries me very much. Again, there is this phenomenon called the conscience. If I go against it, then my conscience feels remorse. But anything referring to the conscience of others is very subjective.
“Between the numerous readers that any writer may have, you will always find a variety of opinions to suit every taste. Every reader sees the same thing in a different way, often with good intentions and frequently coerced by the atmosphere that surrounds him. But for any specific subject, however miniscule it may be, there are always diverging attitudes. They cannot be kept in mind when writing.”
Writer’s responsibility
Some writers impose on themselves a social responsibility, especially towards his readers. But is it correct to impose such responsibility?
“No, he has a responsibility before himself and his own conscience. He must have a very great sense of his own conscience, be very aware of himself.”
“There is nothing more grievous than a writer who is at the service of a master. It’s really a horrible affair. Because afterwards, the writer has no choice but to swallow his own work. Look what has happened to the work of the artists who were under Stalin’s charge. Under Stalin’s or under anyone else’s for that matter.
The other day someone called a piece of information to my attention that had been taken from The Guinness Book of Records. The human being to whom the greatest number of statues has been raised in the entire world is Stalin. He would give the order, Make me a statue and they had to continue making them. Only to find that later they all came crashing obstreperously to the ground. Its sheer nonsense and one shouldn’t allow it to happen.”
Goal of a writer
What is the goal of a writer in literature? Cela says, it is “to touch the ulcer with your finger” and “write without the poultice of rhetoric.”
He believes”, that’s my aspiration. If I achieve it or not, I don’t know.
But it is certainly one of my intentions.”
Inspiration
Some writers complain that they cannot write because they are facing financial problems. Others say they have no time to write, while another say they are absence of inspiration. Cela has a different view on this. He once said that “in order to write books, all one needs to have is something to say, a stack of blank papers and a pen with which to say it; everything else is extraneous and nothing more than an attempt to add theatrics to the trade.” In the Paris Review interview he elaborates on this:
“I think inspiration is a refuge for poets. All poets are generally very lazy. They’re loafers! Plato was right when he wanted to put colored ribbons around their heads and expel them from the boundaries of the State.
Picasso once said, “I don’t know if inspiration exists, but when it comes, it usually finds me working.” One time a woman asked Baudelaire what inspiration was, and he responded by saying, “Inspiration is something that commands me to work every single day.” And Dostoyevsky said, “Genius is nothing more than a long, sustained patience.” What a person has to do is sit himself down before a stack of blank papers, which is in it terrifying.
There is nothing as frightening as a stack of blank pieces of paper and the thought that I have to fill them from top to bottom, placing letters one after the other. And for that reason I have the feeling that I want to say something and that what I have to say is worth being said. Of course, one must have confidence in the fact that writing, like a child in school, “I will not talk during class” one hundred times, well, simply is not literature.”
About rules
Art is a creation where you cannot produce under set of rules. Pío Baroja once said that “art is not a series of rules, but life itself; the spirit of things as they are reflected in the spirit of man.” How does Cela think about this?
“Yes, I think it’s very clear. You cannot be subjected to rules. Then writing wouldn’t go beyond being a mere ability. Rules can be found in soccer or any kind of sport and in the end they prove nothing more than certain ability. Great art is differentiated by the fact that it is constantly in the state of being created. Any professor could say: This book doesn’t follow the rules of grammar. But what does that matter if you are creating new rules? Once Unamuno was told: The word you used cannot be found in the dictionary. He responded by saying, that doesn’t matter, it will be.”
Nothing more than words
What is the most important quality of a writer, his artistic vision, the form, or the content of his work?
“Well, content and continent, essence or form is an age-old discussion of which I am not in the least interested because essence and form are one and the same thing. Literature is nothing more than words and it is within these words that the idea resides. There is not a single word in all the languages of the world that doesn’t have a meaning. Therefore, why look for the fifth leg on a cat? It’s just that way. No, essence and form, content and continent are all one and the same thing. It’s like the question of using a technique or not using a technique. It’s not necessary even to consider it!
It’s similar to the need for a certain kind of scaffolding in order to raise a Gothic cathedral. Later the scaffolding disappears. Either they take it down or it falls down by itself.”