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Mia Couto and the Exercise of Modesty
Again I am translating an interview of Mia Couto, this time by Marilene Felinto, published by "Folha de São Paulo" in July 21st, 2002. Again apologizing for my translation shortcomings, I believe it is always a positive step to bring the work and world of Mia Couto to a "freeway" of communication such as the English language is today.
The interview is long and I will break it in two postings.
Mia Couto and the Exercise of Modesty
by Marilene Felinto
The main Mozambican writer says that he is older than his own country.
Mia Couto, or António Emílio Leite Couto, 47, one of the most original voices of today's literature in Portuguese, is also a biologist. Mozambican, son of Portuguese parents, lives in Maputo.
He was a member of Frelimo (Frente de Libertação de Moçambique) since its inception. Mia couto fought with Frelimo the Independence from Portugal and worked for Frelimo during the civil war period. Today he says he is no longer a militant, but he misses the times when the ex-marxist Frelimo, lead by Samora Mahel, "a man we considered a God", used to sing in meetings and rallies.
In his Maputo office, Mia talked about the exercise of modesty that is to write fiction in a poor country such as Mozambique and about the influence of Brazilian literature on his work. "Here, the birth of the national literature happened at the same time as the birth of nationality itself. I am older than my country. It is a historical circumstance particularly unique".
Couto is the author of, amongst others, "Each Man is a Race" (1990) and "Under the Frangipani"(1996).
Why do you have so many jobs? Medicine, for instance, how many years did you study?
Mia Couto: I completed medicine until the second year; I studied three years, repeated the second year and I would forever repeat it. I have so many jobs because I don't want to have any. It is a strategy not to be anything. Because from the moment on when I see myself as a biologist or a journalist or any other thing, I close my windows to the world and I start a relationship that will follow the same path an I don't want that. I think it is impoverishing.
I can obviously do this because of a happy circumstance. I don't deserve it, but I can do it. I am living at the right time in the right place. About your second answer, I had a huge passion. It was writing. From my childhood I have had that idea that part of my soul only reveals itself through writing. Back them I thought I could be a psychiatrist. That was my wish.
I went to medical school to become a psychiatrist but them I realized that the image of psychiatry I had was very romanticized. And then what I visited was a horrible world, a world of prisons, and there was a big disenchantment. Second, I was already a member of Frelimo, I was already a militant for the Independence cause and that to me was much more exciting.
I lived with that more that I lived with anything else. So, when the pre-independence times came, 1974, a period of transition, Frelimo asked me to "go under", as we used to say back them. There was a campaign to infiltrate the media that were controlled by the Portuguese. And I was assigned that task. I loved doing it because I had the idea that I was doing something ethical, in the name of the country.
How did that happen?
Couto: The qualified workers that Frelimo believed could go against the Portuguese domain were important. It was a transitional period and I think that overall that undercover campaign was important because it helped to create a conscience and to contradict the dominant view that Mozambique not only did not have the right but it would also be a disaster if it ever got to independence.
But what exactly did you do to go undercover?
Couto: I lost a job. I was in the unemployed bank and I was chosen between several candidates. I asked for a job in a newspaper called "A Tribuna". The term "going under" was used back meaning something like a small ant corroding, subverting a building that had been designed for a certain purpose. We were supposed to go against that domain. But it wasn´t anything heroic because the direction of the newspaper was sympathetic to our cause, so I didn't take many risks by doing it.
Even being so involved in a political cause, you have found a very original, non propagandistic speech for your fiction. How did you do that?
Couto: I believe I haven't separated the two things. We weren't even concerned with that. The birth of a national literature happens at the same time than the birth of the nationality itself. Most Mozambican writers have been journalists at some point or other in their lives.
They are or correspond to a follow up of that country that borders modernity, they are the ones opening doors to modernity, to the universe of writing. And that was lived back them very intensely. We actually believed that it was an illusion, we believed we were doing something ethical, we were helping to create a nation and that meant something.
We believe it because I'm older than my country. It is an historical circumstance particularly unique. I was witnessed the birth of my own nation and I have also written some propagandistic poetry. I confess I've done it, and I've written poetry at the service of the country, I have written the national anthem's lyrics.
Mozambique's anthem is changing now, isn't it?
Couto: Yes, it is going to change. There's actually a funny story. In 1981, 1982, President Samora, alive back them, thought that the national anthem wasn't good enough. It was too partisan, it started by "Hurray, hurray Frelimo". And he knew that not all Mozambicans belonged to Frelimo, so an anthem was needed that covered all Mozambicans.
He (Samora) sent six poets and six musicians to a house and said "you need to come out with several proposals for a national anthem". And we were stuck in a house in Matola and it was great. It was not a prison, it was great because we were fed in a time when there was no food. So we saved our food to give our families when they visited us. We had a swimming pool at the house, we lived quite well there. And when the sirens sounded we rushed to work.
They (Frelimo) came to visit to check how we were doing. And we produced half a dozen anthems that stayed there and were never approved. Now, because of the new political atmosphere that arose since 1995, an atmosphere of open democracy and multi-partisanship, it was really necessary that the country finds a different anthem. At least different lyrics.
There was then an open competition and I was part of the jury that evaluated the several proposals but they were all very weak. Then someone thought of revisiting those old proposals and one of those was chosen. There are reasons that help deny that idea that it is possible to separate literature and militancy.
Your fiction today is nevertheless not a militant fiction.
Couto: Right. That was a process of becoming aware, for instance, that was always born out of ruptures, in small conflicts. Today my relationship with that militancy is more removed, critical, but that doesn't mean it's not there anymore. Other people's militancy changed and so has mine, probably. The first poetry book I published was already in a flighty mood, angrily. I was very irritated that all poetry that mentioned "me", that talked about any intimacy, was considered bourgeois poetry. This first book was written in 1983 opposing this. It was a lyrical, intimist poetry that talked about love.
Were you ever afraid that politics swallowed the writer?
Couto: No, I have never even thought about that because politics was something important in my life, it was important because I had fun, I was that. The process of sedimentation, of differentiation between the two areas happened so naturally that it wasn't a product of reflexion, I didn't sit to think about it.
It happened and I gradually learned that each had its own place. I also think that the circumstances of Mozambique help because you learn that being a writer is a small thing, that is great for your ego. Writers always think they are so important, that the world depends on what they are doing.
Here (in Mozambique) you learn that it isn't that important because the universe of those who read is so small, the book circulates is such small areas that it is a kind of lesson in modesty that is good for you. If you want to contact other, if you want other areas of communication, you can't depend on books.
I started to get involved with theater groups, working on the radio, on TV, to see if what I wanted to say could be said through different channels. It is very important that writers learn to be a non writer, to stop being writers. It is a lesson that is very good for us all.
Did you always study in Mozambique? You say you have been very influenced by Brazilian Literature. What did that happen?
Couto: I have always studied here and lived here. I believe that when I became aware of that contamination by Brazilian literature I was already "ill", in a good sense. I think my generation and the generation before me were very influenced by Brazilian literature. There was a certain rediscovery with Graciliano, Jorge Amado that our language can be something else.
Some people are working the language in a different way. There are other cultures that take this thing that is the Portuguese language and work it differently. And not only. Political subjects, like especially Jorge Amado, were things that coincided with a historic time that needed to be questioned. Certain values. So, when I started writing, there was all this stronger context.
Mozambique's literary atmosphere was also more connected with Brazil than with Portugal. For another reason also, censorship, that was very heavy in Portugal and no so bad in Mozambique. Some books were sold here and forbidden in Portugal. It was easier. Even that magazine "O Cruzeiro", do you remember? It was widely widespread here. When "O Cruzeiro" arrived it was like a window to another world that was very familiar where we saw ourselves more than by reading what came from Portugal.
What about the influence of Guimarães Rosa?
Couto: First, I have to mention Luandino Vieira, the Angolan writer, that was the first contact I had with someone who writes a sort of Portuguese that is deviating, that is mixed with the earth. And Luandino made a big impression on me. It was the first approval of what I wanted to do.
I knew I wanted to do it but I needed a credential from the older one that said "that road is blessed". And he confesses he was approved himself by someone else, João Guimarães Rosa, that I wasn't familiar with, because we didn't have those books. After the Independence Brazilian books were allowed and it is something ironical from the historical point of view.
There was more book exchange in the fascist colonial times than after the Independence. I used to have this fascination. I had to know this João, this Rosa. A friend of mine brought "Terceiras Histórias". It was passion in fact. It was someone who told me again "this can be done literarilly". But I wanted to do it already because I was already contaminated by this process that is not literary, it is a social process of people that come from different cultures, take the Portuguese language and renew it, make it plastic and do with it what they want.
It is a very free process in Mozambique. People mix Portuguese and just as a peasant woman from Zambezi used to say "I speak a shortcut Portuguese", it is an athletic competition through the bush, following paths. That's it. I wouldn't have done it if I hadn't been marked before Guimarães Rosa, before Luandino Vieira, if I hadn't been marked by a process that isn't only linguistic.
(...)
to be continued here.