^A

Magdalena Tulli

— It was the choice of my first publisher. It wouldn’t have occurred to me, but I like it, it was very beautiful, very spacious actually. It’s a wonderful picture. I think that was the first time I’d seen it.

^A

Magdalena Tulli

— Yes, I believe that the word builds the image. That’s what it’s for. All words, with the exception of the words: yes, yes, no, no. As you know, the Bible says that everything beyond those words is from the Evil One. And so any games involving literature are dangerous. We’re taking a risk, but we want to play the game. You think there are innocent words beyond those two? There are none. Even the word ‘or’ is poised to construct an image, though it may be an abstract one. And if we take the word ‘because…’ There, you see. Let alone the whole rest of the dictionary. As for me, I don’t get upset by words, I use them for what they’re for, what is stronger than them. For making an image.

There’s one hitch. I don’t have complete control over the images I show. If a bloody-minded reader comes along, he’ll just go ahead and make his own images out of my words. It might even be something that I wouldn’t want to sign my name to.

^A

Magdalena Tulli

— What do you think? What you just quoted is a literary fiction. Of course, fiction is rarely pure invention. We invent things about the world, so there has to be something that’s to the point. After all, we’ve never seen anything aside from this world. You ask about distinctions. In Dreams and Stones I ramp them up to the point where they snap. There are others too that aren’t wound up like that. Not in physical reality, of course. And not beneath the vaults of skulls, they’re not in there either. They arise somewhere at the meeting point. That’s exactly it, the meeting point. It’s that which determines whether the tangible world can be separated from the world of the imagination. It can’t, of course.

^A

Magdalena Tulli

— Yes, throughout that book the tree and the machine, these two metaphors of the world, provide the dynamic for the action. Two metaphors for the same thing, like two themes in a respectable sonata, yes? It’s precisely that that gives the plot of Dreams and Stones its tension – those transformations, those modulations. The newsreel is of lesser importance, it appears only on the margins of the action, like a caricature of propaganda offering a sham commentary on what we see in the foreground – in other words, as a comic character. Just like the newspaper with its photographs, which also figures as a comic character.

^A

Magdalena Tulli

— Dreams and Stones is a book full of metaphors, but the metaphors are not there to embellish the sentences. That particular metaphor replaces a longish chapter on the history of Poland during the partitions, including emigrations after the uprisings, a chapter that would in any case have ended with a metaphorical punchline about the flight of hope in two directions.

^A

Magdalena Tulli

— Everything in the world is the space of perpetual conflict. The conflict ends when we exit the world. But to provide a proper answer to your question, I have to agree with you. The passage you quoted, though it’s a literary fiction, has a reflex in reality. Words mean now one thing, now another. Why? Because of the emotions. This can be seen particularly in the course of long-standing disputes. Each side of the argument pulls the word toward itself, tries to impose its own meaning on it, disregarding the meaning its opponent seeks to place on it. The word may long ago have become empty, hollowed out, while each adversary tries to fill it with what is most useful for him. That’s why lingering disputes are hardly ever resolved. It’s not words that are the cause, though, but emotions. They’re what lead us to manipulate words. There’s nothing wrong with emotions. But we need to remember that emotions are a terrible force that can send the entire dictionary every which way.

^A

Magdalena Tulli

— If we’re talking about what we call the world, then we can only see the image, create our own description. We do not see the thing itself at all, and this is not the fault either of the image or the description. The world has no eyes, it doesn’t see itself. From that perspective it’s an empty void, because all of us living creatures have eyes. But if we weren’t there? What would it be then?

^A

Magdalena Tulli

— Yes, they do. It’s just that in fact we don’t finally know from what. Because of course they don’t create it out of nothing. Something created out of nothing is advanced stuff, mythical I’d say, if it weren’t for sensational new items from the domain of quantum physics. But even knowing what we use to make what we make – even such knowledge is unattainable. Something flows through us, but what is it? I’d really like to know. Something flows, and in my opinion that’s all that can be honestly and unsentimentally said about the nature of the world. The revelations of quantum physics indicate nothing to the contrary.

 

Dreams and Stones is filled with jokes about certainty of any kind. Because at the time I was writing it, I’d begun to see any sort of certainty as irresistibly amusing.

^A

Magdalena Tulli

— I removed it, though I liked it. It gave a pleasing cadence to the very emotional ending. I don’t want to claim credit for the idea. Like the Klee on the cover, it came from the first publisher of the book. I appreciate a good idea. But I’m not all that attached to ideas, including my own. Except perhaps the absolutely most important ones, to which everything else is subordinated.

^A

Magdalena Tulli

— You’ve touched on several issues all at once. The beginning of Moving Parts is sardonic, right after that come the words, ‘there is no one to save them’, which reveal the bitter joke. The one who conjured the world out of thin air for amusement, and then immediately abandoned it, appears on the following page; he’s lying in bed while all around him are empty bottles and used needles. It’s him, this someone, who holds the strings of all the other characters. If he’d thought a little less about himself and a little more about others, events would have taken a different course. There’d be less violence and humiliation in the story. The figure known as the ‘narrator’ – a person hired under false pretenses to carry out an impossible task – could be any one of us, because each of us is the narrator of our own story, with no control over its ending. You ask what worlds these are. They’re the worlds we live in. There’s also an element of literary fiction in this, because we don’t see the creation of worlds, or the metaphorical elements, because they don’t rise like soap bubbles. But the truth is that they’re swallowed up by the darkness. In the final sentence I return to this, and write that no one has ever prevailed against darkness.

 

Why is the sense of sight privileged here? I don’t know. It privileged itself. Literature refers to sight more than to the other senses. This arises from the nature of literature, and from the way our minds work.

^A

Magdalena Tulli

— These photographs are a representation of the whole muddled-up contents of human relations – impermanent, fleeting. The impermanence of life brings melancholy – I’m not the only one to think so. That’s just how things are with us. Why? It’s obvious. Sympathy for ourselves is our God-given right. But there’s something else about those photographs. At some point they’re all removed and replaced with a single photograph – one that’s been cut out of a newspaper. A portrait. And it occupies not just this one window display, but all the others too. The muddle of human relations is forced to disappear. It has to make room for the one right thing. And since the one thing that’s right is made of concrete, that doesn’t leave the slightest room for life.

^A

Magdalena Tulli

— The narrator doesn’t emphasise that the photographs have a special pedagogical value. On the contrary, she mocks such a view. She mocks it painfully, with rage, tears in her eyes. The observation that victims come off unfavourably in photographs is highly tongue-in-cheek. That whole piece is about boundless humiliation being captured on photographic paper and put on public display. The narrator wants to take the photographs down to prevent them from being misused as supposed tools for the betterment of youth. It’s hard for me even to talk about the powerful emotions I felt because of what’s being done with those photographs. They’re at Wannsee, by the way.

 

I think anyone who feels that these are pictures from his own album will understand. As for those who don’t, how can it be explained to them? For the moment that’s beyond me.

^A

Magdalena Tulli

— Watching in Flaw is characterised by indifference. The descriptions of watching are there to show what happens when one looks through a glass pane, or through a metaphorical pane of feeling superior or better protected by Providence, feeling entitled, believing that some things don’t concern us. This is an illusion. Everything concerns us. Everyone has a body, inside, everyone can be struck down and die in despair. Chance can also be kind, but it’s still no more than chance. If we lead a more or less happy life, we can’t take the credit and there’s no guarantee for the future.

 

But can literature affect our readiness to see? Can it affect anything at all? I don’t want to say that it can’t. I simply don’t know. Can the visual arts truly affect anything? They can thrust an image in front of us. Literature can do that too. Up to that point I’m certain; any further and one enters the realm of fantasy.

^A

Magdalena Tulli

— Dreams and Stones is different from my other books. Of course each one is different, but Dreams and Stones differs fundamentally from the rest. There’s no plot in the usual sense of the term. There’s a story, but it’s driven by an entirely different form of propulsion. To make something like Dreams and Stones, to make it function, make people willing to read it – and they were willing to, very much so in fact – when I think about it, it seems an almost impossible thing to me. But I wrote it, and I’m the author of that almost impossible thing. The next book after Dreams and Stones, In Red, is very much about plot, about images, probably more than anything else I’ve written. From the beginning I’ve had access to both kinds of driving force. Moving Parts and Flaw use a mixed propulsion. Of all my books, only Italian Heels is driven by regular gasoline. And you say that using ordinary gasoline is the crowning point of the long path I’ve taken? I’m not sure.

^A

Magdalena Tulli

— I didn’t know that. He wanted to teach a way of seeing? As concerns me, he succeeded. Though of course it’s not the only thing I’m able to do.

 

I’ve only translated one tiny little book of Calvino’s, Amerigo’s Long Day, about democracy. The hero is a member of an electoral committee. The narrator describes what this man sees, hears, thinks, and feels on election day in northern Italy in the mid-1950s. It’s a very interesting work. Does the visual play an important part in it? When I think about Calvino’s imagery, above all I see Invisible Cities. But it’s true, imagery plays a part in this story too. Literature doesn’t function without imagery. So you and I can collectively categorise literature among the visual arts.

^A

Magdalena Tulli

— Well, well – I didn’t expect that. You like to bring out the big guns? All right, I’ll try and answer. Above all, not what for, but why. Because we have a need for meaning that the world cannot satisfy, and a need for beauty which it could satisfy if it weren’t for the fact that it’s constantly renewing itself. That produces a truly heady cocktail which drives us to search for something in the realm of feelings, thoughts, images and sounds.