“Ivo and Jorge”, the cross and face of two adventurers of the 20th century

one naturally Jorge Semprunhe is Federico Sanchez Several houses in Madrid (one of them, the poet’s) Angel Gonzalezin front Ministry of Public Works Francoism). And the other Yves Montandis a voice and dance artist who gradually embraces the ideas of the struggle of the proletariat, as well as an artist of cinematographic scenes. In the case of Semprún, over a history of Spanish exile and the European war, the two gradually found each other and eventually became close friends and collaborators.

Moreover, the two gradually became disillusioned with communism, which was the main idea of ​​​​the devoted artists of that time. The two had very different interests and backgrounds. The Spaniard was the son of the Spanish liberal aristocracy, and the Marseilles was, so to speak, the son of the street and communist ancestry. Because of this, their upbringing was different, and they were both introduced differently by the arts. This Humans embraced literature as a way to combat their melancholy or anger. when he was imprisoned by the nazis buchenwaldand Ivo (Yves) He got along as well as he could on the rough streets of his hometown of Marseille.where communism thrives in your veins.

The disappointment for both came together when it was already the end of the game (and the game), so they both became a metaphor (the first is loud, because Semprún has not been silent about Moscow and its contradictions with Moscow). Santiago Carrillopost-war communism, whose boss in Spanish communism and then, in both cases, slowly more or less noisy and social democrats, had disagreements with those more committed at a time that ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall

It wasn’t hard to get them together, as they’ve become more and more close friends over the years since they met, but no one had ever dared to seat them next to each other, at least not literally, but also really. until they appear together in a book. Whoever accomplished this with very exciting and extraordinary results, patrick romanFrench filmmaker, journalist, documentary filmmaker and author, author of twenty documentaries, including the one that embraces one of the greatest books of the Spanish hero of these two stories: write or life (also in Tusquets), a masterpiece of reminiscence in any language. He is also the author of documentary works on the liberation of France from the Nazi occupation and a biography of Montand.

It is a non-fiction work; in other words, it is understood that the author reinterpreted the written dialogues that took place in some branches of this tree, and did not overshadow what may have actually happened between these two characters, who eventually merged with the rocks. The will of 20th century history. The Spanish war destroyed Semprún’s young life, the European war made him a communist militant; The same war made Montand militant until he became communist and beyond; Both were exposed to the whips of fascism at the same time and both were excluded from the common history of those years (party militancy) because no attention was paid to the excess of reason demanded by the Muscovite-based authority for him.

This dialogue was naturally conducted separately with himself or with others (with Spanish dissidents, as in the case of Semprún). fernando claudin) and after the war, from the co-discovery of night and women in the case of Yves, and from the literature of experience that helped Semprún explore his own contradictions, which to this day have not stopped billing him. With an aggravating situation, he was the first to reveal them in his books, in his explanations, in this very book. Felipe González’s former Minister of Culture.

From the books he left as a witness write or life going deeper, because he confuses everything that happened to him in the war (and in the concentration camp under Nazi rule) with his doubts about the prison itself, with his successive contradictions about the role a prisoner should have when he also enjoys certain privileges. Rotman talks to Jorge Semprún and Yves Montand; Based on the fact that they both live in distant and different places, the conversation mingles until the two agree on a trip to Moscow, when there is no longer any official communism there, and the two slowly but surely count before I fly. As if the interviewer were putting them before an exercise of mutual confession, what happened to them, what hurt them politically, and what these parallel lives had resulted in humanly.

That meeting in Moscow around 1990, before Semprún was appointed Minister of Culture in Spain by a socialist government, is a key finding of this book by Patrick Roman. symbolizes the end of a long flight, Staring at Moscow, it started out like a trip to the Holy Grail for these two European friends’ once-dedicated teens. Now, faced with the rottenness of their youthful hopes, they have no blast telling stories, one writing and scripting, the other interpreting the evils of the past, until they find the films they left behind. . written testimonies like (written in a movie) Admission, What Gavras Beach (both of their favorite filmmakers), the touchstone of their mocked militant melancholy, has become a metaphor for something that neither is unfamiliar.

“Communism wasn’t the world’s youth, but it was our youth,” Semprún told Montand before she was adopted as his actress wife. Simone Signoretand the second expresses “the melancholy of days gone by, of years lost” in his eyes.

That sentence, that dialogue that one confirms and the other listens to, finally reflects almost all of the alternating currents of this book, which are electricity and time, history and regret, joy and strangeness. If you want to know where those roads lead and what it means to sit with two people riding together with the same doubts and regrets, go to the bookstore and ask. Ivo and Jorge, and marvel at how an engaging, contemporary and open dialogue in journalism and literature is conducted. Thanks to Patrick Roman and naturally these two heroes of the most difficult chapter of the last century.