In 2019, Bernardo Atxaga announced his resignation from writing more novels and his intention to explore new paths. The Basque writer’s first exploration of this new medium, a satisfying one, is this Out of Eden, published by the Cuatro Lunas publishing house.
The Outskirts of Eden is a book that cannot be classified, which is, on the other hand, very characteristic of Atxaga; Here the author deftly surveys the endless landscape of his experiences and combines story, history, poetry, and magical fantasy to present it to us. This new vision of the literary world.
The main part of the book collects the feelings and reflections of his visits to various prisons in the south of France to participate in a reading project for prisoners. Out of Heaven emerges from the unique experience of these conversations with an audience so unfamiliar with literature.
From these thoughts of Atxaga, it becomes clear that reading books in prisons is an intense experience because the prisoners are only a few meters away, but mentally they are actually in another world entirely, a world inaccessible to others. Records of these visits reflect the author’s and his friends’ efforts to penetrate and reach the prison world, without much success.
The program included interviews in prisons for ordinary prisoners at Mauzac, Neuvic sur l’Isle, the castle of Neuvic sur l’Isle, the village of Saint-André-d’Allas and finally the Martutene prison in Saint Sebastian. .
As the author constantly watches the French farms from the car or the sight of several prisoners in front of him, he experiences escapes from memories that lead him to take “twists” that bring him closer to memories or digressions about the present time or event. past. Thus, his visits to prisons in the south of France remind him of the Goose game, which is like a metaphor for life, and a four-square journey that is not easy and poses the danger of reaching the end. 31, well; 42, labyrinth; 52, imprisonment and 58, death. He sees most of the prisoners settled in box 52, accepting their situation, but others appear to be locked in their own labyrinth in box 42.
He also had difficulty getting out of the labyrinth after visiting the Neuvi sur L’isle prison. He encountered the blank stares or misshapen faces of some of the prisoners and the inattention of most of those present.
At the castle of Neuvic sur L’isle, a Renaissance castle, he read the poem “Confession” with great autobiographical tone to the young misfits living there, where he told what the young Basque poets writing in the Basque language had written. It was like the seventies. They rushed into “Big Topics” and imitated Dylan Thomas. They were young people suffocating under dictatorship and national Catholicism, who, like the painter Vicente Ameztoy, self-harmed in search of an early death.
In the village of Saint-André-d’Allas in French Occitania, it was like being in the 19th square of the inn, far from the labyrinth, death and prison. There, in one of the constant turns of his thoughts, he remembered a great feast near the temple of Arantzazu. While the diners, including a priest, were enjoying a copious meal, a group of faithful, already tired from a religious ceremony, emerged. When he saw the woman he knew, who was guiding them as a priest, eating and drinking in pieces, he asked her with all his sarcasm and silence: “In your opinion, Don Eulogio, where is heaven?” “Well, here it is,” the priest managed to reply.
In the old and dilapidated Martutene prison, he talked to a group of prisoners about the history of Basque literature. The story is small, but the attention the prisoners showed him was much greater.
Only one young man, the informant, took an interest in him and eventually asked him for money, and it was a lawyer who knew something while the rest of the prisoners were devoted to mingling and having fun among themselves, like a rugby fight.
The speaker didn’t lose his temper and remembered other terrible auditions; As he wanted to do in a town in Bizkaia with only three people, a town that was originally reduced to two; or at an American university where there are two hundred students, only five of whom speak Spanish and the rest are under threat from the professor; Finally, in Antwerp, an assistant with a baseball bat forced him to condemn the City Council for turning the city into a haven for ETA members.
The author contributed to his speeches a beautiful collection of his own poems, which he thought were best for the occasion: “Confession,” “Cricket is a Monotonous Poet,” or “Lecture on the Ostrich.”
There are other texts in the book besides those told in prisons, the most beautiful and shocking one being “I listen to what Pierre says”, the story of Margarita and Pierre, the bee lover who instilled in her the love for these insects. , and they were happy. While Pierre was explaining to her the process of creating a hive, how the queen bee lays 80,000 eggs in less than a month and creates a hive of 80,000 bees, she insisted on learning beekeeping. And the couple remained happy, with laughter in their hearts, le rire était dans le coeur, as Jacques Brel sang. But just as the acherontia atropos with the skull image on the back of the butterfly that steals their honey enters the beehives, an acherontia atropos enters the house of the beekeeping couple in love, but Pierre, on the contrary, like the bees, it took months for him to realize that his wife was terminally ill. Margarita died, and Pierre continued to tend the hives and listen to the sound of the woodpecker, whose soul turned into a bird for him.
And others, more humorous, such as the story of Adam’s fear of catching the first flu as soon as he left paradise, although when he recovered he told Eve that “it is not really a misfortune to lose paradise.”
Even more witty and ingenious are the stories at the end of the book, filled with personal experiences; For example, he is surprised that the bank refuses to give him a loan because he is seventy years old, or he sees how the expiration date has passed when he renews his ID card. The date skipped and lasted until January 1 of the year nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine. “For all intents and purposes, a timeless card. “How lucky!” he thought.
In this first foray into new literary worlds, Bernardo Atxaga continues to claim that he is one of the most original writers, one of the most brilliant in his use of a unique, charismatic and defining style; This Out of Heaven proves it once again.