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| Fiction and reality in a very Sephardic novel |
Sephardi Association of Ottawa, October 28, 2017 (Motzaé Shabbat)
Shavua Tov, Buenas semanas:
I would like to thank my
friends and colleagues from the Sephardi Association of Ottawa, and
particularly our president Isabelle Benhamou, for giving me the opportunity to
present the English translation of the novel that I co-wrote with Meir Magar, La conjura del esplendor, in English Splendor’s intrigue.
I would also like to thank you
all for being here to talk about this very Sephardic novel.
First, I want to briefly
discuss the covers of the Spanish and the English versions of the novel, both
of them designed by my son Gabriel Nahón. The eye is a common element in both
covers, and if you already read the novel, you know that there is this idea
that someone, somewhere, has this ability of seeing everything, everywhere and
therefore, somewhat a Big Brother who controls things. The main difference
between the two covers is the golden hook. In Spanish, it was easy to play with
the hook because the word Conjura (Conspiracy or Intrigue) has a “J” in the
middle, becoming the glaring hook, a key element in the plot of the novel.
Without spoiling the story for those who have not read it yet, this novel has
at least three narrative layers, and one of the layers (the novel within the novel)
is actually a hook to catch certain “fishes” blinded by the light or the splendour
of the story.
What means to write a novel
with another person, writing by four hands, as we sometimes do when playing
piano? Meir lives in Venezuela, and I live here in Ottawa. Today we have
Whatsapp, email, Google, Skype. But even with all this technology, the main
challenge of writing a text with another person is not the exchange of
information or sharing ideas. The main challenge is how you build a story or
various stories (as in the case of this novel) that at the end will have some
internal coherence and cohesiveness, and will, hopefully, capture the attention
of the reader.
As everything in life, the
novel Splendor’s intrigue has a genesis. The origin of the novel is a research
that Meir Magar did about the story of the Nahón family. He did a very
comprehensive research, read many documents, consulted several Internet sites.
The Nahón’s family story is in many ways the story of the Sephardim expelled
from Spain in 1492. Meir first wrote a
paper that he published in the journal of Sephardic Studies Maguén-Escudo in Caracas. But Meir had a
lot of information. He called me one day and told me. I have very interesting
details about the Sephardim. I think I can write a novel with this. Would you
like to write it with me?
I was not sure what was going
to result from this experiment. Meir took care of everything that is either
historical, old or mythical in Splendor’s intrigue. I focused on the
contemporary fiction. The question was how we could connect both narrative
streams, the old, historical, and the current fictional events. What could be
the link between the saga of the descendants of the great Sephardi poet Yehuda
Ha’Levi Abulafia, and the plot of delirious and apocalyptic religious fanatics
in this turbulent world?
The writing process was a
truly contrapunctus as we say in
music, a contrapunteo as we say in
Venezuela. Sometimes the contrapunctus was
quite intense: to a historical chapter from Meir, followed another one of
current conspiracies, celestial hackers and the almost detective work done by
some of the characters in the novel.
But we faced moments where
nothing worked and the contrapunctus
stopped. At this time, in front of the “white page”, a conversation via Skype
with Meir helped to ignite the spark of imagination and to find an exit to the
labyrinth that we were building together.
Why did we decide to call the
novel Splendor’s intrigue or La conjura del esplendor? My colleague Pierre Lévy
told me that the idea of conspiracy or intrigue is associated with the notion
of opacity, something that is hidden. Why then make the connection with this
notion of light, something that is brilliant, flashy? It’s because at the heart
of the intrigue, of the plot, there is an object that causes a glare, an effect
of blinding by the excess of light (éblouissement
in French). And the story of this glaring object that could seem fantastic,
impossible, could be seen as real, truthful in the eyes of some delirious
fanatics. And who is weaving this web of intrigues? Someone who knows well the
psychology of these fundamentalists who are ready to believe in their own toxic
conspiracy theories.
The labyrinth that we built in
this novel was carefully set by my co-writer Meir Magar. All the events in the
novel before and after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 are very well
documented. In the notes from the “writer” Haim Abulafia, the doctor from Tel
Aviv who descends from the family of Yehuda Ha’Leví Abulafia, that you can find
at the end of the novel have the references with the books, the sources, the
sites that we consulted. We tell there the story of the Jews from Spain, with
its splendorous and not so splendorous moments. But I think the value of this
novel, and this is my very subjective opinion, resides in approaching the
question of being Sephardi, of being a Sephardic Jew in the current context,
and explores, in a fictional but still valid way, how what happened in the past
shapes the current geopolitical moment when identities emerge, change, are
strengthened (as in the case of the “marrano” or “converso” Segura in the
novel), but also how they coexist and enter in conflict.
And this leads me to my other
question: how history, fiction and current events are articulated in this
novel? I think the main difference with the history of historians, that should
be very rigorous, the historical novel or historical fiction can introduce some
nuances, some grey areas that are also important to understand what we are
living now. In that sense, I would like to highlight something about the
characters of Splendor’s intrigue: they are all very human in their greatness
or miseries, in their idealism or in their very basic instincts. And sometimes,
those who are portrayed as villains in the media, could also have their heroic
side, and vice versa, there are heroes that can become villains. In the
labyrinth of the novel we find a cul-de-sac. What’s the right path towards the exit of
this labyrinth? I don’t think we have a clear, definitive answer from the
perspective of the historical fiction. And I am wondering if we, Meir and I,
found really the right path to escape from the Splendor’s intrigue. I will
leave it to the readers to answer this question. Some readers have told us that
they feel that the novel continues and are looking forward to read the second
part. Let’s see what happens.
Thank you,
Isaac Nahón Serfaty
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