Kitob Dunyosl N 16 (350)
Interview by Xosiyat Rustanova
Your unique place in world literature has been studied and we hope that you will answer our questions carefully!
We are passengers! There is a long way behind us ... And the way in front of us is known only to Allah! What do you see when you look at these two paths, what is being seen?
I am aware that all my work is traversed by time and its great metaphors: travel, the road, corrosion, etc.
The prodigious memory of everything that has been written allows us to travel that illusory path backwards, while the imagination encourages us to go forward. However, we don't know anything about the future and just a few distorted things about the past. We can only live in this present. So when I look at those two directions I feel small enough to admire the infinite and the timeless.
My parents chose my name inspired by Daniel, that holy man who 2,700 years ago was a revealer of future mysteries. Perhaps that is why, since I was a child, I have tried to decipher time, knowing that words and especially poetry are keys that open and widen the universe of knowledge when they connect with the greater word and with the higher existence.
One of my dreams is to visit the mausoleum of the prophet Daniel in Samarkand, next to the healing fountain. There are many legends, related to his grave, told by pilgrims. As is known, Daniel is venerated in three great religions, that means that his word reached universality and survives the passage of time.
The Word and the Power of the Word ... How is the power of the Word in your life. How did you feel by living with it? Can you tell the story of the hardships of living with it?
We are born without words, we learn them as we grow because we need to communicate and language is the vehicle of education. But those of us who dedicate ourselves to poetry know that, in addition to naming objects and actions that try to define reality, there is also an internal and spiritual dimension in them. In relation to the above, we could say that we are passengers but we are also the journey. The journey is inside and outside at the same time.
The most powerful word I know is Thank you. It has the magic of harmonizing the internal with the external and is one of the forms of universal love. Let's not forget that we are what we say and that is why we must be aware of that power. Neuroscience has shown that negative words produce adverse emotions not only in those who receive them but also in those who emit them.
I started writing poetry after a very controversial episode for my country, I mean the War in the Falklands, when the Argentine army recruited me along with thousands of young people just out of high school. He could not understand certain things in the world and writing was a way of perfecting it, of expanding and modifying reality through poetry. However, given the complexities of certain emotions, it took me many years to address the subject of war in a book.
Dante Alighieri, despite having written one of the most monumental works of literature, felt sorry for himself because he could not put into words all that he felt.
Language is a collective construction, possibly the largest and most complex of humanity. I can't imagine a life without words at this point.
Have you gone through the hardship of writing and not being able to write? And what can you say about it? What advice would you give to the youth coming after you?
I am not a disciplined author, one of those who take writing as any other profession and stick to a schedule. In this sense, it is good to distinguish poetry from poem. The poem is a linguistic construction that expresses poetry and requires literary work. Aristotle already said that many poems did not contain poetry and that, in the same time, poetry could be found in texts that were not written in the form of poems. A poetic idea can take many days to mature until the moment arrives when it is possible to put it into words, then one wonders when the writing of that poem began: at the moment I conceived it or when I sat down to write it? Other times it appears spontaneously and is written in a few minutes. I am one of those who think that poetry has its rhythms to manifest itself and that it is not possible to regulate this process.
But I do work with words every day because in addition to being a poet I am an editor, which is an enriching profession since it gives us access to the gestation of writing in other authors and allows us to value even those works that are not to our personal taste.
I can only advise young people a true love of words and intellectual honesty. That is to say: do not renounce beauty, do not write with an ulterior purpose, never fall into the temptation to write to satisfy the ego.
Your unique place in world literature has been studied and we hope that you will answer our questions carefully!
