Eva Baltasar

Thank you so much for showing interest in my stories. So far, I’ve drawn from landscapes of my own life when writing. These are landscapes that serve as a backdrop for anchoring fictional stories. I don’t write autobiography, nor do I write autofiction (a term I don’t fully grasp). I discover characters, voices that seduce me and intuitively lead me to build a narrative. I mirror myself in these voices, projecting onto them, using them to express my own discomforts.
Writing, for me, is a journey into the subconscious, into the dark areas where my own monsters reside, along with family history and collective archetypes. I use my girl main characters to dig into that space. I keep a relationship with them because writing these characters is a way of getting to know them, they become a strong source of company. Though they often make me uncomfortable, I end up falling in love with them, as I did with the protagonist of Boulder.

My own experience of an unbalanced relationship, marked by miscommunication and with motherhood, inspired Boulder, alongside the need to become aware of my own situation. For me, writing is a way to get to know myself. I discover who I am in the writing process. That’s one of the powers of literature; it doesn’t matter whether we think of the writer or the reader — it’s all about awakening. When you see things you hadn’t seen before, you can do things you hadn’t done. In my case, I got divorced after writing Boulder.

Right now, I’m writing at the same little table but in a corner by the fireplace, in the dining room. I can write almost anywhere as long as I’m alone. Writing is one of the things that feels most proper to me, like laughing or eating. I write because I enjoy it, out of passion. I love it. In any case, before writing, I entrust myself to the Holy Spirit and say, “You’ll have to tell me what to write, because I don’t know.”

I spent a lot of my childhood either in school or shut away in my room, and I loved both places. In my room, I did homework, copied books, and read. It’s a safe place, isolated from people, where I feel good. It connects me to this primal feeling of a cave. I’m a creature of dens and storehouses, of contact only with those closest to me.
And yes, a stable is a good place, somewhere that meets the most basic needs: there’s food, warmth, and companionship. You find yourself there, and that’s the most fascinating discovery. It’s a sheltered and unassuming place, the most impenetrable one, as the protagonist in Mammoth says. There’s a reason Jesus was born in a stable.

I am not a woman of just one bible, but it’s true that I find Mansfield’s journals marvellous. I suppose they’ve influenced me about as much as other books and authors I admire: Goethe, Woolf, Withman, Duras, Kazantzakis, Thoreau, and many others.

I’m not really interested in the violence inherent in the concept of authority. That said, I get the question, and besides the authors mentioned above, there are people who, without being writers, live in ways that influence me as much or more than many beloved books. What do they have in common? The lack of judgement about other people’s lives and a deep acceptance of life. They live with a ‘yes’ on their lips. They’re not naive, neither resigned. I admire their wisdom.

It was interesting, easy, and beautiful. Julia works in her own way, truly makes the novel hers, and works the magic of bringing it into another language and culture. She brings her own poetics, which I think is the hardest part. That’s why translation involves a kind of co-authorship. When the translation is finished, we have a small meeting to solve any questions that may have come up. In that meeting, I become aware of the care she brings to the language and the story. It’s a gift to count with her.

My own life, I would say. I think in images, and I have a vivid dream world — I dream a lot and remember my dreams; I can even, to a certain extent, induce and influence them. I feed off other reading and from hours spent walking in the woods near my home. I’m also inspired by the company of interesting people who have nothing to do with, let’s say, the world of books. I read less, every time less and less. And I spend hours doing nothing, just being, and I’d say that’s what most inspires my life and language.

I don’t feel the need to separate myself from my protagonists. I mirror myself in them, make them speak for me, make them live for me, connected to my own desires and instincts. It’s easy and safe, cathartic, and fun. Above all, it’s terribly interesting. There’s a lot of me in them, but I change and they don’t – they’re stuck on the page – and so sometimes, in certain ways, the separation occurs naturally. I’m fine with that.

I’ve been interested in all three since I can remember. Writing about them allows me to explore them, and I get pleasure in this exploration. Writing, to me, is closely linked to beauty and pleasure.

It’s a personal interest, too. I feel that we mostly go through this world without truly living. I’m an observer. I observe people, animals, plants, rocks, river courses, and weather phenomena. I observe things. I observe myself. And I feel that we live on the surface, on tiptoe. Life is somewhere else; we have it without unfolding it, without touching or seeing it. I’ve felt this strongly since I was young. I feel it least when doing things with my hands, things involving matter: when I gather firewood, cook, caress, comb, wash, light the fire. Sometimes when I write, but not when building a story — only when working with language itself.
I lived for three years in an isolated rural area. In one of the houses, I didn’t even have electricity. There, life pulsed, all that beautiful and terrible pulp beating in the palm of my hand, within my heart and lungs, stamped on the surface of my eyes and embedded in my brain. Day after day. Full of meaning. It was marvellous. If God wills, I’ll return.

I’m writing a novel. It’s a tough job: the protagonist feels like a lesbian (laughs) and I don’t anymore.