The oracle of Delphi Interview Magazine Absinthe 
This morning I received a welcome surprise. Community Blog which is responsible for Prisa group, ELN blog "drones on street corners, playing an old interview I did with my dear friend Pilar Pedraza, under the original title" The concern across the mirror "and with my name, although later, during my initial interview has been replaced by "LC".
The Prisa SA legal notice of this blog, it clearly informs the rights as listed in their pages content area are owned, in addition Reproduction is prohibited, blah, blah, blah.
Nobody asked my permission to reproduce this interview, nor was I paid for it, and rights, are mine and not of Mr. Rush, so that here, in my humble blog without the auspices of giants, literally copied the interview and their link so they can verify. (Then removed, insurance).
This is called to pass through the lining of the guts of copyright and the work of writers in general, belong to the group unless, of course. Obviously the country is not liable for anything, because they are powerful.
And sorry for the author or the author's blog under the alias or avatar of "Irimotu2" which no doubt has worked with the best of intentions, but I'm not willing to work for others to change anything or even hosts.
The concern across the mirror
And here's the interview:
With a modesty that when he speaks of his books called "booklets", Pilar Pedraza (Toledo, 1951), runs away from paths fashion and literary circles, this "Dark Lady", all light and smiles, perhaps the paradigm of the Gothic in Spain, moving on tiptoe through the narrative scene left a deep and solid footprint in the literature fantastic horror and the Gothic novel and short story. The coherence and consistency of his work, his baroque style and bright at the same time, as well as distant recurrence of the circumstantial issues that appeal to the unconscious constant values \u200b\u200band culture, are the pillars of his work. From Pilar Pedraza young lives in Valencia, whose University is Professor of Arts by the Chair of History of Cinema. She is the author of the novels
"Brides still"
, "The phase of ruby \u200b\u200b, " The jewels of the snake ", " Little Passion ", " Landscape with reptiles " , "Satyr Skin" , "The bitch of Alexandria of several books of short stories most notably the magnificent collection of horror stories " Arcane Thirteen ", and testing " Beauty , enigma and nightmare ", " love machines ", " Spectra ", etc, as well as the Latin translation of the classic esoteric literature: " The dream of Polifilo ". Pilar Pedraza is an author true to his readers, his beliefs and his own work, one whose image shines Dark Lady in the mirror of the Gothic letters, whose words are capable of generating chills the most seasoned fan of horror and gothic genre in general. LITERATURAS.COM: Ph.D. in art history professor, how did you come to writing? PILAR
PEDRAZA: Writing has always been a natural in me, to the point that the development of a doctoral thesis, as I had to do, or books that I've been researching my academic activities have been also writing, and there comes a time when not distinguish very well ... for me there is no fundamental difference between creative writing and science, and I move with some ease and happiness in intermediate tasks, such as essays, and perhaps that kind of mix or balance between creation and research is the book "The beauty, mystery and nightmare"
.
LC: There is a work of craftsmanship in your work, how do you work a novel?
PP: That I would like to know (laughs). It is really difficult to answer because I do not follow a very defined. What costs me more effort-and most interesting to me in a novel is to arouse the materials inside, have them forward as a sort of compilation of bricks with which we must build something, and once you have start making rational, with a narrative, all those things that have sprung up as a magma, and that a reader would be unintelligible. The eruption of this magma is so liberating for me, what I pleased, and the second phase is to structure and polish, work less creative, more officially, it takes me a long time, because my intention is that magma is not chaotic, not arbitrary, but have a solid structure, a well-crafted dialogue, etc. LC: I play in your work there is an almost constant presence of the myth: according to Levi-Strauss, it has a conciliatory role contradictions between desire and reality, life and death, nature and culture, "they will appeal to the unconscious internal reader, a territory where slumber?
PP: What really interests me is internal to myself, in my own territory, and how it is theoretically impossible (the unconscious is what it is and not be known), one can only approach it from the myths, language and certain methods. And the myth is perhaps the most creative of all, and allows me to delve into myself through them, remove them from inside me in this form of magma told you and give you an intelligible structure, communicative. And I really want, from that time, the unconscious response of the reader, although I know I can not address either the conscious or the unconscious of anyone, but through some common myths, that first experiment on myself, then I can communicate certain experiences intellectual and erotic experience that I consider most important in the literature. LC: How would separate these two experiences?
PP: No, not separated by a line because the eroticism is also spiritual, perhaps the term "spiritual" I mean more like a theoretical aspect, and eroticism to a more body, though the spirit is inside the body, is an emanation of his own, of course, but I consider the spiritual in its philosophical aspect, in view of the world, death, time. LC: All your novels are marked by the myths, the great myths of mankind, but mostly those who refer to the feminine condition.
PP: I am interested in the myths of womanhood in the same way that I am interested in everything that happens is that, perhaps for being a woman, I am closer to some problems, with a view that can not stop being feminine for my upbringing, or perhaps my writing will see more such female myths than others, but I am interested in myths like women who like themselves, because as a human being I am concerned about aspects of reality in both male and female, which I think can not be separated. Then, at the time of writing, perhaps because it is the unconscious as the highest expression in certain forms of speech, if you use more female myths. LC: In your work clearly shows a universe of women, a kind of harem, with such force that it seems to be a sectarian world, matriarchal. Maybe I'm wrong ...
PP: I matizaría in the sense that perhaps in the writing appears more feminine and more concerns deep, and may give the impression of a matriarchal or radical feminism, but I think not. It happens that as a woman of liberal and leftist ideology, of course I am a feminist in the sense that I believe and fight for the equality of men and women, but I've never been partisan or feminism of difference, nor have I fought in any feminism ... I do not agree with a feminine culture have to start inventing again (I think we have enough with the culture that the ancestors have left us with everything in it's feminine and masculine , and everything that's wrong, both on the one hand and on the other), it comes to a more balanced world on the role of men and women, a world in which roles are interchangeable, which has no equal differences and other legal and de facto. LC: Your literary world does not exclude or despise male characters, but behind them, their treatment, evidenced by the failure of his own condition. It is clear from
"Little Passion"
, "Satyr Skin" and "Landscape with reptiles" . PP: Yes, yes, I think at this point in history it can speak of a failure of civilization in general and perhaps all cultures, and that is not attributable solely to the patriarchy, but I think largely culture-historically have failed and are failing, because they have taken opposite directions to the nature and violated to some extent, legislation that would have been preserved and I, of course, having no feminist utopia, I think some values \u200b\u200bthat have historically women: a certain tolerance and a certain contempt for the competition, yes that would have been good, and would be usable. And in that sense, the male characters in these novels fail because of his arrogance and that they ignore the nature or about the body and skin, which are of interest to women. LC: Men and women are doomed to not understand, perhaps since God divided the androgyne. Your work is also a heavy patina of androgyny.
PP: I think they are condemned to understand, if you do not believe so, I despair a lot, because one of my political ideals is the understanding of different, mostly of men and women. Androgyny ... yes, there in my work and my life too. I believe that the boundaries between masculine and feminine as strictly as they have been imposed by our culture is a mistake. Other cultures have been more flexible and it has been put better. LC: Men do not look for themselves? Do they be found? Is it the pride of his own nature?
PP: In part, yes. I think that all literature, for millennia, has remained mostly men, and when it was occupied by women has done from a male point of view, with some papers commissioned by the culture itself, and I certainly I do not follow this line, follow the line of women in the sense that what interested me express myself and how I see nature and the world. And I do not see from the strictly female point of view, but from the person I am, with everything is in my feminine and masculine, because I have very clear that a large part of me is masculine in the sense of a party "socialized masculine" for my own culture and education, and would not resign. LC: Both in your gothic novels like those that are not there is a strong erotic content: Francesco Alberoni eroticism touch calls, interpretation and perception of female body and sex.
PP: Yes, I think you can extend both male and female characters, but especially to women: your body is important, not the other as his own, in that context, perhaps we can speak of a conception autoerotic generally more attributable to female characters. LC: Anyway, the eroticism is not just the body or sex, has a sprawling extension to all that surrounds the characters, even in the structure of your novel can be traced traces of eroticism.
PP: Yes, yes. Refers to what we were talking at first, on the interior magma that comes loaded with eroticism and can not be otherwise, "and that in turn is pervasive eroticism, and, moreover, there is a certain fetishism present in my writing towards physically beautiful things that are beautiful and yes and that I love: Oriental fabrics, precious stones ... It is a tradition of late nineteenth century, the symbolist novel, Gothic novels and fantastic, always a part of luxury, fascinating staging a sumptuous decor to the pleasures of good and evil. LC: Do you think the sensuality of things is in their reading or in nature itself?
PP: I think your reading. LC: Do you think there are people who may lack capacity to interpret the sensuality?
PP: I do not know. No, I think it's all about education and that, as Goethe said: "Do not know what is not, and if anyone, man or woman, educated in the perception of beauty, eroticism can reach a very subtle touch, feminine, even as a man, or you can get to be a sadomasochistic the phallus as a woman, I think that may be interchangeable. LC: In your opinion, what kind of circumstances now agree with those that gave rise to the Gothic novel?
PP: The big event that is always present in the civilization of Judeo-Christian origin: the anxiety and melancholy. LC: Do you think they may have differences of substance between a Gothic novel written by a woman to those written by men?
PP: I do not think. Goth is a romantic sensibility common to all. But the fact is that there have been great writers of the gothic that has instilled a great passion to their stories, extreme passion and at the same time delicate. I think for example in the "Mathilda"
of Mary Shelley or the works of the Bronte sisters.
LC: Why did your passion for the Gothic novel? Is not it an anachronism? The golem, homunculus of Faust, Frankenstein's monster ... Does the child still stands, perhaps more than ever with the discoveries of genetics?
PP: Anachronism at all. Remains, of course, every time takes a different form, to the concerns of the time, but in our contemporary culture these myths are those of romanticism, then go to the end of the century symbolism they are strongest is in the expressionism, especially in the German cinema. Are myths eternally present, as the creator and the creature is the founding myth of the Judeo-Christian civilization, and it is there: the myth of Adam and Eve, and is taken up continuously from a romantic view of creation become of monster emulation of man to God. Now alive by genetics, in another moment it was for the war, or whatever ... LC: You've just published a new novel in VALDEMAR ...
PP: Yes, "The bitch of Alexandria," a story based
recently pagans of Alexandria, when it was a melting pot of difference, a mixture of races, religions, sects, and when the gods coexisted with humans and involved in their lives. I had to document many for the environment as well as attractive plausible result, and remember the course of Greek and Roman art that I have taught at the University and travel, reading, etc. But most important in this novel is, in my opinion, great character rather than its historic. It was very fun to create characters Greeks, Dacians, Egyptians and Romans and put to spooky adventures. As my editor (Pilar Pedraza refers, of course, the lords of Valdemar), is the first "gore peplum.
LC: Could you tell us what projects you are immersed in the moment?
PP: The trial horror film called "Spectra"
, published last year, left me exhausted and I would not write anything in a long season. Of course, things are not so simple. Writing no vacation, only drought. I started working on a new story, with a new monster. And I just finished the script for a movie based on
"The phase of ruby \u200b\u200b in collaboration with the director Spaniard Antoni Aloy, interested in the gothic and terror, and especially love the character says Imperatrice. It is a fabulous project, but probably very expensive. I do not think you get to see the light, at least in Spain.
LC:
"... was doomed, as anyone to see himself not only in the mirror, which returns the subtly distorted picture"
. It's the end of your novel and perhaps most successful in unfolding the wider range of constants in the Gothic genre, "The phase of ruby \u200b\u200b. PP: When you look into the mirror always struck me that what is left out to right and vice versa. A novel is a mirror of the author, of culture in general, the imaginary. LC: And I would add that an author is also a reflection of his own work, and both, in this case, come together in peace and harmony across the mirror.
Norberto Luis Romero.
Hugs, dear Pilar!
