There was a time when Juan Villoro (Mexico City, 1956) was convinced that his father, the Mexican-Catalan thinker Luis Villoro, was “an infiltrated Soviet spy.” He proudly said that he was an enemy of the Americans, since his name appeared in the so-called black book of customs, where the names of the alleged enemies of the American homeland were noted. His son did not quite understand the interest that an agent in Mexico could have at that time, but what he did not believe was the excuse that he always gave when he wondered about his profession: “I dedicate myself to finding the meaning of life, He said. I thought he was kidding me.” But no, he didn’t. Philosophy was his true profession and also the reason for occasional absences, even though he was present.
Villoro Jr. made an effort all his life to understand it and to bring positions from two worlds that had little to do with each other. “I moved in the field of feelings. He, strictly in the rational. It was through writing that we achieved a more fluid understanding and communication, ”the writer confesses to La Vanguardia during his visit to Barcelona. Precisely for this reason, when he felt the need to delve into the figure of the philosopher, it naturally arose to do so through the pen. The result is The Figure of the World (Random House Literature), a book that, without being a biography, allows us to delve into the singular life of this social fighter and architect of a fundamental work; and, in the background, that of the author himself and the portrait of an era, which goes from exile to the inference of the Cuban revolution in Latin America, passing through the student movement of 68 and the Zapatista rebellion.
The writer warns that this “is not even remotely a memorial full of grievances like the ones Knausgård does, nor is it a Pedro Páramo-type novel, which tells the story of a father who is a living grudge. It’s simply the best way I’ve found to understand him and, incidentally, understand me.” Of course, “if he had been a more common father, he probably would not have been a literary father. The literary is always difficult to investigate ”, he admits.
Villoro describes his father as “a person who didn’t need to be authoritarian to be firm. I belong to a generation in which it was difficult to disobey adults and in which parents were those mysterious beings who did not share their lives with the little ones. Social interaction is always a huge emotional commitment, for better and for worse. And in that world my father circulated with a certain foreignness of affections, something that I required. I found the opportunity to put into words a very thoughtful but seldom emotional father to be exhilarating.”
The title is not trivial either. “He often used the expression the figure of the world in reference to the thinker trying to capture an era. He wrote a text at her time about Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz in which he reflected on the way in which the nun managed to capture the world of the new Spain with all its complexity. I have tried to do the same but on a small scale, focusing on my little personal world, and always with the idea that the shadow of the father is present in us. He also felt that way with his. In fact, the search for my own father stems from the absence of his.”
The philosopher’s was “a story of uprooting. He was born in Barcelona but lost his father when he was very young. They send him to a boarding school with the Jesuits in Belgium, where he gets used to spending hours alone and among books and, surely, where his interest in what would become his profession was born. But from there he must leave at the start of World War II. Then he arrives in Mexico, a country that disconcerts him, because he sees it as unfair, violent and corrupt, which forces him to endlessly search for a foothold that he ends up finding in the indigenous world”.
Still, he never forgot his hometown. “He always talked about the Ciutadella park, Tibidabo, the Catalan cream and Barça. His relationship with soccer was an allusion to a lost childhood. That later crystallized with me by taking me to the stadium for a practical need. I thought he was a soccer fan, but until I started writing this book I didn’t realize that he really didn’t take me as a fan but as a father. Even though he wasn’t the most affectionate person in the world, he would take me there to hang out with me, not because he really wanted to watch the game. He liked Futbol Club Barcelona, ??a team he couldn’t see there because there was no satellite TV. That’s why it was so moving for me when the team sent me a condolence on the death of my father. It truly is more than a club.”
To write this book, Villoro has had to wait a long time. “I have been paying attention to details and writing them down all my life, but I felt that I could not talk about all this until he passed away, due to a matter of respect and distance. In addition, there have been periods of time in which I have had to stop writing since certain doubts arose. If I don’t consider myself exceptional as a father, how can I complain about mine? I think I’m different from him but I’m not necessarily better. This is something that my daughter would have to say in her own book, but I hope she has the decorum that I had and writes it down when I am dead, ”he concludes.
