Interview by Maria Teresa Liuzzo given to the egyptian journalist Mohammad Helmi Elsallab
Mohammad Helmi Elsallab
Talk about yourself and your creativity… as you would like the Egyptian reader to know you?
Maria Teresa Liuzzo: Often in secret I’ve been writing since i was child, I was and still i am in love with nature, and the sky, which i believe are God’s paradise, the Kingdom of the light, hope and Mercy. I still feel enraptured in this day, by the unknown, and I dare living the rhytmic moment that i feel digging in the memory of time. My writing is sorrow, but life and love.Love that creates without imprisoning.I feel a water creature and free from the word that comes like a flesh of down or like a stream of blood where the heart is its center. I had alwys said that I write not to die anti s is the lone world i feel myself confortable, away from deceit, jealousy, wickedness. Creativity is as continous as spring water. It’s the embrace of the world, Anassimandro’s Apeiron, not the limit . Egypt has always fascinated me, so much I say that two friends of mine are Egyptians. In a previous interview with the Egyptian Journalist Hamdy Elmelegye, broadcast on Middlewest newsletter, I said that egyptians writers are important, and they have nothing to envy to the south-american ones. I find them very smart and I share a lot of their thinking. Writing, for me was my family, mom, dad, sister, brother, lover, water, earth, sea, storm, wind and cahos. Fire especially, that is the Earth’s core of the wind, its heart, the intellect even. The cahos becomes word inthe creative mind. It’s not a puzzle game, but suffering that becomes sublimation, facing the cruelty of life its continuos challenges. I was born writer, or an enfant prodige anyway, in the words of the noble women that hosted, together with my maternal grandmother, lady in waiting of one of them. I used to paint when I didn’t know to write yet, smearing walls and doors with my fingers. I made swallows, masts, sailboat, abstract figures. With gradations of color matching the propotions of the traced subjected. I was a curous child, everything i loved, and everything captured and inspired me.
Your literary upbringing and interests… How did you chart your path in the world of writing… and your family’s interaction with you?
Maria Teresa Liuzzo: My interests ranged from stillness to movement, the musicenraptured and overwhelmed me like a waved sea, and the whistling of the wind also,the hatching of a poppy, the berry of a rose, the wail of the rain, the charme of the rainbow. I hid feelings and words, as if they were sins until they reach the age of majority. Writing, at that time represented for many freedom or libertinism-if had been a woman who had written-pride, revolt, unleashing to get herself free from that hand that would never free its prey. Family commitments, during that time, didn’t stop me from dedicating myself to my greatest passion: writing. I had to face many sacrifices, but so did the gratifications.
Tell us about the cultural situation in your country and the extent of its literary popularity. Is it possible to draw a picture of your country for the Egyptian reader? What is the experience of your literary publication (Lamos). Tell us about this experience and the extent of its success and literary impact?
Maria Teresa Liuzzo: I can’t complain since i’ve been published since I was a child on the pages of the National newspapers and in several anthologies together with well-known authors.Many literature Nobel price nominees, became interested at my works: such as Maria Luisa Spaziani, Athanase Vantchev de Thracey, Peter Russel, and the biggest critics of the Italian Literature, such as A.Piromalli, G.B. Squarotti, F,Ulivi, A.Cappi, V. Vettori, V, Guarracino, Romeo Magherescu, Eugen Evu. Current popularity is just confusion, prizes galore, eresie and vulgarities passed off as a poetry where the flocks cheersand are on their side, increasing the leftover cancan. They study a few, and very few they read, they copy everywhere, and like flies, they are prizes and contests without any restraint. Useless prizes, deceptive diplomas, on the printed paper,behind a direction of arrogance and piloted disloyalty from the various cliques and literary mafias.
Who are the most important innovators you have influenced in your country and internationally?
Maria Teresa Liuzzo: My works had been published both in Italy and abroad, by several newpapers, blogs, and cultural review, for over twenty years I was foreign correspondent. I was translated into chinese,french, arabian, russian, bulgarian, rumanian, english, polish, greek, japanese, macedonian, german, albanian, portuguese, spanish, bengali.The first to take interest in my literary works were arab nationality:Hassan Ezzat(teacher at the University for Foreign and Mohamed Akalay (poet).
To what extent did you interact with Egyptian and Arabic literature? Who did you read? Have you visited Egypt before? What do you know about it and its culture?
Maria Teresa Liuzzo: I think that arab writers are close to my way of thinking,they labeled, infact(not only they, but alerian writers, too), my writing very close to The Sufism. I often read arab poets, and some novelist and i believe the egiptian people the most advanced. If we see the Monuments, “the Mnemosine Giants” and the Pyramids of Giza, in particolar, we can undertand the artistic and literary real size and the stature of this Ancient and Cultured people. Some things should be revised, of course, but none are perfect, maybe the perfection doesn’t belong to this world. I never visited Egypt, but through its works, legends. Fairies, its immense History, and the Historical, and literary big Wealth, the value arabs place to friendship, and I think myself to be very lucky in finding so educated and Great Humanity people.
What books are currently available near you that you would like to read?
Maria Teresa Liuzzo: Have no preferences about books, just because i think the each author is worth to be read. Sometimes, to much noise about a poet or writer is done, we try to label him at every cost and have him eternalized between the “Greats”. But this is another tale.
How do peoples come together? How do we put an end to the pain of people everywhere? Does culture have a real role?
Maria Teresa Liuzzo: All peoples should and could join, but there’s no will;there are very few are those who aspire to peace and no one wants to give up anything. Evil, political and economic interest prevail that doesn’t permit, of those who believe in this mission of brotherhood –despite the efforts- Culture has a façade. If this was not the case there wouldn’t be preferences, genuflections and begging, and not even literary mafias, who impose even tough they know they are wrong poets and writers who are worth less than zero. By exising those who have value, it makes them feel safe,they boast supremacy like the dog that marks its territory, snatching value from those who really deserve it. “Blessed are the monocles in the land of blindpeople”-you can’t discuss other people’s tastes-Power, violence, protagonism, threats, are far from culture that has the ardous task to build not the one to destroy. This cynical and immoral rush of appearance at every cost smears the truth and obscure the merito f the real few poets and writers worthy of the name. It is nothing more than a bipolar move,miserable, and ruthless, of the various judges. Their cunning, not the intelligence or consciousness, take the short cut and enter the night with the headlights off, and disguises himself like the tree of Cockaigne, but nothingness dies and then is reborn.
What are your most important books, publications, and creativity?
Maria Teresa Liuzzo: Books are sons, everibody is loved, they had been read after being written.They had a long and hard gestation, loved and traslated by the insiders the works. Another novel is going to be translated by an actor and director into english, aiming to realize from the famous and successful trilogy about a Neorealist movie. The numerous poetry books and the five novels have obtained great International success.
Do you believe in the role of the intellectual in confronting painful reality?
Maria Teresa Liuzzo: The role of the intellectual has changed, among those who write there are also dishonest critics that never they say one is bettere than themselves. During my writer career i met lots of honest persons that had reviewed and prelate me, introduced me in the great Theaters, and Fine Arts Academies and widespread my works all over the world. First ot all the irishman Peter Russel-(6 Nobel Prize nominations), Athanase Vantchev de Thracy who translated some of my poems into French language, and he didn’t have time to translate my novel “Now i speak- (he had a nomination for 2019 Nobel for Literature also), the same was for Maria Luisa Spaziani who taught at the Chair that was the Pascoli’s one, nominated for Nobel. I include the Erudite Mauro D’Castelli, between the greatest. He is poet, writer, and literary critic who had always appreciated and supported in this tortuos journey ,very often violent and hard because of envy and protagonism. Another important person i me the was Thomas Fleming director 0f “Chronicles” and editor in Chicago, he is n love with my poetry and he is one of the most important supporter. He wrote to me “Maria Teresa Liuzzo i’ll leave to you the torch of Magna Grecia”, in one letter of him.If today ’ writer weren’t a hurricane of gluttony (more than one has even wished me death.i was and i am an inconvenient person), and once again I want to point this out, i went on just by my own forces, with great sacrifices and waivers. Never catwalks or appearences as a “goodevening” young lady, but I lived, and live isolated and free- I don’t write to store useless pieces of paper or titles to use or to abuse. Hence the role of the intellectual turns 360 degree just to gain support from the various hen farms and chickens inthe jungle of social media in an inhuman and harlequinesque theater. Their task is to appear at every coast, invented degenerative and massive deseases even, or family in nonexsted problems, in order to Charity programs, while they borrow even a greeting, continuino to boast nonexisting titles in order to marginalize the genial and irreparity word. Word but survives to a whutering life, always running Windward to find lastly in the sunset magic or in the atmosphere of a fairy tale. In moments that are enigmas, often obscure and involve, embedded words suddenly awaken and set like asleep pearl, where the breaths short though, finds love digging at the end into a book. Man doesn’t grasp the Holy Baby’s Divine Tenderness, and His Birth, also come to the eerie historical scenary, not only for the war in Ukraine, but the Holy Earth is involved in a bloody war scenario.The massacre of innocents are repeated , and the bitter weeping of a lost and suffering Humanity, handed by Jackals and magicians of the worst, deaf and indifferent to an atmosphere of fraternità and spiritualità, but imbued with hatred that drags Manhood adrift.
Do you believe in the role of poetry in prevailing feelings of love and beauty?
Maria Teresa Liuzzo: I strongly trust the Peotry love, just because is a gift that comes from God, is pure crativity , made of water, fire, air and earth, Il the soul that rebirths in the Chast Nudity of dawn.
What about your philosophy in life? At the end of the dialogue, what would you like to say to the Arab reader?
Maria Teresa Liuzzo: My philosophy doesn’t stop me sufferring and struggling for a fairer world,though I certainly know,it is not easy to realize. The very fact that it has won the hearts of so many widespread readers make me closest to each of every one of them. This is the right way forward. That’s way I didn’t surrend to the controversies of life, and i’m going on when the counter wind between a fall and another one, also, always with my head held high. Everyone perceives according his own sensibility and his knowledges. Poetry is pure doctrine, truth, courage, denunciation, loyalty in the world of loneliness and bitterness. But, the longest night is also going to come an end. I just have a dream; that one that a day, non very far, to visit Egypt. I’d like to find myself on the Kings Valley, to see the Tutankhamon, located on the West Bank of the Nile closet o the Ancient Tebae. It should be really immortalize in the pupils and into the heart such mysterious Areas and get them immortal in the memory like life experiences and knowledges. It should be very nice if i could visit the Egyptian Museum and the “Memnone Giants” (which I had talked about in my Poem Books that is going to be published ) the Archeological Enterprise should be a grat conquest, art and science, discovery of light far for megalomanias, diatribs, tavern gossips, That sacred area ask for respect: only those who are in tune with the spirit has the necessary tools to get close the fairy tale and the myth. They, shouded in a veil of auralism, wil be able to read and realize through the symbols the concrete realities that surround them a magico of thrills and ecstasy.