A Crack, a Mother, and a Daughter: Valeria Luiselli Presented “Beginning, Middle, End”

Before a packed audience at the Thames Cultural Center, Valeria Luiselli (Mexico City, 1983) presented *Principio, medio, fin*, the novel that launches Feltrinelli’s Spanish-language catalog. The Mexican writer spoke with Gabriela Cabezón Cámara about the book’s origins, Greco-Roman classics, observations of the natural world, and the questions that run through a story born, as she explained, from a conversation with her daughter. “It feels like a birthday,” remarked Cabezón Cámara as the event began. The audience included writers, editors, journalists, and readers who had come to hear the author of *Desierto sonoro*. Cabezón Cámara opened the conversation with a reflection on the novel, which she described as an “immense” work due to its ability to weave an intimate story with questions that far exceed the scope of its characters. The plot of Principio, medio, fin follows a mother and daughter who, after a family breakup, travel through Sicily as volcanoes erupt. Between readings of Pliny, the Odyssey, and the Aeneid, they attempt to rebuild a daily life and revisit the story of their great-grandmother, Nanna, who worked on archaeological excavations before emigrating to America. “What is a home? What is a beginning, what is a middle, what is an end?” summarized the Argentine writer as she described some of the questions that run through the book. He also highlighted the way the novel shifts the focus from human stories to a broader scale. “We live as if the landscape and geography were the backdrop against which human stories unfold, but the truth is that our small stories are nothing more than the backdrop to the much vaster tragicomedy of natural history,” she said. “Luiselli explained that the initial impulse for the novel came from a conversation with her daughter. During a series of nights when she was reading her Greek myths before bed (“a very bad idea; I don’t recommend it if the goal is for them to fall asleep quickly”), the girl asked her a question that lingered for a long time: why is there always something that splits in two in origin stories? “ “I was able to answer her at the time about what it means to split in two—a crack that opens, something that breaks. But I couldn’t offer her a good answer to the immense question of why this exists in origins,” she recalled. That concern ended up becoming the driving force behind the book. “In origin stories, there seems to be something that splits into two halves, both on a cosmogonic scale and in the female body, which must split in two to give birth to a life, and then in all our many turns in life where we start over because we’ve suffered a great loss.” “Throughout the conversation, the author returned again and again to the idea of scales.” She explained that while writing, she read a book about scales and was fascinated by one observation: although a whale and a mouse have very different heart rates, over the course of their lives their hearts beat approximately the same number of times. That way of thinking about the relationship between seemingly incommensurable dimensions also appears in the novel, where volcanoes, family genealogies, origin myths, and domestic scenes coexist. "Luiselli explained that this reflection on scales and resonances was also intertwined with another project she has been working on for several years. It is *Ecos de las Tierras Fronterizas* (Echoes of the Borderlands), a sound piece developed alongside an interdisciplinary collective that records acoustic landscapes along the border between Mexico and the United States. During that process, they recorded everything from humpback whales in the Pacific to deserts, rivers, and space centers in Texas. “That process of listening has re-literated my ear,” she said. As he explained, the work of recording sounds, searching for repetitions, and detecting resonances ended up influencing the very form of the novel, constructed from echoes, recurring images, and questions that resurface from different places. That fragmentary structure was also linked to the doubts that accompanied the writing of the book. For years, he explained, he didn’t know if he was writing a novel or an essay. “This is clearly an essay,” he would think on some days. В следующем месяце она изменила свое мнение. «Конечно, нет. Это роман». В конце концов она решила смириться с этой нерешительностью. «Философия и классика также заняли центральное место в беседе. Луиселли даже пошутила, что роман выступает в качестве «эссе против Аристотеля», имея в виду классическое деление на начало, середину и конец, сформулированное философом. По мнению автора, «середина» — это неоднозначное пространство, которое не является ни началом, ни развязкой, — заслуживает более глубокого размышления. «Учитывая, что в нашей жизни мы почти все время находимся в этой середине, она заслуживает немного большего внимания», — утверждала она. В этом контексте Кабесон Камера особо подчеркнул то, как роман переосмысливает образ Энея, несущего своего отца на руках и ведущего сына за руку. Там, где традиция на протяжении веков видела основополагающую сцену, связанную с зарождением Римской империи, Луиселли предлагает другой взгляд: мать, ведущая дочь за руку и поддерживающая при этом свою собственную мать. «Именно в этом и проявляется вся человечность этого образа», — заметила аргентинская писательница. К концу встречи Луиселли затронула две темы, проходящие красной нитью через большую часть ее творчества: чужестранство и способы взгляда на мир. Исходя из размышлений о разнице между туристом и эмигрирующим иностранцем — фигурой, которая также появляется в романе, как и в «Звуковой пустыне», — она утверждала, что последний сохраняет особое внимание к тому, что наблюдает, стремление понять и принадлежать. Эта мысль побудила её рассказать о том, как она вернулась к перечитыванию и изучению классиков, и в особенности — досократических философов. «Они были первыми, кто, как мы знаем, зафиксировал мир», — сказала она. По её словам, речь идет не столько об эрудированном поиске, сколько о возвращении к внимательному наблюдению. «Это был способ вспомнить, как смотреть, как наблюдать», — заключила она.