The future is never remembered
av Joaquin Albaicin

Stockholm, 11th November 2002

Mire but mangle phrala aj phenja, ladies and gentlemen, lacho dives:

First of all, Iīd like to grate to Baki Hasan, Fred Taikon and the Stockholm Romani Cultural Centre the invitation and the chance to be now, today, among Roma phrala and colleagues from other European countries as well as with our Swedish and Finnish friends. And there is a thing I want to point before to give response to Björn Kummīs enquiring: it is that Iīd really like to give my brief lecture directly in our Romani chib. Unfortunately the anti-Romani legislative policy led in Spain in the past wreaked havoc with our language. Thatīs why at the present day we conserve no more than pure traces of it that do not enable us to hold a complete conversation in Romani. Let us say, nevertheless, that due to some individual initiatives arosen in the recent years we can reasonably expect to see outcomes leading to its rebirth in the not very long term. Of course, I am refering to a rebirth of the Romani chib as an everyday conversation language. In order to speak about it as a regular literary language, we will have to wait for some time else.

In the country in which I was born and currently live, we can speak about three Roma authors -José Heredia Maya, Sebastián Porras Soto and myself- professionally devoted to literary art, whose novels, essays, short stories, poems, articles and so on are regularly printed by leading publishing houses, magazines and daily newspapers. Maybe four or five else, who occasionally give their contributions to second-line magazines would deserve also to be mentioned, though -being rather amateurs- they do not devote their energies to literature in full time and remain in a territory where it is not very easy to locate the frontierline where does the hobbie finish and starts the vocation.

As regards to the influence and position of the Roma authors in the Spanish literary world, it is necessary to remark that both stem from and are the product of the general attitude held towards the Roma by the majority society. As in nearly every country with an old and important Romani population, the average Spanish citizen cultivates an ambiguous attitude towards the Roma. On one hand, he watches at the Romani minority as, among all the minorities, the most "suspicious". On the other hand, the artistic brilliance shown through the years by the members of this minority in music, dance, bullfights or other arts make to the very same average Spaniard to recognize in the Roma a sort of predilects of the Muses. This certainly does not mean that those who admire the Romani art should at the same time be recognized as people with an special liking for the Romani culture and values. The Romani culture, as well as all the non-Western ones, is generally seen as uncompatible with the aims and demands of alleged progress in which the Western World is envolved.

The fascination projected on the collective mentality by the artistic prestige enjoyed by the Roma as a whole makes possible to an hyphotetical Romani author the access to the main publishing houses. Nevertheless, an author-publisher long term agreement is not so easy, since the attitude held by the Spanish publishers and readers towards the talented Roma artist is characterized by the same given ambiguity. After the initial euphoria, they donīt know where to locate you. They are totally lacking of strategy for you. "A Romani writer! This is great! We donīt have anybody writing on the Romani world!" This is the first reaction. The second one is: "Wait a moment... Are those stories going to interest to our readers? Our readers are not Gypsies. Moreover, what kind of stories is this author going to write?"  So, we have to face two walls. First, the strange assumption that the Roma donīt read, that all our potential readers are necessarily Gadje. The second one: the esteem for the values of the different cultures preached by the Modern Western Civilization is in the most of the cases a pure joke.

There is still a third step. It is when the publisher meditates: "Well, he could write about another subjects, since we have to concede that the guy writes well, but... About what? He is a Gypsy! How could he write on Astronautic, domestic policy or history of Medieval China? How to believe it? How to expect such thing? Oh, he should have devoted himself to dance or bullfights! Itīs a pity he didnīt!" So, we find a third wall: the gratuitous assumption that Roma authors are supposedly oriented to become some kind of official bards of the "Gypsy life". Nobody certainly expects a Gadjo author to be necessarily the literary spokesman of the folk traditions typical of his native region or village. But you are regularly obliged to explain as simple thing as your condition of writer, as simple thing as that your are a professional writer... regardless your ethnic origin. And you frequently have to face a really schizophrenic attitude: if you write about Flamenco, Romani traditions, etc... You are just a pintoresque, minor and non relevant author: "He only writes about Gypsies!". If, on the contrary, you donīt usually write about "typical Romani" subjects, you are an intruder: "Why this guy does not write about what he really knows?"

At a first glance, such arguments could seem very surprising coming from people allegedly engaged with the dream of a World free of frontiers, but they turn out to be totally understandable as soon as we realize that we, the Roma, are not the only victims of such narrow mentality. I think for example in Sherman Alexie, the excellent Native American author, whose first book of short stories was clapped by the North American critics as a blow of fresh wind. He was very well received, though in fact very subliminal but eloquent prejudices could be detected already in the first praises devoted to him, as for example: "Sherman Alexie is one of the best contemporary writers, and it has to be said that not only among the Indian ones". We are never said, we are never precised -right?- that, for example, Norman Mailer is "one of the best contemporary writers, and it has to be said that not only among the White ones". In any case, the cordiality of the critics did not last very much. It lasted just while the author did not cross certain frontiers. When he decided to leave behind for a while his literary world of suggestive metaphores and wrote Indian Killer, a novel in which the average American citizen is very sharply portraited, Sherman Alexie was "rediscovered" by the critics as a totally new author. His talent was no more. Suddenly, he turned out to be an "scarcely ripe" author that still "has not found his literary path" and should "leave indigenist chauvinism behind".

In Spain there does not exist such thing as a Romani Lobby. If it doesnīt exist not even in the field of music, since our control never does reach the top steps of the staircase... what to say about the literary field? For some years, some thought of the so-called Romani organizations as a tool through which their works could be made widely known. But I do not believe the general policy followed in Spain by them to be a positive contribution to such aim, since these organizations hardly pay atention to finearts -literature included. "Our mission", state those who work in these organizations, "is to provide of houses, water, light, etc. to our people, and such accusations, though baseless, could easily lead to a wider exclusion". I see their point and I understand it. I just try to mean that the path of development for an artist is in the artistic atmospheres, not in the official, charitable ones.

To walk an own artistic path is not always easy, since this is not what the literary establishment expects from you. Supports for this mission will be hardly found. The artistīs road is a long one, flanked by spines as that of the knight errant. That who becomes familiar with the fact that vocation is not a choose, but the chooser only can expect to be supported by the heart. But it is clear to me that giving in is not the solution. Art never wins from a surrender. I donīt think that neither the old prejudices rooted in the Western mentality, nor the acculturation process in course, nor the so widespread politicaly correct mediocrity ruling the latter-days cultural bureaucracies should dishearten us. In my opinion, those who expect to triumph in the literary field just by no other reason than that they are Roma as well as those who think that atention will be never paid to them just because the same reason are both in a wrong and forget that Art and Market do not necessarily share the same laws and views. Many writers probably sold no more than five hundred items of his books in all his life, but their influence over the following generations has been far larger than that of many of their then famous and now forgotten contemporaries. We should also remember, as Roma, how many great metropolis, nations, empires, peoples, political systems and utopias have fallen... while we remain here. And, if different modes, including a Gypsy Mode, have been known to Europe in several periods -in nowadays Spain, Flamenco is in fashion-, modes are always circumstancial phenomenons.

Since my view, if we want to remain loyal to the spirit and the teachings of our ancestors and want to contribute to the preservation of our Romani identity we should avoid as authors all annoying and sterile engagement with currently in fashion pseudoutopias and pseudophilosophies alien to our traditions and suspicious to our Romani heart. We shouldnīt forget that the true art work is that whose roots are deeply planted in the past. "The more a poet sings therein his genealogical tree, better he will sing", Jean Cocteau wrote. The Western Modern Art lacks generally of trascendence for the reason that the modern artist, while working, does think just in the future, in the coming time. And the future is never remembered. Only the past is remembered. Only the past remains.