IGNACIO SOLARES
349
Later on, in tranquillity, with the tape recorder between us, we
developed those earlier questions.
IS:
The religious factor is as important in Tolstoy as it is in Dosto–
yevsky , so why, if you were influenced by either or both, was it
only in your last book that religion came to have any importance ?
It's a central theme in other writers, Flaubert and Faulkner for ex–
ample, who also influenced you .
MVL:
I think that the absence of the theme of religion in my writings
is one of my genuine limitations . Now it has appeared and is defi–
nitely a central theme. That's why, among other reasons,
Laguerra
del jin del mundo
[
The War at the End oj the World]
is so important to
me. The research I did for that book not only related to Canudos
and the Brazil of the nineteenth century, but also to the phenome–
non of religious experience itself. I started out reading about the
history of the period and ended reading about religion, simply be–
cause I was fascinated by it.
IS:
Even so, you maintain a critical distance because the characters
in
La guerra del jin del mllndo
are all religious fanatics .
MVL :
Maybe when I began to work it was that way, but there is a
huge difference between the Antonio Conselheiro I had in mind
when I began
to
write the novel and the one who actually appears
in the published text. At the beginning he fascinated me as a nov–
elistic character, even though he repelled me because he incarnated
that closed, intransigent, dogmatic fanatic's vision of things. But
as I wrote, I began to see other sides of him.
IS:
He began to come to life.
MVL:
People said Antonio Conselheiro was a heretic, but I don't
agree. Just three years ago his sermons were finally published,
and they make surprising reading. It turns out he was completely
orthodox. All he did was to carry that orthodoxy to its logical con–
clusions, which is what turned him into the fanatic who became
the scourge of the nation , a scourge that had to be destroyed so
that the life of the Church and the life of Brazilian society could
develop. That's what makes him, in my mind, such a tragic fig–
ure, such a tragically human figure . He was a man shaped by a
certain ideology, which he - out of honesty, or because he had no
other choice -lived out . Accordingly, he tried to organize his so–
cial and personal life within those limits. People like that always
end up persecuted, rounded up, oppressed, and liquidated. He
was a pathetic case, and he became a much more human figure
than the idea I had of him at first. I think that applies to many of
the other characters as well.
