MARIO VARGAS LLOSA
365
them and, fleetingly, compensates them for this tragic condition which is
our lot: always to desire and dream more than we can actually achieve.
When it freely produces its alternative life, without any other con–
straint than that of the limi tations of its own creator, li terature extends
human life, adding the dimension that fuels the life deep within us-that
impalpable and fleeting, but precious life that we only live through lies.
This is a right that we should defend without shame. Because to play
with lies, as the author and reader of fiction do, the lies that they them–
selves fabricate under the rule of their personal demons, is a way of
affirming individual sovereignty and defending it when it is threatened; of
preserving one's own free space, a citadel outside the control of power and
of the interference of others, where we are truly in charge of our destiny.
Other freedoms are born from this freedom. These private refuges, the
subjective truths of Ii terature, bequeath to historical truth, which is com–
plementary to them, a possible existence and a particular function: that of
regaining an important part-but only a part-of our memory, that great–
ness and poverty that we share with others as gregarious beings. This
historical truth is indispensable and irreplaceable for us to know what we
were and perhaps what we will be as human collectivities. But what we
are as individuals and what we wanted to be and could not really be and
had therefore to be through fantasy and invention-our secret history–
only literature can tell. This is why Balzac wrote that fiction was "the
private history of nations."
By itself, literature is a terrible indictment against existence under
whatever regime or ideology: a blazing testimony of its insufficiencies, its
inabili ty to satisfy us. And, for that reason, it is a permanent corroder of all
power structures that would like to see men satisfied and contented. The
lies of li terature, if they germinate in freedom, prove to us that this was
never the case. And these lies are also a permanent conspiracy to prevent
this happening in the future.
Barcelona,)une 1989
