“We must learn to fall without fear of hurting ourselves”

Date:

Marta San Miguel debuts in the novel with ‘Before the jump’, a brilliant investigation into the pitfalls of memory and identity

There are moments that enclose a world. A life. Decisive moments that confront us with what we wanted to be and what we are. Starting from one of those crucial seconds when a horse ridden by a youngster prepares to jump an obstacle, Marta San Miguel (Santander, age 41) has built “Before the jump” (Asteroid Books). It is his first novel. A narrative delight that explores the nooks and crannies of memory. He wonders what we become if we forget what we were or what we dream of being.

The Madeleine of Proust is here the forgotten photo of a formidable horse, Quessant, on which the narrator rode as a child, today a mother who moves with her family to Lisbon for a year. A physical and emotional journey around identity, motherhood, attachments and impermanence.

Though the title evokes an equestrian adventure, it speaks of leaps and bounds and vital changes: “Quessant existed and I rode it. I gave it to the main character so she wouldn’t go away completely, along with my memories and everything I knew about horses to use as a metaphor,” explains San Miguel.

Novel about «the leaps we make in life, be it job change, partner change, moving, falling in love or loss. Sometimes voluntarily, sometimes involuntarily, but they push us and we are forced to give». “With every jump, we leave a piece of ourselves behind, whether we like it or not. There comes a time when you have to think about what is left in you of all that you have left behind. What have you become? Quessant is also a Trojan horse that forces the protagonist to think and discover all her mistakes,” San Miguel sums up.

Some forgetfulness that makes us? “Yes. We all swallow that idea of ​​just pulling forward, of moving forward. But in the name of what? What’s the point if you’ve forgotten your raison d’être?” wonders the writer. parts of an emotional story choreographed in walk, trot or gallop, in full flight over every obstacle, with triumphs, resignations and defeats, laughter and tears.

If there is a jump, there may be a fall, but the novel tells us that we must learn to fall in order to get up again and again. “A fall is inevitable. But you’ll never fall off a horse if you don’t step on it. If you don’t, you’ll miss what it feels like,” says San Miguel. “In life it is the same. We are all afraid of falling, but it is more useful, wiser and more realistic to learn to fall. Another thing is to know whether you protect yourself with your hand, foot or with the whole body “You have to get rid of the fear of bruising. There are times when the fear of pain often takes us out of life,” he illustrates.

San Miguel is a journalist for ‘El Diario Montañés’ and author of poems such as ‘Meridiano’, which won the José Hierro Award, and ‘El tiempo vertical’. “The jump from poetry to the novel has been quite fluid, natural. From poetry to journalism it went much more radically, although everything is mixed up anyway”, she explains with a laugh. “It has to do with your view of things, not so much how you finally resolve it, whether it’s prose, in an article, or in a verse.”

“The pinnacle of the poetry had to do with the fact that he started working and the times of the papers are what they are. You can advance a verse at any time while waiting for a press conference to start or for a page to be painted. Novels need more time and I got it with the leave I asked for when my husband was sent to work in Lisbon,” she explains.

It was a crucial change. “The great vital stages must end before another can begin. We should not be chained to memory, as that can paralyze us and lead to nostalgia, which is as if the boat is moored to a pole or stranded in the mud of a river mouth. You have to be alert and never be enslaved by memory,” he says. He knows that a thin line separates nostalgia and memory, that this is “the literature, but it’s very difficult.”

“We tell ourselves the story as we think it was. But deep down, that story is the only way to understand much of what happened. Man has progressed in his socialization thanks to the word, the story with which each of us explains himself,” he notes.

San Miguel hadn’t ridden a horse in twenty years, but recently he ventured again. “That stage is over. I am in another. I’ve grown as a journalist, I’ve written books, I’ve been a mother, I’ve met wonderful people through my work… but there’s a part of me that belongs to the past». “With this book I try not to be that girl anymore. I want the reader to find in her affection what the protagonist achieves: from that memory to which we attach no importance, from what remains, that spark that illuminates the shadow areas».

Source: La Verdad

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Share post:

Subscribe

Popular

More like this
Related

Free Good Friday – Renewed calls from the Protestant church for a holiday

As has been the case every year since its...

Murder by negligence? – Flixbus crash: investigations against hapless drivers

After the serious bus accident on Autobahn 9 near...

Woman brings crested pom-pom to animal rescue station

One night an English woman tried to nurse a...

Criticism from the Greens – Minister Raab invited to the “Leitkultur” panel of experts

Integration Minister Susanne Raab (ÖVP) is starting to design...