If you have an idea and you can't tell it in a coffee conversation, it means that you don't know how to explain it or it's not clear to you. Or you don't care that your interlocutor understands it. Or maybe, in the worst case, that idea doesn't even exist. The coffee test proposed by the writer Javier Gomá regarding philosophical truth is one of the evidences of brevity. Antoni Gutiérrez-Rubí (Barcelona, 63 years old) dissects this category in Brief praise of brevity (Gedisa), an essay that delves into the history, functions and use of this notion and helps find the thread in the labyrinth of words. Because short does not mean the same as brief. And brevity is not necessarily a derivative of brevity, a concept that this political communication advisor, especially active in Latin America, links more to practices such as sobriety and respect. “Brevity and clarity should be political rights of citizens,” says Gutiérrez-Rubí in conversation with EL PAÍS by videoconference from Buenos Aires.
Ask. The journalist Miguel Ángel Bastenier one day asked his students to write a brief about the Second World War. It's a good exercise to organize your ideas, to begin with. Why a book about brevity?
Answer. The raw material of political communication is language. In my job as an advisor, which is to find the right, precise, appropriate, timely words, there is a constant and permanent exercise on language. And I always considered that brevity and brief are not the same. Brief is a condition that has to do with duration. Brevity is an intention, to condense something in a profound way, that has that transformative capacity of language and also a certain vocation for duration. Brevity is a technical exercise that politics in general and political communication and political consulting and all of us who work with language, including journalists, must practice. And it also has an almost ethical aspect, because brevity requires restraint, respect for other people's time. There is something almost moral in brevity. And it is a very stimulating exercise from a creative point of view. That's why I wrote it.
Q. Did you write it thinking about the politicians you advise?
R. No, I wrote it thinking about the work I do with words. That includes articles I publish or notes I prepare for a meeting. I have always really liked lists, memory, everything that has to do with language, from etymology to any other aspect. That idea of finding the right word, hitting the target. That is, arriving in a special way that makes the reader or viewer vibrate with a word. It's a kind of momentum.
Q. At the same time, working with the language resembles the task of a builder. In the book he uses the architectural metaphor, based on Van der Rohe, of “less is more.”
R. Brevity would be like the pillars on which to build, they are master columns. I think the book may be timely at a time when there is just an abundance of words. To coexist in this world of abundance and excess, of language fat, brevity acts as a kind of opportunity. There is a great offer and a short time. What I have to read, write down and turn into a foundation has to aspire to brevity. You have to have that ability to concentrate, to condense, to explain a lot in a little. So I think that brevity, the exercise and practice of brevity is a useful discipline in times of abundance.
Q. He says, quoting Javier Gomá, that philosophical truth must pass the coffee test. If you have discovered a truth and you cannot convey it in a coffee conversation, something is wrong.
R. A coffee can be long or short, you can spend many hours or five minutes. But the idea has to do with a humanized, slow conversation, which will not necessarily be brief in length, although what is said has to be elaborated, no matter how complex the concept, in a friendly chat around a coffee.
Q. How high is the demand for brevity in our societies today?
R. That's exactly the problem. Since we have little time, we think we have to go fast. That is, we confuse brevity with speed. But how many times do you have to read a quote that has moved you or that has mattered to you several times, trying to discover the secrets it contains? The text does not change, the one who changes is me and therefore each time it is like a reading that gives you new clues. The brevity challenges you, it is like a secret within a secret, and each one reads it with different nuances.
Q. He has spoken of returning to the same passage and this essay seems to be presented almost as a reference book.
R. I would love for readers to be able to reread it, underline it, return to that quote, that memory. I also wanted it to somehow be an opportunity for the reader to also begin their own process of brevity. That is, not so much returning to the book as a closed product, but rather returning to the book as a springboard, an opportunity to remember that quote again or refresh it. A springboard that allows the reader to return to the state of mind necessary for brevity to have this capacity to move and transform.
Q. He also quotes Italo Calvino, American lessons, some texts that have a lot to do with the honesty of communication, with commitment, with the truth.
R. Let's take a fact. You can't put adjectives to it. It is 1,000 or it is 100. The data is the essence of brevity, and when language manipulates the data it is evidently distorting the data. The data can then be interpreted, but from the outset it has that precision of the essence. So, a first consideration of why brevity brings us closer to intellectual honesty is that I cannot disguise it. Brevity and clarity should be political rights of citizens. We really need political dialogue and representation to be focused on brevity and clarity. Brevity as respect. And clarity because voters and readers need their representatives to be clear in their commitments, in their statements, in their opinions. Anything that does not go in the direction of brevity and clarity in some way is adulterating the commitment to politics through language.
Q. How does brevity mesh with artificial intelligence?
R. There are several points. First, artificial intelligence always wants to offer you a comparable and homogenized synthesis. So, in some way it aspires to condense, to concentrate, to give you brief content that supposedly has value due to its capacity for synthesis and its ability to draw from many sources and have a condensation of the available knowledge. But this exercise of condensing, of synthesizing, is not always an exercise that brings us closer to brevity. Artificial intelligence will have a great capacity to synthesize, it will be very effective in synthesis, but I am not so sure that it will be able to understand the essence or give us the essence of the words.
Q. He has said that he did not write with politicians in mind. Who is he addressing?
R. To readers who, whatever their professional performance, do consider that brevity is a discipline and sometimes also a requirement and, in my opinion, a right. For all those who believe that the battle for rights is an inconclusive battle that can be improved, brevity and clarity can help them.
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