Luis Antonio de Villena: “He who abandons sexuality in old age is much more off”

Villena does not believe in ghosts, but if they existed, I would also talk to them: of course. «My mother’s ghost appears. Well, I would say: ‘Hello, mom, how are you doing? What happens out there?’ You can’t be afraid of that.

In the midst of an answer, the cane leaning on the table falls. “Quiet, it’s metacrylate,” he apologizes. His last book is called ‘Miserable old age’ (Visor).

“When did you start feeling your old age?”

—Tard, very late, as at sixty -nine, approximately. Sometimes I continue to find very young inside, because I deal with young people and try to have a youth attitude. But one day I spent the mirror test. I remember getting out of bed, going to the bathroom and discovering that I had bags in my eyes. I had not noticed before, and there was a moment as self -defense. To say: it will be that I have slept badly. And no, of course, that was old age. Time is passing and time has an action, it must be said exactly like that, destructive action. Time is destructive, it destroys us: suddenly you get gray hair one day, you are noticing the lack of flexibility, everything costs you more work, bend yourself is a kind of pull … at that time I already saw myself as an old man, and instead of hiding it, of trying to say no, because I did the opposite: say yes. And that is this book. Now I am seventy -three years old. I look old because it is what I am.

—In the postfacio he writes: “I do not like old age, and unleashed from the official or official discourse on the third (or fourth) age.”

– It is that idea that old age is great, a pleasant stage of life and soft and quiet … well, if you have a lot of health and you have a lot of money and you have who cares for you, because it can be a meek and quiet stage, but of course I think it is not the best stage of life. Old age is stealing things, taking things away. Before you could walk, now you can’t walk so much; Before you could drink what you wanted, because not so much; You could do a certain type of excess … The body is like a castle that is assaulted by enemies, and those who are defending the castle are increasingly reducing, they get in and in the end they remain in what in the medieval castles was called the tower of the tribute. That tower in the middle of the castle, which is supposed to be the last place where the castle is defended. Time is harassing and you stay there. Old age is to manage spaces. Manage the space that takes time [deja un silencio]. In addition, that idea that old age is the era of wisdom … the Greeks who defended that were not so old. And besides: in today’s world that has broken. The old man is not seen as wise today. The old man is rather a kind of hindrance. And if you have money, as I say, a South American or a South American to take care of him and there.

—The poems is also a song to youth: here there is someone who looks and admires young people.

—The old age and youth are accessories, not only because they are extremes of life, but also because they can be helped, against what is thought. It seems that young and old have to be very separate, because it is like the old man is going to spread old age or something. However, I believe otherwise. The old man, in a very generic sense, has experience, has knowledge of life, can usually also have more culture, more to know, and that transmits it to the young man. And the young man transmits to the old man an appetite of living, a new look, a look that is not contaminated by the passage of time, and thus the old man sees through that look a spring world. From autumn or winter sees spring.

“There are several poems that talk about loneliness.” Does it weigh?

“Now I notice loneliness, and I don’t know if it’s just because of old age: they are the circumstances of old age.” There are many friends who have retired and return to their lands of origin, and now it turns out that in Madrid I know many less people than I knew ten or twelve years ago. On the other hand, I have no family, they all died, and that is another loneliness … and there are friends who die, who die. Like Javier Marías, who was my age, who published his first book the same year as me. Suddenly I lack a reference, someone with whom I usually commented on or rant from the world, which is worse than he could imagine. Víktor Shklovski said that one of the most dramatic things that can happen to one in life is to call on your telephone agenda the names of those who have died. Because suddenly one day you open the agenda and it’s all full of red stripes.

“Are there anything good in solitude?”

“I have been very close to loneliness, I like loneliness, loneliness is creative.” But loneliness, say, eighty percent of the day, or time, is creative, and in that eighty percent loneliness is good. But that other twenty percent makes it hard, sometimes very hard. Sometimes one is doing something and suddenly hurts his head, for example, and if you are alone to that pain you turn him around and begin to think that you have a brain tumor. If you are with someone that does not happen, because you comment and immediately everything is appeased, serene, it goes on a more logical, more normal side [hace una breve pausa]. Yes, loneliness ends up being a problem that is closely related to old age, because the environment you had, friends … leaves you on the bad side of loneliness. Now I always have the feeling of being a needy. It seems that I am asking for help continuously. And it is loneliness that makes you feel that you need something, that help is very important.

Javier Marías appointed him Duke of Malmundo of the Kingdom of Redonda.

“Someone said it was the most beautiful title.” He appointed me in 1999. I had published in Tusquets a book that brought together two novels, ‘The Evil World’. Javier liked it a lot, and since I went a lot at night and was very little heterodox, he decided that I was very good for the title of Duke of Malmundo. Now, like that [se refiere al Reino de Redonda] It has disappeared, because there it stays as historical. He spent a lot of time and money to the publisher [también Reino de Redonda]. And that editorial was expensive, he paid very well, did what an author who should do. I remember that he commissioned me a prologue for one of his books. I would have done it almost for friendship, but he suddenly gave me a thousand euros for a prologue, which is not usual, of course.

“I quote:” The gym is – TRAMPANTOJO – as our politicians / populists: greed, merchant, ruins … “

“Well, gyms destroy many people.” That is, you go to the gym and have a better body. And there is a first time you have it, but if you continue and continue and continue then the gym makes you a horrible mole, a mole full of balls, unnecessary, ugly muscles. The gym product ends up being very ugly, because it is the bodybuilder model, which is brutal. And I knew a Brazilian boy who did Striptease for ladies, especially in bachelorette parties. The pectoral was displaced so much and had to operate it.

“It shows that desire is a drug:” The heart that loves the excess young continues to burning in the old flame. ”

“I commented on once with Savater, which is somewhat older than me.” He is an old friend, in the two senses of the word. And he told me that this idea that sexual desire was over at a given time … He told me that he had not happened to him. And I said: I too, me too. He who abandons sexuality or sensuality – I have been more sensual than sexual -, the one who abandons that, is much more off, much poorer. And if you can continue with the desire, that desire is something that moves you, desire becomes a drug, because when you have those moments of desire you feel very young.

“He doesn’t enjoy great prestige in old age.”

—Goza of a horrible prestige. Rather discredit [y ríe]. It is what they called the old green, right? But it is quite the opposite. If it occurs within limits, obviously. This story of the old green someone solved it very well in a joke. Do you know who were the first environmentalists? The old green.

“Is aesthetics also an ethic?”

“For me, yes.” I like aesthetics as something consubstantial. I have been my life a esthete. I really like beauty, I’m in love with beauty. As a very young man, when I was decadent, I wrote: “When ethics is missing, aesthetics must double.” That is already a bit resounding, but it is true that aesthetics is something that helps. Because the strength of beauty, from the physical beauty of a person to the beauty of literature or art, produces a feeling of attraction, an impulse towards it, which is very good. All my life I have felt a drive towards that very big. And I hope it lasts.

“He has written many poems to summer. Are you still believing in long days?

“I have been very devout of summer.” Now a little less, because with climate change they are harder … The second volume of my memoirs is called ‘golden days of sun and night’, precisely because that world of sun and night for me have been very important. And that I have to take care of the sun, because I have ultrasensitive skin, but my thing was not to sunbathe, I never liked that, but to be in the sun. I also like the sea, the shore, the coast, but in the end where I like to bathe is in the pool. Although that may be very Madrid, right? I remember bathe in the Pool of the Chamartín stadium, always at noon, before eating. For me it is a mythical memory. Now there is the new Bernabéu, which looks like a pressure pot [y ríe de nuevo]. It is very ugly.

—The book is opened by a quote from Jaime Gil de Biedma – «Aging, dying, / is the only argument of the work» -, and also dedicates a poem.

“Jaime was a man of these who believed absolutely in youth and nothing in old age.” And old age did not really live her, because he died sixty. But he at fifty wrote Senectute ‘poem’, who is supposed to be the last he wrote, or at least the last one he accepted in his work. There he says: “I remember life, but where is it.” At fifty it was already oblivious to life. I had another phrase that repeated when someone died: put on covered that shoot [y ríe]. He also said that everything has been twenty years old. But I am much older than him. Everything has already spent forty years now. Twenty years seem little to me.

“Luis Antonio, are you afraid of death?”

“No, what I am afraid is pain.” I am very afraid of pain, having a disease that hurts. That is why I am a supporter of euthanasia. (…) My mother was made. She was in a society that gave right to die with dignity … Death doesn’t scare me. If you give me a speech with a button and tell me that if I tighten I die, I squeeze. Well, not right now.

“Is the hospital more afraid than death?”

“Very more.” I have asked that they do not understand me, that they put me palliative, sedatives and things against pain, but do not extend my life to end up becoming a useless doll, a wheelchair without being able to move, needing help for everything. I accept that, of course, I respect it. Whoever wants that, to have it, because he offers his pain to the Virgin of Mercy. That seems very good to me. But since I don’t have that belief, I don’t have who to offer those pain.