Thanos Stathopoulos: ‘Literature is a space where everything acquires meaning through metaphor.’

Thanos Stathopoulos talks to Lina Rokou on Popaganda about *The Hour*, his latest book. You can read the interview below: *The Hour* as a title. Why? And what role does time play in your writing? Book titles always elude me. I would say, however: Time at the heart of things. The time at which things happen. It is the moment or the duration. Every hour. The flow of time. The present and the past. Now or then. (When?) It is what we tear away and what tears us away. It is the merging. Time and the spiritual centre – a deep, concentrated feeling. All writing is connected to time. In my own writing, the tyranny of time is perhaps excessive. What is your earliest memory? Sitting on a little chair with a toy. Perhaps in 1965, I don’t know. A memory of myself, that is. Like a photograph. This connects me to something in the book: ‘And then the question returns: what is art? And art is what an artist does: sitting in a chair in his studio’. What is the artist’s studio? Life? Memory? Imagination? None of these? The connection takes me by surprise. You’re referring to a passage from a text by Bruce Nauman, which I quote in the book. The artist’s studio is an open field of action: it contains everything. I would say that its existence is of paramount importance. Everything happens there. By ‘studio’, of course, we must mean an expanded state. A space that extends. A spiritual state, certainly. This, after all, is the central theme of the book: space as a studio. Not just the artist’s, but everyone’s. The poetics of space and human expression. Everything can serve as material for processing. Everything you mention is raw material, but it does not constitute the artist’s workshop. The studio is the personal space the artist constructs and the intellectual atmosphere they need in order to exist. And beyond the intellectual space? What about space in its realistic dimension? Where do you prefer to write? Where do you imagine yourself writing? What is the most unusual place you have written in or found yourself writing in? I always write in my studio – the space where I live and work. I have rarely written anywhere else. I often take notes in cafés, which I then immediately transfer to my computer to edit. I’ve never imagined writing anywhere. Under the right circumstances, of course, I could write anywhere. The writing process involves a lot of work, anxiety and tension. You want to write. You wake up in the morning and write, or try to write. Sometimes you manage it, sometimes you don’t. Probably, most of the time you don’t. But you have to persevere. I can’t recall any paradoxical passage I’ve written; obviously, there isn’t one. The only paradox lies in the nature of what I write. What is paradoxical to you? Anything that clashes with common sense.Is ‘The Hour’ a puzzle of time, events, dreams, desires, thoughts, repressed feelings, influences? What is ‘The Hour’? If we exclude the repressed feelings, it is everything you mention. And more. It is a puzzle. Traces, fragments, readings, annotations, quotations. It can be read as a fragmentary text, interpreted as a dream or as a feeling. You hover in space and time. There are the other texts—that is, the borrowed texts—which I present either on their own or by commenting on them, in which I participate. They are the events and details from the lives of others. They are memory, of course. A personal archive of events concerning the poetics of space and the psychological centre, with a nod to what we call ‘architectural or architectured space’, where the body, actions and human expression take centre stage. It is the personal space we construct and the way we exist within it. In other words, what I mentioned earlier regarding the concept of the workshop. How and to what extent does your writing style resemble or differ from your way of life? The way I write embodies the way I live to the same extent that it eludes it. I don’t know if it could be any other way. I am not referring solely to the fragmentary and disjointed nature of what I write. The autobiographical elements in my texts often dictate the style: emphatic, declarative, revealing. Someone who knows me might recognise me by reading my work. Literature, however, is a space where everything acquires meaning through metaphor. The statement functions simultaneously as a metaphor. Readings, references and quotations are indirect experiences. My way of life can sometimes be channelled into my references to artists and writers from whom I quote passages, either from their work or from their lives: a mediated biography, one might say. We are always the others as well.A quote from a favourite writer or artist that expresses better than any other how you feel about writing? ‘I asked her if there was any way I could eat a wild carrot from time to time. ‘A wild carrot!’ she cried, as if I’d expressed a desire to taste a Jewish baby. I told her that the season for wild carrots was coming to an end and that, if until then she could give me only wild carrots to eat, I’d be grateful. ‘Only wild carrots!’ she cried. Wild carrots have a violet flavour, to me. I like wild carrots because they have a violet flavour, and violets because they have the scent of wild carrots. If there were no wild carrots on earth, I wouldn’t love violets, and if there were no violets, wild carrots would be just as uninteresting to me as turnips or radishes. But even in their present state of flora, I mean in this world where wild carrots and violets find a way to coexist, I could very easily do without them.” Samuel Beckett, First Love, trans. Achilleas Alexandrou. Has a woman ever fallen in love with you because of something you wrote? What was it? As far as I know, no. A quote from a favourite writer or artist who expresses better than anyone else how you feel about love? Oh, what can I say… There are many. Each one expresses a truth. I could, however, mention Baudelaire’s text *Consolations on Love*. Among many other aphorisms: ‘One must therefore choose one’s loves. – Beware of the moon and the stars, beware of the Venus of Milos, of lakes, guitars, rope ladders and all novels. – But love the one you love deeply, steadfastly, boldly, fiercely; let your love, having grasped the meaning of harmony, not torment the love of another. – Because every woman is a fragment of the essential woman, because love is the only thing for which it is worth composing a sonnet and donning fine lingerie. I don’t know if it expresses how I feel about love better than any other, but it is a text I have come to love very much. What do you love about everyday life and what can’t you stand about it? I like taking long walks around the city: walking, observing people and the city’s landmarks. I really like cafés – I’ve been a regular at cafés for over thirty years. It’s like a ritual. I like meeting friends there or sitting on my own. I like the quiet hours of the afternoon in my studio. Those are the hours when I can concentrate completely. I always read every afternoon. I like to have a few drinks in the evening. Often I can’t stand my daily routine – it always happens when I’m not feeling well. I can’t stand anything that’s compulsory. I can’t stand it, so to speak, as long as I’m forced to endure the day’s constraints.