The Argentinian-Chilean writer, most famous for the play, Death and a Maiden, chatted with Shana Maria Verghis about two extremes — politics and children's literature
I had a queue of school kids lined up for my autograph. Some of them got my signature and then asked who I was!” commented a very tickled Ariel Dorfman, who is someone who has spent the majority of his life in exile. “I found it fascinating to deal with them. Childhood is so fleeting. I enjoy writing for kids.” And so, instead of discussing the time he, say, served as cultural advisor to Salvador Allende, the former Chilean president, or his long time of being an outsider from his native soil, fighting for democracy, we began the conversation by discussing childhood.
Dorfman, who was born Ukranian-Argentinian, later moved to US with his family as a child. And in his older years, to Chile.
He said he was “politicised early in life owing to my parents, both of whom were activists in exile. I grew up as a red-diaper baby, though I was never a communist. My mother was a party worker. My Father was imbued with Bolshevism.”
It was because of them, that he wound up in Queens, New York as a kid and was part of a, “little gang in Parkday Village.” The band of kinds were initiated into global warfare pretty early on. The gangs were divided into different nationalities and one of those opposing Dorfman’s, had French kids. “They were the plague of everyone. Our group had a big Kenyan girl in charge, and Scandinavians. We were fighting early on, for reasons I don’t clearly know still.”
He reminisced, “It’s odd that the only kid who would declare, ‘peace, peace,’ was a young Indian boy called Ray Bahana. Interesting to think he was from the place that gave us Gandhi. When I was seven or eight I was informed, ‘your little friend Ray Bahana died.”
He forgot about Ray soon. But his memory would come back to him many years later.
Dorfman’s life would follow a less than peaceful trajectory, as he engaged in the politics of the time, from the fifties to the seventies. He would be tortured, imprisoned. He would write of tyranny and oppression and everything mangled by the bloodthirsty dogs of war. And much of what he wrote, including Death of the Maiden, where a victim of torture has her revenge, was based on his personal life. But as often has sometimes been the case with people who have lived long lives, in his later years, Dorfman is mellower and dwells on peaceful issues. The writing for kids fits in that area.
later this year, he will be, “going to open an opera in Chennai, about Nachiketa, the little boy in Indian mythology who asks Death three questions that lead to enlightenment. like ‘What is loveIJ’”
Incidentally, apart from peace, these days love poems are another favourite subject with Dorfman.
“When terrible things happen to you, when there are people disappearing, how else do you get through the traumaIJ’
The “unrepentant exile” said that his stories for kids include The Magical Rabbits, where a “wolf invades a land of magic, and its filled with monkeys and other creatures.” He remarked, “after exile, everything starts to matter more to you. Be it friends or family.”
However, he remarked that there were also many shattered dreams along the way, like when he realised that the “country of dreams” for which he had fought for, “had changed too much. After we struggled for all those ideals. When I was in Chile talking about democracy, homosexuals were being discriminated against. I said they were cripples and mentally sick.”
He added, “Joyce (James) said you live with exile.” It never leaves you.” These days he has been working with his son. One of his creations, Blakes’ Therapy, got auctioned for a movie, but apparently there was an issue of funds, so its in the backburner. Dorfman continues to write, and while admitting that words have their limitations in political struggle, ended “but they can be very powerful.”