Hans Ulrich ObristAre there any quotes you live by?
Hélène CixousNo, but what comes to mind is “Man kann doch nicht nicht-leben” [One cannot not-live]. That’s Kafka.
HUOAre there historical figures that you admire?
HCThe characters who are constantly present for me and whom I adore, whom I cherish, are always great writers. Like Kafka, Shakespeare, Montaigne. And then there are those who are like characters in a grand play. For example, I have been fascinated recently with the character of Victor Hugo, whom I don’t love as a poet. But from his birth until the end, he is the main character of the nineteenth century. It’s extraordinary. Or take Napoleon at Jena, with Hegel in a corner observing him.
HUOWhat was your first museum visit as a child?
HCIf you say “museum” to me, it conjures a very strong and fantastic image. It’s linked to my childhood in Algiers and to my father. There was a museum, but it’s as if it was in a fairytale. The museum was a very white building in the middle of a forest. There were forests in Algiers, and we lived on the heights, in an Arab neighborhood. And to reach the city, sometimes we walked down through the forest. One day on foot we crossed the forest and arrived at this building, like in an Oriental fable. And what I discovered was not so much the artworks hung on the walls, it was the museum itself that was an artwork, this white object in the green of the forest. But as in a German or Oriental fable, what remained with me was this place with a treasure, though we only went one time. But what stood in for a museum for me when I was young was something else. As a doctor, my father received a small salary, and he subscribed to a little art magazine. You can’t imagine how ugly it was! Bad paper, bad images. During the war there was nothing. There were none of the marvelous catalogues we have now. It was in black and white on awful yellow paper. But it enthralled me. I studied this magazine and I was in love with the images, the paintings, the silhouettes. Retrospectively I realize I didn’t have terribly good taste. For example, I had an infinite passion for Ingres. I looked at those bodies of women and I thought, “They are so beautiful!”
HUODo you have rituals?
HCThat depends on what you mean by rituals . . .
HUOWhat ought to change?
HCOne can’t give a single response, especially as things ought to change all the time. That’s to say across centuries and millennia. In the first place, things change, except we’re not always aware of it, we don’t realize it. Then I think the answers can only be concrete and local. The obvious question that arises is the question of politics. Every government is supposed to change something. For me, you know, I always tell myself: everything has changed, nothing has changed.
HUOWhat is time?
HCTime?! [laughs] Actually, I ask myself this question every day. And sometimes I say to myself, “Right here, I believe I sense time, I feel time.” But what it is I have not yet been able to say. First, because there isn’t “time,” there are incessant mutations, and maybe time is simply this kind of atmosphere that doesn’t have materiality and where we continuously encounter transformations of perception. It’s something I feel extremely strongly all the time. So for example with letters: you receive a letter, you read the letter, the next day you can reread it, but you’ve already read something else. But then, at least in my case, when it enters a universe where there is a population of letters, not one, but thirty, forty, fifty, two hundred letters, this no longer has a relation to the letter that arrived just now, because everything says different things in different ways. For me, that is the work of time. But what is time? Time is perhaps this kind of supernatural machine that metamorphizes without stopping, without stopping, without stopping, everything that happened once and then returns.
HUOWhat is your unrealized project?
HCIt’s a good question. I don’t think I have one. That probably means I only have a project when it’s achievable. That is to say, it’s a challenge. But I could say one thing: What’s not realized is the ultimate book. Because my whole life, I’ve told myself I must write the book that I haven’t yet written. And I used to think, it’s going to happen one of these days; it will end up happening. But, no it didn’t happen. Sometimes I think it won’t happen.
HUOWhat keeps artists coming back to the studio? What makes you come back to writing every day?
HCIt’s exactly the same for the writer as for the artist: it’s a workshop. What is the workshop? You take the boat, the magic boat. It’s a little like “The Hunter Gracchus” [1917], you know, in Kafka. You must take the boat to go where things will happen, things that you don’t yet know.
Question added by Joy Williams In what guise does your worst nightmare appear?
HCI can’t say that I have the worst nightmare, because then it would actually not be a nightmare, it would be reality. And reality offers hundreds, thousands, of nightmares, each one worse than the last. For example, I was reading in the newspaper the other day about a recently liberated prison in Damascus, Syria. The journalists give some details and say it’s the worst thing they’ve ever seen. And I ask myself a thousand questions. What’s the worst? The worst place of torture? Because I think of the prisons at the time of Lenin, Stalin: it was horrible, horrible. . . . Is it possible to say something is the worst thing in all of history?
HUOWhat achievements of yours are you especially proud of?
HCI think I’m never proud, it isn’t possible for me. I would like to be but it’s not given to me. I have the feeling of being relieved when I have carried, created, procreated a book, a text. I have the feeling that something has happened that could not happen, it’s the seventh day. But I rest only for it to begin again right away. I have a law, like it or not, that I must act, I must do. All the time, all the time, all the time. It’s very tiring. And when people come to accept the idea of death, it’s because they say to themselves, “Whew, it’s over! Enough effort!”
HUOWhat is the role of titles?
HCAh, that’s a complication, because when I write a book, it never has a title. For me, it’s torture, the fact that there must be a title. We’re not allowed to propose or present a text, an object, without one. I’ve always been fascinated by this title you see given to so many visual artworks, which is, Untitled. I think, That’s amazing! It’s called “Untitled”! But the problem is that as far as the publication of texts is concerned, they can’t be untitled. So I force myself to give titles, and I don’t like forcing myself, because it’s an artifice. To tell you the truth, for a very long time I asked for help: I asked Jacques Derrida, who was my reader, “What’s this called?” I asked him and he told me. Phew. What’s interesting is that he told me: “I would never do that, I would never accept receiving a title from someone else.” Now, because he’s not here, it’s as if I asked for them from a ghost. Because I have no titles myself.
HUOWhat have you forgotten?
HCIf I knew, I wouldn’t have forgotten. But what I can tell you is that there is a mysterious thing . . . it’s that I know that I forgot, but what? I forgot it.
HUOWhat is your advice to a young artist or writer?
HCI think of this often because I remember when I was very young, I had read of course Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet [1903–08]. It makes me laugh now. I think one can’t give advice. One must never give advice. It means nothing at all. You can’t give advice except to yourself, and even so it makes no sense. My mother was always giving advice. And it was charming. It was naive. It was confident. It was her duty to give advice. But why give advice? Because we never follow advice, never. I told her “You’re making yourself suffer, and since your advice is never followed, it only causes you astonishment and indignation.” But she didn’t follow my advice.
Question added by Precious OkoyomonAny miracles lately?
HCThere are no miracles. For example, yes, a miracle would be if Ukraine were saved. And there are miracles by other means, that are part of the world of love. There is the miracle of love. Love is a miracle. It’s absolutely unexpected. It’s absolutely incalculable. It resembles death, only it’s on the side of life.
