When did Bernadette become Waiting, and why?

True, Waiting is a pseudonym, half a pseudonym. A long time ago, I began to publish verses in the village for fourteen years and I was a little afraid of what the family would say. In addition, I realized that I needed a name of Basque musicality, and at that time there was a painter here in Bayonne, from Biscay, who called himself Itxaro Mentxaka. So take his name, my official name, tie the two together and, look! I have always signed texts under the name of Itxaro Borda, and now people who know me mostly call me Itxaro, except the families, obviously, and my colleagues, they call me Bebe or Bernardette.

When did you decide to become a writer?

It's been a long time. As soon as I learned how to write, I wrote small texts in French for nine years. Then, gently, I re-acquired the language of my childhood and then, in twelve years or so, I began to study writing in Basque, literacy, literature, etc. At a very young age I decided to be a writer and it seems to me that my life has only been about writing, that I have not done anything more valuable.

How was the boy Bernardette who started writing?

Very lonely, very quiet, very timid, who did not love to talk, and who spent time reading when there was a free time at home from work or school. I could say very introverted, I still am, although I have made a strong point about shyness, fear of people and I manage to communicate with others. I believe that if I had not written I would have sunk my body and soul, writing has always been, secretly or openly, a way of being for myself, a way of being about others, and a way of being about myself. Look, both feet on the floor and the floor on paper.

They say you literally buried your start-up jobs.

Yes, I had a crisis and, indeed, I buried my old quays, perhaps because I unconsciously wanted to write in a different way, addressing other ways. It was a metaphorical suicide, because I think I've spent all my young time with that idea. Maybe I needed psychological help not to become a writer. But writing has been his help; not writing to sink.

Did you do it in verse, too?

I wrote verses mostly, I even sang, but not boldly, always because of my shyness. It is true that in those times, in the 1970s, there were no wives or girls in the verse world, so in writing, yes, Marijan Minaberri also did verses in the Village like I did, but in the squares we soon caught some grunts like that, hard, and I think that sometimes those grunts were humiliating. Perhaps not intentionally, perhaps to be laughed at, but for those who wish to advance themselves in this world, such grudges are humiliating, and I think most of them did. And then I needed a lot of energy to appear in people’s glory, which was impossible, it’s easier to write in oneness. But I always like to listen to verses, write verses, write as verses and sometimes even sing verses, kiskun-kasun.

You were 12 years old and have been writing since then. I've read to you: “For a long time I thought I was writing urgently, as if I had disappeared with the language tomorrow.”

I was only speaking in Basque until I was six years old, I learned French for a year and my brother and I were illiterate in Basque for 12 years. That is why I know that the evil they have done to us has been very severe, they have done to us as Indians in a very short time, and I do not forgive them. I have written when I have recovered Basque, studied grammar, studied literature, and for me that is my commitment to language and the world. And for a long time I have written in this way, because it seemed to me that I belonged to a world that was always disappearing, that of the cultivators of the interior, and this impression has been accentuated to me when we have lost the gurascos. The Malian writer Amadu Hampate Ba says that some elderly people die when they lose their library, and I certainly have that feeling when I lose my parents or when I kill old people. We have recovered the language tribally again, the Borda clan has recovered it again, but all the others have abandoned it, they have not eroded their energy in it, the people of our generation have allowed it to be lost. From an economic and political point of view I have also had the feeling of being in the middle of a catastrophe, knowing that every minute is not as old as it could be, but that thought has lightened me a little since the coming of life Baionarat, I don’t feel that loss or fall of worlds so much, I don’t feel so much here. For a long time, being a writer was like touching a certain sin or tack, and in recent years it hasn’t. I believe that to be a writer, to be in possession of this office and vice, is a great fortune, both for me and for those who read me or listen to my poems. I think that being a writer at the moment is a lot of luck, and that gives me the impression that the world I imagine when I write does not change, does not fall, does not deteriorate, does not erode, does not rot. When I write I don’t care to read a statistic that mentions the loss of Basque in the north, for me it doesn’t get lost, when I write it I think when we write, or sing, or paint... it doesn’t get lost.

You’ve said several times that you’re not a great writer, but a second-class writer. For what reason?

On the one hand, I write a lot, and the one who writes a lot has no reputation. It’s like in economics, abundance is cheapness. I’ve been accused of writing too much. Then, on the other hand, I also think about the topics, about the topic. I talk about everyday life issues: unemployment, factory closures, rejected loves, exile... they are not serious issues for the harsh Basque world and in dealing with these issues I always capture that ideology of the Basque faithful, always against it, as a wall. Besides, I want to believe that I'm second-class because I have less pressure on my back. I want you to believe in something else too: that you can write to the point of erasing yourself. I, for the first used person, not to be there as a simple person, to be there being me and being us at the same time, we now, we yesterday, we tomorrow.

Is that why you feel like a writer on the periphery?

Oh, yeah, yeah. To be a writer of the periphery means, on the one hand, not to be in the midst of this literary whirlwind, not to be in the eye of the cyclone. Therefore, to have more freedom with topics, with language and with our relationships and political opinions. It has its advantages. As I say, this character of secondary writer is a bit ironic, because when writers come out in the Basque Country they are always first class, no one stops at the second or third level.

“For me, when there is no control at the front, there is no limit.” How do you live that boundary?

I live this border as an anecdote now when we are blocked on one side or the other, because it happens that they close the border on one side or the other. We can also mention the other limit, that limit that is in our minds, that everyone is talking about, but no one does anything to sabotage or break that limit. The border is at the same time of adversity and happiness for all, for the South and for the North. It is a disgrace to those of the North who are not as well known and read and invited to the cultural world of the South as they deserve. I don’t have any guts there, I’ve been in the south for almost 40 years doing speeches, reading poems... if I can go, because that’s also what it is, we also need to accept and take the time to go to Bilbao or Navarre, and we don’t all do that. But I think that the border, on the other hand, also gives us a kind of freedom, because the tradition that we have here, a literary habit that is ancient, we must not forget that literature, in Basque, originated here, and the border gives us freedom to work on the succession of that, and I think we care about that too.

You mention this and other limitations in your latest novel, “Without Anything Better.” Will the border always have holes?

Yeah, we'll always pass. This is the truth, and with our border it is the same Gaza, we are denouncing the presence of the border, as well as the intellectual border between us, but we always surpass it, and we would be of bad faith if we did not accept this potential that we have. It’s always been like that, when we were 16-17 years old, we went to the south to sing verses with Niko Etxart and Jean Mixel Bedaxage, the three of us sang verses in the Guernica pilot. I mean, the one who has walked does not feel the limit even though he is sometimes physically paralyzed, even though the limit is actually closed, symbolically and actually, and that is also the idea of the book.

In the novel there is another limitation that breaks down: that of the genre.

Oh yeah, that too. This border that we do not have broken in Europe, not in the world between us, although there are some trends that point to breaking, as in the case of the border, but I think we are far from it, and it is important to break the gender border as well. In addition, even the language has no limits if the allocutory is not used. Some readers miss the absence of the genre, but when I’ve written it I was a bit frustrated, like when you write a sonnet or verse papers, you can’t include your thought in all of it. It was the same in this novel. When we read it we don’t know who it is, I had the idea for a long time, even in 100% Basque there is a chapter written without gender, and that was my will. I have always heard that in Basque there was no alkylative genre if it was not used, and my intention was to take that to my head, to do it in a whole novel and see what is created, what grows, what limits and what freedom it gives me.

What have been the main difficulties in writing without gender?

On the one hand, the characters cannot be described physically. On the other hand, it is not possible to use alkylutives between the characters... and nothing else, the rest has been a complete fantasy. But the characters I saw, they had genres in my head, I named them. But the names of the characters in the novel also come out of the Greek alphabet, so they don’t even have a specific gender or personality, they don’t even have a name. This is also another idea, since another axis in this novel is that of neoliberalism, which affects us: it eliminates us with personality, it eliminates us with gender... I’ve been a bit sloppy about gender and the economy.

They say you're a farmer's daughter who loves cities very much. What gives you the city and the agricultural world? What about Paris and what about Oragar?

Cities give me anonymity, and the power to live according to my natural qualities, without preserving them, and campaigns, to be attentive, silent, and thoughtful, and also the immense taste of nature, the physical connection with nature. Nature is often another character in my poems. In this last novel I have done something that is not normally done in the literature of these times: to prolong in descriptions, to make digressions... I have acquired this freedom.

You went to Paris when you were young. What kind of experience was it?

The experience was very hard on the one hand, as I left my two-month-old daughter here, but on the other hand it was also very productive. I think he freed me from my inner chord, and freed me from that chord as my Basque.

In this nomad of yours, what do you always carry from one side to the other?

To write it down. And the photographic machine. It's a spine like that for me to write. I have been looking for an economic way of life here and there, otherwise I would have been quiet doing the thing that I enjoy the most, but I have no rent, no interest, the whole list of Gabriel Aresti. Yeah, yeah, I've been looking for a job from one side to the other... I don’t have much control over the economy.

Many writers say they suffer when writing. Do you suffer or enjoy it more?

I have suffered for a long time. When I thought writing was a vice that I needed, when I could, I suffered, since I comming out as a writer and other. It’s been a decision to make a decision for pleasure, to think, look, I haven’t been able to do anything else in my life, to do it for pleasure, to do it for pleasure.

You are a postman by profession, and it is said that you are happy to say “I am a postman”. Does your job make you freer?

Yes, it makes me financially freer and I always stay in touch with the “real world” through work. Probably it would be fine if I spent my life writing, but I think I would lose my sense of reality very soon, I wouldn’t know how to relativize things... Sometimes we emend the problems of writers, make them public... and if you see how other people also live and then you can relativize the problems of the writer. It helps me to be away from the Basque literary and cultural world. It is true that when I finish the work, I have finished the work completely, and I have more free spirit for things to do at home, and I always have many things to do. My profession also influences my literature, let’s say I don’t have anything at all or I include 100% basque in my work place to collect life biographies, experiences... In this sense I am a very indigenous writer, not only do I write about my own life, but I also include the lives of others, and as I write I always feel in the lives of others; it seems to me that even the most petty lives should not be forgotten, and I have the power to remember them in writing.

What is your goal when you write?

To remember some people, some time, some environment through literature. I am not a linguist, I have not studied literature. I have studied history, and I have seen in some times the importance of writing texts, which stop there a century or two later for others to study. That’s what I also want: to write about things that other writers don’t deal with, to take pictures, to be held in words by times and people, with words and sentences as literary as possible. May the Testo be literature, fiction, but may it serve to retain something.

What themes prevail in Basque literature at the moment?

The themes prevail according to the concerns of the people. There has been a lot of talk in the South of the Civil War of 36. I think every great writer has his own novel about it. If we talk about the literature of wives, it focuses a lot on the destiny of the couple: the couple yes or no and how... and through this theme of the couple now all writers include homosexual couples, without which it is not possible to publish a book in Basque any more. Perhaps it is modeled to be politically correct, but hosexualism is still clearly mentioned only in the ghettos, and perhaps it is also done to force the Basque society to mention it. Literature has always been a bit ahead of society, even in Basque. Creation is always an abrasive path, so at the moment we don’t understand it or we don’t accept it, or we think it depends on the market, and yes, it is also the market, but not only that. But in everyday life, if not in the ghettos, it is not mentioned. It's symptomatic, it's a constant theme in books, movies, verse tournaments, but outside of them... It seems that it cannot even be mentioned outside of fiction, but bo, well, our society is like this and we are not the only ones, the whole of Europe is like this.

How do you build your literary language?

I am self-taught and therefore I have taken from many sources and I still drink from many sources at the linguistic level. In addition, it seems to me that to write a text in Basque it is not possible to use functional Basque, I distinguish between the language of journalists and the language of writers. Therefore, my field of freedom is that of language, and I integrate in the texts the words that I have received from my different dialects and those that I gather in my travels. Sometimes it’s just a nod to the Biscayan or Navarrese reader, but I’m also working as an Axular: collecting and using as many words as I can. The literary language, in general, is more and more flat, but the reading language is formatted in this way. In addition, even in other languages, even more functional in French, then the books are simpler, if you read the new writer of everything in French is the same. It is no longer written as it was written in the 19th century or in the mid-20th century. Africans also write in this way when they write in French, with such pompous richness, as if they had to prove that they know a rich language. And I do the same, I have heard so many times that my Basque was poor, it was deficient, because I need it to be rounded up, emendado, pomposo... that I know, it can also be that. But the language is free in its structure, so you can use the verb joined but everything else passes, it passes by adding the spelling as well as the xibero u.

It is said that you have learned more than one language to be able to read authors who write in that language.

Yeah, that's right. I learned German so that the German author could read it. I wanted to read Rilke in German. Also the Greek authors, and now I speak Greek in Greece. Basque and Greek in Greece. I read in many languages: English, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Catalan, German, Greek... The poets I read always impact me, everyone, always shows me a possible path, and that’s how I get rich. I read obsessively: I take an author from alpha to omega. I take my time. I don't take a lot of time working as a normal woman, which gives me a lot of free time. I don't care if it's dust in the house, I live with dust.

Who and what has Eñaut Etxamendi been to you?

A formatter of the spirit. We were teachers, economics teachers, and what we know about economics is thanks to Eñaut Etxamendi. We consider today’s economy according to the thinking of Eñaut Etxamendi. Eñaut Etxamendi and Manex Erdozaintzi Etxart, who prepared the books for me, did not find them in the northern libraries at that time. I also approached the song thanks to Etxamendi, and that is another of my great loves, hoping that writing poems will be sung at some point. And often it is so, they are sung, they are received by singers on both sides of the border, and for me that is a great emotion, a great emotion. I think I’m a frustrated musician, I always listen to music from dawn to dusk, and I’m always looking for special music, and I also listen to classical or Madona, or tribal music or... I always have music and if in all my novels it is a musical band, the novels should be sold with a record. Music brings rhythm and otherness to literature, the words of a specific place accompanies everything, it gives depth, music gives the third dimension to the word.

When you talk about your literature, you often talk about high sensitivity and certain seriousness. How do you combine intimacy and social reflection?

I don't know how I do it. I’ve always done it, I don’t even realize it, the two are one, and curiously, I don’t even write from the point of view of my wife, sometimes yes, because many times I don’t, maybe because in a socio-cultural and economic environment I feel my identity melted, and I can’t distinguish between us and me. Sometimes I do, but often I can't tell them apart. The pretension is perhaps to think that what the “I” lives is also lived by the gua, but in others it seems to me that it is, that we are never separated from the world around us. We are as the water ttantta in the sea, at the same time it is the water ttantta but it is also the sea.

You have also brought your sores and your resignations into the literature as your enlightenment. Does writing help ease the pain?

It helps me establish the distance between these pains and me. But with joy the same, otherwise we wouldn't even know where to be, how to be.

Is the writer an exibicionist by nature?

Yes, partly yes, but he wouldn't want to be, that's his tragedy. I am carrying this contradiction more and more peacefully, but it is true that in the past it was a great mourning to appear and, at the same time, a desire to hide. In addition, the Basques have not shown any enthusiasm, we must not show any pain or happiness, and we do not distinguish between fiction and reality. Now I know that what I write is fiction, even if it is reality, but that is what all writers do since the writer is a writer and the world is a world. The writer cannot hide himself, he is there in any text and therefore either accepts to be there or he cannot be a writer. Writing for me is my life, and as I say it is my life I write my life, but I know that my life is nothing at all, that others have similar lives, that is my justification, my salvation. And that’s what I share, that’s what I have to give my best to the reader or listener.

How has moving away from the military changed you?

On the one hand, it has reassured me to trust myself as a writer, because being a militant is very difficult to be a writer, and there you need even more to deny and reject your being, because being a militant, as I was in schools and then in Seaska, I think that there was no place for the writer Itxaro Borda. And not for the person. I think I've lived 10 years without having anything, having a tool... and I've written high!

As you get older, you seem to have fewer and fewer ideological barriers. How tight were those barriers?

I was particularly overwhelmed because I thought too much about what the reader would think of what I wrote. And from my education it seemed to me that the reader could not think of anything good. And then, on the other hand, they also limited me to the fact that the conflictive situation that we are experiencing in the Basque Country is manifested in its entirety. I mean, if you write as a patriot you deny the other part, something is missing in your dialogues, and for the first time I included those who spoke against the Basque cause in my novels or writings, I was surprised, but I also realized that I needed to write that, what others say, without me judging, what say anti-Basque, anti-Basque politics, non-patriots in Basque and the Basque world. A whole thing. I globalize myself, the economy does it, so I globalize myself. Yes, and it is also very enriching to see that we have the possibility of integrating the different Basque voices and voices that are against us in our literature, without being against the cause! Simply including voices, even if you include voices that sometimes accuse you of being anti-Basque. But this is also the result of not understanding the codes of reality and fiction, I think I have said that, in our case, fiction is very important. By the word, and if we include all these different voices, we can imagine what can happen in real society, if we don’t stay between the walls and we can’t imagine what can happen if I talk to a non-patriot as a patriot. How do I answer his argument? And what argument will he use to solve with them at least in public? We need to fix people, humanly. And fiction helps us to simulate, fiction helps us to act and acting helps us to live.

You mention that you are a stranger to the cultural world of the north, as well as to the outside. Does that hurt you?

I’ve always been outside, I’ve never been inside. As I said, I write too much and I don’t write about the right topics, and I don’t even have a good perspective, I have a marginal perspective. I belong to a marginal people, a marginal genre, a marginal faith, a marginal language... It’s true that there was a time when I was very hurtful about these issues, but in this last time I don’t care. I won in mental health.

You mentioned that your work is more an ethical and linguistic commitment than a political commitment. What is your ethical commitment?

I will always be like
Gabriel Aresti, he said, for the man; I will generalize and say I will always be for the people.

Although you consider yourself an optimist, the pessimism of your works is emphasized.

Yes, I am an optimist, although I have a pessimistic vision. That’s another contrast of mine. And to make irony, to laugh and to mock, that is my good. The good of my tribe. The irony really helps me explain things. It also helps me to lay down according to my truth, and to establish the distance between tragedy and me. And also to enjoy reading at some point and to feel that it is clever and intelligent.

Homosexuality is another topic that crosses your works, sometimes in a more metaphorical way, and more often in the books “At Any Time” or “Pull to the Square”. Why did you decide to take that leap? From metaphorical homosexuality to visible homosexuality?

I’ve always written about being a lesbian. It can only be said in truth, because everyone writes from his own point of view. Then, there have been times when I have written metaphorically, and it is true that in that “Jalgi hadi palzara” I did some kind of comming out, but it was made as a person for a long time, and I think that it was also there by the impulse of society, I felt that there was also an echo of a phenomenon, in short, that story is the story of many of us, we have spent years and years without saying it and, well, at some point it is time to say it. I believe that by saying and speaking naturally, we open the line for others to say and live. The truth is that it has been easier to do a personal comming out than to do it as a writer, although in 1985 I already had a story written, “Klara and I”, which told the love story between two young girls during the GAL attacks, this is another testimony, if there are two there. But I think it's been harder to do it in fiction than in reality. Many times the language itself dictates, because the language has its own morality, and our cultural world has its own morality, things do not surrender, they do but they do not surrender, throw the stone and keep the hand, that is how we live. And I wanted to emphasize the lesbian character, because everyone else is constantly emphasizing his or her manhood, his or her status as a wife, his or her status as a politician... everyone emphasizes it, you listen to conversations and everyone emphasizes his or her character, and those who are lesbian or gay do not. Some characters seem to weigh more than others. We have made two roundtables on literature and homosexuality, only two, and our writings are full of homosexuality. It is normal for it to be accepted at any time, so that this character can also be seen. In my books, homosexuality is not just another characteristic that is imposed on the characters, it is a way of looking at the world, a point of view. Homosexuality always determines and enriches the character of the characters. In most cases, it enriches the marginal conception of the characters.

“I was thinking that once I came home from work, thinking of the murder of Capbreton, that almost forty years ago our country was ravaged by a blind and dry war and that I only wrote poems of love.” Coexistence in the game and you again in the little songs?

That’s the irony of my writing career. It is also a way of relativising our characters as writers, and also a way of saying that we as writers are aware of the nature of a war, a mute and blind war, but a war, in which we also participate, in our words, either for or against, or neither for nor against.

How do you manage your daily column work?

That's a happiness. It's a great pleasure. It is a great pleasure to be looking at the world and to search within the week or within the day for every point of view from which I wish to speak, knowing that the point of view must be situated within my limits, within my knowledge. Sometimes I write three in a row, sometimes one, now I go home and do one... It’s been a year and a half now and I feel like I could go on all my life. And I write something every day, or translation or novel... Now I don’t write novels but maybe this summer I’ll have a kind of attack like that, it’s like an absence in the belly, a bubble like that all day long... I know I need to write something long.