00:00So in the story of the Roman history, there is an element that is very eloquent and very revelatory
00:08to think about the survival of the causes and political conflicts. I talk about that all
00:14and I embark on the Panteon, which is perhaps the temple of the antiquity better preserved.
00:23It has a lot to do with my love and my devotion for Italy. There,
00:29above all, a key figure that is the of Orfeo, which was the bardo and semi-dios of the Greek
00:37mythology.
00:39So in that meeting with the Roman catacumbus, I wanted to do something about that.
00:45I thought it was a few pages, and it resulted in this book of 560.
00:51And this book also came from an Italian journey, the first journey that I made after the lockdown and the
01:02pandemic
01:03was to Rome, where I re-encontained, among other things, with two of my daughters who live in Germany,
01:10but we put the point of encounter in Rome, which is a city that I adore,
01:17which is a city that I have visited many times, which I could say that I know more or less
01:24well.
01:26But in this encounter, after the pandemic, it was also like if I saw for the first time, with an
01:34intensity,
01:35inédita, inédita, many of those places, among others, the catacumbas romanas,
01:43which were the cemetery of the Christians in the time of the expansion of the christianism
01:52by the empire, and in those catacumbas, there is a dialogue revelatory between the paganism and the christianism
02:03that was arising.
02:05This book begins with a declaration of love to Rome, and, above all, those spaces romanos
02:16in which they fund and mix the paganism and the christianism with the christianism.
02:21Now, the christianism comes to Rome as a cult oriental persecuted,
02:27but around three centuries, it becomes the official religion of the empire and lo doblega.
02:33It is to say that the christianism conquisted the greatest power that have seen in the centuries.
02:38And this book is called with an epigraph of Don Nicolás that says,
02:47that more than a christianism, perhaps I am a pagan who believe in Christ,
02:52that resume a little bit what is my faith and that marks a little bit the tone of this essay
03:00that has to do with the cruce of caminos between the Judaism of the Second Temple
03:06and the paganism griego and romans and how that mix of those two torrents is what, at the end,
03:17explains the origin of the christianism, but also explains why a messianic secta,
03:24like there were so many others in their time, which is the christianism,
03:29ends up becoming a phenomenon universal, tan universal, that doblega the Roman Empire
03:33and conquista the world.
03:35Yes, many times I realized how there are conflicts and tensions in history that are perpetuated,
03:46that are recicled, and one is talking about the ancient Rome and it would be like if we were talking
03:52about the Colombia of today,
03:54even in the ideological and partidistic way and in the causes that they defend themselves,
04:03also have to be careful with the place where the history is repeated, because that is not true.
04:11But this book, in its way, is also a story of Rome, of the Rome mítica and monárquica
04:21after the birth of the Republic with its conflicts and the creation of the Roman Empire.
04:26I felt that I had to tell that story because I wanted to narrate
04:31very well all the roots that are going to explain the origin of the christianism.
04:37So it is the explanation of the world of the Mediterranean,
04:41with the conquest of Alejandro and the helenization of the Oriental,
04:46what we call the helenism, and also how the Roman Empire
04:53the Roman Empire ends up with all that and without the Roman Empire no exist would exist.
04:59The case of the Roman Empire is exemplary, archetypical,
05:05because Rome begins its expansion, which will lead very soon to be the one of the Mediterranean
05:14and the greatest empire in the history of humanity.
05:20And that process of the birth of the Roman Empire, which in reality has to do with the Roman Empire
05:27and its expansion throughout the Mediterranean and the Occident, coincide with the need for the Roman Empire
05:36by the Roman Empire of inventing a past that was deposited in the myths and legends,
05:45because also Roma had also been asediated by the celtas in the IV a.C.
05:52and they said that they had destroyed all the archives.
05:55So in a moment, when Rome begins its great expansion,
06:00and the Roman Empire of the Roman Empire
06:01are cobrando consciousness
06:03of the place they start to have, not only in Italy,
06:07but also in the Mediterranean,
06:10they need to invent their history.
06:14or reinvent themselves
06:16and they begin to believe in it as if it were a act of faith.
06:21And that is something that happens a lot
06:23in different societies throughout the time, throughout the centuries.
06:29There are, many times,
06:31a need to reinvent the past
06:37because of the circumstances of the present.
06:40And that is something that we see,
06:42very clearly in the moment
06:44in which Rome will reach the cima
06:46of the political power
06:47in the Mediterranean,
06:49because the Roman Empire,
06:50instead of advancing forward,
06:53they are advancing forward,
06:55they are enhancing
06:57their past
06:58and they are finding
07:00a number of insumos
07:02that justifies
07:04that kind of history
07:05that they are finding
07:06in the Empire.
07:08Yes, that is a idea
07:12literaria
07:12and filosófica
07:13that I really like
07:14and that guides
07:17the work of a Spanish author
07:20that is Javier Marías,
07:22that we will say
07:23our life
07:24and our destiny
07:26are the sum
07:28of what we
07:29we are
07:30and we have decided
07:33and we have done
07:34but also
07:35it is
07:35the sum of
07:36everything that we hate
07:37we are being
07:38and we are having
07:39as of
07:40a kind of
07:41a kind of
07:43that we have
07:44on the part
07:46and
07:48reading
07:49that idea
07:51of Javier Marías,
07:52I realized that he was a great lector of a Colombian author,
07:58which is Álvaro Mutis is one of the authors that most liked Javier Marías,
08:05and that idea Javier Marías was taken from the work of Álvaro Mutis,
08:11from the destiny of Macrol,
08:15the destiny of Macrol and disaster of Macrol,
08:18Mutis decía eso, somos lo que somos,
08:23porque fuimos lo que fuimos,
08:25somos la suma de todas nuestras decisiones,
08:29de los gestos que van tejiendo nuestra suerte,
08:33pero somos también el relato contrariado y negado de aquello que no fuimos,
08:39la llamada que no respondimos, la puerta que no abrimos,
08:43la carta que dejamos pasar,
08:44y cuando uno traslada eso a un relato histórico,
08:48pero en un ensayo que también es literario,
08:51pues se encuentra con figuras como la de Julio César,
08:55sobre la que conocemos un poco más,
08:57como la del propio Cristo, sobre el que conocemos menos,
09:01pero entonces ahí está el relato biográfico de estos personajes
09:05y también la suma de aquello que pudieron haber sido y no fueron.
09:10Pues bueno, bienvenido.
09:12Gracias, gracias por aceptar nuevamente una entrevista.
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