Q&A with Melanie Little
Q: What prompted you to write the novel The Apprentice’s Masterpiece?
A: It’s so difficult to understand the endurance of intolerance—be it racial, religious, or ideological—in our world. There seem to be so many people with good intentions devoting their lives to changing things for the better, and yet the intolerance persists, to continually tragic result. I think one of the only ways of understanding the complexity of these conflicts is to examine their mirror images—and, in many cases, their roots—in the past.
The Spanish Inquisition has become the touchstone for the evil that can arise from intolerance—so much so, unfortunately, that the specific details of its history have been reduced to cliché, and the extremely complex web of factors that made it possible are largely forgotten. We have this image of a barbaric, medieval institution and place that could never be replicated in a modern society. In fact, the Spanish Inquisition followed closely on the heels of one of the most vibrant, pluralistic, and even tolerant cultural periods in world history. How did one of the most enlightened cultures on record—one in which Jews, Muslims, and Christians lived and learned together, if not in harmony then at least in some modicum of respect—become an engine synonymous with cruelty and discrimination? This question fascinated me, in no small part because of the resonance it has for the most difficult situations in our world today.
One of the only ways to combat intolerance, I believe, is to make it impossible to ignore the individual humanity in every person. Reducing people to nothing more than a component of a group—whether the group be Hutus or Tutsis or conversos or “Old Chrisitians”—is the first step to making discrimination, hysteria, and even genocide a thinkable thing. One of the best tools we possess in the fight against this is narrative. As soon as we tell the story of one Muslim boy in Christianized Spain, his plight becomes real to us. History comes alive, and we draw parallels between his world and ours. I wanted to look back on a period that has tremendous relevance to contemporary society and make it inescapably real to my readers. It’s my hope that this story will make them examine both the past and the present in another light.
Q: Can you describe the experience of traveling to Spain to research your novel?
A: The first monument I visited in Spain was the Synagogue of El Tránsito in Toledo. Its great prayer room is perhaps the most beautiful, most spiritual place I’ve been in my life. I’d spent the three months leading up to my trip reading everything I could get my hands on about medieval life in places like Toledo and Cordoba, cities that had a strong Jewish and then converso population. I knew that the stunning ornamental stuccowork on the synagogue’s walls was the product of what’s often called convivencia—the interaction of Muslims, Jews, and Christians in early Spain. I knew also that this prayer room was the legacy of hundreds of years of Jewish presence in Spain, and a place where Jews from all over Castile once came to worship and to meet. And I knew that many of those very same Jews were killed in pogroms, or forcibly converted to Christianity, or expelled. It was a powerful and in some ways horrible moment.
I journeyed south to Andalusia, where the novel is set, and I spent most of the first week there in a state of sorrow and anger. How could these people I walked among go so blithely about their lives, eating tapas in restaurants off plazas where conversos were burned at the stake? The inheritance of convivencia was etched on every single Spanish face I saw—given what had happened here, what were they all smiling about?
It was only in the second week of my visit that I came to realize that, far from forgetting the dark events of the past, the Spanish are trying to make peace with it. They are doing so, not by forgetting, but by rediscovering and reincorporating what was so very nearly obliterated during the long years of the Inquisition. Once again, Muslim and Jewish influences are everywhere—in food, in fashion, in music and art and literature and architecture. It was tremendously inspiring to realize that it is possible for a culture to recover from the darkest reaches of intolerance. But it takes care, and remembering. The bookstores are full of books set in all periods of Spain’s history, many from the perspectives of Muslims, Jews, and conversos.
Q: Why did you decide to write this as a verse novel rather than as a conventional narrative?
A: Quite early on I realized that in order to tell the full story of even one person in medieval Spain, I would have to weave a very complex narrative indeed. A whole tapestry of elements have to be woven if I were to really capture the period, the place, and the circumstances that lead to some of the most unthinkable events in history. At the same time, I knew I wanted to write the story in a way that was accessible and palatable to young readers. I didn’t want to give them a history lesson with a few narrative elements thrown in. But to include all the threads I felt I needed, I would have needed a thousand or more pages of prose.
As the story grew, I further realized that I couldn’t tell this story fully with a single protagonist. Nor could I limit it to a single place and time. Around this time I discovered the verse novel format, and fell in love with the complex verse narratives by Australian writers Dorothy Porter and Les Murray. What if I told the story in poems?
From there, everything seemed to fall into place. The verse novel format allowed me to move through time and space with much greater ease than in prose. And I began to discover how appropriate it was to be creating these characters through poetry. I read medieval Jewish and Muslim poets like Samuel ha-Levi and, of course, the great Hafiz, and was struck by how much they managed to say in few words. Poetry was not only a supreme art to these writers, but an act of resistance. It was perfect for my characters and their dawning awareness of the world around them.
Q: What impact did researching and writing this novel have on you?
A: I’m a storyteller, by both profession and temperament. People tend to focus on the positive aspects of that—things like inspiration and personal expression. What doesn’t get a lot of press is the astounding responsibility that goes along with telling stories. Stories are immensely powerful, and can have a lasting effect. Even a writer with the best intentions sometimes gets it really, dangerously wrong. I read accounts of truly horrible cruelties in my research, and these affected me profoundly. But what had an even greater impact on me as a storyteller was the terrible role played by words in many of these events. Wild rumours and tall tales often led to very real lootings, arrests, and even massacres. And these were not just the fancies of the uneducated. Historians and priests who were more concerned with staying alive and employed than with representing the truth have a great deal to answer for.
Even today, there are few scholars who agree on every aspect of the Inquisition—especially regarding the question of why. Researching a historical period in such depth made me realize that there is never only one answer to a question. Never again will I consider even the most distinguished historical textbook or account as more than a jumping-off point for further exploration.
There were wonderful discoveries, as well. Among these were stories of friendship and self-sacrifice across cultures and against all odds. These are the stories that kept me going through some very dark hours. They are the kind of story I hope The Apprentice’s Masterpiece will be for others.
Reviews
The Apprentice’s Masterpiece: A Story of Medieval Spain
Melanie Little
Ramon is the son of a scribe, an apprentice scribe himself, and the great-grandson of conversos, those who converted from Judaism to Christianity in medieval Spain. Even though Ramon and his parents were raised Christian, the Inquisition has been making life hard for them. Amir is a Moor slave, a Muslim of Spain. Ramon and Amir’s worlds collide when Amir is given to Ramon’s family. The boys are about the same age and Ramon is jealous of the time his Papa spends with Amir learning to read and write Arabic. But one fateful day changes the course of both Amir’s and Ramon’s lives. Little’s descriptions of life in this time of distrust and fanaticism are made all the more poignant by the way they are written--this is a novel in verse, with Amir’s words sandwiched between Ramon’s. The imagery is brief for each poem, yet each one resonates of its own accord. Some are of the past, some of the present, some funny, many serious, but all make up the lives of Ramon and Amir in powerful words. While the language is easy to read, the subject matter is not. The format, however, makes it much more palatable and therefore easier to absorb than perhaps long, drawn-out, descriptive paragraphs of the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition would have been. This is an amazing tale of survival and hard-won friendship during a time of intolerance and pain for many. This would be a very good book to use in many different kinds of classes, from studying poetry to history, and also could be read on one’s own for its message of hope amid struggles. 2008, Annick Press, Ages 12 up, $19.95. Reviewer: Kathleen Foucart
ISBN: 978-1-55451-117-4
Added 03/24/08
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