The author and his commitment

On May 29, 2002, hours prior to concluding my new book, I went to the Grotto of Lourdes, in France, to fill a couple of gallons with the miraculous water from the fountain there. Already on the cathedral’s grou-nds, an approximately 70-year-old man approached me and asked: “Did you know you look like Paulo Coelho?” I told him that I am indeed Paulo Coelho. That man embraced me, introduced me to his wife and his granddaughter.

He spoke of the importance of my books in his life, concluding: “they make me dream.”
I have heard that sentence many times and it always makes me happy. At that moment, however, I got very startled — because I knew Eleven Minutes spoke of a sensitive, hurting, shocking subject; the course of a Brazilian prostitute in search of meeting her soul. I walked up to the fountain, filled the gallons, returned, and asked the man where he lived (in northern France, near Belgium) and wrote down his name. At that very moment I decided to dedicate the book to that man, Maurice Gravelines. I have an obligation towards him, his wife, his granddaughter, and towards myself: talk about what worries me and not about what everyone would like to hear.

Some books make us dream, others convey reality, but no one can flee from what is most important for an author: honesty towards what s/he writes.
For example, for me, to write about sex was a challenge that followed me since my youth. Those were the times when the hippie revolution had created a series of new behaviours, sometimes getting to the limit of good sense.

After those crazy years, we went through a conservative period, through the advent of the mortal diseases, through the question that always returned: “Is sex really that important?”
We live in a world of standardised behaviours: beauty, quality, intelligence, efficiency standards. We think there is a model for everything. We also think that by following that particular model, we will remain safe.

And because of that, we establish a “sex standard,” which in truth is composed of a series of lies: vaginal orgasms, virility above everything, better pretend than letting the other down, etc.
As a direct consequence, this type of attitude has left millions of people frustrated, unhappy and guilty. And it has led to all types of aberrations such as paedophilia, incest and rape. Why do we behave this way about something that important?

Similarly, an author never knows the course his/her books will take — and because of that he allows his writings to go in unexpected directions — we, too, need to live our contradictions, especially in fields as sensitive as sex and love.

A man who wants to follow a pattern all the time will be compelled today to think what he thought yesterday. How can one always wear the tie that matches with the socks? Is there anything more boring than that?

Today’s society that approaches sexual behaviour by the “standard” and does not respect the individual differences should try to remember one of the most beautiful poems about the human condition, the Hymn to Isis discovered in Nag Hammadi, Egypt, which specialists date between the third and the fourth centuries of our era.

Translated by Bettina Dungs