Paulo Coelho: writing the pilgrim’s way

By Tony Watts - Editor - 19/06/2008

It’s Paris in mid May, and Brazilian author Paulo Coelho is enjoying some time in one of his favourite cities before heading off to the Cannes Film Festival. “This,” he tells me, “is pleasure not work.” 

 

But his visit to France does have an additional purpose: a few days later, from Cannes, comes the announcement that his most famous book, The Alchemist, is to be made into a film.

 

The prospect is intriguing. The Alchemist has topped 30 million sales worldwide, but it is much, much more than a best selling book. To its millions of devotees it is a life changing work, a novel that has tapped into the universal desire to discover or confirm, our purpose in life. It is handed out in schools, companies and communities.

 

Not that The Alchemist offers a ready-made set of answers to life’s mysteries - as Coelho is at pains to point out to me: “Once the universe is explained, you lose the sense of magic and mystery”. The Alchemist simply reveals that our purpose and meaning are to be found not by travelling around the world looking for someone to give us the answers, but within each of us: if we only stop and listen to the voice within.

 

And, as he tells me, “The book is a metaphor of my life”.

 

What an eventful life that has been. Committed to a mental institution by his parents because he wanted to live the life of an artist, he forged his own way and became a celebrated lyricist whose work was perceived as subversive by the authorities in his native Brazil, and they imprisoned and tortured him. He subsequently found inspiration on the 500 mile Road of Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain: a spiritual awakening that has found expression in all his books since. And now he is a best selling author and a United Nations appointed “Messenger of Peace”.

 

The Alchemist is a simple tale, simply told. But its simplicity is deliberate and telling, like The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran, a book that has been one of the most influential on his work together, Coelho tells me, with the art and poetry of William Blake. Both those sources emphasise the need to shed excess complication: truth is actually very simple. In Coelho’s words: “Try to live with the same intensity as a child. He doesn’t ask for explanations; he dives into each day as if it were a new adventure and, at night, sleeps tired and happy.”

 

Each of Coelho’s books is a journey of discovery for the protagonists, a road towards enlightenment; and, as he says, “They each raise questions that don’t necessarily have answers. Ever since the dawn of time, people have been asking ‘why am I here, who am I?’.

 

“Are people looking for answers?” he asks enigmatically. “No, they 
are looking for questions.” And he is deeply suspicious of people – 
and religions – that claim to have pat answers for life’s mysteries. 

 

To quote from his earlier work, “I know many people who will explain to you in great detail the meaning of our existence. Don’t believe them, these people are tied to an ancient language, and only believe in things which have an explanation.”

 

The characters in his books are rarely spared difficult experiences, and that, too, is central to his philosophy as we ‘grow through experience’. To Coelho, we lead more than one life, each one accumulating wisdom towards our ‘higher self’. It’s a philosophy that may not sit comfortably with some people – just as his latest book, The Witch of Portobello, deals with issues such as intuition, clairvoyancy and feminine divinity. But it’s an outlook on life, the  universe and everything that strikes a potent chord with a growing  global readership that embraces the commonality between us, and does  not dismiss other people’s faiths out of hand. “We’re all going 
towards the same light,” says Paulo. “It just happens that Jesus Christ is my guide.”

 

The heroine of The Witch of Portobello suffers the slings and arrows of an outraged church and hysterical media; and, as Paulo explains to me, a society which is distrustful of anything new. “When you step outside the path that society tells you to follow, you’re seen as suspicious, a threat.”

 

The “witch” in the book, is someone who has tapped into an inner power that all of us can access – a female side that is in touch with nature – and our own nature, before the dulling process of modern life stifled it.  “She’s not really a witch,” says Paulo. “She simply doesn’t comply with the rules.”

 

So how does someone so associated with “New Age” thinking remain  comfortable with his avowed Catholic faith?

 

“Yes, I’m a Catholic – I was born into it. But I don’t agree with all of it. Some of the dogma that has been built up over the years has been to maintain economic and social order. And when the Pope says something stupid, he is not necessarily representing the Holy Spirit.” It’s a division between “faith” and “religion” that might  find him at odds with his Church at times, but to him faith is about leading his life according to Jesus Christ.

 

“He enjoyed life,” says Paulo. “His first miracle, remember, was to turn water into wine – not the other way around. He spent his life travelling and socialising – and making his mother worry about him.”

 

To Coelho, his dream, his purpose in life is plain: to write; and it’s a dream that he has now realised. But he also wants to keep on learning and doing new things. The last few years have seen him harness the power of the internet as probably no other author has ever done. His regular “blogs” on there keep him in touch with his readers, large parts of his work can be found there, and he is constantly in interactive contact with his audience – answering their questions and learning from their feedback in the process. “It’s a  new medium, and demands new ways of writing,” he says. The internet is so powerful – a universal mind offering real democracy.”

 

Life, then, is a journey … but a shared one. For while Coelho often portrays himself as a “guide” to his readers, he is at pains to point out that a teacher learns from his pupils too.