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🦋 The Dog of Tears
It is not worth describing what Cipriano Algor thought about because he had thought it on so many other occasions and we have supplied more than enough information on the subject already. The only new thing here is that he allowed a few painful tears to run down his cheeks, tears that had been dammed up for a long, long time, always just about to be shed, but, as it turned out, they were being reserved for this sad hour, for this moonless night, for this solitude that has not yet resigned itself to being solitude. What was truly not a novelty, because it had happened before in the history of fables and in the history of the marvels of the canine race, was that Found went over to Cipriano Algor to lick his tears, a gesture of supreme consolation which, however touching it might seem to us, capable of touching hearts normally not given to displays of emotion, should not make us forget the crude reality that the salty taste of tears is greatly appreciated by most dogs. One thing, however, does not detract from the other, were we to ask Found if it was because of the salt that he licked Cipriano Algor's face, he would probably have replied that we do not deserve the bread that we eat, that we are incapable of seeing beyond the end of our own nose.
A dog licking tears from the face of a crying human is a central image in Saramago's work, as much as I've read of it so far anyway. And it is touching -- the other times I've read sequences like this, they have touched me as symbolizing the depth of connection between the dog and his master. But another way of looking at it that is occurring to me now, is how painfully lonely, to be weeping in a place where there is no other person present.
 (The clause after "truly not a novelty" strikes me as funny in a sort of self-referential way -- it could be rendered, "What was truly not a novelty, because it had happened before in books I have written,...")
posted evening of Friday, July 25th, 2008
➳ More posts about Blindness
➳ More posts about José Saramago
➳ More posts about Readings
➳ More posts about The Cave
The dog of tears theme sort of links The Cave with Blindness and
Seeing. It's a different dog in The Cave, but it's a dog who
appears replacing Constant, Cipriano's former dog. And Constant
happens to be the dog of tears of Seeing and Blindness!
posted evening of August first, 2008 by Jorge López
Oh, I forgot about that! He got the name Constant in
Seeing, is that right? Nice link.
posted morning of August second, 2008 by Jeremy
Yeah, it's on Seeing.
And you're right, same thing happens with the dialogues on the
spanish translation, it sounds completely natural.
Pilar del Río, Saramago's wife, does his translations, so
she surely keeps them very very close to the originals.
posted morning of August second, 2008 by Jorge López
Interesting -- now The Cave was written in 2001, in
between Blindness and Seeing -- so it seems like
the progression would be, "Dog of Tears" appears in
Blindness; then "Found" appears in The Cave with
a reference to the older dog "Constant"; then in Seeing
"Dog of Tears" is renamed "Constant". Kind of following the thread
of composition.
The English translations are done by Margaret Jull Costa. I can't
really vouch for their closeness to the Portuguese except to say
that they read very, very smoothly and beautifully.
posted morning of August second, 2008 by Jeremy
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