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🦋 Saramago in bronze

A statue of José Saramago has been erected in his childhood home, the small town of Azinhaga in Ribatejo, Portugal. Saramago was in Azinhaga this weekend for the unveiling of the statue; he writes:

There I am, sitting in the middle of the plaza, with a book in my hand, looking at the people passing by. They made me a little bigger than life-size, I suppose to make me look better. I don't know for how many years I will be there. I have always said that the destiny of statues is to be continually removed, but in this case, I like to imagine that they will leave me in peace, someone who in peace has returned twofold to his land, as a person and, starting now, as bronze also. Even if my imagination has at times caused me to fall into such absurd deliria, I never dared to think that they would one day erect a statue of me in the land where I was born. What have I done, that this might occur? I wrote some few books, I carried with me, for all the world, the name of Azinhaga, and more than anything I never forgot those who bore me and reared me: my grandparents and my parents. I spoke of them in Stockholm before an illustrious audience and was understood. That which we see as a tree is just a part of it, doubtless important, which would be nothing without its roots. Mine, the biological ones, are named Josefa and Jerónimo, José and Piedade, but there are others who are places, Casalinho and Divisões, Cabo das Casas and Almonda, Tajo and Rabo dos Cágados, and also others named olive, weeping willow, poplar and walnut, rafts sailing on the river, fig trees laden with fruit, pigs raised on the pasture, and some, still sucklings, sleeping in the bed with my grandparents so they would not freeze to death. Of all this I was made, all of this entered into the composition of the bronze into which they have transformed me. But look, it was no spontaneous generation. Without the willpower, strength and tenacity of Victor Guia and José Miguel Correia Noras, the statue would not be there. It is with the deepest gratitude that I give them here my embrace, extended to all the people of Azinhaga, into whose care I deliver this other child which is me.

posted evening of Tuesday, June second, 2009
➳ More posts about Saramago's Notebook
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