READIN

🦋 The elephant on his journey

Saramago is taking a few days off to go hiking:

Readers will recall that the names of two villages which the expedition passed through on its way to Figueira de Castelo Rodrigo were never mentioned by the narrator of the story. These villages, as far as they were described, were simply invented to fill a need of the fiction and had no real-world correspondents. Thus it will appear appalling to lovers of historical ricor, that Salomón is preparing himself today for a journey that, while not being literally the one he took, surely could have been it, even if of that one there remains no precise record. Life carries many coincidences in her pockets and one can not exclude the possibility that, in some one or another case, the lyrics might fit with the music. It's certain that our story doesn't say Salomón crossed the lands of Castelo Novo, Sortelha or Cidadelhe, but nonetheless it is impossible to say that that didn't happen. We are making use of this tautology, we the José Saramago Foundation, to think up and organize a journey which will begin today in Belén*, in front of the monastery of the Jerónimos and which will bring us to the frontier, up there, where the Austrian cuirassiers wanted to transport the elephant to the archduke. But the itinerary is arbitrary, the reader will protest, but we prefer, if you will permit us, to consider it one of the innumerable possible routes. We will hike that way two days and we will tell the story of what happens to us. Who is coming? The Foundation will be there in full, a couple of staunch friends of Salomón are coming along, Portuguese and Spanish journalists, all good people. Stay well. Until we come back, farewell, farewell.

(I am extremely impressed by a man of his advanced years going off for a multi-day hike. Perhaps he should take as a nickname, "Father William".)

* This is a kind of interesting question: should this be rendered as Belén or as Bethlehem? He is talking about Lisbon -- unless there is a neighborhood in Lisbon called Belén -- I'm not sure quite what he is doing by referring to it as Belén. It's probably something to do with Bethlehem being a generic starting point, a birthplace. Or it might have something to do with the novel, which I'm anxiously awaiting. Here are some pictures of the monastery they are starting from.

...Aw, forget all that -- a little more research reveals that adjacent to the monastery is a structure called "the Tower of Bethlehem," and the district around there is called Belém. That's all he meant by it. Probably the correct/best way of rendering this would be Belém, since that's what locals would call the neighborhood.

posted evening of Tuesday, June 16th, 2009
➳ More posts about Saramago's Notebook
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