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Wednesday, December 24th, 2008
So here are the books I've read by José Saramago in the order I've read them, with a brief reaction to each and a note about where it falls in his career:
- Blindness: This absolutely spectacular, powerhouse book took my breath away. It was published in 1995, about 13 years into Saramago's status as an internationally recognized novelist, and seems to be regarded as a major part of the reason he received the Nobel prize.
- Seeing: This book requires fairly close reading. I think that the combination of this book with Blindness (to which it is a sequel) is far greater than the sum of its parts; the worldview of the two books together is immensely more complicated than of either one by itself. The book was published in 2004, six years after Saramago had won the Nobel prize. I have read reviews which characterize it as Saramago coasting, a minor work; I think they are wrong.
- The Cave: This book does not have the fireworks of Blindness and Seeing. It is a book on a human scale, a cottage rather than a skyscraper. I loved it -- it cemented my view of Saramago as a consummate artist of human characters. It was published in 2001.
- The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis: This book is very different from the previous three. It is the most intensely "literary" work of Saramago's among those I have read -- it is concerned with how literary representation of reality works. It was published in 1986, the second novel Saramago published after Baltasar and Blimunda, which appears to have marked his entree to worldwide recognition.
- Death with Interruptions: I found this book disappointing. It is brief but not, I think, worth spending your time on for any reason other than completeness. It was published in 2005.
- The Stone Raft: Hugely thought-provoking. This book opens up many avenues for further investigation (and makes me ache to travel to Spain and Portugal). I'm still not sure quite what it is about. It was published in 1986.
What's next? I'd really like to read all of his books that are not on this list, with maybe my top priorities being The Gospel According to Jesus Christ and All the Names. If The Elephant's Journey is published in translation before I get to either of those, it will certainly be at the top of the list. For now I am going to try and broaden my Portuguese palate a bit by reading Lobo Antunes' What Can I Do When Everything's on Fire?.
posted afternoon of December 24th, 2008: Respond
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Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008
I have never given any thought to why Brazil is historically a Portuguese colony, when (almost) all the other states of South America are historically Spanish colonies. But perhaps it is because of the Treaty of Tordesilla, which specifies that lands west of the meridian halfway between the (Portuguese) Cape Verde islands and the West Indies shall be the territory of Spain, and lands east of this meridian shall be Portuguese. Brazil is the easternmost country of South America and much of it lies east of this meridian. (In The Stone Raft, the Iberian "peninsula" comes to rest "on the line that in those glorious days had divided the world into two parts, one for me, one for you, one for me." -- That's how I came to be finding out about it.) Also here, we have a couple more direct textual references, to "Padre António Vieira's History of the Future and The Prophesies of Bandarra, as well as Pessoa's Mensagem, but that goes without saying." ...And, Roque Lozano has rejoined the story! Can Maria Dolores be far off? Your questions are false if you already know the answer.
posted evening of December 23rd, 2008: 4 responses
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Saturday, December 20th, 2008
Do you believe in any of what you're saying, It's not a question of believing or not believing, everything we go on saying is added to what is, to what exists,... when I get to the end of what I'm saying, I have to believe in my having said it, that's often all that's needed, just as water, flour, and yeast make bread.
I read a lot more of The Stone Raft today and am pretty well cured of my fear (sort of silly on its face) that Saramago was going to turn the story into a conventional unconventional romance. I still feel concerned about the way the two female characters were brought into the story each to hook up immediately with one of the men -- it seems to diminish their roles as independent characters, when the male characters had a hundred or so pages to develop themselves solo, not as part of a couple. (Also I'm still wondering about Maria Dolores -- why was she brought into the story and given an identity if she was not going to play any role going forward?)But maybe the romantic pairing is necessary -- it gives me as a reader a familiar element in this very alien story. I like the characters and I'm ok with them getting together. Joaquim is still immature and petulant -- he has not been cured of that by his liaison with Maria Guaivera. And yet I respect him, since he is the one who set this whole pilgrimage in motion. Something I'm wondering about: When Pedro tells of the stone ship he found at the coast, it reminds Maria of an old story that "saints landed on this coast in ships made of stone, coming from deserts on the other side of the world." Is this a real story? I'm going to try and find out more about it -- Maria references St. James as one of the sailors in question. ...Yes, a real story. celticcountries.com says, Further details about Saint James' late whereabouts were given in the Historia Compostellana [sic] commissioned by Archbishop Diego Gelmirez of Galicia in the 12th century. According to the Historia, after St. James was martyred in the Holy Land his disciples carried his body to Galicia in a ship made of stone. Like St. James, many other Celtic saints such as St. Matthieu or St. Malo in Brittany navigated also across the Atlantic in stone vessels.
(later, the travellers "are following the old route of Santiago," who is St. James, as they move slowly through the villages south of Lugo.)
posted evening of December 20th, 2008: Respond
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Wednesday, December 17th, 2008
The Wooster Collective features some art from Peter Fuss of Poland, including this billboard, which reminds me a bit (as so much else is doing these days) of The Stone Raft:
 (Seen in context at Fuss's site the message is a bit different.)
posted morning of December 17th, 2008: Respond
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Tuesday, December 16th, 2008
The only real thing that exists at this moment on earth is our being here together...
I'm lingering around the middle of The Stone Raft a bit. I was a bit surprised at Joana's revelation, and it prompted me to think of the book as pretty strongly feminist in tone; but now, following close on that, she has paired off with José; Maria has been introduced and has paired off with Joaquim, and with that any feminism in the book seems (for now) much more muted, I mean to say it seems like a romance in a more familiar model. Joachim is self-centered and needy; if the book's aim is to show him growing into a full human being by accepting love from a woman, well, it will still be a very good book but I will be disappointed. (I speculate about how I will feel about the book when I'm done reading it -- obviously I can't know.) A romance can be a very satisfactory read of course. But the first half of this book made it seem like it was going to be much more than that; hopefully Saramago is not headed where I am assuming he is.
posted evening of December 16th, 2008: Respond
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Sunday, December 14th, 2008
(Yikes! four posts about The Stone Raft this morning -- it's taken over my consciousness pretty completely.) Interesting: With the addition of Joana to group of travelers, there will be no more conversations that everybody understands. Pedro speaks only Spanish, Joana speaks only Portuguese -- José and Joachim are bilingual. I guess I had been vaguely assuming that most people in Portugal were competent in Spanish, not really sure why I would think such a thing though. When Pedro did not understand what was happening between Joachim and the border guard, it surprised me to realize that Joachim and José had not been speaking their native language with him. I think it's easy to fall into a trap of viewing the two languages as more similar than they actually are, if most of your exposure to them is reading. It seems like if you just do some letter substitutions, written Portuguese looks pretty similar to written Spanish. I was surprised watching City of God last night, that I had mostly no clue what the characters were saying -- when I watch a Spanish film with subtitles, I can generally map the meanings in the subtitles to the sounds of what people are saying -- but here it was very much the exception for me even to recognize a word of the spoken dialog. I don't know how different the spoken Portuguese of Brazil is from that of Europe. (By the way, Paolo Lins' City of God is now on my list of books to read in 2009 -- the movie made me really want to find out more about the characters, and I think I'll be able to understand them better in book form.)
posted afternoon of December 14th, 2008: Respond
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 The Mondego crossing at Ereira, 1952  Church at Ereira I had the thought maybe Ereira was Saramago's birthplace, and went to check -- but it is not. He was born in Azinhaga, near where José Anaiço lives. (And I think it makes sense to identify José Anaiço with the author of this story.)
 (With regards to Joana's feminine mystique: as they are walking to see the line, she says she will tell them the rest of her story. "You could have told us sooner, either in Lisbon or during the journey, José Anaiço remarked, I don't see why, ...As a reward for having believed in you, It's for me to decide your reward and when it should be given, José Anaiço refrained from answering,... but she heard Joachim Sassa murmur, What a girl, Joana Carda smiled, I'm no girl, and I'm not the bitch you think I am, I don't think you're a bitch, Domineering, stubborn, conceited, affected, Good heavens, what a list, why not say mysterious and leave it at that,...") *Not quite -- her home is in Coimbra, but she's been living with relatives in Ereira for about a month, since separating from her husband.
posted morning of December 14th, 2008: Respond
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This positively Baroque passage just made me dissolve in a fit of giggles. Hope you like it! José and Joachim are driving back to the hotel after dinner:
They finished their dinner, resumed their journey without haste, at the slow pace of the Deux Cheveaux, there was little traffic on the road, probably because of the scarcity of gasoline, they were fortunate in having a car that got such good mileage, But we would still run the risk of grinding to a halt somewhere or other, then our journey would really be over, Joachim Sassa remarked, then suddenly remembering, he asked, Why did you say the starlings must have gone away, Anyone can tell the difference between farewell and so long, what I saw was definitely farewell, I can't explain it, the starlings went away the moment Joana appeared, Joana, That's her name, You could have said the lady, the woman, the girl, that's how male diffidence refers to the opposite sex, when to use their names might seem much too familiar, Compared to your wisdom, mine is rudimentary, but, as you've just seen, I spoke her name quite naturally, proof that my inner self has nothing to do with this matter, Unless, at heart, you're much more Machiavellian than you appear, trying to prove the opposite of what you really think or feel so that I will think that what you think or feel is precisely what you only appear to be trying to prove, I don't know if I've made myself clear, You haven't, but never mind, clarity and obscurity cast the same shadow and light, obscurity is clear, clarity is obscure, and as for someone being able to say factually and precisely what he feels and thinks, don't you believe it, not because he doesn't want to, but because he cannot, Then why do people talk so much, Because that's all we can do, talk, perhaps not even talk, it's all a question of trial and error, The starlings went away, Joana arrived, one form of companionship went, another took its place, you should consider yourself fortunate, That remains to be seen.
This is a little uncharacteristic of Saramago's constructions: the "punch line", which I am identifying as "trying to prove the opposite of what you really think or feel so that I will think that what you think or feel is precisely what you only appear to be trying to prove," comes in the middle of the sentence -- then there is a digression into the nature of clarity and whether it can be achieved, leading into a second, fainter punch line, "That remains to be seen."
posted morning of December 14th, 2008: Respond
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In the ninth chapter of The Stone Raft I find the second explicit reference to a work of literature that I've come across in Saramago's work. (The first was in The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, to Borges' "Examination of the Works of Herbert Quain".) -- Pedro and Joachim are telling José about the stressful time they've had being examined by Portuguese authorities, and Joachim says (after Pedro has gone to bed), "...shall I tell you what this reminds me of, a story I read years ago entitled At the Mercy of the Quacks, Do you mean the story by Rodrigues Miguéis, That's the one." Miguéis, 1901 - 1980, was a Portuguese author and illustrator. The best source for information about him on the net in English appears to be this page at Brown University. I don't see this story in the abbreviated bibliography offered there, but there are plenty of links for further research.
posted morning of December 14th, 2008: Respond
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Saturday, December 13th, 2008
In the eighth chapter of The Stone Raft, a fourth person joins the group of pilgrims -- the first female pilgrim, and the first person who was mentioned in the book -- back in the first sentence of the whole story, "When Joana Carda scratched the ground with the elm branch all the dogs of Cerbère began to bark..." This is key -- references to Ms. Carda and her elm branch have appeared throughout the story but no information about who she is, where she lives, what she was doing. Now here she is, still carrying the branch* -- she has come by train seeking the other three. The group is still one person short of the full complement -- I wonder if the final person to join them will be Maria Dolores. I'm still curious why she was given a name, when the only other characters with names are the members of this group of pilgrims. A point for research -- when José, Joachim and Pedro return to Portugal they cross the border at "the mouth of the Guadiana", which is Vila Real de Santo António; but the starlings, "swept away by the volley of gunfire from Rosal de la Frontera of bitter memory,... made a wide circle northward..." I wonder what battle is being referenced here. Something from the Spanish Civil War? Or earlier, maybe part of a border conflict between Spain and Portugal? In Lisboa, José, Joachim and Pedro stay at the Hotel Bragança, where Ricardo Reis stayed a long time ago -- the narrator references this point, saying, ...the book where that name was once registered, many, many, years ago, is stored away in the archives, covered with dust in the attic, written on a page that may never come to light, and if it should, most likely the name will be illegible, the line will be faded, or even the entire page, that's one of the effecs of time, to blot out everything. It is deemed unwise for Joana to stay in the same hotel -- the authorities have by now found out about the travelers and are giving them some grief -- so she moves in up the street, at the Hotel Borges. Ha!
 *"...which unfortunately is neither telescoping nor easily packed away, so that people stare in amazement as she passes, and the receptionist at the desk, jesting to disguise his genuine curiosity, makes a discreet reference to wands that are not walking sticks, Joana Carda responded with silence, after all, there is no law to prohibit guests from taking even a branch of Holm Oak into their room, much less a thin little stick, not even two meters long, which fits easily into the elevator and can be neatly stored away out of sight in a corner."
posted morning of December 13th, 2008: Respond
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