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Tuesday, July 14th, 2009
As in tales of yore, a secret word was uttered and before a magic grotto there suddenly arose a forest of oak trees that could be penetrated only by those who knew the other magic word, the one that would replace the forest with a river and set thereon a barge with oars. Here, too, words were uttered, If I must die on a bonfire, let it at least be this one, the demented Padre Bartolomeu Lourenço had once exclaimed, perhaps these bramble thickets are the forest of oak trees, this woodland in flower the oars and the river, and the distressed bird the barge, what word will be spoken that will give meaning to all of this.
This scene feels like a critical juncture. Baltasar and Blimunda have already been into the sky and back to land, back to Malfa and the drudgery and toil of building the convent, and now for the first time they are venturing together back to the wrecked airship. And suddenly Saramago is speaking in terms of a fairy tale and wondering what word can be spoken that will give meaning to all this. This passage illuminates his earlier efforts to give meaning to the labour of the six hundred men transporting a stone from the quarry to the construction site, by naming them and telling their story; it casts a subtle light on Saramago's project in telling this story.
posted evening of July 14th, 2009: Respond
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Sunday, July 12th, 2009
There are other fellows too, named José, Francisco, and Manuel, very few named Baltasar, but many named João, Ãlvaro, António, and Joaquim, and perhaps even the odd Bartolomeu though never the one who disappeared, as well as Pedro, Vicente, Bento, Bernardo, and Caetano, every possible name for a man is to be found here and every possible kind of existence, too, especially if marked by tribulation and, above all, by poverty, we cannot go into the details of the lives of all of them, they are too numerous, but at least we can leave their names on record, that is our obligation and our only reason for writing them down, so that they may become immortal and endure if it should depend on us, ...
I'm noticing how well Saramago draws his minor characters -- in this chapter of transporting the huge stone for the convent's balcony, there are hundreds of workers, and those that he spends any time on come through very clearly and distinctly -- I'm thinking specifically of Francisco Marques, Manuel Milho (who I believe is a stand-in for Saramago), and José Pequeno. This passage is a funny piece of that, Saramago is lamenting that he does not have space and time to make characters of all the workers in this scene.  The Convent at Mafra -- I believe the balcony referenced here is the one at the center of the façade, above the main entrance -- behind the lamp post in this picture. Below the fold, a bit of the story about moving this stone.
 Let others testify who may know more than we do. Six hundred men desperately clinging to the twelve cables that had been fixed to the back of the platform, six hundred men who felt that with time and continuous effort they were gradually losing the stiffness in their limbs, six hundred men who were six hundred creatures terrified of being there, and now more than ever, for, compared with this, yesterday was child's play and Manuel Milho's story a fantasy, for that is all man really is, when he is only the strength he possesses, when his is nothing other than the fear that he might not be able to summon the strength to detain this monster that implacably drags him on, and all because of a stone that never had to be so huge, with some three or ten smaller stones the balcony could have been built just as easily, even though we would no longer have been able to tell His Majesty with pride, It is made from a single stone, or to tell visitors before they pass into the next room, It is made from a single stone, and by means of these and other foolish vanities, absurdities become rife, with all their national and individual characteristics, such as the following statement one reads in manuals and history books, The Convent of Mafra was built by Dom João V in fulfillment of a vow he made should God grant him an heir, here go six hundred men who did not make the Queen pregnant yet they are the ones who pay for that vow and carry the can, if you will pardon that old-fashioned expression.
↻...done
posted morning of July 12th, 2009: Respond
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Tuesday, July 7th, 2009
Take a look at Saramago's blog today for some beautiful pictures of Castril de la Peña, in the northern part of Granada. His reflections on its age are reminding me pretty strongly of One Hundred Years of Solitude:
The river which passes through Lisbon is not called Lisbon, it's called Tagus, the river which passes through Rome is not called Rome, it's called Tiber, and that other one which passes through Seville, neither is it called Seville, it's called Guadalquivir.... But the river which passes through Castril, this one is called Castril. Many inhabited places will right away be given the name of that which they are known for, not just rivers. For thousands and thousands of years, patiently, every river in the world had to wait for someone to show up and to baptize it, in order to be able to appear on maps as something more than a scribble, sinuous and anonymous. Through centuries and centuries the waters of a river as yet nameless would pass tumultuously through the place where one day Castril would have to erect itself and, while passing by, would look up at the cliff and say one to the other, "Not yet." And they would continue their journey to the sea thinking, with the same patience, that in time, a time would come, and that new waters would arrive, would meet women washing their clothing against the stones, children inventing swimming, men fishing for trout and all the rest that would rise to the bait. At this moment the waters knew that they had been given a name, that henceforth they would be not the River Castril, but the River of Castril, so strong would be the pact uniting them with the people building their first rustic houses on the slopes of the mountainside, who would later construct second and third dwellings, one next to the other, one over the ruins of the others, generation after generation, until today....
The José Saramago Center in Castril funds and promotes cultural, literary and artistic projects.
posted evening of July 7th, 2009: Respond
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Another point of comparison for Padre Bartolomeu Lourenço that hit me this morning, as I was reading about Signor Scarlatti proposing to bring his harpsichord aboard the Passarola, is Moominpappa in Moominpappa's Memoirs -- holed away in his retreat, working at the pleasure of the whimsical monarch, building a mystical flying vessel... Interesting how Baltasar and Blimunda is bringing children's books to mind.
posted afternoon of July 7th, 2009: Respond
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Monday, July 6th, 2009
In a funny way Baltasar and Blimunda is reminding me of The Golden Compass. Obviously far more is different between the two books than is similar; the passage that initially made me think of comparing the two was Padre Bartolomeu Lourenço's statement that he believed Blimunda would be able to see people's will if she looked: I have never seen their will, just as I have never seen their soul, You do not see their soul because the soul cannot be seen, you have not seen their will because you were not looking for it, What does will look like, It's like a dark cloud, What does a dark cloud look like, You will recognise it when you see it,... -- so he is looking for Dust to power his airship! That makes sense... There are some other parallels I could draw between the two works; the opposition to the Catholic church, clearly -- though Saramago's anti-Church streak is far less strident than Pullman's -- and something else as well, some similarity of atmosphere that I haven't been able to pinpoint.
posted morning of July 6th, 2009: Respond
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Sunday, July 5th, 2009
Saramago wrote a note on Friday about reality and dissimulation:
Suppose that in the beginning of beginnings, before we had invented speech, which as we know reigns supreme as creator of incertitude, we were not tormented by a single serious doubt about who we were and about our relationship, personal and collective, with the place in which we found ourselves. The world, obviously, could only be that which our eyes saw in each moment, and more, complementary information no less important, that which the rest of the senses -- auditory, tactile, olfactory, gustatory -- contributed to understanding it. In this initial hour, the world was pure appearance, pure externality. Matter was simply rough or smooth, bitter or sweet, loud or quiet, smelly or odorless. All things were what they seemed to be, for the simple reason that they had no motive to seem one way and to be something else. ... I imagine that the spirit of philosophy and the spirit of science, coinciding in their origin, both manifested the day on which someone had the intuition that this appearance, at the same time as being images captured and utilized by the conscious mind, could also be an illusion of the senses. ...We all know the popular expression in which this intuition is reflected: "Appearances can be deceiving."
Today, he responds to a critique of his newly-published collection of blog posts, O Caderno, by José Mário Silva in the latest issue of Expresso -- Critica de livros, scroll down to "O Caderno" -- I'm not sure if this link will continue to work.
José Mário Silva says in his review of "O Caderno," published in the "Currents" section of the latest "Expresso," that I am not a real blogger. He says it and demonstrates: I don't make links, I don't enter into dialogue with my readers, I don't interact with the rest of the blogosphere. I already knew this, but from now on, when they ask me, I will make the reasons of José Mário Silva my own and give a definite conclusion to the matter. At all events, I will not complain about a critic who is well-educated, relevant, illustrative. Two points nonetheless, make me enter the fray, breaking for the first time a decision which until today I have been careful to carry out, that of not responding nor even commenting on any published assessment of my work. The first point he makes is that of an alleged oversimplified quality that characterizes my analysis of problems. I could respond that space does not permit me more, even though in truth, the person who does not permit me any more space is I myself, given that I lack the indispensible qualifications of a deep analyst, like those of the Chicago School, who, in spite of how gifted they are, fell down with all their baggage, it never passed through their privileged cerebra that there was any possibility of an overwhelming crisis which any simple analysis would have been able to predict. The other point is more serious and justified, for it alone comes this in many respects unexpected intervention. I refer to my alleged excesses of indignation. From an intelligent person like José Mário Silva I would expect everything except this. My question here would be as simple as my analysis: Are there limits on indignation? and more: How can one speak of excesses of indignation in a country in which this is precisely, with visible consequences, what is missing? Dear José Mário, think about this and enlighten me with your opinion. Please.
Hm. Not sure what I think about this -- Mário Silva's complaints about Saramago's blog entries are kind of similar to my own, I think -- I don't generally translate and post Saramago's political blog entries because, well, they don't seem worth the effort, seem full of froth and vitriol but not a lot else. (A major exception was his series of posts on illegal emigrants from Africa shipwrecked on the Canaries; these were informative and moving.) So Saramago's take-down of Mário Silva feels like it's directed at me, and doesn't feel successful, but this could of course be due to my biased position. (As far as Saramago not being a "real blogger," well, that's silly of course; his selection of this to open the response is a good rhetorical move but not germane to the real issue.*) I will go on being happy to read the notebook entries that exhibit Saramago's love and mastery of language and his thoughtfulness, and not paying so much attention to the others. (José Mário Silva's blog is Bibliotecário de Babel.)Update: Mário Silva responds to the response.
 * And looking at the source, and making allowances for my very limited understanding of Portuguese, it doesn't look like Mário Silva even intended this as a criticism, he just says in passing, "In truth, Saramago is the Antipodes of real bloggers. He doesn't make links, doesn't dialogue directly with his readers, doesn't interact with the rest of the blogosphere. He limits himself to writing short prose pieces which others then place online." All true and not a part of his critique, though the "real bloggers" reference grates.
posted evening of July 5th, 2009: Respond
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 I'm glad Pontiero has included a translator's note with Baltasar and Bimunda (as he did with The History of the Siege of Lisbon) -- it is nice to have at hand the information that Bartolomeu Lourenço de Gusmão is a historical figure -- I could think of his story as being the initial piece of this novel, the love story of the two principal characters woven around it. Also: pictures!  Nice to have an idea what the man looks like. I hadn't come up yet with a mental image of him... I had started picturing the airship, and it looked a little bit like what the engravings show, as far as general shape; the details are great.
posted morning of July 5th, 2009: Respond
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Saramago's books are strongly united by the common voice and diction; but reading each of them is its own distinct experience. So far the experience of Baltasar and Blimunda is one of overpowering physical beauty; it feels a little bit like some of Faulkner's or GarcÃa Márquez' work, the kind of fractally detailed painting that draws you in and gets you lost in its details. This is very different from some of Saramago's later work, which I've approached in more of a top-down way, thinking about abstract ideas in the novels and relationships between the characters as the primary element of the story. It gives me less to write about; the experience of being overwhelmed by beauty, while a lot of fun, is not something I have the writerly chops to describe in an engaging way. (It is still early in the book though, something more on my blogging wavelength may come along.) I can totally see how this would be good material for an opera, hope it gets produced in NYC sometime.
posted morning of July 5th, 2009: Respond
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Saturday, July 4th, 2009
Yesterday I finished The History of the Siege of Lisbon and started reading Baltasar and Blimunda (wonder why the translation has this title; the original is called something like Memoir of the Convent) -- not much to say about it yet besides I loved the sex scene between João V and his queen -- especially nice in with the memory fresh of the very different sex scene between Raimundo and Marie Sara; Saramago can certainly write sex scenes! -- I wanted to note that this is the only of Saramago's novels to be made into an opera, by Azio Corghi, with a libretto written by Saramago himself. Corghi and Saramago also collaborated on the opera "Divara, Wasser und Blut," based on Saramago's play "The Name of God." And more music: Rudolf Kämper composed a chamber music suite called "Baltasar & Blimunda." I am happy to be reading these two novels set in Portuguese history now, I think they are going to be good ones to have fresh in mind when I start reading The Elephant's Journey -- I haven't seen a publication date for that yet but have my fingers crossed it will happen before the year is out.
posted morning of July 4th, 2009: Respond
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Wednesday, July first, 2009
I get home from the Spanish-language meetup this evening -- I mostly listened, talked a little bit -- and find a new post up on Saramago's blog, starting out "To write is to translate. It will always be, even when we're writing in our own language." The rest of it's a little beyond my meagre translating abilities, but interesting stuff. Reading The History of the Siege of Lisbon tonight, I found another reference to the Blindness epigraph -- ... Nonsense, I've simply done a little reading, I've amused or educated myself little by little, discovering the difference between looking and seeing, between seeing and observing, ...
posted evening of July first, 2009: Respond
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