There's this post I'm delaying because I don't want to be the one who writes it, but I do want to write about my last conquests by José Saramago.
In my vast ignorance about non-Spanish literature (which I'm trying to fix) I didn't know about him until one day back in 2008, on a bus trip, I saw one of those huge posters by the road, showing a photo of him and some novel I don´t remember. I did some little (tiny) research and went to the library with the intention to pick The gospel according to Jesus Christ. They didn't have that one and, when I was trying to take All the names, another book felt down (Homecoming -
Die Heimkehr-, by Bernhard Schlink -
review here) and I picked that one instead... Didn't happen to be the wrong choice until the last 50 pages or so, when the author had a personality crisis or something and the story turns into a completely different one, but whatever.
So... Back to Saramago, since then, I had always wanted to read something by him, and I won't say I never had the time because I did, but it was like one of those things you vaguely want to do but never actually do..., until the first time I came to the U.S. with James Joyce's Odyssey in my backpack and it turned out not to be the most productive reading for me, at least at that point of my existence.
So, the first novel I read by Saramago was Blindness (
Ensaio sobre a Cegueira - "Essay on blindness" in English), which I downloaded in pdf for free while in NY.
In this novel, he tells a story that happens who knows where, when the citizens suddenly start to get blind inexplicably. Of course panic spreads, because nobody knows how this "white blindness" is transmitted.
If you're not used to his style (I wasn't yet) and maybe also even if you are, you might find it not easy to read. You'll see, he uses these kilometric sentences that sometimes are so long that they don´t fit in one page. He never uses full stops but you'll have a lot of commas to separate narration from dialogues. You'll know when a dialogue starts when you see a capital letter following a comma, and you'll know that there's someone else speaking when you see another capital letter following another comma, and so on. Also, he never uses proper nouns in this novel, so the characters are "the first blind guy", "the doctor", "the doctor's wife", "the girl with the dark glasses" and such.
After that one, I read The Elephant´s Journey (
A Viagem do Elefante) (haven´t finished it yet, because I´m reading it in english and I´m lazy), Cain (Caím) and Death with Interruptions (
As Intermitências da Morte).
Cain is my favourite so far, but I´m gonna let someone else blog about it (hopefully, some day).
I´m just gonna try to explain why I think his style works so well, to me at least.
Will give you as an example the beginning of The Elephant´s Journey (sorry for the length):
Strange though it may seem to anyone unaware of the importance of the marital bed in the efficient workings of public administration, regardless of whether that bed has been blessed by church or state or no one at all, the first step of an elephant’s extraordinary journey to austria, which we propose to describe hereafter, took place in the royal apartments of the portuguese court, more or less at bedtime. And it is no mere accident that we chose to use the vague expression more or less. For this enables us, with admirable elegance, to avoid having to go into details of a physical and physiological nature, often sordid and almost always ridiculous, and which, set down on paper, would offend the strict catholicism of dom joão the third, king of portugal and of the algarves, and of dona catarina of austria, his wife and the future grandmother of the same dom sebastião who will go off to lead the attack on alcácer-quibir and die there during the first assault, or perhaps the second, although there are also those who say he died of an illness on the eve of battle. This is what the king, with furrowed brow, said to the queen, I’m worried about something, my lady, About what, my lord, The gift we gave to our cousin maximilian at the time of his marriage four years ago always seemed to me unworthy of his lineage and his merits, and now that we have him close to home, so to speak, in his role as regent of spain in the city of valladolid, I would like to offer him something more valuable, more striking, what do you think, my lady, A monstrance would be a good idea, my lord, a monstrance, I find, is always most welcome, perhaps because it has the virtue of combining material value and spiritual significance, Our holy church would not appreciate such liberality, it doubtless still retains in its infallible memory cousin maximilian’s confessed sympathies for the reforms of the lutheran protestants, or were they calvinists, I was never quite sure, Vade retro, satana, exclaimed the queen, crossing herself, such a thought had never even occurred to me, now I’ll have to go to confession first thing in the morning, Why tomorrow in particular, my lady, given that it is your custom to go to confession every day, asked the king, Because of the vile idea that the enemy placed on my vocal cords, oh, I can feel my throat burning as if it had been scorched by a breath from hell itself. Accustomed to the queen’s sensory excesses, the king shrugged and returned to the difficult task of finding a present that might satisfy archduke maximilian of austria. The queen was murmuring a prayer and had just begun another when, suddenly, she stopped and almost shouted out, There’s always solomon, What, asked the king, perplexed by this untimely invocation of the king of judah, Yes, my lord, solomon the elephant, And what has the elephant got to do with anything, asked the king somewhat waspishly, He could be the gift, my lord, answered the queen, standing up, euphoric and very excited, He’s not exactly an appropriate wedding present, That doesn’t matter. The king nodded slowly three times, paused and then nodded another three times, after which he said, Yes, it’s an interesting idea, It’s more than interesting, it’s a very good idea, an excellent idea, retorted the queen, unable to suppress a gesture of impatience, almost of insubordination, the creature came from india more than two years ago, and since then he’s done nothing but eat and sleep, with his water trough always full and a constant supply of food, it’s as if he were a kept beast, but one who’ll never earn his keep, That’s hardly the poor creature’s fault, there’s no suitable work for him here, unless we were to send him to the docks on the river tagus to transport planks, but the poor thing would only suffer, because his professional specialty is transporting felled trees, so much better suited to the curve of his trunk, Send him off to vienna, then, But how, asked the king, That’s not our affair, once cousin maximilian is the owner, it will be a matter for him to resolve, he is, I assume, still in valladolid, As far as I know, yes, Obviously, solomon would have to travel to valladolid on foot, he has the legs for it after all, And then on to vienna as well, he’ll have no alternative, It’s a long way, said the queen, A very long way, agreed the king gravely, and added, I’ll write to cousin maximilian tomorrow, and if he accepts, we’ll have to agree on dates and ascertain certain facts, for example, when he intends leaving for vienna, and how many days it would take for solomon to travel from lisbon to valladolid, after that, it’s up to him, we wash our hands of the affair, Yes, we wash our hands, said the queen, but deep inside, which is where the contradictions of the self do battle, she felt a sudden sadness at the thought of sending solomon off to such distant lands and into the care of strangers.
(
Here to read the whole first chapter)
Yes, if you see this mass (or this mess) of words without full stops, without paragraphs, you might not feel very inclined to read it (did you read it? Right, that´s what I mean). It looks like there´s no pause for breathing until the end. And it looks like you will never be able to get to the end, or even to the third or fourth page... But once you start reading it, he gets you so interested in the story that you will not even notice the lack of conventional punctuation. Rather, you will notice it, and you´ll see how naturally the story develops.
To me, during the parts where the narrator is speaking, it's like he's trying to recreate the way he would tell the story if he was telling it out-loud to a friend (i.e. you), whereas for the parts where there's dialogue, he tries to emulate the scene, to set you in the very room where the characters are, so that you're not just listening to a narration but actually witnessing the action. And, in order to do this, he gets rid of those artificial elements of written language that don't have a translation or an equivalent in spoken language, such as the dashes in dialogues or the capital letter in proper names (when he uses them).
This way, contrary to what it may seem if you just limit yourself to take a superficial look at the bunch of lines, and lines, and lines, page after page without a breathing pause, the story goes on fluently without being constantly interrupted, artificially, by things like:
- Blah blah blah - the King said.
- Blah blah blah blah - the Queen replied.
- Blah blah? - he asked her.
- Blah blah - she stated.
No, you don't need all that "the King said", "the Queen replied"..., you don't need him to tell you that, because you're
seeing it as it happens, first-hand.
Another characteristic of Saramago that I've noticed, I think, in all the four novels I've read by him, is the fact that, as a narrator, he (or they, because he always refers to himself in plural as if he was a part of some group) is somehow above the story, he's better than the characters and he takes the liberty to judge or criticize them or to make comments completely outside the story.
But not only he is a great story teller, he's also a great story maker. I told you about Blindness. If you haven´t read it, you might think it´s a stupid story: people getting blind by some sort of magic. Great. And I haven´t told you about Death with Interruptions yet, but here I go: once upon a time in the present time, this woman named Death quits her job and people stop dying. Also, great. Both of them sound like the kind of stupid stories that I, grown up and busy adult, don´t want to waste my time with.
Yes. The facts that originate the stories are absurd. What happens next is rather comic. The way he tells it is quite satirical. But what is great about it is that, if you think of it, this might actually be the reaction of people if they did suddenly get blind, if they did suddenly stop dying. And because, given the absurd circumstances that trigger the story, that might actually be the reaction in reality, he has the justification to be satirically critic towards society and its strata. With special attention to clergy!
Funny thing, in Death with Interruptions, written in 2005, he states something that anticipates the fact that origins the whole Cain pilgrimage in Cain, written in 2009:
It´s easy enough to understand, it takes very little imagination to see why death´s workplace is probably the dullest of all those created since cain killed abel, an incident for which god bears all the blame.
About this particular book though, I'll probably post something in detail sooner or later (later, I guess, let's be honest). Because, although overall I liked it, I got kind of disappointed...
But anyways, this "anticipation" business made me realize, because I had recently read Garcia Marquez's
No one writes to the colonel and noticed the same thing (read
this post about it), that, the same way some readers read several books at the same time, also some authors write several novels at the same time. Yes, I know it's ridiculously obvious, but I had never thought of that before! And I discovered that I enjoy crossed references between them when I'm able to identify them. Rather, I enjoy being able to identify crossed references between them...
I think this is it for now. I hope it's not me the one who posts about Cain (wink-wink).
I already have several other books to post about: Brave new world, Strange pilgrims and Animal Farm, which I'm reading right now.
I have to say, I hate when they don't translate the title of the books accurately!!
The Spanish name for
Brave new world is Un mundo feliz (A happy world).
The English name for
Ensaio sobre a Cegueira is Blindness.
The English name for
Memoria de mis putas tristes (Memory of my sad whores) is Memories of my melancholic whores.
The English name for
Doce cuentos peregrinos (Twelve pilgrim tales) is Strange pilgrims.
Why??!
Title: Doce Cuentos Peregrinos (Strange Pilgrims)
