José Saramago
Encyclopedia
José de Sousa Saramago, GColSE (ʒuˈzɛ sɐɾɐˈmaɣu; (16 November 1922 – 18 June 2010) was a Nobel-laureate Portuguese
novel
ist, poet
, playwright
and journalist
. His works, some of which can be seen as allegories, commonly present subversive perspectives on historic events, emphasizing the human factor. Harold Bloom
has described Saramago as "a permanent part of the Western canon
".
Saramago was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature
in 1998. More than two million copies of his books have been sold in Portugal alone and his work has been translated into 25 languages. He founded the National Front for the Defence of Culture (Lisbon, 1992) with Freitas-Magalhães and others. In 1992, the Portuguese government, under Prime Minister
Aníbal Cavaco Silva
, ordered the removal of The Gospel According to Jesus Christ
from the European Literary Prize's shortlist, claiming the work was religiously offensive. Saramago complained about censorship
and moved to Lanzarote
in the Canary Islands
, Spain
, where he resided until his death.
A proponent of libertarian communism
, Saramago came into conflict with some groups, such as the Catholic Church. Saramago was an atheist who defended love as an instrument to improve the human condition.
At the time of his death, Saramago was married to Spanish journalist Pilar del Rio, and had a daughter from a previous marriage. The European Writers’ Parliament came from a proposal by Saramago and Orhan Pamuk
; Saramago was expected to speak as the guest of honour at its opening ceremony in 2010 but he had died.
, Portugal
, a small village in the province of Ribatejo
some hundred kilometers northeast of Lisbon
. His parents were José de Sousa and Maria de Piedade. "Saramago", a wild herbaceous plant known in English as the wild radish
, was his father's family's nickname, and was accidentally incorporated into his name upon registration of his birth. In 1924, Saramago's family moved to Lisbon
, where his father started working as a policeman. A few months after the family moved to the capital, his brother Francisco, older by two years, died. He spent vacations with his grandparents in Azinhaga. When his grandfather suffered a stroke and was to be taken to Lisbon for treatment, Saramago recalled, "He went into the yard of his house, where there were a few trees, fig trees, olive trees. And he went one by one, embracing the trees and crying, saying good-bye to them because he knew he would not return. To see this, to live this, if that doesn't mark you for the rest of your life," Saramago said, "you have no feeling." Although Saramago was a good pupil, his parents were unable to afford to keep him in grammar school, and instead moved him to a technical school at age 12. After graduating, he worked as a car mechanic for two years. Later he worked as a translator, then as a journalist. He was assistant editor of the newspaper Diário de Notícias
, a position he had to leave after the democratic revolution in 1975
.
After a period of working as a translator he was able to support himself as a writer. Saramago married Ilda Reis in 1944. Their only child, Violante, was born in 1947. From 1988 until his death in June 2010 Saramago was married to the Spanish
journalist Pilar del Río, who is the official translator of his books into Spanish.
tale set during the Inquisition in 18th-century Lisbon, it tells of the love between a maimed soldier and a young clairvoyant, and of a renegade priest's heretical dream of flight. The novel's translation in 1988 as Baltasar and Blimunda
, by Giovanni Pontiero
, brought Saramago to the attention of an international readership. This novel won the Portuguese PEN Club Award.
He became a member of the Portuguese Communist Party
in 1969 and remained so until the end of his life. Saramago was also an atheist and self-described pessimist. His views have aroused considerable controversy in Portugal, especially after the publication of The Gospel According to Jesus Christ
. Members of the country's Catholic community were outraged by Saramago's representation of Jesus
and particularly God
as fallible, even cruel human beings. Portugal's conservative government would not allow Saramago's work to compete for the European Literary Prize, arguing that it offended the Catholic community. As a result, Saramago and his wife moved to Lanzarote
, an island in the Spanish Canaries.
, Spain. He was reported to have eaten breakfast and chatted with his wife for a time before ill health overcame him and killed him. The Guardian
described him as "the finest Portuguese writer of his generation", while Fernanda Eberstadt of The New York Times
said he was "known almost as much for his unfaltering Communism
as for his fiction". Saramago's translator, Margaret Jull Costa, paid tribute to him, describing his "wonderful imagination" and calling him "the greatest contemporary Portuguese writer". Saramago had continued his writing until his death. His most recent publication, Cain, was published in 2009, with an English translation made available in August 2010. Saramago had suffered from pneumonia
a year before his death. Having been thought to have made a full recovery, he had been scheduled to attend the Edinburgh International Book Festival
in August 2010.
Portugal declared two days of mourning. There were verbal tributes from senior international politicians: Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
(Brazil), Bernard Kouchner
(France) and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero
(Spain), while Cuba's Raúl
and Fidel Castro
sent floral tributes.
Saramago's funeral was held in Lisbon on 20 June 2010, in the presence of more than 20,000 people, many of whom had travelled hundreds of kilometres, but also notably in the absence of right-wing President of Portugal
Aníbal Cavaco Silva
who holidayed in Azores as the ceremony took place. Silva, the Prime Minister when Saramago's name was removed from the shortlist of the European Literary Prize, said he did not attend Saramago's funeral because he "had never had the privilege to know him". Mourners, who questioned Silva's absence in the presence of reporters, held copies of the red carnation, symbolic of Portugal's democratic revolution
. Saramago's cremation took place in Lisbon, with his ashes being scattered in his birthplace of Azinhaga and in Tias in Lanzarote, his home until his death.
Saramago's novels often deal with fantastic scenarios, such as that in his 1986 novel The Stone Raft
, in which the Iberian Peninsula
breaks off from the rest of Europe and sails around the Atlantic Ocean. In his 1995 novel Blindness
, an entire unnamed country is stricken with a mysterious plague of "white blindness". In his 1984 novel The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis
(which won the PEN Award and the Independent Foreign Fiction Award), Fernando Pessoa
's heteronym
survives for a year after the poet himself dies. Additionally, his novel Death with Interruptions
(also translated as Death at Intervals) takes place in a country in which, suddenly, nobody dies, and concerns, in part, the spiritual and political implications of the event, although the book ultimately moves from a synoptic to a more personal perspective.
Using such imaginative themes, Saramago addresses the most serious of subject matters with empathy for the human condition
and for the isolation of contemporary urban life. His characters struggle with their need to connect with one another, form relations and bond as a community, and also with their need for individuality, and to find meaning and dignity outside of political and economic structures.
When asked to describe his daily writing routine in 2009, Saramago responded, "I write two pages. And then I read and read and read."
, and a member of the Communist Party of Portugal. As a member of his PCP he stood for the 1989 Lisbon Local election in the list of the Coalition "For Lisbon" and was elected Alderman and presiding officer of the Municipal Assembly
of Lisbon. Saramago was also a candidate of the Democratic Unity Coalition to the European Parliament
in all the elections from 1989 to 2009, usually in positions with no possibility of being elected. Saramago was a critic of the European Union
and the International Monetary Fund
.
In his novel Blindness
, the communist principle of from each according to his ability, to each according to his need
is stated in a positive light. In a 2008 press conference for the filming of Blindness
he stated, in reference to the global financial crisis, that "Marx was never so right as now"
Although many of his novels are acknowledged political satire of a subtle kind, it is in The Notebook that Saramago makes his political convictions most clear. The book, written from a Marxist perspective, is a collection of his blog articles for the year September 2008 to August 2009. According to The Independent
, "Saramago aims to cut through the web of 'organized lies' surrounding humanity, and to convince readers by delivering his opinions in a relentless series of unadorned, knock-down prose blows." His political engagement has led to comparisons with George Orwell
: "Orwell's hostility to the British Empire runs parallel to Saramago's latter-day crusade against empire in the shape of globalisation." When speaking to The Observer in 2006 he said "The painter paints, the musician makes music, the novelist writes novels. But I believe that we all have some influence, not because of the fact that one is an artist, but because we are citizens. As citizens, we all have an obligation to intervene and become involved, it's the citizen who changes things. I can't imagine myself outside any kind of social or political involvement."
During a visit to Ramallah
in March 2002 during the second intifada, Saramago compared the Palestinian city, which was blockaded at the time by the Israeli army, to concentration camps. Some critics claimed Saramago's statement was antisemitic.
During the 2006 Lebanon War, Saramago joined Tariq Ali
, John Berger
, Noam Chomsky
, and others in condemning what they characterized as "a long-term military, economic and geographic practice whose political aim is nothing less than the liquidation of the Palestinian nation".
He was also a supporter of Iberian Federalism.
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
ist, poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
, playwright
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
and journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
. His works, some of which can be seen as allegories, commonly present subversive perspectives on historic events, emphasizing the human factor. Harold Bloom
Harold Bloom
Harold Bloom is an American writer and literary critic, and is Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University. He is known for his defense of 19th-century Romantic poets, his unique and controversial theories of poetic influence, and his prodigious literary output, particularly for a literary...
has described Saramago as "a permanent part of the Western canon
Western canon
The term Western canon denotes a canon of books and, more broadly, music and art that have been the most important and influential in shaping Western culture. As such, it includes the "greatest works of artistic merit." Such a canon is important to the theory of educational perennialism and the...
".
Saramago was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature
Nobel Prize in Literature
Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded annually to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction"...
in 1998. More than two million copies of his books have been sold in Portugal alone and his work has been translated into 25 languages. He founded the National Front for the Defence of Culture (Lisbon, 1992) with Freitas-Magalhães and others. In 1992, the Portuguese government, under Prime Minister
Prime Minister of Portugal
Prime Minister is the current title of the chief of the Portuguese Government. As chief executive, the Prime Minister coordinates the action of ministers, representing the Government from the other organs of state, accountable to Parliament and keeps the President informed...
Aníbal Cavaco Silva
Aníbal Cavaco Silva
Aníbal António Cavaco Silva, GCC , is the President of Portugal. He won the Portuguese presidential election on 22 January 2006 and was re-elected on 23 January 2011, for a second five-year term. Cavaco Silva was sworn in on 9 March 2006....
, ordered the removal of The Gospel According to Jesus Christ
The Gospel According to Jesus Christ
The Gospel According to Jesus Christ is a novel by the Portuguese author José Saramago. A fictional re-telling of Jesus Christ's life, it depicts him as a flawed, humanised character with passions and doubts...
from the European Literary Prize's shortlist, claiming the work was religiously offensive. Saramago complained about censorship
Censorship
thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...
and moved to Lanzarote
Lanzarote
Lanzarote , a Spanish island, is the easternmost of the autonomous Canary Islands, in the Atlantic Ocean, approximately 125 km off the coast of Africa and 1,000 km from the Iberian Peninsula. Covering 845.9 km2, it stands as the fourth largest of the islands...
in the Canary Islands
Canary Islands
The Canary Islands , also known as the Canaries , is a Spanish archipelago located just off the northwest coast of mainland Africa, 100 km west of the border between Morocco and the Western Sahara. The Canaries are a Spanish autonomous community and an outermost region of the European Union...
, Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
, where he resided until his death.
A proponent of libertarian communism
Anarchist communism
Anarchist communism is a theory of anarchism which advocates the abolition of the state, markets, money, private property, and capitalism in favor of common ownership of the means of production, direct democracy and a horizontal network of voluntary associations and workers' councils with...
, Saramago came into conflict with some groups, such as the Catholic Church. Saramago was an atheist who defended love as an instrument to improve the human condition.
At the time of his death, Saramago was married to Spanish journalist Pilar del Rio, and had a daughter from a previous marriage. The European Writers’ Parliament came from a proposal by Saramago and Orhan Pamuk
Orhan Pamuk
Ferit Orhan Pamuk , generally known simply as Orhan Pamuk, is a Turkish novelist. He is also the Robert Yik-Fong Tam Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University, where he teaches comparative literature and writing....
; Saramago was expected to speak as the guest of honour at its opening ceremony in 2010 but he had died.
Early and middle life
Saramago was born in 1922 into a family of landless peasants in AzinhagaAzinhaga
Azinhaga is a small village near Golegã, located in Ribatejo, Portugal. It is the birthplace of the late Nobel-laureate writer José Saramago.-External links:*...
, Portugal
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
, a small village in the province of Ribatejo
Ribatejo
The Ribatejo is the most central of the traditional provinces of Portugal, with no coastline or border with Spain. The region is crossed by the Tagus River...
some hundred kilometers northeast of Lisbon
Lisbon
Lisbon is the capital city and largest city of Portugal with a population of 545,245 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Lisbon extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of 3 million on an area of , making it the 9th most populous urban...
. His parents were José de Sousa and Maria de Piedade. "Saramago", a wild herbaceous plant known in English as the wild radish
Wild radish
Wild Radish or Jointed Charlock, Raphanus raphanistrum, is a flowering plant in the family Brassicaceae. It is sometimes claimed to be the ancestor of the edible radish, Raphanus sativus...
, was his father's family's nickname, and was accidentally incorporated into his name upon registration of his birth. In 1924, Saramago's family moved to Lisbon
Lisbon
Lisbon is the capital city and largest city of Portugal with a population of 545,245 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Lisbon extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of 3 million on an area of , making it the 9th most populous urban...
, where his father started working as a policeman. A few months after the family moved to the capital, his brother Francisco, older by two years, died. He spent vacations with his grandparents in Azinhaga. When his grandfather suffered a stroke and was to be taken to Lisbon for treatment, Saramago recalled, "He went into the yard of his house, where there were a few trees, fig trees, olive trees. And he went one by one, embracing the trees and crying, saying good-bye to them because he knew he would not return. To see this, to live this, if that doesn't mark you for the rest of your life," Saramago said, "you have no feeling." Although Saramago was a good pupil, his parents were unable to afford to keep him in grammar school, and instead moved him to a technical school at age 12. After graduating, he worked as a car mechanic for two years. Later he worked as a translator, then as a journalist. He was assistant editor of the newspaper Diário de Notícias
Diário de Notícias
Diário de Notícias is a Portuguese daily newspaper, founded in Lisbon, on December 29, 1864 by Tomás Quintino Antunes and Eduardo Coelho. It gradually became one of the best known Portuguese newspapers...
, a position he had to leave after the democratic revolution in 1975
Carnation Revolution
The Carnation Revolution , also referred to as the 25 de Abril , was a military coup started on 25 April 1974, in Lisbon, Portugal, coupled with an unanticipated and extensive campaign of civil resistance...
.
After a period of working as a translator he was able to support himself as a writer. Saramago married Ilda Reis in 1944. Their only child, Violante, was born in 1947. From 1988 until his death in June 2010 Saramago was married to the Spanish
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
journalist Pilar del Río, who is the official translator of his books into Spanish.
Later life and international acclaim
Saramago did not achieve widespread recognition and acclaim until he was sixty, with the publication of his fourth novel, Memorial do Convento (literally, Memoir of the Convent). A baroqueBaroque
The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...
tale set during the Inquisition in 18th-century Lisbon, it tells of the love between a maimed soldier and a young clairvoyant, and of a renegade priest's heretical dream of flight. The novel's translation in 1988 as Baltasar and Blimunda
Baltasar and Blimunda
Baltasar and Blimunda is a novel by the Portuguese author José Saramago.It is a love story set in the 18th century with the construction of the Convent of Mafra, now one of Portugal's chief tourist attractions, as a background...
, by Giovanni Pontiero
Giovanni Pontiero
Giovanni Pontiero was a British scholar and translator of Portuguese fiction, most notably the works of José Saramago. His translation of the Saramago work The Gospel According to Jesus Christ was awarded the Teixeira-Gomes Prize for Portuguese translation.Pontiero was born in Glasgow and...
, brought Saramago to the attention of an international readership. This novel won the Portuguese PEN Club Award.
He became a member of the Portuguese Communist Party
Portuguese Communist Party
The Portuguese Communist Party is a major left-wing political party in Portugal. It is a Marxist-Leninist party, and its organization is based upon democratic centralism. The party also considers itself to be patriotic and internationalist....
in 1969 and remained so until the end of his life. Saramago was also an atheist and self-described pessimist. His views have aroused considerable controversy in Portugal, especially after the publication of The Gospel According to Jesus Christ
The Gospel According to Jesus Christ
The Gospel According to Jesus Christ is a novel by the Portuguese author José Saramago. A fictional re-telling of Jesus Christ's life, it depicts him as a flawed, humanised character with passions and doubts...
. Members of the country's Catholic community were outraged by Saramago's representation of Jesus
Jesus
Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...
and particularly God
God
God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....
as fallible, even cruel human beings. Portugal's conservative government would not allow Saramago's work to compete for the European Literary Prize, arguing that it offended the Catholic community. As a result, Saramago and his wife moved to Lanzarote
Lanzarote
Lanzarote , a Spanish island, is the easternmost of the autonomous Canary Islands, in the Atlantic Ocean, approximately 125 km off the coast of Africa and 1,000 km from the Iberian Peninsula. Covering 845.9 km2, it stands as the fourth largest of the islands...
, an island in the Spanish Canaries.
Nobel Prize
Saramago was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998. The announcement came when he was about to fly to Germany ahead of the Frankfurt Book Fair, and caught both him and his editor by surprise. The Nobel committee praised his "parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony", and his "modern scepticism" about official truths.Death and funeral
Saramago died on 18 June 2010, aged 87, having spent the last few years of his life in LanzaroteLanzarote
Lanzarote , a Spanish island, is the easternmost of the autonomous Canary Islands, in the Atlantic Ocean, approximately 125 km off the coast of Africa and 1,000 km from the Iberian Peninsula. Covering 845.9 km2, it stands as the fourth largest of the islands...
, Spain. He was reported to have eaten breakfast and chatted with his wife for a time before ill health overcame him and killed him. The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
described him as "the finest Portuguese writer of his generation", while Fernanda Eberstadt of The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
said he was "known almost as much for his unfaltering Communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
as for his fiction". Saramago's translator, Margaret Jull Costa, paid tribute to him, describing his "wonderful imagination" and calling him "the greatest contemporary Portuguese writer". Saramago had continued his writing until his death. His most recent publication, Cain, was published in 2009, with an English translation made available in August 2010. Saramago had suffered from pneumonia
Pneumonia
Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung—especially affecting the microscopic air sacs —associated with fever, chest symptoms, and a lack of air space on a chest X-ray. Pneumonia is typically caused by an infection but there are a number of other causes...
a year before his death. Having been thought to have made a full recovery, he had been scheduled to attend the Edinburgh International Book Festival
Edinburgh International Book Festival
The Edinburgh International Book Festival, is a book festival that takes place in the last three weeks of August every year in Charlotte Square, in the centre of Edinburgh, Scotland’s capital...
in August 2010.
Portugal declared two days of mourning. There were verbal tributes from senior international politicians: Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva , known popularly as Lula, served as the 35th President of Brazil from 2003 to 2010.A founding member of the Workers' Party , he ran for President three times unsuccessfully, first in the 1989 election. Lula achieved victory in the 2002 election, and was inaugurated as...
(Brazil), Bernard Kouchner
Bernard Kouchner
Bernard Kouchner is a French politician, diplomat, and doctor. He is co-founder of Médecins Sans Frontières and Médecins du Monde...
(France) and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero
José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero
José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero is a member of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party . He was elected for two terms as Prime Minister of Spain, in the 2004 and 2008 general elections. On 2 April 2011 he announced he will not stand for re-election in 2012...
(Spain), while Cuba's Raúl
Raúl Castro
Raúl Modesto Castro Ruz is a Cuban politician and revolutionary who has been President of the Council of State of Cuba and the President of the Council of Ministers of Cuba since 2008; he previously exercised presidential powers in an acting capacity from 2006 to 2008...
and Fidel Castro
Fidel Castro
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz is a Cuban revolutionary and politician, having held the position of Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, and then President from 1976 to 2008. He also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from the party's foundation in 1961 until 2011...
sent floral tributes.
Saramago's funeral was held in Lisbon on 20 June 2010, in the presence of more than 20,000 people, many of whom had travelled hundreds of kilometres, but also notably in the absence of right-wing President of Portugal
President of Portugal
Portugal has been a republic since 1910, and since that time the head of state has been the president, whose official title is President of the Portuguese Republic ....
Aníbal Cavaco Silva
Aníbal Cavaco Silva
Aníbal António Cavaco Silva, GCC , is the President of Portugal. He won the Portuguese presidential election on 22 January 2006 and was re-elected on 23 January 2011, for a second five-year term. Cavaco Silva was sworn in on 9 March 2006....
who holidayed in Azores as the ceremony took place. Silva, the Prime Minister when Saramago's name was removed from the shortlist of the European Literary Prize, said he did not attend Saramago's funeral because he "had never had the privilege to know him". Mourners, who questioned Silva's absence in the presence of reporters, held copies of the red carnation, symbolic of Portugal's democratic revolution
Carnation Revolution
The Carnation Revolution , also referred to as the 25 de Abril , was a military coup started on 25 April 1974, in Lisbon, Portugal, coupled with an unanticipated and extensive campaign of civil resistance...
. Saramago's cremation took place in Lisbon, with his ashes being scattered in his birthplace of Azinhaga and in Tias in Lanzarote, his home until his death.
Style and themes
Saramago's experimental style often features long sentences, at times more than a page long. He uses periods sparingly, choosing instead a loose flow of clauses joined by commas. Many of his paragraphs extend for pages without pausing for dialogue, (which Saramago chooses not to delimit by quotation marks); when the speaker changes, Saramago capitalizes the first letter of the new speaker's clause. His works often refer to his other works. In his novel Blindness, Saramago completely abandons the use of proper nouns, instead referring to characters simply by some unique characteristic, an example of his style reflecting the recurring themes of identity and meaning found throughout his work.Saramago's novels often deal with fantastic scenarios, such as that in his 1986 novel The Stone Raft
The Stone Raft
The Stone Raft is a novel by Nobel Prize in Literature-winning Portuguese writer José Saramago. It first appeared in Portuguese in 1986, and was translated into English in 1994...
, in which the Iberian Peninsula
Iberian Peninsula
The Iberian Peninsula , sometimes called Iberia, is located in the extreme southwest of Europe and includes the modern-day sovereign states of Spain, Portugal and Andorra, as well as the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar...
breaks off from the rest of Europe and sails around the Atlantic Ocean. In his 1995 novel Blindness
Blindness (novel)
Blindness is a novel by Portuguese author José Saramago. It was originally published in Portuguese and then translated into English. It is one of his most famous novels, along with The Gospel According to Jesus Christ and Baltasar and Blimunda....
, an entire unnamed country is stricken with a mysterious plague of "white blindness". In his 1984 novel The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis
The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis
The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis is a 1984 novel by Portuguese novelist José Saramago, the winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in literature...
(which won the PEN Award and the Independent Foreign Fiction Award), Fernando Pessoa
Fernando Pessoa
Fernando Pessoa, born Fernando António Nogueira de Seabra Pessoa , was a Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic and translator described as one of the most significant literary figures of the 20th century and one of the greatest poets in the Portuguese language.-Early years in Durban:On 13 July...
's heteronym
Heteronym (literature)
The literary concept of heteronym, invented by Portuguese writer and poet Fernando Pessoa, refers to one or more imaginary character created by a writer to write in different styles...
survives for a year after the poet himself dies. Additionally, his novel Death with Interruptions
Death with Interruptions (novel)
Death with Interruptions, published in Britain as Death at Intervals, is a novel written by José Saramago. First released in 2005 in its original Portuguese, the novel was subsequently translated by Margaret Jull Costa in 2008....
(also translated as Death at Intervals) takes place in a country in which, suddenly, nobody dies, and concerns, in part, the spiritual and political implications of the event, although the book ultimately moves from a synoptic to a more personal perspective.
Using such imaginative themes, Saramago addresses the most serious of subject matters with empathy for the human condition
Human condition
The human condition encompasses the experiences of being human in a social, cultural, and personal context. It can be described as the irreducible part of humanity that is inherent and not connected to gender, race, class, etc. — a search for purpose, sense of curiosity, the inevitability of...
and for the isolation of contemporary urban life. His characters struggle with their need to connect with one another, form relations and bond as a community, and also with their need for individuality, and to find meaning and dignity outside of political and economic structures.
When asked to describe his daily writing routine in 2009, Saramago responded, "I write two pages. And then I read and read and read."
Politics
Saramago was a proponent of anarcho-communismAnarchist communism
Anarchist communism is a theory of anarchism which advocates the abolition of the state, markets, money, private property, and capitalism in favor of common ownership of the means of production, direct democracy and a horizontal network of voluntary associations and workers' councils with...
, and a member of the Communist Party of Portugal. As a member of his PCP he stood for the 1989 Lisbon Local election in the list of the Coalition "For Lisbon" and was elected Alderman and presiding officer of the Municipal Assembly
Municipal assembly
Municipal assembly may refer to:* Assembleia Municipal in Portugal* Municipal assembly * People's Municipal Assembly in Algeria* Town meeting in the United States...
of Lisbon. Saramago was also a candidate of the Democratic Unity Coalition to the European Parliament
European Parliament
The European Parliament is the directly elected parliamentary institution of the European Union . Together with the Council of the European Union and the Commission, it exercises the legislative function of the EU and it has been described as one of the most powerful legislatures in the world...
in all the elections from 1989 to 2009, usually in positions with no possibility of being elected. Saramago was a critic of the European Union
European Union
The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
and the International Monetary Fund
International Monetary Fund
The International Monetary Fund is an organization of 187 countries, working to foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty around the world...
.
In his novel Blindness
Blindness (novel)
Blindness is a novel by Portuguese author José Saramago. It was originally published in Portuguese and then translated into English. It is one of his most famous novels, along with The Gospel According to Jesus Christ and Baltasar and Blimunda....
, the communist principle of from each according to his ability, to each according to his need
From each according to his ability, to each according to his need
From each according to his ability, to each according to his need is a slogan popularised by Karl Marx in his 1875 Critique of the Gotha Program. In German, "Jeder nach seinen Fähigkeiten, jedem nach seinen Bedürfnissen!"...
is stated in a positive light. In a 2008 press conference for the filming of Blindness
Blindness
Blindness is the condition of lacking visual perception due to physiological or neurological factors.Various scales have been developed to describe the extent of vision loss and define blindness...
he stated, in reference to the global financial crisis, that "Marx was never so right as now"
Although many of his novels are acknowledged political satire of a subtle kind, it is in The Notebook that Saramago makes his political convictions most clear. The book, written from a Marxist perspective, is a collection of his blog articles for the year September 2008 to August 2009. According to The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
, "Saramago aims to cut through the web of 'organized lies' surrounding humanity, and to convince readers by delivering his opinions in a relentless series of unadorned, knock-down prose blows." His political engagement has led to comparisons with George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
: "Orwell's hostility to the British Empire runs parallel to Saramago's latter-day crusade against empire in the shape of globalisation." When speaking to The Observer in 2006 he said "The painter paints, the musician makes music, the novelist writes novels. But I believe that we all have some influence, not because of the fact that one is an artist, but because we are citizens. As citizens, we all have an obligation to intervene and become involved, it's the citizen who changes things. I can't imagine myself outside any kind of social or political involvement."
During a visit to Ramallah
Ramallah
Ramallah is a Palestinian city in the central West Bank located 10 kilometers north of Jerusalem, adjacent to al-Bireh. It currently serves as the de facto administrative capital of the Palestinian National Authority...
in March 2002 during the second intifada, Saramago compared the Palestinian city, which was blockaded at the time by the Israeli army, to concentration camps. Some critics claimed Saramago's statement was antisemitic.
During the 2006 Lebanon War, Saramago joined Tariq Ali
Tariq Ali
Tariq Ali , , is a British Pakistani military historian, novelist, journalist, filmmaker, public intellectual, political campaigner, activist, and commentator...
, John Berger
John Berger
John Peter Berger is an English art critic, novelist, painter and author. His novel G. won the 1972 Booker Prize, and his essay on art criticism Ways of Seeing, written as an accompaniment to a BBC series, is often used as a university text.-Education:Born in Hackney, London, England, Berger was...
, Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...
, and others in condemning what they characterized as "a long-term military, economic and geographic practice whose political aim is nothing less than the liquidation of the Palestinian nation".
He was also a supporter of Iberian Federalism.
External links
- The Unexpected Fantasist, a portrait of José Saramago, written by Fernanda EberstadtFernanda EberstadtFernanda Eberstadt is an American writer.-Early life:She is the daughter of two patrons of New York City's avant-garde, Frederick Eberstadt, a photographer and psychotherapist, and Isabel Eberstadt, a writer...
and published August 26, 2007, in The New York Times MagazineThe New York Times MagazineThe New York Times Magazine is a Sunday magazine supplement included with the Sunday edition of The New York Times. It is host to feature articles longer than those typically in the newspaper and has attracted many notable contributors... - Introduction and video of Saramago from "Heroes de los dos bandos" – Spanish Civil War –
- Interviews with Saramago in video
- José Saramago from Pegasos
- Translation of interview with Saramago in El País – 12-Nov-2005
- Saramago's Nobel Lecture
- Societies of Mutual Isolation, an essay on Saramago by Benjamin KunkelBenjamin KunkelBenjamin Kunkel is an American novelist. He co-founded and is a co-editor of the journal n+1. His first novel, Indecision, was published in 2005.-Background and education:...
from DissentDissentDissent is a sentiment or philosophy of non-agreement or opposition to a prevailing idea or an entity... - "The Year of the Death of Jose Saramago" in memoriam from n+1N+1n+1 is a New York–based American literary magazine that publishes social criticism, political commentary, essays, art, poetry, book reviews, and short fiction. It is published three times each year, and content is published on several times each week...
- Jose Saramago's blog
- Video Saramago - Where's the democracy? (english subtitles)