🦋 Appearances; and a response
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 Sunday, July 5th, 2009
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