|
|
🦋 Another look at Saramago's œuvre
Yikes! I am starting another book by José Saramago -- namely The Double. I haven't heard much about this one, I think Jorge has referenced it once or twice as an enjoyable read. It is from 2003, after The Cave and before Seeing. Just want to say up front, with each book I read of his I am more deeply in awe at the breadth of his writing -- what is prompting this is one of the few explicit references I've seen him make within a novel to his other work. On page 2, Saramago is describing Máximo Afonso as a solitary man who has "succumbed to the temporary weakness of spirit ordinarily known as depression."
What one mostly sees, indeed it hardly comes as a surprise anymore, are people patiently submitting to solitude's meticulous scrutiny, recent public examples, though not particularly well known and two of whom even met with a happy ending, being the portrait painter whom we only ever knew by his first initial, the GP who returned from exile to die in the arms of the beloved fatherland, the proofreader who drove out a truth in order to plant a lie in its place, the lowly clerk in the Central Registry Office who made off with certain death certificates,...
Gosh! four of his other novels and only two that I have read! (plus one that is on my reading list.) I wonder if the portrait painter is the main character of Manual of Painting and Calligraphy. ...Somehow I had been going along thinking that Baltasar and Blimunda was his first major novel, that I was close to mastering his back catalog. Somehow I had formed the silly impression that Manual of Painting and Calligraphy was what it claimed to be, that based on this and Journey to Portugal, Saramago's previous, untranslated works were not fiction. That is clearly false and it looks like if I really want to know his work, I need to learn Portuguese -- or at least get better at Spanish, it looks like almost all of his novels are translated into that language. As far as his poetry, I've been reading some of it in Spanish online; I think the combination of reading in Spanish for understanding and Portuguese for the sound will be sufficient for getting it, at least once I figure out how to pronounce Portuguese.
posted morning of Saturday, July 18th, 2009
➳ More posts about The Double
➳ More posts about José Saramago
➳ More posts about Readings
As I haven't read those novels I never figured he was pointing to his past work, but let me tell you that this book is the Saramago novel I've enjoyed the most. Maybe not the best, but surely the funniest: I remember myself laughing out loud many times while reading it!
posted morning of July 19th, 2009 by Jorge Lopez
Great -- it is looking like a lot of fun though I'm just at the beginning. I'm very interested in seeing Saramago's take on depression, which I don't think he's dealt with explicitly in any of the books I've read so far. For some reason I thought you had read Todos Los Nombres?
posted morning of July 19th, 2009 by Jeremy
Nope, I haven't. It's been a while since last time I read Saramago, actually, and I think I should get back to him soon.
Death with Interruptions was the last book I finished, and then started with The Gospel According to Jesus Christ and I just couldn't get into it so I left it.
By the way, The Double is called El Hombre Duplicado in spanish, being the original O Homen Duplicado.
posted morning of July 19th, 2009 by Jorge López
| |
|
Drop me a line! or, sign my Guestbook.
•
Check out Ellen's writing at Patch.com.
| |
