READIN

Wednesday, August 5th, 2009

The Pátio do Padeiro

On Monday, Saramago posted a charming piece about the neighborhood where he grew up:

I believe it was twelve years, the time I spent in the Penha de França, first in the Rua Padre Sena Freitas, then in the Rua Carlos Ribeiro. For a much longer time, until my mother died, the neighborhood was for me a persistent extension of all the other places through which I passed. I have memories of it which remain vibrant today. Back then the Vale Escuro lived up to its name, it was a place of adventure and discovery for kids, a remnant of nature which the first construction projects were already beginning to threaten, but where it was possible to savour the sour taste of of the cedars and the sweet tuberous roots of a plant whose name I never learned. And there was also the battlefield, the site of Homeric struggles... And there was the Pátio do Padeiro (which was not in Penha de França, but in Alto de Saõ Joaõ...), where "ordinary" people did not dare to enter and where, it was said, even the police made themselves scarce, turning a blind eye to the supposed or actual illicit behaviours of those who lived there. What's certain is, great distrust and fear were caused by the closeness of that small world which lived segregated from the rest of the neighborhood and whose words, gestures and postures clashed with the tranquil routine of the timorous people who passed outside. One day, from the nighttime to the morning, the Pátio do Padeiro disappeared, perhaps laid waste by the municipal hammer, or more likely by the construction companies'excavations, and in its place arose buildings without imagination, each one a copy of the others, which grew old within a few years' time. The Pátio do Padeiro, at least, had its originality, its own physiognomy, even if it was nasty and malevolent. If I could do it, if I were able to share the life of these people to find out, I would like to reconstruct the life of the Pátio do Padeiro. Alas they are lost. The people who lived there are dispersed, their descendants have improved their lives, have forgotten or do not wish to recall the hard existence of those who lived before them. In the memory of the Penha de França (or of the Alto de S. Joaõ) there is not any space left for the Pátio do Padeiro. There were people who were born and lived without luck. Of them there remains not even the stone of their door-jamb. They have died and passed away.

posted evening of August 5th, 2009: Respond
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Sunday, August second, 2009

Gabo

Saramago posts today about reading García Márquez:

Writers can be divided (assuming that they will accept being divided...) into two groups: the smaller group, of those who can open new paths into literature, and the more numerous, those who go after and who use these paths for their own journey. It's been this way since the birth of our planet and the (legitimate?) vanity of authors will do nothing against the clarity of the evidence. Gabriel García Márquez used his ingenuity to open and to pave the way that would come to be called "magical realism," down which multitudes of followers would later proceed and, as always happens, detractors in their turn. The first book of his which came into my hands was Cien años de soledad, and the shock which it caused me was enough to make me stop reading at the end of fifty pages. I needed to put some order in my mind, some discipline in my heart, and above all, learn to get my bearings and orient myself on the paths of the new world which presented itself before my eyes. In my life as a reader there have been very few occasions that have produced an experience like this. If the word "trauma" could take a positive meaning, I would willingly use it in this case. But, it has been written, leave it there. I hope it will be understood.

posted evening of August second, 2009: Respond
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Tuesday, July 28th, 2009

Waiting...

Finally today I read a notice that The Elephant's Journey is going to be published in English; but not until more than a year from now! Jull Costa will be translating it, as I had assumed she would be; Houghton Mifflin will publish it next fall.

posted morning of July 28th, 2009: Respond
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Monday, July 27th, 2009

Tomarctus

The bedroom door, which was only pushed to, opened softly in the darkness. Tomarctus, the household dog, had come in. He came to find out if this master, who only turns up very infrequently, was still here. He is a medium-sized dog, and inky black, not like other dogs that, when seen from up close, are really gray.

I am wondering about the roles of the female characters in this book, Maria, Helena, and Tertuliano's mother. Each one of them seems pretty cryptic in her own way.

posted evening of July 27th, 2009: Respond
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Saturday, July 25th, 2009

Doubles

They say that if you meet your double, you should kill him -- or that he will kill you. I can't remember which; but the gist of it is, that two of you is one too many.

-- Double Take

Bill of Orbis Quintus linked to an interview with screenwriter Tom McCarthy, in which he discusses among other things his most recent project, the movie Double Take (a longer article about the movie is at Art in America). Sounds great -- he says it is based on "a Borges tale about meeting his own double" -- at first I thought this was referring to "Borges and I", but this is probably wrong, unless the relationship between the source text and the movie is very loose indeed.* He's changed it around so that the movie is about Alfred Hitchcock rather than Borges, which seems to me like a excellent move -- not that I wouldn't be glad to see a movie about Borges, but throwing Hitchcock into the mix can only produce good consequences. Here is a clip:

(...And thinking further, I'd say the relationship between source text and movie is indeed very loose, and who knows, "Borges and I" may have been the inspiration for this. I need to see more of the movie to have any actual opinion about this, though.)

↻...done

posted afternoon of July 25th, 2009: 3 responses
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Sunday, July 19th, 2009

The movie

The video Máximo Afonso rents at the beginning of The Double is called Quem Porfia Mata Caça -- internet translation sites seem to think this proverb should be translated as "Where there's a will, there's a way"; Jull Costa chooses "The race is to the swift" -- which does sound like a good title for a movie, though from checking with imdb, it does not appear to have been used that way yet. This title is repeated several times in the first few pages -- makes it seem like riffing on the adage is going to be an important part of the book. I think the literal translation is something like "He who perseveres will kill his prey."

posted morning of July 19th, 2009: 3 responses

Saturday, July 18th, 2009

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,...

posted morning of July 18th, 2009: 3 responses

Blimunda searched for nine long years

In the course of reading the second half of Baltasar and Blimunda I had sort of begun to assume that the end of the novel would feature the cripple and the clairvoyant repairing Bartolomeu's flying machine and taking again to the air -- I have come to expect a romantic vision of Saramago's novels in which the protagonists transcend their gritty reality through love. (This is a little simplistic, and it certainly does not apply to every one of his books, but speaking very broadly it is a common feature of a lot of his fiction -- and it just seemed like it would be the natural ending for this book.) The fairy-tale imagery was making me expect a fairy tale.

Do not want to give away the ending, exactly -- I am recommending this book very strongly and it is always a better reading experience not to know just what's coming -- suffice to say that while the airship does fly again and while broadly speaking, the ending does involve the protagonists transcending their gritty reality through romantic love, it is much, much darker and less pat than what I was imagining.

posted morning of July 18th, 2009: Respond
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Tuesday, July 14th, 2009

To give meaning to all of this

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.

posted evening of July 14th, 2009: Respond

Sunday, July 12th, 2009

Minor characters

There are other fellows too, named José, Francisco, and Manuel, very few named Baltasar, but many named João, Álvaro, 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, ...

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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