READIN

Monday, August 11th, 2008

🦋 Resolution

I'm seeing a lot of tropes in The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis that will be repeated and magnified in Saramago's later work. For instance about halfway through the book Reis and Lydia (who are having an affair) have been talking for a little while, and Reis says,

...All I know about you is that you live here in the hotel, that you go out on your days off, that you are single and unattached as far as one can see, What could be better, Lydia retorted, and with these four words she wrung the heart of Ricardo Reis. It is banal to say so, but that is precisely how they affected him... We could go on in this manner multiplying words, adding them to the four already spoken, What could be better.... Lydia is about to leave, a clear indication of not having spoken at random. Certain phrases may seem spontaneous, a thing of the moment, but God alone knows what millstone ground them, what invisible sieve filtered them, so that when pronounced they ring like judgements of Solomon. The best one could hope for now is silence, or that one of the two interlocutors should depart, but people usually go on talking and talking, until what was for a moment definitive and irrefutable is completely lost.

-- And from here the conversation goes on, until what was definitive is lost. This seems to me to speak to Randolph's observations about the dialog in The Cave, that its realism stems from its fallibility and lack of direction. Saramago is laying out his thoughts about how conversation works, which will support his constructions of conversations in his later work.

I am curious about where Saramago is going with the developing conflict within Reis, opposing Lydia and his earthy affection for her to Marcenda and his more cerebral attraction to her. The archetypal nature of this conflict is pretty superficially clear -- the narrator even mentions at one point, Marcenda is understood to be a virgin, and has Reis wondering whether he should pay Lydia -- but it's hard for me to see how it will add to the story and to the characters Saramago is describing.

(As I write "more cerebral" I think Hm, that's not quite what I mean -- the distinction is not really between "earthy" and "cerebral" but rather class-based. Reis is socially above Lydia but in the same class as Marcenda. Lydia is attainable but not an appropriate match. I was trying to think of Reis' attraction to Marcenda as similar to Dante's attraction to Beatrice, but that is probably not going to be a productive line of thought.)

posted morning of August 11th, 2008: Respond
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Sunday, August 10th, 2008

🦋 A time when words were pristine

Midway through The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis I find Saramago stating his manifesto:

...Marcenda simply said, I am going up to put these things in my room and will come right down for a little chat, if you have the patience to bear with me and don't have more important things to do. We should not be surprised that Salvador is smiling, he likes to see his clients strike up friendships... Ricardo Reis also smiled, and speaking slowly, assured her, I would be delighted, or words to that effect, for there are many other expressions equally commonplace, although to our shame we never stop to analyze them. We should remember them, empty and colorless as they are, as they were spoken and heard for the first time, It will be a pleasure, I am entirely at your service, little declarations of such daring that they cause the person making them to hesitate, and cause the person to whom they are addressed to tremble, because that was a time when words were pristine and feelings came to life. [emphasis added]

This is, well, just delightful. This is written approximately 15 years before the comment in The Cave about stock phrases which I referenced last month, and it does not have the same tone of anger, but it's direction is most similar. The thought just crossed my mind, I wonder if the anger in the second passage is frustration at writing the same prescription for 15 years and fearing that it will never be followed... But I think probably not. Mainly this is giving me context for Saramago's habit of deconstructing cliché, which I had been thinking of as a fun and interesting verbal tic, that besides just having fun he is maybe practicing a sort of linguistic evangelism, trying to persuade people to listen to language as a quasi-religious experience. (That last sentence is pretty poorly formed, I'm not totally clear on what I'm trying to say. Look for me to try and clarify this a bit in the coming weeks.)

posted evening of August 10th, 2008: Respond
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Monday, August 4th, 2008

🦋 Fictions

He thought that good literature is common enough, that there is scarce a dialogue on the street that does not achieve it. He also thought that the æsthetic act cannot be carried out without some element of astonishment, and that to be astonished by rote is difficult.

I'm finding this, well, a lot of fun -- the degree of layering of fiction on fiction is really astonishing. (Particularly when Borges admits to having adapted one of his own stories, "The Circular Ruins," from a manuscript by Quain.) I'm waiting for personalities to emerge, but am confident they will; for the time being I'm just enjoying the technical beauty of the composition.

It has been several years since I read any of Borges' stories; his mastery of language is washing over me again. I'm reacting to his voice in a way I never did before, which is to feel like Borges is a control freak who wants me to react to every word of his in a particular way, and is leaving no room for my own reading; not sure how valid this is, it's just a spur-of-the-moment thought.

(According to The Modern Word, Saramago is not the only author to make use of The God of the Labyrinth. In Philip K. Dick's notes for a sequel to The Man in the High Castle, there is mention of Joseph Goebbels reading Quain's book.)

posted evening of August 4th, 2008: 2 responses
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Sunday, August third, 2008

🦋 Pacing

How little they must have known him, to address him and speak of him in this way. They take advantage of his death, his feet and hands are bound. They call him a despoiled lily, a lily like a girl stricken by typhoid fever, and use the adjective gentle. Such banality, dear God. Since gentle means noble, chivalrous, gallant, elegant, pleasing, and ubane, which of these would the poet have chosen as he lay in his Christian bed in the Hospital of São Luís. May the gods grant that it be pleasing, for with death one should lose only life.

Starting The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis so soon after I finished The Cave I am really noticing something about Saramago's pacing; the last half of the book really pulls you along in a rush, where the first half is much slower and more open to stopping, starting, jumping back to a few pages previous. I think I have had similar experiences with Blindness and Seeing, as well.

posted evening of August third, 2008: Respond

Saturday, August second, 2008

🦋 Strength of Voice

Meanwhile the guest returns to the reception desk, somewhat out of breath after all that effort. He takes the pen and enters the essential details about himself in the register of arrivals, so that it might be known who he claims to be, in the appropriate box on the lined page. Name, Ricardo Reis, age, forty-eight, place of birth, Oporto, marital status, bachelor, profession, doctor, last place of residence, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, whence he has arrived aboard the Highland Brigade. It reads like the beginning of a confession, an intimate autobiography, all that is hidden is contained in these handwritten lines, the only problem is to interpret them.

I see Saramago's habit of deconstructing commonplace expressions coming through here, although the two examples I've noted in the opening pages -- "pay the fare" and another that I'm not finding now -- are not arresting in the way that I've found his later work. This book is set explicitly in Portugal, in Lisbon, unlike the anonymous countries and cities of his later books. I find that I have no preconceived image of Portugal! So I guess I will acquire one here.

Oh! I see now that Blindness was also translated by Pontiero; I had forgotten.

posted evening of August second, 2008: Respond

Monday, July 28th, 2008

🦋 Dealing with life

I was meaning to ask, what lessons can I take from The Cave? It is very clearly written with a pedagogical slant; it seems to me like Saramago intends for me to apply it to my own life. And I want, instinctively, to do so.

But how? I guess I wouldn't say the lesson of Thelma & Louise is, running away and driving your car off a cliff is the appropriate response to an abusive relationship; but then I don't recall thinking of Thelma & Louise as a movie with a moral; and also an abusive relationship is not a problem that I have to deal with. Whereas here, it would be easy to say that the moral is, running away without plans, without regard for how you're going to support yourself or lead your life, is the appropriate response to alienation from the natural world caused by capitalistic expropriation of our experience of life, by the replacement of dreams with advertisements; and there is certainly room for the claim that this type of alienation is exactly the problem that I have to deal with. So where does that lead me except to running away, a solution that I've not found to be reliable in the past?

The answer, I think, is that I should not focus on the final chapter of the book so much -- that I should look at Cipriano's style of living throughout the book as worthy of emulation, and treat the conclusion as a promise that if I live my life with this sort of honor and self-respect, I'll find connection and happiness. Which is at least a worthwhile self-deception.

posted evening of July 28th, 2008: Respond
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🦋 Craft

No amount of sweetness today can diminish the bitterness of tomorrow.

And yet: somehow that is not at all what the experience of reading the book is like. It is not only beautifully written, it is also surprising for all you have a pretty good idea going in, what the general structure will be. When Cipriano says, "Those people are us," my impulse was to say "Well duh" -- but when he says a few sentences later, "You must decide what to do with your own lives, but I'm leaving," my reaction was one of palpable relief. Saramago has crafted his story well enough that I am included in its ups and downs almost despite myself.

I'm a little torn about the ending. It has a certain Thelma & Louise quality to it that feels like it might be less true to the characters than is the rest of the novel. I see Saramago called deeply pessimistic, and there is a lot of darkness in the world of his books; but this ending is so optimistic that I would call it romantic.* And, well, in a way I guess I'm grateful to him for that. I'm glad my memory of the novel will be of Cipriano's and Marta's and Marçal's rebellion from The Center, of Cipriano's and Isaura's tears of reunion rather than of Cipriano's bleak, lonely tears. I'm not sure how this affects the philosophical message of the book though -- if the only way you can rebel from The Center is to turn to romantic fancy, how much real hope is there?

* The ending of Blindness is also, certainly, hugely optimistic; but the darkness of Seeing keeps me from thinking of the first book as romantic.

posted evening of July 28th, 2008: Respond

Friday, July 25th, 2008

🦋 The Dog of Tears

It is not worth describing what Cipriano Algor thought about because he had thought it on so many other occasions and we have supplied more than enough information on the subject already. The only new thing here is that he allowed a few painful tears to run down his cheeks, tears that had been dammed up for a long, long time, always just about to be shed, but, as it turned out, they were being reserved for this sad hour, for this moonless night, for this solitude that has not yet resigned itself to being solitude. What was truly not a novelty, because it had happened before in the history of fables and in the history of the marvels of the canine race, was that Found went over to Cipriano Algor to lick his tears, a gesture of supreme consolation which, however touching it might seem to us, capable of touching hearts normally not given to displays of emotion, should not make us forget the crude reality that the salty taste of tears is greatly appreciated by most dogs. One thing, however, does not detract from the other, were we to ask Found if it was because of the salt that he licked Cipriano Algor's face, he would probably have replied that we do not deserve the bread that we eat, that we are incapable of seeing beyond the end of our own nose.

(The clause after "truly not a novelty" strikes me as funny in a sort of self-referential way -- it could be rendered, "What was truly not a novelty, because it had happened before in books I have written,...")

posted evening of July 25th, 2008: 4 responses
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Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008

🦋 Beach Reading

Coincidence: the two times this year I have gone to the beach, I've taken along a book by Saramago -- he works really well for a relaxed read, lying in the sun. I'm not sure what it is exactly -- he's very "heavy" -- it takes a lot of thinking and re-thinking for me to get it. But the sun and the sand seem to help that along.

A couple of nice bits from this weekend's reading, below the fold:

...It would help to clear my head too, so why don't we both go and pick Marçal up, and Found can stay here to guard the castle, If that's what you want, Don't be silly, I was just kidding, you usually go and fetch Marçal and I usually stay at home, so long live usually, No, seriously, we can both go, No, seriously, you go. They both smiled, and the debate on the central question, that is, the objective and subjective reasons we usually do what we do, was postponed.

---

Indeed, whether we mix water and clay, or water and plaster, or water and cement, we can cudgel our brains for as long as we like to come up with a name that is less vulgar, less prosaic, less common, but always, sooner or later, we come back to the word, the word that says all there is to say, mud. Many of the best-known gods chose mud as the material for their creations, but it is hard to know now if that preference represents a point in mud's favor or a point against.

---

We have already mentioned the fact that many anthropogenic myths made use of clay in the creation of man, and anyone moderately interested in the subject can find out more in know-it-all almanacs and know-it-almost-all encyclopedias.... There is, however, one case, at least one, in which the clay had to be fired in the kiln for the work to be considered finished. And then only after various attempts. This singular creator, whose name we forget, probably did not know about or did not have sufficient confidence in the thaumaturgic efficacy of blowing air into the nostrils as another creator did before or would do later, indeed, as Cipriano Algor did in our own time, although with the very modest intention of cleaning the ashes from the face of the nurse.

---

I might just as well drive the van into a wall, he thought. He wondered why he didn't do so and why he probably never would, then he listed his reasons. Although inappropriate in the context of his analysis, after all, being alive is, at least in principle, the main reason why people kill themselves, the first of Cipriano Algor's strong reasons for not doing so was the fact of being alive...

Also -- I got a chance to read some passages to Sylvia, mainly involving the adoption of Found by Cipriano and his daughter, and she seemed really into it. Sylvia thinks Found is better behaved than Pixie.

↻...done

posted afternoon of July 23rd, 2008: Respond
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Tuesday, July 15th, 2008

🦋 Saramago and the rhythm of speech

When I was just getting started on Blindness, I wrote that Saramago's style of rendering dialog was "dismissive," and threatened to make his characters "sound like automata." I don't think that was exactly right (although it may have accurately described my impression at the time) -- based on how completely human his characters seem to me. But I want to pick at this for a bit and figure out what is my impression of Saramago's dialog -- it has certainly struck me as one of the most important aspects of his novels.

Allow me to quote some portions of a conversation between Marta and her husband, Marçal, about Marçal's parents wanting to come live with them. Sorry about the ellipses, the passage is too long to quote in full:

What's wrong, asked Marta, suddenly uncertain, Nothing important, just a few niggling little problems, At work, No, What then, We have so little time together and yet they still won't leave us alone, We don't live in a bell jar, I dropped in at my parents' house, Did something happen, some complication. Marçal shook his head and went on... I said that we were intending having your father to live with us when we moved..., You told them that, Yes, but they took no notice, they practically started yelling at me and crying, well, my mother did, my father's not really the sloppy type, he just protested and waved his arms around a lot, what kind of a son am I, putting the interests of people who aren't of the same blood over the needs of my own progenitors, they actually used the word progenitors, heaven knows where they found it..., And that was the final word, To be honest, I don't know if it was or not, I've probably forgotten a few others, but they were all out of the same mold. ...Marçal said, I know a son shouldn't say things like this, but the fact is I don't want to live with my parents, Why, We've never understood each other, I've never understood them and they've never understood me, They're your parents, Yes, they're my parents, and on one particular night, they went to bed, happened to be in the mood, and I was the result... Marta took Marçal's left hand, held it in hers, and murmured, All fathers were sons once, many sons become fathers, but some forget what they were and no one can explain to the others what they will become, That's a bit deep, Oh, I don't understand it myself really, it just came to me, pay no attention, Let's go to bed, All right. They got undressed and lay down. The moment for caresses came back into the room and apologized for having spent so much time outside, I got lost, it said, by way of an excuse, and suddenly, as sometimes happens with moments, it became eternal. A quarter of an hour later, their bodies still entwined, Marta said softly, Marçal, What is it, he asked sleepily, I'm two days late.

What is it? -- It seems to me the dialog has a certain fuzzy quality, you are constantly reminded that it is the narrator who is speaking, not the characters. But you get the impression that he is a faithful and a sympathetic narrator, that his paraphrase captures accurately the rhythm of language as spoken and heard by his subjects. In most novels, dialog serves in part to crystallize the scene, to bring sharply into focus what is happening and whom it's happening to; the dynamic in Saramago's novels is kind of the opposite -- dialog pulls the lens back and mutes the focus. You identify with the characters but with the understanding that you are identifying with the narrator's descriptions of them, and thus with the narrator.

posted evening of July 15th, 2008: 4 responses

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