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Sunday, December 6th, 2009
Saramago addresses a new post to the Italians who marched in protest of Berlusconi's regime yesterday.
Si Cicerón todavÃa viviera entre vosotros, italianos, no dirÃa "¿Hasta cuando, Catilina, abusarás de nuestra paciencia?" y sÃ: "¿Hasta cuando, Berlusconi, atentarás contra nuestra democracia?". De eso se trata. Con su peculiar idea sobre la razón de ser y el significado de la institución democrática, Berlusconi ha transformado en pocos años a Italia en una sombra grotesca de paÃs y a una gran parte de los italianos en una multitud de tÃteres que lo siguen aborregadamente sin darse cuenta de que caminan hacia el abismo de la dimisión cÃvica definitiva, hacia el descrédito internacional, hacia el ridÃculo absoluto.
Con su historia, con su cultura, con su innegable grandeza, Italia no merece el destino que Berlusconi le ha trazado con frialdad canalla y sin el menor vestigio de pudor polÃtico, sin el más elemental sentimiento de vergüenza. Quiero pensar que la gigantesca manifestación contra la "cosa" Berlusconi, donde serán leÃdas estas palabras, se convertirá en el primer paso para la libertad y la regeneración de Italia. Para eso no son necesarias armas, bastan los votos. En vosotros deposito mi confianza.
If Cicero still lived among you, O Italians, he would not say, "How long, O Catiline, will you abuse our patience?" but rather: "How long, Berlusconi, will you transgress against our democracy?" This is how it is. With his unusual ideas about the basis and significance of the democratic institution, Berlusconi has in a few years transformed Italy into a grotesque shadow of a country; a great part of the Italian people, into a mob of puppets who go on, ovine, without understanding that they're marching toward the abyss of definitive civic resignation, towards international discredit, towards absolute ridicule.With her history, with her culture, with her undeniable grandeur, Italy does not deserve the destiny which Berlusconi has mapped out, with brutal coldness and without the least vestige of political modesty, without the most elemental sentiment of shame. I want to believe that the massive demonstration against the Berlusconi "thing", where these words will be read, will become the first step for liberty and for the regeneration of Italy. For this arms are not necessary; votes will suffice. In you I place my confidence.
posted evening of December 6th, 2009: Respond
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Saturday, January second, 2010
Mary put out her hands to receive the earthenware bowl, which, through some extraordinary optical illusion, perhaps due to the light of the sky, was transformed into a vessel of the purest gold.
I started reading Saramago's Gospel According to Jesus Christ last night, the book which precipitated his self-imposed exile from Portugal. Taken aback by the grandeur of the heresy he lays out and by the subtle beauty with which he commits it. His voice describing Galilee and its denizens, and Mary and Joseph, has a familiar ring to it -- this book is very clearly written by the author of Balthazar and Blimunda.By happy coincidence I was at the Brooklyn Museum today and got a chance to look at their collection of James Tissot's watercolors of The Life of Christ -- beautiful, meticulously researched and composed. Tissot is of course coming from a very different place than Saramago. But the commitment to a naturalistic rendering of Christ's life had me thinking of Saramago's work as I looked through this exhibition. A few reading notes: The opening of the novel is a detailed description of a painting of the Passion, it had me wondering whether Saramago is describing a particular existing painting or a fictitious composite work. In the third chapter, when Joseph tells his tale to the council of elders, they send a delegation composed of Zacchæus, Dothan, and Abiathar ("names recorded here to forestall any suspicion of historical inaccuracy in the minds of those who have acquired their version of the story from other sources" -- ha!) to question Mary about her vision; I wonder where Saramago is getting this bit from. The three names are Biblical but I'm not finding any connection to the story of Jesus' conception.
posted evening of January second, 2010: 1 response
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Sunday, January third, 2010
Saramago's telling of the trek Joseph and Mary must make from Nazareth down to Bethlehem in the ninth month of Mary's pregnancy, is utterly gripping and fascinating. I had never thought much about this aspect of the Christmas story; Google Maps gives the distance they had to travel as either 155 km (taking the westward route) or 166 km (taking the eastward route) -- perhaps 2000 years ago, on donkey and foot rather than in a car, it would have been shorter to go due south, not sure what the geography is like there. This is a long way to be forced to travel in service of paying taxes to an occupying power! The four canonical gospels do not spend much time on it, I wonder if there is another biblical source for this. I'm moderately surprised to find this book (so far, at any rate) not strongly hostile to religion; prayer in particular is being treated as a vital source of comfort to the impoverished Nazarenes. There is a lot of hostility towards the villagers' patriarchal misogyny apparent, and this misogyny is encoded in much of the prayer; but it isn't seeming to me like this translates directly to an anti-religion stance. A little bit of beauty from the third night of the trek, as the travellers take refuge in a caravansary in Ramah:
That night there was no conversation, no prayers or stories around the fire, as if the proximity of Jerusalem demanded respectful silence, each man searching his heart and asking, Who is this person who resembles me yet whom I fail to recognize. This is not what they actually said, for people do not start talking to themselves like that, nor was this even in their conscious thoughts, but there can be no doubt that as we sit staring into the flames of a camp fire, our silence can be expressed only with words like these, which say everything. From where he sat, Joseph could see Mary in profile against the light of the fire. Its reddish reflection softly lit one side of her face, tracing her features in chiaroscuro, and he began to realize, with surprise, that Mary was an attractive woman, if one could say this of a person with such a childlike expression. Of course her body was swollen now, yet he could see the agile, graceful figure she would soon regain once their child was born. Without warning, as if his flesh was rebelling after all these months of enforced chastity, a wave of desire surged through his blood and left him dizzy.
posted morning of January third, 2010: Respond
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I'm impressed again by Saramago's eye for the details of the story as he looks at Joseph and Mary's predicament -- they are in Bethlehem, 100 km from Joseph's shop and source of livelihood, they need to find a way to feed themselves for the 33 days Mary must remain in confinement following the circumcision of her son. My unresearched understanding of the Nativity sort of has the Magi showing up with their gifts immediately the night Jesus is born (and I am wondering whether the visit of the Magi will figure in Saramago's retelling*) -- I should go look at some source material and see how close this is to the accepted story. Joseph's taking work building the Temple has me thinking of Balthazar working on the Convent. Two passages from this section that I think illustrate the broad range of tone Saramago brings to this story. First a belly laugh:
On the eigth day Joseph took his firstborn to the synagogue to be circumcised. Using a knife made of flint, with admirable skill the priest cut the wailing child's foreskin, and the fate of that foreskin is in itself worthy of a novel, from the moment it was cut, a loop of pale skin with scarcely any bleeding, to its glorious sanctification during the papacy of Paschal I, who reigned in the ninth century of Christianity. Anyone wishing to see that foreskin today need only visit the parish church of Calcata near Viterbo in Italy, where it is preserved in a reliquary for the spiritual benefit of the faithful and the  amusement of curious atheists.
and only a few pages later, Joseph is walking back from the construction site where he has found employment; he passes by Rachel's Tomb, and we get deeply reverent, mournful introspection:
Without so much as a word or a glance, one body separates itself from another, as indifferent as the fruit that drops from a tree. Then an even sadder thought came to him, namely, that children die because their fathers beget them and their mothers bring them into this world, and he took pity on his own son, who was condemned to die although innocent. As he stood, filled with confusion and anguish, before the tomb of Jacob's beloved wife, carpenter Joseph's shoulders drooped and his head sank, and his entire body broke out in a cold sweat, and now there was no one passing on the road to whom he could turn for help. For the first time in his life he doubted whether the world had any meaning, and he said in a loud voice, like one who has lost all hope, This is where I will die.
* No, it does not.
posted afternoon of January third, 2010: Respond
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Sunday, January 10th, 2010
I went over to Woody's house last night and watched The Passion of Joan of Arc, which I've seen a couple of times and loved for its visual beauty; I think I may be getting past the gawking and starting to be able to appreciate the tragic beauty of Joan's story. In particular I was noticing something in common between watching this movie and reading The Gospel According to Jesus Christ -- how my understanding of the story is shaped by knowing the lead character will suffer martyrdom. It probably goes without saying (though I don't know if I would have made the connection myself before yesterday) that Joan is a Christ-like figure -- in her story as in Jesus' there is a sense of fatality, that he will go to his death on the cross and she to hers on the pyre because God has set in motion the course of events and it is not subject to change.
Something that had held me off from reading The Gospel According to Jesus Christ was the subliminal fear that it would be mocking Jesus -- I am not a religious man and indeed have been known to appreciate lampoons of religion and of Christianity, but the idea of a life story of Jesus which mocked him was rubbing me the wrong way. I am glad to find my worries were totally misplaced.
posted evening of January 10th, 2010: Respond
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Thursday, January 28th, 2010
 The Saramago Foundation announces that a new edition of The Stone Raft will be published, with all profits given to the Red Cross's relief efforts in Haïti.
Update: no, I misread that. The foundation is not donating all profits to the Red Cross, but rather "the entire 15€ purchase price of the book" -- rather more substantial a commitment.
posted morning of January 28th, 2010: Respond
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Tuesday, May 18th, 2010
How exciting! On the occasion of my birthday Saramago has posted a  cryptic and tantalizing note on his blog (which he has retitled "Saramago's Other Notebooks"):
Aside from the conversations of women, it is dreams that sustain our world in its orbit...
The piece is a quotation from Balthasar and Blimunda... I don't know why he picked today to post it but it fits in nicely with my frame of mind today. So I will consider this (until proven otherwise) my birthday gift from Mr. Saramago.
posted morning of May 18th, 2010: Respond
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Saturday, May 29th, 2010
At UCLA in 2002, Saramago reads from some of his work: 
Thanks to education blog Teach Our Children for the link.
posted morning of May 29th, 2010: Respond
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Friday, June 18th, 2010
José Saramago, 87 years old, died early this afternoon, at home in Lanzarote. This man and his voice will be missed.
posted morning of June 18th, 2010: Respond
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 Saramago is the Portuguese name of the wild radish Raphanus raphanistrum. José Saramago's family name was de Sousa, but when he was born his birth certificate was mistakenly inscribed with his father's nickname. His parents were illiterate and did not discover the error until José enrolled in school.
Life is like a candle burning; when it comes to the end it blazes brightly before it goes out. I believe that I'm now in the period of blazing before I go out. I can see very clearly that I will not go on living much longer. Now I'm in a phase where if I believe that I can carry out some task and that I can do it well, I want to do it. After it all stops and my books remain, I think they will continue to be read.
(quoted in Francesc Relea's article on the national weekend of mourning in Portugal.)
 (Take a look at the slide show included in the El PaÃs obituary; it features some extravagantly beautiful pictures.)
posted afternoon of June 18th, 2010: 5 responses
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