José de Sousa Saramago died on the 18 of June 2010, but apart from some bloggers, few in the country seemed to know, or care. I didn’t see anything in the newspapers, not even in the ‘books’ section. Jose who? Exactly. When I read the BBC report on my laptop aloud in the shop, several people said, ‘Oh, no,’ as if I had just announced the death of someone they knew personally. In a way, we all did. Someone suggested we close the shop for the day. Saramago wouldn’t have liked that, I decided, and stayed open.
According to most reports, Saramago died of multiple organ failure after a long illness, although one said that he had breakfast and talked with his wife for a time before he was overcome by ill health and died.
Some regarded Saramago as the best writer in any language when he was alive. Now, his work will continue to live with those of the other all-time greats. I thought of writing an obituary, but then I said, “Will a writer like Saramago ever die? Wouldn’t it be better for him to be read, not mourned?” Below is an introduction to one of the greatest 20th century writers.
Saramago was a writer’s writer, an intellectual's writer, a humanist’s writer, a politician’s writer, among other things. When he was awarded a Nobel prize in 1998, he was reported to have said, “I was not born for all this glory.”
Although he was good in school, his family could not afford to keep him there and, at the age of twelve, he was enrolled in a technical school whereupon, after graduation, he worked as a car mechanic for two years. After that he worked as a translator, a journalist and an assistant editor. He wrote his first novel when he was 25, and it was a flop. Then fifteen years later he started writing again -- mainly poems and plays. International recognition, however, eluded him until 1987 when Balthazar and Blimunda (which he wrote in 1982) was released internationally.
I have stopped reading writers to death (because there are so many wonderful writers and so little time), but I have made an exception of Saramago. His prose was lucid, unpretentious and direct. Despite his long sentences, I never got the feeling that he was difficult to read. He would replace full stops with commas, and didn’t believe in quotation marks (when the speaker changed, he simply capitalised the first letter and got on with it). In the hands of a lesser writer all this would have become tedious, but not with his works. His novels were fast paced and relentless, simultaneously comic and brutal. His were stories of the human condition, about the astounding capacity of man for tenderness or violence.
My first Saramago book was the History of the Siege of Lisbon (1989). Proofreader Raimundo Silva is assigned to correct a book by his publishing house. After much deliberation, he decides to ‘correct’ a crucial sentence by inserting the word "not" in the text. So the new version says that the Crusaders did not come to the aid of the Portuguese monarch in taking Lisbon from the Moors, which is contrary to the account in standard textbooks. According to ‘agreed’ history, the 1147 ousting of the Moors from Lisbon was the event that resulted in the formation of the Portuguese nation. He questions the nature of history and its relationship to truth and reality. In the end the reader is left wondering if the proofreader’s transgression resulted in a more accurate version of what really happened. As Malaysians, we are all too aware of how history can and is being changed, albeit with much less finesse than Raimundo Silva.
My attraction to Saramago has always been the universality of his writings -- a mark of all great writers. I always felt he was talking to me, the Malaysian. An epidemic of ‘white blindness’ struck the population of a fictitious country in Blindness (arguable his greatest work), leading to mass panic and the collapse of social order, highlighting the repression and ineptness of the government in dealing with the situation. It was so much like home -- a country suffering from 50 years of mass blindness with the blind fumbling as they led the blind ineptly, ruling the blind, abusing the blind, and raping the blind. Despite all that, many still prefer to remain blind, and seek comfort in the condition. No proper nouns are used throughout the book, and characters are referred to merely as the doctor, the doctor’ wife, girl with dark glasses, and so on.
The sequel to it, Seeing, involving the same people in the same city; a few years on, people begin ‘seeing’ with bizarre results. On polling day, 83% of the votes cast are blank, as the party on the right, the party on the left and the party in the middle look on. Journalists and bureaucrats are bewildered. Citizens carry on with their lives. When asked whom they voted for, the citizens remind them politely that the question is illegal. Then the government goes berserk and becomes increasingly repressive as it looks for the ringleaders, though there are none.
Does all this sound familiar? Is voting meaningless?
Saramago was a member of the Communist Party and an atheist, but that did not stop him from writing The Gospel According to Jesus Christ about a very human Jesus up against a megalomaniac of a God, while the devil tempts him with hedonism. Some have condemned this books as ‘antireligious’ while other have praised it for its ‘philosophical and compelling’ approach to the subject. (He also wrote another book on religion called Cain - the first murderer. The book has just been released.)
Saramago was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature one year after he wrote The Tale of the Unknown Island. It is one of those children’s books that are not really for children. It is a slim volume -- about 50 pages -- with illustrations. It is a deceptively simple tale full of metaphors about hope, dreaming, politics and governance. Following is a quote from the book:
"...you have to leave the island in order to see the island that we can't see ourselves unless we become free of ourselves, Unless we escape from ourselves you mean, No, that's not the same thing."
The Stone Raft deals with a hypothetical situation in which the Iberian Peninsula breaks away from Europe and drifts into the Atlantic. What if the Malay Peninsula were to break off at the Isthmus of Kra and float away, together with Sumatra, into the Indian Ocean? How would history be written?
It seems an awful shame that you only hear of someone's existence after they are dead. So many apparently eminent men and woman I never heard of when they were alive. How cruel this is, why is it only when their blood is cold does the media see fit to honour the person. Why don't we honour and appreciate the person while they can still benefit from it, to give them encouragement in their work. This is the case with this fellow - what's his name - begins with S - Samaragio was it? Some writer geezer from probably South America. We all think of ourselves and our personal history as so important but really even if you write and publish 10 books you're still not significant. I think it's a shame. Colin Wilson when he published the Outsider was mobbed by the media and in his innocence he assumed that this was what happened to every author. He came down with a nasty bump when his second book came out, Religion and the Rebel. Hardly anyone read it or took any notice. But then in UK if you put the word "religion" in the title everyone will ignore it. I won't go on but have a nice day...
ReplyDeletePeter Hassan