The time marks the absence. The farewell is counted in days. And even without observing, being still present. José de Sousa Saramago, the writer of consciousness, translated into twenty languages, is immortal. This is for those who, like his wife, the Spanish Pilar del Rio, reads almost daily.
While “The Master”, as he called the critic Harold Bloom, I no longer feel all evenings to write two or three pages, his work is constantly rediscovers between conversations, conferences, tributes, biography, interviews, cultural events, and posthumous titles as “Halberds” published in September 2014.
The rulers should read
The Spanish jurist Baltasar Garzon, very close to Saramago and they took care to present “Halberds” ruling ensures that all should read it, because “from fiction reflects well the contradictions of the human being and the immense power of money to corrupt “.
As this novel, which reflects on the arms industry, the absence of strikes in arms factories and ethics of those working in them were born several literary projects in their thinking. This, thanks to the work of his widow, journalist and translator Pilar del Rio, who chairs the José Saramago Foundation and constantly working to spread his legacy.
But “the president” as he called his wife Saramago sometimes, quite contrary to what one would think, he feels close, alive. From his office, located in the heart of Lisbon, he is still working with him, because and so has shown her complicity is in memory, in words and also in places.
Right in front of the building of the sixteenth century, La Casa dos Bicos, lie the ashes of her husband and father of trial declared a poorly universal blindness and some years later, he would respond to that of lucidity.
There, in the Campo das Cebolas, overlooking the Tagus River, in the midst of a small garden, guarded by an olive tree, a kind of gravestone, the words tattooed on a stone bench that reads read “But it did not rise to the stars, if the land belonged”
Recalling imagining five years ago
On Friday, 18 June. 2010, after 11 am, the Portuguese writer Jose Saramago, grandson of farmers Melrinho Jeronimo and Josefa Caixinha, stopped breathing. After 87 years, the crumpled body ended a long battle with chronic leukemia. By that time, the Portuguese novelist and played another stream. Lanzarote whispered his goodbye.
Some days later, in a solemn act, it dismissed the Portuguese capital in the Hall of Honor of the City. Friends, followers and intellectuals, among them the leader of the Portuguese Communist Party Jeronimo de Sousa was expressed mourning, not only them, but “all the people who loved and was faithful.”
Lisbon clothed with the letters who made social, his problems. One afternoon not far, dozens of friends and fans of his generous work and, at the same time, rebel, met in the Casa Fernando Pessoa, to honor those who, according to his biographer and friend Fernando Gomez Aguilar, “resounds from the Liberate . of his mighty uneasy conscience, irreplaceable “
That afternoon, Pilar del Río prepared to share, once again, as so ago, his eternal experience with the author.
“Here begins the sea ends and the earth” began … After a deep air continued, “It rains on the pale city, the river running muddy clay are flooded groves shore. A boat stands between soturno flow is the Highland Brigade that will dock at the pier of Alcantara (…) “.
It was the beginning of” The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis “( 1984). the work that was born a few decades ago, in a library of industrial school when young Joseph aspired to mechanical locksmith.
His hidden interest in poetry led him to discover that the name of the signatory of such verses, was that and more, but one in particular:. Fernando Pessoa, the same Ricardo Reis
The author of “Manual of painting and calligraphy” (1977) featured this episode in 1998, when he received the Nobel Prize for Literature.
In his words, “a long, long time after the apprentice writer and with white hair and a little wiser in their own wisdom dared to write a novel to show the poet the “Odes” something that was the spectacle of the world in that year of 1936 when it began to live his last days: the occupation of the Rhineland by the Nazi army, Franco’s war against the Spanish Republic, the creation by Salazar of the Portuguese Fascist militias. “
” In Pilar “, he dedicated this and many other novels that earned him more recognition and popularity, the ability to exist without silence. More than 30 works, among which resonate off the ground (1982), Memorial of the Convent (1982), The Stone Raft (1986), The Gospel According to Jesus Christ (1991) Blindness (1995); The cave (2000), Death with Interruptions (2005), The Elephant’s Journey (2008) and Cain (2009), reflect the need, say its creators, to let “something done” as “a form of eternity.”
The “conscience”
The stories, statements, questions, allegations, judgments and thoughts that are woven into each of their texts pose a necessity, a struggle for mankind tell their true misfortunes, successes and apocalyptic future.
His ideas, but prescient, were consistent with reality. Had already noticed this lover of literature, the problems afflicting humanity can only be addressed with a single word. “Conscience”
While his wisdom represents a triumph of contemporary thought, Saramago He never considered an expert or a famous intellectual. He argued, however, that his writing was simply the way for disquiet.
Perhaps, therefore, the words that welcomed the highest literary recognition that a writer can aspire, started from their origin.
They counted with absolute simplicity, whom the child, youth, adult and old man, in spite of the time and in the same metaphors in their stories, continued walking barefoot on the earth was wondering why or for no reason, of human life. That day in 1998, and with leaning gray hair, he decided to be the humble young man who lived in the village of Azinhaga in Portugal.
By the 1930s, little Joseph helped his grandfather Jeronimo in their daily work. It was not enough to dig the soil in the garden adjacent to the house, or to cut the wood for the fire. Sometimes, too, it rose water community well and carried on their shoulders.
There, in a simple plot, in the middle of the night with his grandfather, knew the word imagined. They were -contó- legends, amazing appearances, unique episodes, old deaths, skirmishes sticks and stones, words of ancestors, an untiring rumor of memories that kept them awake at the same gently cradled him.
Never I knew time- admitted that if his grandfather was silent when he discovered he had fallen asleep or if he kept talking to keep half the answer to the question that invariably he did, “And then” …
After … the universe was set in motion. Beauty is revealed in his dreams. Jose Saramago clung to literature, poetry, essays. And after a few years, he became a true storyteller, and his grandfather Jeronimo.
In 1947 he published his first title “Land of Sin”, a rural story of memories, something fuzzy, to tell what emerges mysteriously from the imagination.
It would, then, that creative power, which allowed him to remember, paint and repaint these routines yours, that with the passage of time, however, was mutating to derive the other literary beings, who always he described as his “teachers of life”. . The most intensively taught him the art of living
Baltasar Garzon: “I miss Saramago, the fighter honest”
The former judge Baltasar Garzon, recounts in this interview with Efe a small semblance of Portuguese Nobel Literature José Saramago, with whom he shared a close friendship and ideals of justice and democracy. The author of the recent book “The Mud”, remembers him well.
P (EFE) .- What strange writer Jose Saramago?.
R (B. Garzón). – I miss him, an honest fighter, brave, consistent between the statement and action, even from the discrepancy. Always on the side of the victims with the powerful and ruthless. I always think of him as a defender of just causes. “The defense of human rights is not right nor left; honest people can agree, “that phrase of his defined him.
His views prompted thousands of people to think about the importance of civil society and the responsibility of all in a democratic society. His interest in me made me feel deep inside, he wrote about me did not deserve beautiful things. I had him for a great man, he was a great friend.
Q. Why do the rulers should read Halberds, Halberds! Muskets, shotguns!?
A-. Saramago used to bring this out, the relationship between the loving husband of weapons and contrary to these women. And the arms trade is an outstanding chapter, do not forget that wars to promote arms sales are organized.
The rulers should analyze the causes, from law and diplomacy, but of course, is it easier to bomb a country or a particular area of the country to carry out this reflection. And we know that to reach a large global pact against the industry of death is a pure utopia, but I think we must continue fighting from civil society to get it.
Q. What form ¿De reflected the current problems in the posthumous work of Saramago?.
A. He expressed his allegation against the power of this war industry that moves billions of dollars and yet does not resolve no problem. This is where governments should consider.
Q-What is the Book, or the books of Saramago who have had the greatest influence on his personal and professional life?.
A. I have always been impressed by the hard and clairvoyant argument “Blindness”. This journey from the stage of being civilized the purely animal, the will to survive either way. And Saramago’s proposal that it is urgent to recover the lucidity against terror discover the most primitive impulses. In the end, the question that arises is the same as you do every day when you work with the most sordid, most complex society and is only the question whether it is feasible to have hope. The answer for me is in that line suggested, that love and solidarity can change people and society.
Q. Any other than any of his books, essays and speeches he has stored in memory
Answer: There is a very descriptive phrase of reality in this book that mentioned:. “I think we were not blind, I think we are blind, blind to see. Blind seeing, do not see … “What form brightest define that finally makes sprout seed evil and that is based on disregard for others and what happens! “We talk a lot about democracy and the practice soon,” said Saramago. True, when critical voices away, numb consciences and the risk of indifference displayed.
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