All the Names

Saramago piše na neobičan način. Zarez je i ponovo njegov najbolji prijatelj. Navodnici za dijaloge su nepostojeći, tačke se koriste retko, a kad otvori nov pasus, pa to je praznik. Jeste, zbog te gustine ga je teže čitati, ali vremenom zavoliš stil sa ubačenim metaforama i prelascima sa tekuće teme na nešto deveto. Pored toga, iako ne piše da bi bio zabavan, ima sjajan smisao za humor. Ovo mi je njegov četvrti roman, svaki je bilo zabavno čitati, a opet nisu bili samo puka razonoda.

Pisar iz Centralnog registra matične službe, Gospodin Žoze, je jedini lik sa imenom u ovom "kafkijanskom" (kakav pridev!) romanu. Osim što uzorno obavlja svoj posao u lavirintu birokratije, njegov život i nije nešto. Bez prijatelja je, a živi sam u stančiću uz sam Registar (u stanu čak ima i vrata koja vode do radnog mesta). Međutim, ima hobi koji mu donosi skoro više strasti od samog života - iz novina skuplja informacije o poznatim ličnostima, i kombinuje ih sa podacima iz Registra.

Život mu se menja, iz korena što bismo rekli, kada mu pažnju skrene fascikla 36-godišnjakinje. Koja nije poznata. Obična žena. Nema tu ništa posebno, ime i datum rođenja, informacija o razvodu i to je to. Žoze ipak postaje opsednut idejom da pronađe tu ženu, sazna što više o njoj, pa možda je i upozna. Ali, kako roman odmiče, jasno nam je da nije krajnji cilj ono što će mu doneći najviše zadovoljstva, već sam proces traganja. Proces traganja za ženom, ali i za smislom života malog pojedinca.

So you’ve finished this book, and it’s done. And so it’s time to move its registration card from the registry of the living to that of the dead, right? Think again. Go back into the darkness, falsify records if necessary, but don’t think it is over.

There is a long history of authors playing games with their readers expectations — it goes back at least to Don Quixote, right? A few months ago I was reading Borges, and was frustrated at most of his stories. Those short stories hinted at something they never quite delivered: a fantastic mystery, one which twists and turns like a labyrinth, leaving the reader never feeling secure that anything was understood, or even could be understood.

For me, at least, Borges failed. He spent too many words making allusions to contemporary events, for example. For the knowledgeable readers of his time, I’m sure those references were twisted in ways that added to the creative confusion, but decades later, we simply end up checking with Wikipedia and trying to guess what it all meant. That sometimes left his stories too abbreviated and fractured to deliver on the promise.

But, to invert the saying, he was the giant upon whose shoulders others would stand. José Saramago’s n  All the Namesn answers that challenge. (I recall loving his Blindness as well, although since I hadn’t yet read Borges, I can’t claim I perceived it in the same way I would today).

A much more modern writer, China Miéville, has stated that he doesn’t want his stories to be read as if he wrote them as allegories. But when pressed, I believe he said that he doesn’t want them to have a single allegorical meaning. That is the clue: if you think you’ve found the meaning, you’ve gone too far. Step back, and accept that there are many meanings, and no overarching meaning, and sometimes, perhaps, no meaning at all.

After all, isn’t that what life is like?

The joy — for me, at least — in n  All the Namesn is to constantly be murmuring, “What?” And gazing up at my ceiling and asking it that was supposed to mean. My ceiling isn’t as loquacious as Senhor José’s, and never answers. But I sometimes answer myself (as Senhor José does, too, when his ceiling is unavailable.)

We are all sheep after we die. That one is easy, right? And the angelic sheep-herder does us a favor by releasing us from the burden of the past, because it is time to move on.

God is frustrated that all of his angels are merely moronic bookkeepers, but he’s forgotten what was supposed to be different. José is minister and scourge, condemning himself by redeeming that one lost soul. If just one noble Clerk is willing to sacrifice themselves, the Registrar will save the rest.

Stealing a person’s identify is a kind of redemption, saving them from being like the billions of others shuffling from birth to death. She had a terrible secret, and Senhor José’s investigation made her panic.

The spiders were doing for the flies what the clerks in the registry were doing for other humans. Ariadne is the Registrar of the spiders. The many-branching labyrinth of the cemetery is the roots of the tree of life. No, it’s the spreading alluvial fan of the river of time, dissipating into the sea of eternity.

Do olive trees really get big enough that you can sleep inside a hollow? We all save clippings of famous people, don’t we? Don’t we? Instead of finding some random stranger out there to care about?

The dead are sorted into a filing system that seems like it should be scary, but isn’t, while the living are sorted into a filing system that seems like it should just be paper and shelves, but is mystifying, and scary, and even hazardous!

But God might be changing his mind about that.

Saramago as much as told us not to pretend to understand it:

This might just be coincidence, there are, after all, so many coincidences in life, for one cannot see any close or immediate relationship between that fact and a sudden need for secrecy, but it is well known that the human mind very often makes decisions for reasons it clearly does not know, presumably because it does so after having travelled the paths of the mind at such speed that, afterwards, it cannot recognize those paths, let alone find them again.

Does that sound like an author who intends to tell a clear story?

And, oh, that reminds my how much I loved the language! The timidness of the clerk was portrayed by the hesitancy of the prose. Witness the reluctance to ever complete a sentence, or even the disinclination to have a straightforward clause (p. 9)

It must be said,
however,
that his having to obey that principle of equality is a relief to his methodical nature,
despite the fact that,
in this case,
the principle works against him,
even though,
to tell the truth,
he wishes he was not always the one who had to climb the ladder in order to change the covers on the old files,
especially since,
as we have already mentioned,
he suffers from a fear of heights.

This isn’t a book of sentences, it’s a book that murmurs to you in the voice of an ancient grandfather, not sure at all that he remembers it, or can tell it properly, while you drowse into slumber, sometimes slipping back to consciousness long enough to become, once again, conscious that you are quite confused, but the recalling that it doesn’t seem quite so strange when you’re sleeping, so you drift along with the breeze, or perhaps the better metaphor really is currents, but we’ll just let that go.

I am still working to obtain a clean slate with my reviews so i am only writing a few words about the books I read last year. I wish I could write more but my self imposed rules do not let me.

So, I was less impressed by my 2nd Saramago, but I still believe is is an example of exceptional writing.

Senhor Jose is a clerk at the Central Registry where all deaths and births are registered, pre computers. The living and the dead are separated in the books. The death cards are kept in a very large and labyrinthic place where people can and got lost. When Sr. Jose accidentally finds a card about a birth stuck together with another, he becomes obsessed with finding the woman on the card. The whole novel is absurd, it reminds me a lot of Kafka.

في هذه الرواية يواصل الكاتب رحلة البحث عن الذات كان هناك شبيها في الآخر مثلي وهنا رحلة البحث تأتي من خلال إمرأة مجهولة سقطت بطاقتها بين يدي موظف المحفوظات العامة في سجل الإحصاءات ليبدأ بذلك البحث عن المرأة التي أطلق عليها في الرواية بالمجهولة إمرأة لا يعرف عنها شيئا ولا هي تعرفه , دون جوزيه موظف ذو سمعة ممتازة لم يرتكب خلال الأعوام الطويلة التي قضاها في عمله أي مخالفة غير أن ذلك يتغير حين بدأ رحلته في البحث عن المرأة فيرتكب العديد من الحماقات
التي تثير الضحك ، الشخصية في غاية الطرافة لغرابة التصرفات التي قام بها من أجل أن يخصل على أي معلومة تشي بهوية هذه المرأة !
كعادة ساراماغو تغيب الأسماء في رواياته ماعدا شخصيته الأساسية في الرواية فهي الوحيدة التي حظيت باسم
المرأة المجهولة كانت حاضرة في الرواية وهي الشخصية الرئيسية الثانية على الرغم من أنها لم تظهر أبدا استطاع ساراماغو أن يضع رؤيته للحياة والموت وقيمة الإنسان بعد أن يصبح مجرد ورقة في سجلات حكومية
أبدع ساراماغو كعادته في الحوارات الداخلية تلك التي يهمس بها الشخص لنفسه , وتلك التي كان يحدث بها السقف
وكأنه صديق قديم وتلك الخيالات التي كانت تراوده أحلامه وهذيان حماه

يقول ساراماغو في حوار أجرته معه جمانة حداد:

الأموات "الحقيقيون" لا يمكن أن يموتوا إذا ظللنا نفكّر بهم. فذاكرتنا متصلة بهم، وأعمالهم بقيت لدينا، مثل كل ما فعلوه وتركوه وراءهم. فإذا توقفنا عن الهجس بفكرة أنهم ماتوا، سوف نستطيع ان نهزم الكثير من العوائق التي نبنيها بين الاحياء والأموات، وسنتمكن من العيش معهم من خلال الذاكرة. ولست أعني فقط ذكريات الماضي، اي كل ما كان قيد الوجود يوما ورحل، بل أيضا ذكريات المستقبل، اي الأمور التي نقوم بها أو لا نقوم بها وتترك أثرا لا يمحى في غدنا. هكذا كان بيسوا في رأيي: يعرف أن ليس ثمة خط فاصل بين الأمس والغد، بين ما نخترعه وما نلمسه.
كل ما نصدّقه يصبح حيّ

لعله بذلك يلخص ما أراد أن يقول في كل الأسماء
رائعة

كوابيس الطفولة لا تتحقق ابدا ، واقل منها تحقق الأحلام..
انها مسألة منح وقت للوقت فقط.

يقدم ساراماغو فلسفة الحياة والموت في قصة "دون جوزية" الموظف البسيط في المحفوظات العامة للسجل المدني.
دون جوزية شخص يريد ولا يريد، يرغب ويخشى ما يرغب فيه، شجاع ورعديد، إلى أن يصطدم ببطاقة إمرأة مجهولة تقلب حياته رأساً على عقب وتجعله يبحث ��ن أجوبة.

Senhor Jose is a low level clerk at the Central Registry of Births, Marriages, and Deaths, a huge maze of a building holding centuries of records. He's a poor, lonely man whose hobby is collecting newspaper clippings about the 100 most famous people in the country. When he secretly copies the registry information about the celebrities, he mistakenly takes the registry card of an unknown woman. Senhor Jose becomes obsessed with trying to find her and learn about her life.

Author Jose Saramago writes in long paragraphs with no quotation marks, but it's usually obvious who is speaking. Everyone in the novel is named only by their title except Senhor Jose. There are themes of loneliness, identity, and a search for meaning and purpose in one's life. The book also contains political satire about the layers of bureaucracy in government offices. 3.5 stars

من سأكون أنا غدا ؟
من هو الذي كنته امس و من اكونه اليوم ومن اكونه غدا , اشياء او احداث – سمها ما شئت – مهما قد تبدو صغيرة وتافهة او حتى غير منطقية , قد تجعلنا لنقف امام هذا السؤال , من أنا ؟ , ولماذا في تلك اللحظة بالذات أقرر ان امضي في ذللك الطريق !!!
معذرة , هل قلت أقرر ,
نحن في الواقع لا نتخذ قرارات, وانما القرارات هي التي تتخذنا
لن يدرك هذا المعنى الا من وقع تحت تاثير سحر الصدفة , وكيف للصدفة من سطوة قد تغير حياتك للابد , في تلك اللحظة التي تقرر فيها ان تطارد خيط الدخان , انت تدرك جيدا انه خيط دخان , مجرد خيط دخان صنعه عقلك او الاصح قد صنعه قلبك , فالصدفة ليست لها سطوة علي العقول , تجد نفسك تعبر ذلك الحد الفاصل بين الحياة والموت بين انت الذي هو الان وانت الذي هو غدا , بين كل ما هو واقعي وما هو حقيقي
بما ان الموت النهائي هو الثمرة الاخيرة لارادة النسيان, فبأمكان ارادة التذكر ان تخلد الحياة