<3 Saramago.
Tenho uma relação de “crescendo” com Saramago. Excluindo a obra que fui obrigada a ler no secundário (“Memorial Do Convento”) e que por sinal até gostei, a segunda obra que li deste autor português resultou numa péssima experiência. Li “Ensaio Sobre a Cegueira” muito provavelmente numa má altura, pois a verdade é que as 3 obras seguintes que li do autor deixaram-me rendida ao ponto de desconfiar da minha avaliação relativamente ao “Ensaio”.

Esta obra, “A Jangada de Pedra”, imagina uma separação da Península Ibérica (Portugal e Espanha) da restante Europa. Separação no sentido literal da palavra (ou seja, de península passaríamos a uma ilha).
Para além dos cenários políticos e geopolíticos e das questões humanitárias resultantes, Saramago faz-nos também acompanhar a história de 5 personagens caricatas que, por diferentes motivos, se sentem culpadas por esta separação.

A obra explora várias questões, nomeadamente o sentimento de afastamento que existe (na realidade) destes dois países ibéricos em relação à Europa. Esta questão invoca outras questões nomeadamente relacionadas com a U.E. e a sua ineficácia perante situações de crise (essencialmente devido ao egoísmo dos seus constituintes). No entanto, várias outras questões e reflexões são levantadas por Saramago através desta obra magnifica.

Não foi a melhor obra que li de Saramago, mas sem dúvida que vale a pena e que a recomendo.

"neputând veşnicia să dureze la nesfârşit"

"cred în ceea ce trebuie să se întâmple"

"se prea poate să avem, pe nepusă masă, soarta altcuiva"

"vieţii îi place să cultive, când şi când, sensul dramaticului"

"nu-i de la nuia, nu-i de la persoană, a fost de la clipă, clipa contează"

"corpul înţelept se milostiveşte de noi, simulează în sinea sa satisfacerea dorinţelor, chiar acesta e visul, ce altceva credeţi, dacă n-ar fi aşa, spuneţi-mi atunci cum am putea suporta viaţa asta lipsită de satisfacţii"

"zău că oamenii sunt inconştienţi, se aruncă pe o plută pe mare şi continuă să se ocupe de viaţa lor ca şi cum ar sta pe un pământ neclintit pentru veşnicie"

"visau cu voce tare"
"cerul era înalt"
"au ajuns la Lisabona pe înserate, la ceasul în care străvezimea cerului umple sufletele de o întristare fără nume [...] peisajul este o stare sufletească"

"este o anumită armonie în obrajii slabi, nimeni nu are obligaţia să fie frumos"

"dacă n-am s-o văd, înseamnă că n-a existat niciodată [...] pentru ca să existe lucrurile sunt necesare două condiţii, ca omul să le vadă şi ca omul să le pună un nume"
"cum poţi privi un lucru fără să-i pui un nume"
"o planetă care merge în jurul unei stele, rotindu-se, rotindu-se, fie zi, fie noapte, fie frig, fie cald, şi un spaţiu aproape gol unde există obiecte gigantice care nu au alt nume decât cel pe care li-l dăm noi, şi un timp despre care nimeni nu ştie cu adevărat ce este"

"dacă vei avea cândva un fiu, el va muri pentru că tu te-ai născut, de crima asta nimeni nu te va ierta"

"în diverse arte, şi mai cu seamă în aceasta a scrisului, cel mai bun drum între două puncte, chiar dacă apropiate, nu a fost, şi nu va fi, şi nu e linia care se numeşte dreaptă niciodată şi în vecii vecilor"

"cuvintele nu spun ceea ce ar trebui, sunt prea multe, sunt prea puţine"

Este foi o livro que mais tempo demorei a ler, desde que começámos o clube de leitura de Saramago, no início do ano. Em vez de levar um mês, levei dois. E não fui caso único. Esta jangada levou a maioria dos leitores do clube com ela durante muito tempo.
Ao início, a leitura não é muito rápida, mas chega a um ponto em que não quis acabar por estar a gostar.
Eu estava muito entusiasmada para esta leitura pela premissa do livro. Era dos que mais me fascinavam pela originalidade da ideia que Saramago teve: a península desprender-se da Europa. Penso que leria o livro de novo, sem problemas, mas se não gostarem do Saramago construtor de personagens, talvez não vão gostar tanto.

As I was getting ready to travel around the Iberian Peninsula and fly to Porto, I pulled out this book detaching it from the bookshelves to which it belonged. Since it had been in my shelves for quite a few years, I dreaded that in its immobility it had petrified and that it had lost its nature as a book. But no, there it was, flexible as a thin stack of paper, and with the pages printed, ready for my eyes to scan its graphics. And ready for travel too.

Saramago’s novel chronicles how the Iberian Peninsula, by detaching itself from the European continent along the middle of the Pyrenees departed on a journey, and narrates the wandering of a few Iberian individuals--both Portuguese and Spanish, around the floating Peninsula, no longer a geographic entity, but a huge stone floating and mobile raft.

These individuals have been united in their shared perplexity at the extraordinary phenomenon, and by their suspicion that they are jointly but independently responsible, and in a most esoteric chain of eccentric causality, for the detachment of their countries from Europe.

My edition is in Portuguese, although I had borrowed a Spanish version to keep on the side and help me in case I felt I was drowning in Portuguese (afogar – ahogar). But no, I floated in Portuguese (flutuar – flotar) and I enjoyed the different waters – less salty. And this wavering between the two languages was suitable, since Saramago, who obviously wrote it in his language, had settled in Spain (in Tenerife, one of the Canary islands). The book has many references and comparisons between the two languages using Spanish ones whenever he thinks they are more suitable, and Saramago rings the echoes of various Spanish and Portuguese literary figures. The wandering chevaliers are literary heirs of Don Quixote, and the featured donkey can only be named Platero Platero and I, and the characters have expressed concern about where Antonio Machado was buried. And of course there is Pessoa's shadow.

Saramago was of the opinion that the two countries should be united and this was written when they entered the EEC on Janurary 1st, 1986. And that is the year when this novel was written.

In his delightful and inimitable style Saramago concocts his idiosyncratic mixture of the absurd and the common sense. With his pen the absurd becomes common and the common sense has an absurd tone to it. What he calls the Insólito and the Sólito (and the latter is an invented word, and so his comparison becomes more goofy). This is Saramago’s stamp.

Saramago, together with the story of his quixotic and diverse wanderers of this floating raft—which, in contrast to Odysseus, moves away from home rather than towards it, and in so doing distances itself from the Mediterranean as it advances West onto the Atlantic--, has also developed a parallel story-line with the geopolitical implications on an international scale. The balance of powers is dislocated as this floating island moves towards the Americas and Lisbon is getting ready to become a facing neighbor to Atlantic City. What are the responses of the other Europeans; what happens with Gibraltar; how the tensions between Canada and the US increase as the latter seems to be calling the shots in the new North-Atlantic allegiance... Or once it seems the stone raft is heading South, the concern of the US President with their missiles grounded in Iberia and whether they will have to deploy them against the penguins...And a long and rich and entertaining etcetera.

But with all the wit, and the humour, and the irony and the absurdity, there is also a loving tone when addressing cherished human subjects, such as love, companionship and loyalty.

And beneath all this absurdity on a geographical, political, personal level, there is the understated question of the nature of identity.

And in this Saramago remains provocative. But that could be another review.

------


I dedicate this review to the citizens of Greece, hoping that they will not detach themselves from Europe.

REVIEW CONTAIN SPOILERS

The scenario in The Stone Raft is that the Iberian Peninsula splits off at the Pyrenees and breaks away from France, drifting out into the Atlantic Ocean, headed for a collision with the Azores Islands. Like a good science fiction writer, the author gives us true details of how tectonic forces, like those that cause continental drift, might be at play and talks about scientifically correct information about how weather and climate might change.

The author gives us correct (but speculative) geopolitical information about how this might affect Spain and Portugal’s relationship to the European Union and how Portugal might become more tied to the the USA. “And it wasn’t from France that the peninsula broke away but from Europe, that may sound like the same thing but there’s a difference.”



We also read plausible scenarios of the behavior of people undergoing this geographic trauma. First the tourists panic and leave the peninsula, then the wealthy. People essentially abandon Portugal, especially Lisbon and Oporto, and move inland and into Spain as the Portuguese coast is expected to crash into the islands.

There are power shortages and gasoline shortages; people abandon cars. Poor folks occupy empty luxury hotels as squatters. People also empty out the from the easternmost islands of the Azores in anticipation of the collision.

Now the people part of the story: three men and two women, all initially strangers to each other, end up living together and traveling together fleeing northern Portugal. First they travel in a rat-trap old French Deux Chevaux, and then in a wagon pulled by two old horses (another Deux Chevaux!).



They are drawn to each other after being interviewed on television due to their strange stories related to the break-away of the now-island. Here’s the magical realism part: each of the characters had (or has) a unique experience in which they felt some agency for the breakaway. They feel that something they did was related to it or perhaps even caused it. I’ll put these in a spoiler even though we know all this pretty much at the start of the book:  One man is followed by a flock of hundreds of starlings. Just prior to the break-up a young woman took a stick and drew a line in the dirt that can’t be erased. Another man was skipping stones at the seashore and suddenly acquired the strength of Hercules and threw a giant boulder a great distance.

In part the saga becomes a love story.  The two women and two of the men pair off and become lovers. The odd man out befriends the dog.  There’s a bit of a saga of the Old (American) West with their trials and tribulations in the covered wagon. The trip, a few miles a day with old horses, takes weeks. Sometimes they sleep in abandoned houses. They become peddlers of clothes to get money to survive. Much of the trip parallels the time-honored pilgrimage route, the Camino de Santiago, leading to the cathedral at Compostela.

It’s a story of interconnectedness – everything is interconnected whether we know it or not.

This question occurred to me while I was reading this book: Is Saramago, Portugal’s 1998 Nobel Prize winner, a science fiction writer? His work has been described as magical realism, fantasy, fantastic fiction -- why not science fiction? When I think of the three most recent works of his I have read, The Stone Raft, Death Interrupted and The Cave, I think all three qualify as science fiction. Death Interrupted is a realistic assessment of what would happen if people stopped dying. The Cave is set in futuristic dystopia.

We expect good writing from this Nobel Prize winner and we are not disappointed:

“…we still do not know what he looks like, this man appears to be hiding himself, but this is not the case, how often have we shown ourselves as we really are, and yet we need not have bothered, there was no one there to notice.”

“Bad example has always prospered and borne more fruit than good advice…”

“…and to think that there are people who do not believe in coincidences, when one is constantly discovering coincidences in the world and is beginning to wonder if coincidences are not the very logic of this world.”

“What a girl, Joana Carda smiled, I’m no girl, and I’m not the bitch you think I am, I don’t think you’re a bitch, Domineering, stubborn, conceited, affected, Good heavens, what a list, why not say mysterious and leave it at that…”

“I don’t have television, It was broadcast in the news bulletin, News is nothing but words, and you can never really tell if words are news.”

“I was worn out, and if a woman remarries at my age, it’s on account of any land she may own, men are more interested in marrying land than a woman…”

“Pedro Orce, who is old and already bearing the first sign of death, which is solitude…”

“But no one would forgive a government for abandoning a city as beautiful as this one [Lisbon], perfect in its proportions and harmony, as will inevitably be said of it once the city has been destroyed.”



As you can tell for the quotes above, the author often uses long paragraphs with thoughts and dialog separated only by commas. A good story with great writing, perhaps a bit dragged out and slow in places.

Top photo - rural northern Portugal (near Chaves, birthplace of my grandmother) from portugalbike.com
Map of the Iberian peninsula from pixers.pics
The author from agendalx.pt

A Delight of Wit, A Dearth of Plot

One day Iberia breaks off from Europe. It's clean, it's neat, almost nobody gets hurt. Before you can say "Fernando Pessoa", Spain and Portugal are floating out into the Atlantic. Geologists can't make head or tail of all this free-form continental drift, but what they don't cotton on to is that it's probably all due to a dog, people who draw a line in the sand, feel a certain dizziness, unravel a blue sock, and other minutiae. Logic has nothing to do with what happens, in this book as well as in life. We, the readers, are clued in by the author, who gathers all the "culprits" together in a group that then go on various "Iberiadas" around the stone raft, an immense vehicle that even swerves to miss the Azores. Well, you guessed it, you are reading a fantasy.

Saramago's strong suit is irony. He's an extremely clever man with plenty of wit and humor to keep the reader amused for 292 pages, even though, as they all say, it is hard to translate humor. Life is a comedy of errors, so it isn't implausible that if once a Portuguese nobleman went off in search of an imaginary island, a floating Iberian island could go off to sea in search of imaginary men. Meanwhile, back on the pages, Saramago dispenses with ordinary little objects like question marks or quotation marks. Perhaps it's because the whole book is a question or maybe it could be due to the fact that the author doesn't see much difference between questions and answers. It could be your flavor of the moment, if missing punctuation is your thing.

Well, OK, I admit it. I could not figure out exactly what this novel is about, though I rather enjoyed it anyway. Is it a political allegory about Iberia's cultural dis-similarities with Europe and a protest against Spain and Portugal's joining the EC ? Is it about how the social edifice collapses (topic of many less-literary science fiction novels) in times of crisis ? Is it a gentle reminder to readers about the possibility of change in life ? That it shouldn't take geological transformation of the earth to allow them---if you remove people from their daily fetters, what miracles could they perform ? After innumerable philosophical observations served up with admirable levity, our dear characters betray one another. The magic is over. Iberia screeches to a halt. "Time and time again" we learn, "there are no riches whatsover, where, out of malice or ignorance, we promised we would find them." Our nowhere men (and women) return home. Aren't they a bit like you or me ? If allegories without clear meanings resonate in your bell tower, give Amazon a ring. I can't call THE STONE RAFT a "thriller", but it's highly original writing for sure.

Cu omul începe ceea ce nu e vizibil. (p. 252)

... există fericirea, a spus vocea necunoscută, și poate nu e mai mult decât atât, mare, lumină și năucire. (p. 278)

The narrative technique of Saramago was unusual and quite complex. When I was reading it, I felt as if I wasn’t reading it myself but rather I was listening to a story. Who was the story teller? It is hard to tell as sometimes it was one single person and sometimes it was like three or four people talking all together. I had once read that Saramago is considered as the greatest living author of our time by many critics and this book is a solid proof for this argument, which I strongly support.

http://amulherqueamalivros.blogs.sapo...

Custou um bocado a ler, mas foi um banger. Obrigado José Saramago, obrigado meu amigo

Una 2CV per amica...


[Scusate se irrompo ma la foto della 2CV può sembrare una intrusa per chi non avesse letto il libro e io, rileggendo, mi sono accorta di avere tralasciato il sesto personaggio, senza cui metà storia non avrebbe avuto seguito o almeno non così come è stato. Ecco, la 2Cv io la conosco bene. Per quattordici anni mi portò in giro prima ragazza e poi mamma e quando quei maledetti freni a pompa mi tradirono e mi trascinarono fino nel mezzo dell'incrocio rischiando la vita dei miei bambini, dietro negli "infasit", o come cavolo si chiamavano quei cosi, ecco, dicevo, me ne liberai per una panda di quinta mano ma con banali freni a disco. La mia 2Cv arancio non era quella di Joaqim Sassa: perdeva pezzi, si fermava appena vedeva la minima salita, nelle curve andava per i fatti suoi e decideva lei quando i vetri dovevano chiudersi sul mio gomito, facendomi sobbalzare. Anch'io l'ho amata e ancora la penso ma non al punto da farne un'eroina invincibile: l'ho amata nonostante i suoi difetti o forse per questi].

Adoro il flusso ironico di pensiero di Saramago, mai concentrato sul suo ombelico ma sulla povera gente - e non solo per ceto e per censo - scaraventata in questo mondo senza che le sia stato chiesto se gradiva nascere o vivere lì e ora.
Dopo un bel gruppo di libri cupi, in relazione biunivoca con i tempi che viviamo nel senso che la depressione esistenziale dell'autore e lettore si scambiano emozioni non proprio allegracuore, mi ci voleva ridere riflettendo sull'assurdità della vita a cui, però, siamo legati indissolubilmente fino ad amarla, questa assurdità.
Non è che Saramago navighi in superficie e la sua ironia sia epidermica e auto-celebrativa: piuttosto nasconde un pessimismo di fondo sulle magnifiche sorti e progressive umane e allo stesso tempo un irresistibile impulso allo sfottò di coloro che detengono un ridicolo potere ripetendo sempre le stesse parole – un qua qua qua- qualunque sia l'evento per cui li sprecano, ieri e oggi.
Gli piace giocare sull’ origine della concatenazione degli eventi da "una radicata superstizione, o salda convinzione, che in molti casi è l'espressione alternativa parallela", tanto per rimarcare che sì la ragione è necessaria ma spesso non sufficiente.
Quasi per magia, infatti, succede“… che la Penisola Iberica si mosse un altro po’, un metro, due metri, per provare le forze… Dopo ci fu una pausa, si sentì passare nell’aria un grande soffio, come il primo respiro profondo di chi si sveglia, e la massa di pietra e terra, coperta di città, villaggi, fiumi, boschi, fabbriche, macchie incolte, campi coltivati, con la sua gente e i suoi animali, cominciò a muoversi, come una barca che si allontana dal porto e punta al mare di nuovo ignoto.”
Gli eventi narrati procedono passo passo ma le digressioni, mai noiose, ne interrompono il flusso: “trascorsi quindici minuti, che, come si dice, parvero quindici secoli, benché questi ultimi nessuno li avesse ancora vissuti per poterli paragonare a quelli,…” che ci restituisce i milioni di microfatti umani intercorsi in quei pochi minuti che riempiono lo scorrere del tempo altrimenti senza senso.
Così, quando José Anaiço, Joaquim Sassa e Pedro Orce si incontrano per la prima volta sotto un olivo, Saramago ha lo scrupolo di precisare che si tratta di un olivo cordovil che connota il luogo in cui si incontrano. E ci racconta del luogo e della sua storia, cioè il tempo andato e il presente perché è l’imposizione del nome che ne denota l’esistenza. A differenza del “generico fico” del vangelo.
E poi tutti a bordo di una 2Cavalli che li porta alla ricerca della causa prima del distacco.

È evidente che il distacco della penisola iberica dal continente e della sua deriva nell’Oceano Atlantico (è lei la “zattera di pietra” del titolo) sia una metafora : nella catastrofe della storia la penisola iberica, come l’arca di Noè, porta in salvo – dove? - i rappresentanti di una umanità forse destinata a migliorarne i caratteri sociali.
La spaccatura dei Pirenei e la deriva appena iniziata della penisola Iberica provoca, infatti, reazioni similissime a quelle provocate dal Covid alla sua comparsa: uguali pensieri e parole. Compresa la reazione del Mercato Comune Europeo come si chiamava l'UE ai tempi della pubblicazione del libro. Il pregiudizio sull'inaffidabilità delle terre del Sud non è nuovo e, come si vede, precede anche la globalizzazione finanziaria- attenzione, non economica stante l’etimologia della parola - che ha come obiettivo la cosiddetta selezione darwiniana. La quale però è interpretata alla rovescia: sopravvivono in natura non i più forti ma coloro che si adattano e evidentemente noi poverini sopravviviamo nonostante 'sti nordici e sono loro che hanno paura di noi.
E che deriva sia, sembra dire Saramago, a queste condizioni.
Non mancano nemmeno correlazioni fantasmatiche tra eventi non correlabili: le polveri sottili veicolo di contagio del Covid per esempio così come la pietra lanciata da Joaquin Sassa sulla spiaggia per il gioco dei cerchi con la fenditura.
Oltre l'ironia e lo sfottò non può mancare in Saramago la storia d'amore dolce e gentile in cui l'unione di sesso e sentimento danno origine a qualcosa di più grande e completo.

Il finale è aperto : come finirà la storia di questi uomini nuovi, pionieri di un nuovo modo più solidale di vedere il mondo?
In fondo è il vecchio sogno palingenetico che fa capolino anche in questi giorni in cui il distanziamento sociale ci fa scoprire la nostalgia del calore della vicinanza e sognare un mondo nuovo e più pulito.

أفكار روايات ساراماجو متفردة حتى ولو السرد متفاوت
الرواية تقوم على حدث عجيب بأثر توليفة غرائبية من أفعال بسيطة لشخصيات مختلفة
تبدأ عندما يرمي رجل في البرتغال بحجر في مياه المحيط فيشعر رجل في أسبانيا باهتزاز الأرض
تنشق جبال البرانس وتنفصل شبه الجزيرة الأيبيرية عن أوربا وتطفو عائمة في المحيط
يصف ساراماجو تبعات الانفصال الدولية والمحلية وأحداث الفوضى والشغب في وقت الأزمات
غالبا ما ينجو أصحاب الثروات والسلطة بينما تحاول الطبقات الأخرى التعايش بسلوكيات مختلفة
في هذه الأجواء يجتمع ثلاثة رجال وامرأتين في رحلة على الجزيرة العائمة ما بين البرتغال وأسبانيا
رحلة تضامن ورفقة وحب..وتبقى النهاية غامضة بدون تفسير لفرضيات الخيال التي تُصور الواقع