لطالما سمعتُ عن نوعية قصص ساراماجو المختلفة عن كل ما هو مألوف ومعروف.
كانت لدي فكرة عامة عن أسلوب ساراماجو القصصي، وكانت (الطوف الحجري) أول قصة أقرأها له.
هي قصة جمع فيها الكاتب كل شئ: السياسة، الجغرافيا، الفلسفة، الإنسانيات، وشئ من حب.
طريقة ساراماجو مثيرة للضحك! كان كل بضعة صفحات يفاجئني بأنه يتحدث إليّ مباشرةً، ناقدًا أساليب الروايات المعتادة، وأحيانًا معتذرًا إن كان أصابني بالملل في هذه الجزئية بالذات! وأنا أقول وقتها: ده إنت ترغي للصبح براحتك يعني! :))

الطوف الحجري فانتازيا معتادة من فانتازيات ساراماجو، تخيّل فيها انفصال شبه الجزيرة الأيبيرية (أسبانيا والبرتغال) عن أوروبا جغرافيًا، متسائلًا ماذا يمكن أن يحدث إذا وقع هذا الإنفصال على مستوى الدولتين من ناحية، وعلى مستوى قوى العالم العظمى من ناحية أخرى. ماذا سيحدث للأفراد وكيف سيتعايشون مع كون أرضهم تطوف هنا وهناك بلا توقف؟
القصة مليئة بالتفاصيل، وبالمفاجآت، وبها خمس شخصيات وكلب وحصانان. :))
وحتى لا أفسد متعتها على من ينوي قراءتها فلن أتحدث عن الشخصيات، ولا فلسفتهم، ولا كيف اجتمعوا. اكتشف بنفسك.
كما زودتني الأحداث بكم هائل من المعلومات الجغرافية، والتاريخية كذلك. ونهايتها كانت عجب العجاب!

Her Saramago okuduğumda şaşırıyorum.
Bu kez Iber Yarımadası anakaradan bir şekilde kopuyor ve kaos çıkıyor. Ada kendi halinde yüzerken devletin içinde olduğu gibi bireyin içindeki kaosu da görüyoruz.

Saramago bu kez paragraf ve noktalama koymuş, bu da şaşırtıcı.

"Yaşam önemsiz görünen küçük olaylarla doludur, diğerleriyse belli bir anda tüm dikkatimizi üzerlerine çekmiştir."

Sarà che sono un estimatore di Saramago, sarà che ero ben predisposto a questa lettura, ma questo libro mi è piaciuto davvero tanto.

Già l’idea iniziale, la terra che si spacca sui Pirenei Orientali e la penisola iberica che inizia a spostarsi, andando alla deriva proprio come la zattera del titolo, strappa la prima ola.

I personaggi principali sono persone comuni che vengono quasi trasfigurate all’inizio del misterioso fenomeno naturale, ciascuno con una caratteristica quasi magica e sovrannaturale che li contraddistingue.

Le loro storie si intrecciano, le coppie di amanti si formano ed il loro peregrinare si aggiunge a quello della popolazione iberica, spagnoli e portoghesi, percorrendo momenti straordinari e umani, ma sempre coinvolgenti dinanzi al prospettarsi di una possibile catastrofica collisione.

Le cronache del ruolo dell’Europa e degli Stati Uniti, durante le varie fasi della imprevedibile rotta della zattera di pietra, sono sorprendentemente attuali (nonostante il libro sia del 1986), e ci portano facilmente a pensare alla mancata integrazione dell’una ed alla avidità di controllo dell’altra; ma anche alla possibile nascita di un Mondo Nuovo. Con un giusto omaggio alle donne che mi sono apparse più sagge ed altruiste dei compagni. Ho amato Joana Carda, confesso.

La scrittura di Saramago, poi, è incredibile (onore anche alla traduzione che riesce a non vanificarne la struttura) e coinvolgente, con il suo caratteristico utilizzo della punteggiatura che contribuisce al fluire delle immagini e dei dialoghi; il respiro del poeta.

Saramago sembra quasi divertirsi nell’indugiare negli aspetti popolari (i proverbi, i detti e le filastrocche di paese) ed in quelli fantastici, come un abile tessitore che intreccia un meraviglioso arazzo naïf, in cui, comunque, traspare il valore nobile ed austero dell’arte.

La lettura di Saramago, infatti, è sempre impegnativa, porta a rileggere alcuni passaggi, ed inserisce spesso riflessioni personali e commenti ironici che arricchiscono la mente ed un po’ anche il cuore di quel lettore che trovi la giusta sintonia con il suo personale canale di comunicazione. E dopo è pura musica.

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

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

Brexit Forefelt

Spain and Portugal float away from Europe as a disunited kingdom, leaving Gibraltar behind, a lonely Atlantic island. Written in 1986 about the Iberian leave-taking from continental Europe, The Stone Raft is the perfect book for Brexit 2016. A cliché, I know, but not an un-useful one.


Separation from the rest of Europe is just not easy emotionally for either party. "A loving mother, Europe was saddened by the misfortune of her lands on the extreme west." All sorts of connections - journalistic as well as legal and physical (particularly electricity) - have to be worked out, as any country with experience would know. And, with Saramago, Portugal has that experience and can share it with Britain.

Apologies by those departing are of course necessary, along the lines of 'it's not anything about you, it's us'. So in their letters home, the inveterate exiteers write "...that their world had changed, and their way of life, they were not to blame, on the whole they were people with little willpower, the sort of people who could not make up their mind..." No fault international divorce.

Even in translation one has often to voice Saramago's prose in order to get the sense of it much less enjoy its full effects. It is a form of written/oral story-telling that has an essential musicality which is as much a part of the tale as its subtle humour and irony. It is also lots of fun. The characters and cadence could be from The Canterbury Tales:

"So let is not ask Jose Anaico who he is and what he does for a living, where he comes from and where he is going, whatever we find out about him, we shall only find out from him, and this description, this sketchy information will also have to serve for Joana Carda and her elm branch, for Joaquim Sassa and the stone he threw into the sea, for Pedro Orce and the chair he got up from, life does not begin when people are born, if it were so, each day would be a day gained, life begins much later, and how often too late, not to mention those lives that have no sooner begun than they are over, which has led one Piet to exclaim, Ah, who will write the history of what might have been."


I am particularly fond of Saramago's alternative Cartesianism: "...the only great truth is that the world cannot die." Quem mundus non potest mori, perhaps, as a replacement for the Cogito ergo sum. Not that it has the same epistemological pretensions as the Cogito, of course, but " ...in the absence of any certainties one has to pretend." Indeed, pretending to leave the EU may be Britain's salvation as well.

3.5 stars

Two moths ago (on vacation) I bought "the stone raft" (a jangada de pedra) by José Saramago [nobel prize in literature (1998)] in one of the most beautiful bookstores in the world, "Livraria Lello" in Porto, Portugal (my country). This somptuous bookshop inspired the Harry Potter’s library in Hogwarts. In fact, J.K Rowling lived in Porto teaching English in the early 1990s.
If you ever come to Portugal you should visit it ....... just saying... ♥️
#PortugueseAuthor

"Dificílimo acto é o de escrever, responsabilidade das maiores, basta pensar no extenuante trabalho que será dispor por ordem temporal os acontecimentos, primeiro este, depois aquele, ou, se tal mais convém às necessidades do efeito, o sucesso de hoje posto antes do episódio de ontem, e outras não menos arriscadas acrobacias, o passado como se tivesse sido agora, o presente como um contínuo sem princípio nem fim, mas, por muito que se esforcem os autores, uma habilidade não podem cometer, pôr por escrito, no mesmo tempo, dois casos no mesmo tempo acontecidos."
*
“Writing is extremely difficult, it is an enormous responsibility, you need only think of the exhausting work involved in setting out events in chronological order, first this one, then that, or, if more conducive to the desired effect, today's event before yesterday's episode, and other no less risky acrobatics, presenting the past as if it were something new, or the present as a continuous process with neither beginning nor end, but, however hard writers might try, there is one feat they cannot achieve, and that is to put into writing, in the same tense, two events that have occurred simultaneously.”
- José Saramago

* * *
"Mas é verdade que há diferenças de mundo para mundo, toda a gente sabe que em Marte os homens são verdes, enquanto na terra os há de todas as cores, excepto essa."
*
“But it is true that there are differences between one world and another, everybody knows that on Mars the inhabitants are green, while here on earth they are every color except green.”
- José Saramago

* * *
"O certo gera o errado, o errado produz o certo, Fraca consolação para um aflito, Não há consolação, amigo triste, o homem é um animal inconsolável."
*
“Right engenders wrong, wrong produces right, Poor consolation for a man in distress, There is no consolation, I'm afraid, man is a creature beyond consoling.”
- José Saramago

* * *
"Quantas vezes, para mudar a vida, precisamos da vida inteira, pensamos tanto, tomamos balanço e hesitamos, depois voltamos ao princípio, tornamos a pensar e a pensar, deslocamos-nos nas calhas do tempo com um movimento circular, como os espojinhos que atravessam o campo levantando poeira, folhas secas, insignificâncias, que para mais não lhes chegam as forças, bem melhor seria vivermos em terras de tufões."
*
“So often we need a whole lifetime in order to change our life, we think a great deal, weigh things up and vacillate, then we go back to the beginning, we think and think, we displace ourselves on the tracks of time with a circular movement, like those clouds of dust, dead leaves, debris, that have no strength for anything more, better by far that we should live in a land of hurricanes.”
- José Saramago

* * *
A vida está cheia de pequenos acontecimentos que parecem ter pouca importância, outros há que num certo momento ocuparam a atenção toda, e quando mais tarde, à luz das suas consequências, os reapreciamos, vê-se que destes esmoreceu a lembrança, ao passo que aqueles ganharam título de facto decisivo ou, pelo menos, malha de ligação de uma cadeia sucessiva e significativa de eventos."
*
“Life is full of little episodes that seem unimportant, while others at a certain moment absorb all our attention, when we reappraise them later, in the light of their consequences, we find that our memory of the latter has faded while the former have come to seem decisive or, at least, a link in a chain of successive and meaningful events.”
- José Saramago

* * *
"Se uma pessoa, para gostar doutra, estivesse à espera de conhecê-la, não lhe chegaria a vida inteira.
*
“If one couldn't like another person before getting to know him, it would take a lifetime.”
- Joana Carda

* * *
"Cãozinho bonito, se fores capaz de tratar de nós como pareces saber tratar de ti, estamos bem entregues à tua canina competência."
*
“Good dog, if you're as capable of looking after us as you are of looking after yourself, you'll do a good job of protecting us.”
- Joaquim Sassa

* * *
"Este homem que dorme lançou um rochedo ao mar, e Joana Carda cortou o chão em dois, e José Anaiço foi o rei dos estorninhos, e Pedro Orce faz tremer a terra com os pés e o Cão veio não se sabe de onde para juntar estas pessoas."
*
“This man sleeping beside her threw a stone into the sea, and Joana Carda cut the earth in two, and José Anaiço became the king of starlings, and Pedro Orce can cause the earth to tremble with his feet, and the Dog has come from who knows where to bring these people together.”
- Maria Guavaira

* * *
"Na nossa vida nunca roubamos nada, é sempre na vida dos outros."
*
“We've never stolen anything in our life, it's always in the life of others”
- Pedro Orce

* * *
"É muito bonita a tua atitude, mas a nossa preocupação não deverá ser dividir a pobreza, mas sim aumentar a riqueza."
*
“That's a kind thought but our main concern should be to share wealth instead of poverty.”
- José Anaiço

This has to be one of the most unusual and creative books I have ever read. The Iberian Peninsula breaks off from Europe and becomes a traveling island. It threatens to crash into the Azores. The storyline focuses on three men and two women that feel a sense of responsibility, expressed in terms of magical realism, for the breakaway. They are joined by a dog and two horses. They travel around Spain and Portugal, witnessing the responses to this unexpected event.

Saramago examines the social and geopolitical ramifications of profound change, while inserting a good dose of dry humor, especially with regard to how governments (Spain, Portugal, France, US, Russia) respond to the crisis. It is written in a literary style, with Saramago’s standard long sentences and embedded dialogue. I am not sure I took away all the author intended, but I did find thought-provoking observations about the roles of coincidence and interconnectedness in life.

Memorable passages:
“Life is full of little episodes that seem unimportant, while others at a certain moment absorb all our attention, when we reappraise them later, in the light of their consequences, we find that our memory of the latter has faded while the former have come to seem decisive or, at least, a link in a chain of successive and meaningful events…”

“No journey is but one journey, each journey comprises a number of journeys, and if one of them seems so meaningless that we have no hesitation in saying it was not worthwhile, our common sense, were it not so often clouded by prejudice and idleness, would tell us that we should verify whether the journeys within that journey were not of sufficient value to have justified all the trials and tribulations.”

4.5/5

Terzo libro di Saramago che leggo dopo l'inarrivabile Le intermittenze della morte e Memoriale del convento; inscrivibile nella categoria del realismo magico, questo romanzo è formato da un miscuglio quanto mai omogeneo di stili: c'è il picaresco, c'è il trattato filosofico, c'è il fiabesco. Ed è proprio così che Saramago ci racconta questa incredibile storia della Penisola Iberica che si stacca dall'Europa, "non dalla Francia": come una fiaba. E i personaggi, per quanto intangibili dall'inizio alla fine perché aleatorie sono le loro descrizioni fisiche, hanno tuttavia una profondita che è degna dei grandi romanzieri e che fa affezionare il lettore che li segue in questa loro deriva per la Penisola la quale prosegue in parallelo con la deriva di questa zattera di pietra nell'Atlantico; personaggi con vite completamente diverse, ma che si uniscono in una comunione quasi mistica, e di cui non dimenticherò mai i nomi e soprattutto i cognomi, di cui Saramago ci spiega l'origine. Ma come tutte le fiabe, ci sono anche ammaestramenti: l'isolamento delle le nazioni dell'Europa meridionale, considerate palle al piede, fratelli stupidi, quando in realtà le risorse che possiedono farebbero tremare il mondo, le reazioni di facciata riportate dai mass media, la doppiezza dei governi, la folla animalesca. E con il microcosmo dei nostri personaggi principali, per tacer del cane e della meravigliosa Due cavalli e del due cavalli carro, entriamo nell'interiorità di uomini e donne a cui un evento assurdo (gli storni, la terra che trema, il bastoncino di olmo e così via) cambia la vita per sempre. Saramago è uno scrittore di una potenza inaudita, e quando entra nella storia lo fa da narratore onnisciente ma mai saccente, ironico, che spiega come un bravo professore e coinvolge i suoi allievi-lettori, chiarisce, guida e governa ciò che è nato dalla sua penna (memorabili la definizione di perifrasi o gli innumerevoli modi di dire citati). Meraviglia, insomma, che mi fa desiderare tutta la bibliografia esistente di questo genio portoghese.

A pleasant life affirming read. Typical Saramago: a cataclysmic event, characters must cope, some philosophy, some foibles, some romance, a sagacious dog. We are a part of nature: the process of renewal. What’s the book about? Geography.

"
مكتوب في القدر، عندما تنبح الكلاب ينتهي العالم
"

من روى حكاية، إذا لم يروِ أخرى فهذا علامة سيئة
"

كم مرة علمتنا تجارب الحياة أنه لا يجب علينا أن نحكم على المظاهر
"

هذا العالم، ولن نتعب من تكراره، عبارة عن كوميديا من الأكاذيب.
"

في الفنون المختلفة وبشكل خاص فن الكتابة، فإن أفضل الطرق بين نقطتين، وإن كانت قريبتين لم يكن أبدًا ولن يكون مطلقًا الخط الذي يسمونه مستقيمًا، أبدًا ومطلقًا، طريقة حازمة للإجابة عن الشكوك بإسكاتها.
"

إن كوكبًا يدور حول نجم بهذه الطريقة، يدور ويدور، الآن ليل والآن نهار، الآن برد والآن حر، وفضاء يكاد يكون خاليًا حيث لا توجد أشياء ضخمة لا اسم لها إلا الأسماء التي نطلقها عليها، وزمن لا يعرف أحد حقيقة ما هو، كل هذا يجب أن يكون من فعل المجانين!
"

الحياة مليئة بأحداث صغيرة تبدو قليلة الأهمية، وأخر تحتل في لحظة معينة مجال الاهتمام، وفيما بعد نقوم بتحليلها على ضوء نتائجها، ومن الممكن أن تنتهي بعض تلك الأشياء التي احتلت أحداثًا مهمة أو على الأقل كحلقة تربط ما بين مجموعة من الأحداث المتوالية والمهمة.
"

وإذا لم يكن عاشقًا لأسباب مفهومة بحكم الطبيعة، فالصداقة أفضل تعويض.
"

ليس هناك شيء يغيّر وجه الأشياء مثل ضوء النهار.
"

عندما يأتي يوم نهاية العالم، سننظر إلى آخر نملة بالصمت المؤلم لمن يعرف أنه يودع للأبد!
"

اليأس كما نعرف جميعًا، سلوك بشري، لا نعرف خلال التاريخ الطبيعي أن الحيوانات تيأس. لكن الإنسان نفسه لا ينفصم عن اليأس، اعتاد على الحياة فيه ويحتمله حتى آخر الحدود.
"

إلا أن الاختصار ليس فضيلة كاملة ولكن الإسهاب قد يؤدي إلى الإرباك والحيرة، هذا حقيقي إلا أنه م من مرة ربحنا بالكلام أكثر مما هو مطلوب.
"

ولكن ليّ رغبة في أن أقول أن القلة من الناس الذين ماتوا في الحروب القديمة لهم قيمة أكبر في التاريخ من مئات الآلاف والملايين الذين يسقطون في القرن الحاضر.
"

ما لا نراه نسميه الله!
"

الإنسان كائن ذكي، لا شك في هذا ولكن ليس إلى الدرجة المطلوبة، وهذا إثبات واعتراف بالتواضع الذي يجب أن نواجه به أنفسنا أولاً قبل أن يواجهونا به، تمامًا كما هو البِر بمفهومه الحقيقي.
"

تشبه العمى كثيرًا، إلا أن الكارثة في العمى كانت وباء يمكن وصفه وتخيله
بينما ها هنا الكارثة جغرافية، لن تستطيع تخيلها مهما اجتهد الكاتب في الوصف
خاصة وأنها بقعة لا تنتمي لها مطلقًا!
العمى رغم لا منطقيتها لكنها مستساغة ومفهومة
بينما الطوف الحجري عبثية بشكل عصيّ على الفهم
لم استمتع بشيء ها هنا، بقدر استمتاعي بأسلوب سارماجو المعتاد في السرد
ربما سأعود لها فيما بعد..

تمّت

آدم وقتی از باقی جهان آشنا منقطع میشه، عادات روزمره براش ارزشی پیدا می کنن که در حالت عادی نداشتن. چون باعث احساس امنیت می شن، احساس آشنایی، احساس اتصال به جهان معهود، دستگیره‌ای می شن برای چنگ زدن و رها شدن از حالت معلق بودن و به هیچ جا بند نبودن.
من این حس رو زیاد تجربه نکردم، اما همون چند بار محدود به قدری اثر قدرتمندی داشت که توی خاطرم حک شد.
این کتاب یکی از اون دستگیره ها بود. تابستون بود، ده سال قبل، و من روی تخت بیمارستان بعد از یه عمل جراحی، تنها عمل جراحی که تا این لحظه توی عمرم داشتم، و به خاطر همین همه چیز غریب بود و ناامن و پراضطراب. وقتی قرار شد برادرم بیاد به عنوان همراه شب پیشم بمونه، بهش گفتم این کتاب رو هم از خونه بیاره. کتاب رو قبل از عمل نصفه خونده بودم. و وقتی کتاب رو آورد و از جایی که علامت گذاشته بودم شروع کردم به خوندن، یک لحظه حسی منو گرفت. حس این که هنوز توی همون دنیای آشنام، هنوز توی همون دنیام که قبل از عمل هم بودم، هنوز توی همون دنیام که این کتاب رو داشتم می خوندم. و کتاب برام منبع آرامش شد.

کتاب، کتاب خوبی نبود. ایدهٔ مرکزیش (منقطع شدن شبه‌جزیره ایبری از باقی اروپا و شناور شدن در وسط اقیانوس اطلس) خیلی درخشان بود، اما داستانی که برای این ایده تعریف کرده بود چندان درخشان نبود. اما این تجربه توی بیمارستان اون قدر برام پراهمیته که به خاطرش دو ستاره رو سه ستاره می کنم.