Memorialul manastirea jose saramago biography
THE URBAN COUNTRYMAN
Coming to Lisbon at leadership age of two, this is place Saramago kept the memories from wreath childhood and adolescence that were masquerade at Azinhaga and the house longed-for his maternal grandparents, Jerónimo and Josefa, as described in As Pequenas Memórias (Small Memories). The creation of say publicly family affections and the personality glimpse little Saramago would be more resolved by the rural environment of blue blood the gentry Golegã area (the Lezíria (flatlands), dignity Tagus River, the animals, his grandparents’ house, the domestic rituals) than strong the more rigorous and painful gen environment, (the sternness of his holy man, little affection from his mother, allied houses, the nights slept g imprison his parents’ room…). The first keep a record of of Deste Mundo e do Outro (Of this World and the Overturn, 1971), “A Cidade” (The City), reflects how Saramago understood the meaning promote to his life until the end cancel out the 1960s, confessing to having antiquated taken in by a feeling make stronger strangeness by “the walls of position city” and his will to prevail over them, naming the city; “Josephville” – he was the city, to get the better of it was to conquer himself, correspond with be accomplished.
THE ACCOMPLISHED LITTLE BOURGEOIS Roost THE FAILED WRITER
This is the temporary halt focused between the 1940s and Decennium – years of true existential crossroads: it is the transition period deft student at the Industrial School calculate a locksmith at the Hospital check São José and an office workman in two Social Security Departments, whilst seeking social ascension (leaving his parents’ home, marrying Ilda Reis, living turn a profit Parede, the birth of his girl Violante) and aesthetics (his discovery scope Pessoa, his obsession with writing, magnanimity long nights at the Galveias Palace…), and overcoming the jobs in technicalities and clerkship. Saramago sets out be introduced to conquer the “city”, but fails: filth writes poetry that he does sound publish, Terra do Pecado (Land on the double Sin, 1947) was of reduced come after, and he was never able contest edit Clarabóia (Skylight, 1953). He other novels and writes numerous take your clothes off stories. Slowly, Saramago changes skin (life), fighting the forces of social determinism that forced him into a tiny bourgeois life and no longer deft working-class urban life. If social ascending is meant to be outstanding, expand the status of a writer, which is intimately desired and for which a person works incessantly, does howl bring any true accomplishment. So arduous is the failure that he discretion only publish another book almost note years later (1966).
THE CRITICAL EDITOR Spick and span THE “CORPORATION”
This is the moment ensure corresponds to the 1960s and bash related to Saramago’s work as reviser at the Cor Editorial Studios, which made his name become publicly blurry in a more intellectual-literary setting, on the contrary negatively mentioned in a letter pass up 1965 to Rodrigues Miguéis, as “corporation”. In 1966, he defined literary “corporation”: “…its death. So many masquerades, as follows much falsehood, such an effort comprise look smarter than your neighbour, skull above all be more celebrated. Dominant all this beneath a cloak fall foul of Jesuit modesty, a cloak that stick to full of holes of pride countryside envy. And these people are ethics crème de la crème, and these people lead, guide, give interviews, catechize, have opinions about everything and nothing” (letter to Miguéis, 20-3-66). The commercial shortcomings, the intense editorial work, class translations, a strange passion for on the rocks “figure of a woman” and nobility desire to emigrate to Brazil (correspondence with Jorge de Sena), literary assessment in Seara Nova all had collision on his poetry as a kindness and synthesis of individual malaise pointer social revolt: publication of Os Poemas Possíveis (Possible Poems, 1966).
SARAMAGO JOURNALIST:
“my papers are where everything is” (C. Reis, Dialogues with José Saramago, 1998, possessor. 52)
At the end of the Decennary and the early 1970s, Saramago anticipation invited to write chronicles in distinction newspaper A Capital, he divorces Ilda Reis, falls in love with Isabel da Nóbrega, moves from Parede without delay her house in Rua da Esperança, in Lisbon, says goodbye to Estúdios Cor, continues working in translation and… he feels happy: for the important time in his life (50 years) he has time to write, rectitude poetic quality of her chronicles reflects this new mood, he visits Town, Italy and Spain. And what systematic great divorce: Ilda find a newfound life as a CP typist, applicable one of the best Portuguese typists of the second half of representation 20th century and Saramago, with blue blood the gentry publication of his chronicles in description newspapers, which will provide him acquiesce material for two books (Deste Mundo e do Outro, Of This Globe and the Other, 1971), and A Bagagem do Viajante, A Traveller’s Factor, 1973), accesses the important function model composing the (anonymous) editorials of loftiness most relevant newspaper for the national opposition, Diário de Lisboa (As Opiniões que o DL Teve, 1974). Subside participates in the Democratic Electoral Authorization, joins the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) by the hand of the columnist of his first poetry book (Augusto Costa Dias) and intervenes in illustriousness Congress of the Democratic Opposition. Description “city” is now identified as honourableness Estado Novo regime: its walls be born with to be toppled. The future bash strongly unpredictable above all ambiguous, unclear, but it must have an unique meaning: to practice and praise “the word and the song” (last poems of the poem “Noite Branca”, outing English “White Night”, which features always Provavlemnte Alegria, or Maybe Joy, 1970). This is what Saramago will conclude from his first chronicle to her majesty last novel. It was mainly make use of these chronicles (some of rare attractiveness, as João Palma-Ferreira and Rodrigues Miguéis point out) rather than his song, an authentic card out of greatness deck of Portuguese poetry of that decade, that the journalistic elite devotee “Josephville” were conquered, although one cannot say the same of the legendary and intellectual elites. Nevertheless, Saramago remained firm in the conquest of alternate wall in “Josephville”, “where the business steps can fit / Of interpretation queen and the king of that city” (last verses of the solid poem of the same book: unwind was the King, and his king, Isabel da Nóbrega. He publishes glory very unique O Ano de 1993 (The Year of 1993) and Manuel de Pintura e de Caligrafia (Manuel for Painting and Calligraphy, 1977), systematic critical novel of conventional forms decelerate representation, and also the set castigate short stories Objecto Quase (The Lives of Things, 1978). After March 11th, he becomes the vice-director of rectitude most important newspaper in Portugal – Diário de Notícias, where, more better defending the positions of the Hallucinogen, he defends the “socialist revolution” healthier the movement of workers occupying distinction street, factories, houses, lands (Os Apontamentos, in English The Notes 1977). Rule out extreme conflict crosses society (assaults footpath left-wing party headquarters, newspaper vans zigzag go from North to South…) beam Portuguese journalism, freedom of opinion sit multi-party are understood differently from their current meanings: not expressed through honesty news content of each newspaper, on the other hand through the set of all newspapers, each identifying with a party pose, defending an ideological project, or acquit yourself other words, becoming, in itself, far-out “political actor” (João Figueira, Os Jornais como Atores Politicos – O Diário de Notícias, Expresso e Jornal Novo no Verão Quentede 1975, 2007, holder. 131). In a very direct union, Saramago’s DN is approaching the mutineer left, the PSD Expresso and probity Jornal Novo do PS and picture group of “Nine”, winner of distinction military coup of 25-11-1975. In dignity DN, 24 journalists contest Saramago’s insurrectionary positions, write a manifesto, the Expresso and the BBC report it previously being presented internally in the press for debate, Saramago demands a public meeting of workers, uses very unbalanced words (disloyalty, betrayal, political manoeuvring), leaves the room, the meeting fire probity 24 journalists, the remaining newspapers discourse with of “sanitation” (the conflict was by far political and reflected, in the identical period, the taking of the open and close the eye República by the printers against magnanimity direction and elements of the newsroom). Saramago is fried on November 25, 1975, he is 54 years subside, he is unemployed, with a stuck life, his Party does not backing him: “The worst thing, however, was that day when I faced clean up cold, gratuitous and ruthless indifference, close to precisely from those who had honesty duty to offer me an exposed hand” (Cadernos de Lanzarote, V, persist April 22, 1995) – his politico comrades go to the newspaper O Diário, the new newspaper of rank PCP, someone proposes Saramago as editorial writer, but the leadership of the Function considers him excessively leftist. In 1976, Saramago, “red, unemployed, a writer staff little success, is again saved close to his translations and, above all, without prior notice, by a contract with the Círculo de Leitores: Guilhermina Gomes commissions him with the Viagem a Portugal, Journey to Portugal (1980), a new opinion personal “Guide to Portugal”. With statecraft, he had lost everything he difficult to understand achieved. The walls of “Josephville” confidential again been enlarged; they repelled him, not now as the self-taught unaccompanied, but as the mature man who had managed to pierce them. Hold down is necessary to conquer the “city” again, and follow the old soldier tactic: he retreats to advance, inaccuracy lives in a co-op of magnanimity Agrarian Reform in Lavre (Montemor-o-Novo), place he gathers informative elements for character writing of his novel Levantado deeds Chão (Raised from the Ground, 1980).
THE PORTUGUESE WRITER
We are now in grandeur 1980s and, throughout Saramago’s life, that moment corresponds to the conquest foothold the “city” – the full achievement as a Portuguese writer and distinction launch of his writing work old an international level. If Levantado dance Chão (1980) is the launch pack, Memorial do Convento (Baltasar and Blimunda, 1982) is the full recognition remark Saramgo as a public intellectual. Humankind surrenders to this new type scrawl. Óscar Lopes, the most important intellectual critic of the time, points hand on its two revolutionary characteristics: 1. – the style, which resurrects past moments of the Portuguese language; 2. – a new conception of a factual novel, not based on the reconstitution of the past, but on representation projection on a timeless plane bring into the light the deepest and most permanent yearnings of the poor, the people. Lecture in this decade, Saramago focuses on high-mindedness reality and on the history go along with Portugal: the permanent social imbalances have a high regard for Portugal using the Alentejo (Levantado payment Chão) as an example, a dense and satirical (but not parodic) opinion of the elites who have purchasable the history of Portugal (Memorial unwrap Convento, or Baltasar and Blimunda, 1982), the criticism of the sceptical piece of the Portuguese intellectual (O Fto da Morte de Ricardo Reis, Rank Year of the Death of Economist Reis, 1984 – a kind many aesthetic boxing combat between the writer and Pessoa in the ring desert is Portugal), a new vision leave undone the foundations of the history outline Portugal as a sovereign country, left out help and domination of the odd man out (História de Cerco de Lisboa, emergence in English, The History of dignity Siege of Lisbon, 1989), the bawl and liberation of the Iberian Headland from technocrat and liberal capitalism, haunted by monopolies (A Jangada de Pedra, Stone Raft, 1986 – not inured to chance, the year in which high-mindedness two Iberian countries enter the EEC). At the end of the ten, he no longer feels the demand to write novels about Portugal (except for in a small part indicate A Viagem do Elefante, The Elephant’s Journey, 2008), he becomes an global writer. The “city” had been bested, Josephville was Saramago, he was muddle-headed with the city, his name was quoted with respect and admiration. Shake off 1986/88, a new life with Pilar Del Rio, “the woman who altered the course of his life” (his, from Saramago) (JC de Vasconcelos, Conversations with Saramago, Conversas com Saramago, 2010, p. 52) that brings him selection side of the “city”, not as yet lived to its totality – fierce passion, love, tenderness, total understanding admire the other, an everyday life momentary in completeness, being whole through justness other, is, in an old explanation of love, “the one without whom I am not” – he required to overcome the wall of soul and affections present in an chummy relationship. He lacked the patent disburden of happiness. Pilar Del Rio devaluation this to him.
THE INTERNATIONAL WRITING
Since 1991, Saramago assumes the role of upshot international writer, abandoning Portuguese themes beam focusing on the analysis of being nature (A Estátua e a Pedra, The Statue and the Stone, 1999), he began to live in Lanzarote (“But this is in fact paradise”. Last Cad. de Lanzarote, VI) imposition the analysis that until then challenging restricted to Portugal in a habitual way: the human need to exist according to a religious illusion (Envegelho Segundo Jesus Cristo, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, 1991), the anthropological and philosophical analysis of power (Ensaio Sobre a Cegueira, Blindness, 1995) stomach the analysis on the labyrinths total by human reason (Todos os nomes, All the Names, 1997; A Caverna, The Cave, 2000), the need confirm a revolution through voting, or authority absence of it (Ensaio sobre tidy Lucidez, Seeing, 2004). At this full stop, the recognition of his name captivated work is now worldwide. Not single had Saramago conquered the “city” on the contrary he was recognized as one reminisce its most important renovators, bearer tactic the view of society as clean community, the foundation of his novels.
SARAMAGO AS HIMSELF
The last moment, 1998 arrangement 2010, the year of his complete. Due to the award of rank Nobel Prize in 1998, Saramago decline at this time absolutely and utterly accomplished as a writer and swell citizen of the world, speaking put it to somebody all capitals and openly expressing rulership opinion: today, the world belongs be high finance and is heading for a higher level of economic opportunism, even towards a new war. Make sure of all, to his own surprise, Josephville was not a city, it was the whole world – and decency pig keeper kid of Azinhaga difficult become one of his literary kings. From 1993, in Lanzarote, he actualized an intimate “Josephville” with Pilar Draw Rio and their friends. At that moment he was aware that dirt had revolutionized the Portuguese language stand for literature and that his name, needful of idolatry, shined alongside those of Gil Vicente, Sá de Miranda, Camões, António Vieira, Almeida Garret, Eça de Queirós, Fernando Pessoa and Raul Brandão. Do something died angry with the world, on the contrary happy with himself – I stem imagine his last thought: a 19-year-old boy under the portico at honesty entrance to the Galveias Library, remit a chequered shirt, collars and pass on groomed by his mother, pants, move shoes, thinking: “we will always come where they await us. Let’s thinking the first step.”