moved from the list of nominees by the Portuguese government. Later, he earned the
Prémio Vida Literária (1993) and the Prémio Camões (1995). Most significant, his novel
The Stone Raft received the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature. Saramago is the only native writer in Portuguese to have received this highly coveted award, which includes one million U.S. dollars. The Stone Raft and his earlier novels were soon translated into many languages.
Biography
José Saramago was born into a poor family in the village of Azinhaga, Portugal, about
sixty miles outside Lisbon on November 16, 1922. His name would actually have been a
traditional Portuguese last name (de Sousa), but he accidentally received his father’s nickname Saramago (Portuguese for “wild radish”). In 1924, the family moved to Lisbon.
Saramago has said that he was a good student. His family could not afford to provide
him with a general education that emphasized grammar and writing. At the age of twelve,
he was forced to enter a technical school, where he studied for five years to become a mechanic. Nonetheless, he was able to take courses in French. During this period, he bor-
rowed money to buy Portuguese grammar books. After completion of his training, he be-
came a mechanic for two years. At night, he would frequent the public library, where his interest and skill in reading poetry and prose literature inspired him to advance his writing skills without being mentored.
In 1944, Saramago married Lida Reis; in 1947, Violante, their only child, was born. It
was also in 1947 that Saramago published his first novel, Terra do Pecado, and his only published work for the next twenty years. Saramago himself said that he did not publish
during this period because he had nothing worthwhile to say. In 1951, he started work at a publishing firm (Estúdios Cor), where he would meet Portuguese authors. He then began
working as a translator of literary works. From 1955 until 1981, these translations pro-
vided him a stable income so that he could also begin to seriously write poetry. In 1966, he published his first collection of poetry, Possible Poems. Later, he became a journalist for Diário de Notiças. In the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, he published essays that focused on Portuguese politics.
Saramago had joined the Communist Party in 1969 (an affiliation he has maintained),
and he also became an atheist, which was directly counter to the traditionally conservative government of Portugal and the tenets of the Catholic Church. In 1991, Saramago left Portugal to live on the Spanish island of Lanzarote in the Islas Canarias (Canary Islands), off the western coast of North Africa. His self-exile came after the Portuguese government removed his name from a list of nominees for the European Literary Prize. The government
believed that his nominated work The Gospel According to Jesus Christ was divisive and was offensive to the majority of Portuguese citizens.
Undeterred by the opposition and criticism, Saramago continued to publicly express
his views. In 2002, in response to what he believed were immoral Israeli actions in Pales-196
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tine and Lebanon, he wrote in El País (a Spanish newspaper) that the radical Judaism of Israel created an attitude that allowed the brutal suppression of the Palestinians. In addition, during the 2006 Lebanon War, he signed a statement declaring the actions of Israel to be a war of genocide against the Palestinian Nation. In response, the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish civil-rights group based in the United States, said his remarks were anti-Semitic.
Saramago’s play In Nomine Dei was published at the beginning of 1993, and in the same year, he started writing a series of diaries. Five volumes have been published as
Cadernos de Lanzarote: Diário (1994-1998).
Analysis
José Saramago’s works are often fantastic and surreal. His readers, and his characters,
are forced to confront the basis for the existence of humanity; that is, what it is to be human in ever-changing modern civilizations. His characters struggle to find meaning at precisely the moment of greatest change in their respective social settings. His protagonists must not only justify their interpersonal relationships but also renew and redevelop their individuality, often outside previously understood religious, economic, and political
structures. Saramago’s use of fantasy settings and situations form, many have argued, a
new style of writing that combines the regional Magical Realism (the use of fantastic
deeds and settings as commonplace) of Latin America with the global outlook of Europe.
Saramago’s style, especially in the novels published after 1986, forms a uniquely indi-
vidual experiment in writing. His novels often display lengthy sentences—lengthy even
for Hispanic literature, which is known for its verbosity. His baroque descriptions of the most minor settings and events often continue for pages and pages. He does not use colons, semicolons, hyphens, or quotation marks in his writing, a style that can confuse the reader as he or she attempts to determine who is speaking (including the narrator). Quota-tions are difficult to distinguish from the narrative; in marking a quotation, Saramago uses a limited number of commas and capitalizes the first word of a new speaker. Although this style can be frustrating, it forces the reader to pay close attention to who is speaking at any given moment. Oftentimes, Saramago eliminates the use of proper nouns and instead refers to characters with vague descriptive terms, such as “the doctor’s wife.” This inexactness of terminology reflects one of the author’s major themes: the recurring mystery of
human impermanence.
The Stone Raft
The Stone Raft addresses Portugal’s national identity and its political, cultural, and social destiny. In an almost magical turn of events, a postcolonial Iberian society must confront its open-ended future. The Stone Raft is an ethnographic tale that explores modern strategies for survival within a previously isolated population. It is not by coincidence that the work was published the same year that Portugal joined the European Union. Portugal
had been Europe’s last surviving colonial empire, a nation that had only recently begun its 197
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voyage of self-acceptance as one of Europe’s most enterprising and progressive member-
nations.
Like all of Saramago’s fictional works, the novel evolves like a present-day fable. The
story begins with an event that marks the end of a fundamental concept of accepted reality.
In this case, the entire Iberian Peninsula breaks from the European continent and starts drifting in the Atlantic, first toward the Azores and then toward some unknown destina-tion (and destiny) between Europe and the United States. The story follows five characters who represent the entire population of the strange “stone raft.”
Unlike many of his later works, Saramago chooses to use specific names for his char-
acters in The Stone Raft. Perhaps representative of the evolution of the populace, one of the characters, a dog, has a name that changes throughout the Atlantic adventure. The dog starts as Pilot, later becomes Faithful, and ultimately is named Constant. The newly
formed group of pilgrims, united by their search for answers, roam seemingly without
purpose from Lisbon to Galicia. As with other Saramago novels, the focus of The Stone Raft is on how humans survive in unknown circumstances.
The pilgrims are ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. Saramago does not
conduct a useless search for cause and blame; instead, he focuses on what occurs with human renewal and adaptation: love and companionship, the ability to find love in the
strangest of times, and the timeless determination of humans in situations that seem im-
possible. Saramago shows his readers that everyone must e
ventually learn to start anew.
This collective renewal is symbolized in the novel by the pregnancies of almost all of the women on the floating landmass.
Drifting west at eighteen kilometers per day, the populace slowly begins to accept that
the impossible has occurred and that they must prepare for a future that none could have imagined. The society abruptly faces new geopolitical realities, as it soon becomes obvious that the floating landmass will probably hit the Azores. The populations of Lisbon,
Coimbra, Oporto, and other coastal cities are abandoned for inland areas. The collision
with the Azores is avoided, however, and the floating landmass, the entire Iberian Peninsula, comes to rest somewhere in the South Atlantic between the United States and South
America. Furthermore, it soon becomes clear that the United States and Canada are more
interested in the economic and political effects of the newly located Iberian Peninsula than in what the consequences will be for the new nation and its people.
Saramago’s approach to narration in this work is somewhat complicated, but effective.
The reader is presented with single speaking characters and with dual narrators. One narrator speaks in an omnipresent voice, as if to explain the meanderings of the protagonists and the drifting landmass. Another, perhaps the writer himself, speaks directly to the
reader, as if to justify the style of the work itself. The characters question themselves and the strange series of events, while the narrators question the values of the changes and of the work itself. In spite of the doubt, the “semimagical” tale proceeds forward into an unknown future. As the end of the work states, the journey continues.
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The Gospel According to Jesus Christ
In this controversial novel, Saramago brings the reader into a time and space that is located within the Christian world, but not a part of a commonly recognized Christianity.
The novel explores themes found in the New Testament, such as pain, suffering, guilt, and the struggle for justice and forgiveness, but does so in a manner that goes far beyond the dogma associated with the Gospels of Jesus Christ. The tone of the work is light, even humorous at times. As with other Saramago novels, Magical Realism is employed through-
out the work. The sparse descriptions of the events and characters from the Bible are replaced with detailed and fantastical portrayals. For example, in place of the standard
concept of an angel as an enlightened and magical entity, the reader finds humanlike figures acting out the miraculous deeds assigned to them. Mary, the mother of Jesus, is in-
formed of her pregnancy in a magical manner, but the angel appears in the form of a
common beggar.
The novel describes the life of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. In an interesting reinterpretation of biblical accounts, Saramago describes a relationship between Joseph and Jesus that is much closer than that between Mary and Joseph. After the birth of his son, Joseph finds out about the plan by King Herod to kill every child over the age of two years in Bethlehem. Joseph hides his son Jesus in a remote part of a cave, thereby preventing his death. However, Joseph later repents, and his life is filled with guilt. Eventually, in an effort to justify his guilt, Joseph gives his own life to save another. His son Jesus would later meet the same fate. Before his death, however, Jesus confronts his other father, God, and engages in a heated debate about the right of God to demand so much of humanity to gain recognition. He decides to rebel against God’s plan for him, but in the end, he is deceived and is crucified.
Several predominant themes, or fundamental doubts and questions, arise from the text.
The first is the presence of guilt in Joseph’s life. Why did he not warn the other families of the impending slaughter of the young children in Bethlehem? Joseph’s inaction displays
the theme of limited skepticism, and the consequence of his inaction is used to raise questions about the very nature of a god that justifies his cruelty, hunger for power, and anger to get his way. Other controversial themes in the novel include the mutually beneficial relationship between God and the devil, and the plan by God to use humans as slaves to
achieve his goal of a single global religion.
Blindness
The setting for the novel Blindness is an unnamed city, where people suddenly start to go blind. The illness is contagious, and as it advances, the city’s social fabric degenerates and unravels rapidly. Initially, the blind are rounded up, put in a sanatorium, and left to exist there by whatever means possible. The government then attempts to control the sanatorium and its population by using increasingly repressive and unsuccessful measures.
Gangs form within the sanatorium and, eventually, all order collapses. At this time, a doctor and his wife start a group that slowly entices the population to construct a new society, 199
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with a new form of existence. Once human-centered harmony is restored, people regain
their eyesight.
Saramago’s long sentences and limited separation of quotes is present in this work as
well. Indeed, here it is most effective, as it requires the reader to navigate speech without the usual visual cues. Paragraphs are extensive and punctuation is sparse. Names are not given. Irony is employed throughout the work. For example, the sanatorium doctor is an
eye doctor. The doctor’s wife is the only one who can see, but she must hide this fact in order to be persuasive to the others.
The theme of blindness in this novel is used as a means to explore the fragility of hu-
man societies. Blindness here mimics how one limited problem in a civilization can lead
to a complete breakdown of social systems. The reader becomes a spectator to the nega-
tive consequences of “blind” ambitions for power. In the end, however, one of Saramago’s literary traits comes into play: The new situation brings about a search for new ways of implementing the dignity of the human race. When forced to rely only upon each other,
humans can and do reach out.
Paul Siegrist
Other major works
short fiction: Objecto quase, 1977.
plays: A noite, pb. 1979; Que farei com este livro? , pb. 1980; A segunda vida de Francisco de Assis, pb. 1987; In nomine Dei, pb. 1993.
poetry: Os poemas possíveis, 1966; Provàvelmente alegria, 1970; O ano de 1993, 1975.
nonfiction: Deste mundo e do outro, 1971; A bagagem do viajante, 1973; As opiniões que o DL teve, 1974; Os apontamentos, 1976; Viagem a Portugal, 1981 ( Journey to Portugal, 2000); Cadernos de Lanzarote: Diário, 1994-1998 (diaries; 5 volumes); Discursos de Estocolmo, 1999; Folhas politicas, 1976-1998, 1999; Candida Höfer: In Portugal, 2007 (art exhibition catalog; with Shelley Rice).
Bibliography
Askin, Denise Theresa, and Teresa Méndez-Faith, eds. On the Eve of a New Millennium: Belief and Unbelief as Expressed in Literature, Philosophy, Theology, and the Visual Arts. Manchester, N.H.: Saint Anselm College Press, 1999. Selected papers of a regional meeting of the Conference on Christianity and Literature. An interesting view-
point that incorporates ideas about Saramago’s controversial view of God and religion.
Includes a short, but well-written chapter on The Gospel According to Jesus Christ.
Also includes a bibliography.
Bloom, Harold. José Saramago. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2005. An extensive critical work on Saramago. Bloom finds Saramago to be one of the best living authors. Well
written and informative. Includes a bibliography.
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Frier, David Gibson. The Novels of José Saramago: Echoes from the Past, Pathways into the Future. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2007. Good critical analysis of
Saramago’s novel
s. Uses a European-based perspective of place and time. Includes a
bibliography.
Hart, Stephen M., and Wen-chin Ouyang, eds. A Companion to Magical Realism. Rochester, N.Y.: Tamesis, 2005. A good source for an international perspective on Magical
Realism, with a chapter devoted to the unique style employed by Saramago. Includes
an extensive bibliography.
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RAMÓN JOSÉ SENDER
Born: Chalamera de Cinca, Spain; February 3, 1901
Died: San Diego, California; January 15, 1982
Also known as: Ramón José Sender Garcés; Ramon Sender
Principal long fiction
Imán, 1930 ( Earmarked for Hell, 1934; better known as Pro Patria, 1935) Siete domingos rojos, 1932, 1973 ( Seven Red Sundays, 1936)
La noche de las cien cabezas, 1934
Mr. Witt en el cantón, 1936 ( Mr. Witt Among the Rebels, 1937)
El lugar del hombre, 1939 ( A Man’s Place, 1940)
O. P.: Orden público, 1941
Epitalamio del prieto Trinidad, 1942 ( Dark Wedding, 1943)
Crónica del alba, 1942-1966 (3 volumes, 9 parts; volume 1 translated as Before Noon: A Novel in Three Parts, 1957; includes Crónica del alba, 1942
[ Chronicle of Dawn, 1944]; Hipogrifo violenta, 1954 [ Violent Griffin, 1957]; La quinta Julieta [ The Villa Julieta])
La esfera, 1947, 1969 (originally as Proverbio de la muerte, 1939; The Sphere, 1949)
El rey y la reina, 1949 ( The King and the Queen, 1948)
El verdugo afable, 1952 ( The Affable Hangman, 1954)
Mosén Millán, 1953 (also known as Requiem por un campesino español, 1960; Requiem for a Spanish Peasant, 1960)
Los cinco libros de Ariadna, 1957, 1977
Emen hetan, 1958
Los laureles de Anselmo, 1958
El mancebo y los heroes, 1960
En la vida de Ignacio Morel, 1969
Other literary forms
By the end of 1981, first editions of Ramón José Sender’s books, exclusive of an an-
thology of selections from his works, numbered ninety-six. At the time of his death early in 1982, Destino, the Barcelona publishing house, had scheduled for publication two new
novels by Sender; an additional manuscript of a novel, appropriately titled “Toque de
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