"Still a street-fighting man" Entrevista de Stephanie Merritt a José Saramago para o "The Guardian" (30/04/2006)

A entrevista de Stephanie Merritt publicada no "The Guardian" em 30/04/2006 pode ser recuperada e consultada aqui,
em https://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/apr/30/fiction.features1?fbclid=IwAR0pf74nS8G1oYS0G4xytiJ9zM0YJYrU_lECn1oWJunC1mTJKEF6Eeivsjc

"Still a street-fighting man"

"In his first interview with an English newspaper, 83-year-old Portuguese novelist José Saramago reveals that his famed radicalism is undiminished"

"The architecture of José Saramago's purpose-built library, as it rises from a parched hillside on his adopted island of Lanzarote, creates the impression of a modern cathedral. Sunlight splinters through high, narrow windows of opaque glass that stretch the full two storeys; the clean, white walls and cool flagstones contribute to a sense of hushed reverence in the presence of so many volumes, ancient and modern, in so many languages. Here is a shrine to literature, an alternative religion for a Portuguese Nobel laureate, who left his homeland 14 years ago in protest at the government's censorship of his novel, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ (it vetoed its submission for the European Literature Prize on the grounds that it was offensive to Catholics).

It takes some effort to believe that Saramago is about to turn 84 - not just because of his vivid physical presence, his barely-lined face and the quickness of his eyes and hands when he talks, but also because of his extraordinary productivity.

Although Seeing is published this week in English translation, he has produced another book in the meantime; Las Intermitencias de la Muerte was published last autumn in Portugal, Spain and Latin America (his Spanish wife, Pilar del Rio, translates his books as he goes along so that they can be published simultaneously for his large Spanish readership), and he is now working on an autobiography entitled Peque?Memorias (Little Memories), about his childhood in rural Portugal.

But the image of the venerable novelist shut away in his island retreat, disengaged from the world, could not be further from the truth. Saramago is about to leave Lanzarote for two months of travelling, as he does most years, in part to promote the new novel, but mainly to speak at conferences and presentations on politics and sociology. 'Most of it doesn't have much to do with literature,' he explains, 'but this is a part of my life that I consider very important, not to limit myself to literary work; I try to be involved in the world to the best of my strengths and abilities.' Still a member of the Communist party, Saramago is a vocal opponent of globalisation and many of his best known novels have taken the form of political allegory. Does he believe that the artist is obliged to take on a political role? 'It isn't a role,' he says, almost sharply.

'The painter paints, the musician makes music, the novelist writes novels. But I believe that we all have some influence, not because of the fact that one is an artist, but because we are citizens. As citizens, we all have an obligation to intervene and become involved, it's the citizen who changes things. I can't imagine myself outside any kind of social or political involvement. Yes, I'm a writer, but I live in this world and my writing doesn't exist on a separate level. And if people know who I am and read my books, well, good; that way, if I have something more to say, then everyone benefits.'

Seeing evolved into a kind of sequel to his 1995 novel, Blindness, in which the inhabitants of a republic that may or may not be Portugal are struck by a temporary epidemic of blindness and quickly revert to barbarism. Seeing revisits the same country four years later as it experiences another unprecedented phenomenon: despite the high turnout for the municipal election, when the votes are counted, more than 80 per cent have been returned blank. This wholesale vote of no confidence in any of the political parties makes a farce of the democratic process and the leaders are forced to declare a state of emergency.

'I was giving a talk about my novel, The Double, in Barcelona,' Saramago remembers. 'I have this habit of only talking about my books for a few minutes, then I prefer to spend the time talking about the world in which we find ourselves, a world which is a disaster, and usually I end up talking about the problem of democracy, whether we truly have a democratic system, and I believe that we don't. And in Barcelona, someone asked me, well then, what do you propose? Because I was saying that, in reality, the world is governed by institutions that are not democratic - the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO. People live with the illusion that we have a democratic system, but it's only the outward form of one. In reality we live in a plutocracy, a government of the rich.'

So what was his solution?

'I answered that I didn't have a solution, except that we, as citizens, do have the power of the vote, but we always use it to vote for one or other of the parties on off er. But there is another possibility, which is to cast a blank vote.' He leans forward and points a stern finger. 'And this is not at all the same as abstention. Abstention means you stayed at home or went to the beach. By casting a blank vote, you're saying that you understand your responsibility, you have a political conscience and you came to vote, but you don't agree with any of the existing parties and this is the only way you have of saying so.

'Then I thought about what would happen if the blank votes went up to 50 or more per cent. It would be a way of saying society has to change but the political powers we have at the moment are not enough to effect this change. The whole democratic system would have to be rethought.' He speaks Spanish with a heavy Portuguese inflection, each sentence composed with precision, not at all like the rather breathless, digressive narrative style that has become a hallmark of his novels. Expounding these theories, he comes across as grave and wise, though when he talks about the problems of poverty in Africa or the volatility of most employment, there flares a passionate anger that has fuelled his lifelong commitment to leftist politics.

But there's a twinkle of humour, too, in his mock sternness with his dog as she scuffles around our feet, and a warmth in his exchanges with his wife, who comes in to offer us coffee; as she turns to leave, he impulsively clutches her hand and gives it an affectionate squeeze. I point out that, for all the brave intentions of the blank voters in Seeing, the novel has a bleak end - the authorities simply revert to force, though the protest has been as peaceful as a protest could be; in the end, it seems to have been in vain. I tell him it reminded me of the anti-war demonstrations in London.

'Yes, it all ends badly, because things are not mature,' he says sadly. 'Here in Spain, 90 per cent of the population was against the war and nobody in power was interested. But look what just happened with the employment law in France - the law was withdrawn because the people marched in the streets. I think what we need is a global protest movement of people who won't give up, who won't leave the streets. In Madrid and London, we marched, we did our duty, then we went home and those in power did nothing.

'But we have to keep on demonstrating and demonstrating and demonstrating' - here he breaks into a rich, throaty laugh - 'there's no solution but to say we do not want to live in a world like this, with wars, inequality, injustice, the daily humiliation of millions of people who have no hope that life is worth anything. We have to express it with vehemence and spend days on the street if we have to, until those in power recognise that the people are not happy.'

In a lifetime of political activism, Saramago has witnessed the struggle from various angles. He grew up as the son of landless peasant labourers in a village north east of Lisbon and, although he published his first novel, Land of Sin, at the age of 23, it was another 30 years until he attempted another. In the meantime, he worked successively as a mechanic, civil servant, metalworker, production manager at a publishing house and a newspaper managing editor, until the politico-military coup of 1975 made it impossible for someone of his political colours to find work.

He turned to writing full time, publishing his second novel, Manual of Painting and Calligraphy, in 1976, and producing plays, poetry, essays and newspaper columns until his 1982 historical novel, Baltasar and Blimunda, brought him international recognition. His most successful novels were all written when he was in his sixties and he won the Nobel Prize in 1998, at the age of 76. Why, after so many years and excursions into different genres, did he decide that the novel was the best form for the ideas he wanted to express?

'I think the novel is not so much a literary genre, but a literary space, like a sea that is filled by many rivers. The novel receives streams of science, philosophy, poetry and contains all of these; it's not simply telling a story.' Saramago is often described as a pessimistic writer. I ask if he feels genuinely pessimistic about the future or if he thinks there could be hope for the left?

'We're not short of movements proclaiming that a different world is possible,' he says, heavily, 'but unless we can co-ordinate them into an organic international movement, capitalism just laughs at all these little organisations that do no damage. The problem is that the right doesn't need any ideas to govern, but the left can't govern without ideas. It's very difficult.

'At 83, I don't hope for much, but you are young, you have to keep a perspective. I don't think this novel is going to change the world, but look - those in power are there because we put them there. If they don't get it right, then out! And let others try. There are plenty of reasons not to put up with the world as it is, and if the book has any kind of message, I suppose that's it."

"The Tale of the Unknown Island" foi apresentado no "Gate Theatre" (Londres) ("The Guardian" 19/09/2017) - "O Conto da Ilha Desconhecida"

Adaptação de "O Conto da Ilha Desconhecida" baseada na obra original de José Saramago.

A informação relativa ao espectáculo apresentado, pode ser recuperada e consultada aqui
em https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2017/sep/19/the-unknown-island-gate-theatre-london-review-jose-saramago

"The Unknown Island review – Saramago odyssey asks the audience to dream"

Adapted from José Saramago’s short story, Ellen McDougall’s grownup fairytale draws spectators into a circle of bread, wine and storytelling

"Questioning the old certainties … The Unknown Island. Photograph: Cameron Slater"

"The Gate’s new artistic director, Ellen McDougall, begins her tenure by offering us the essentials of life, sharing bread, wine and storytelling with her audience in this version of Nobel prize-winning writer José Saramago’s short story.

Adapted by McDougall and Clare Slater, it becomes something like a grownup version of Jackanory as we are told of a man who asks the king for a boat so he can find an unknown island. Rosie Elnile’s design wraps the entire Gate space in blue fabric, suggesting both the sea and a dreamworld. As we enter, the only other flash of colour is from a red sailing boat.

McDougall’s previous big hit at this address was Roland Schimmelpfennig’s rewriting of Greek myth, Idomeneus, a play that questioned all the old certainties of an ancient story. She does the same here and with similar playfulness – including plenty of her trademark balloons, used to clever comic effect."

"Unique viewpoint … Zubin Varla. Photograph: Cameron Slate"

"The show challenges us to imagine a new way of living – and to be brave enough to try to seize it. When the king confidently tells the man that all the islands “are on the maps”, the man defies that thinking by pointing out that “only the known islands are on the maps”. He is joined on his quest by the palace’s cleaning woman, who is similarly intent on taking control of her own story.

On the surface, the show looks like the simplest kind of storytelling, but it is smartly conceived, down to the way the audience are seated around the edge of the playing space so they form a community, constantly catching each other’s reactions. The production shares the storytelling between performers Jon Foster, Hannah Ringham, Thalissa Teixeira and Zubin Varla, who may swap characters but always seem to offer their own view of the tale, their voices lapping over each other like the waves of the sea.

And McDougall gives us the chance to own the story, too, inviting the audience to dream their own dreams."

Link de apresentação da peça de teatro

https://www.gatetheatre.co.uk/events/all-productions/the_unknown_island

Apresentação da peça de teatro

"What is this unknown island you want to go in search of?

If I could tell you that, it wouldn’t be unknown. 

You want to go in search of an unknown island.  

Because somewhere out there, there must be something else. 

Because you want to find out who you are when you are there. 

You ask the king for a boat. 

You don’t know where you are going, or even how to sail.

You won’t take no for an answer. 

The Unknown Island is a beautiful, inventive and rebellious adventure story about dreaming of the impossible and trying to cross the vast distances between ourselves and each other.

Based on Nobel prize-winning novelist Jose Saramago’s short story, The Tale of the Unknown Island, adapted for the stage by Ellen McDougall and Clare Slater."

"Gate Theatre"

https://www.gatetheatre.co.uk/

Gate Theatre

11 Pembridge Road

Notting Hill Gate - London W11 3HQ

Box office: 020 7229 0706

Crítica literária, de Ursula K Le Guin, no "The Guardian" ao "Ensaio sobre a Cegueira" (15/04/2006)

(cartaz do filme "Blindness", baseado na obra "Ensaio sobre a Cegueira")

Recupero a crítica literária, de Ursula K Le Guin, no "The Guardian" ao "Ensaio sobre a Cegueira" (15/04/2006).

Aqui, o link, em http://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/apr/15/featuresreviews.guardianreview16

Destaco, das suas palavras, o assombro com que foi confrontada ao ler esta obra de Saramago. 

Para primeira impressão, confessa-se assustada, ao que, não se dando por vencida, aborda outros livros do escritor, para o entender, para o enquadrar e perceber a sua posição perante a mensagem a transmitir.

(Ursula K Le Guin, aqui pequena biografia, via Wikipédia, 

em http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_K._Le_Guin)

"Some years ago a reliable friend told me I should read José Saramago's Blindness. Faced with pages of run-on sentences and unparagraphed dialogue without quotation marks, I soon quit, snarling about literary affectations. Later I tried again, went further, and quit because I was scared. Blindness is a frightening book. Before I'd let an author of such evident power give me the horrors, he'd have to earn my trust. So I went back to the earlier novels and put myself through a course of Saramago.

It's hard not to gallop through prose that uses commas instead of full stops, but once I learned to slow down, the rewards piled up: his sound, sweet humour, his startling imagination, his admirable dogs and lovers, the subtle, honest workings of his mind. Here indeed was a novelist worthy of a reader's trust. So at last I could read his great book - or his greatest until its sequel.

Accepting his Nobel prize, Saramago, calling himself "the apprentice", said: "The apprentice thought, 'we are blind', and he sat down and wrote Blindness to remind those who might read it that we pervert reason when we humiliate life, that human dignity is insulted every day by the powerful of our world, that the universal lie has replaced the plural truths, that man stopped respecting himself when he lost the respect due to his fellow-creatures."

This, on the face of it, is an odd description of Blindness, for in that book it is powerless people who insult human dignity - ordinary people, terrified at finding themselves and everyone else blind, everything out of control. Some behave with stupid, selfish brutality, sauve qui peut. The group of men who seize power in an asylum and use and abuse the weaker inmates have indeed abandoned self-respect and human decency: they are a microcosm of the corruption of power. But the truly powerful of our world don't even appear in Blindness. Seeing is all about them: the perverters of reason, the universal liars. It is about government gone wrong.

Very evidently Saramago's novels are not simple parables. It would be rash to "explain" what all the people (but one) in the first book were blind to, or what it is that the citizens of Seeing see. What's clear is that they're the same people, it's the same city, a few years later: one book illuminates the other in ways I can only begin to glimpse.

The story begins with those ordinary citizens, who not so long ago regained their sight and their tranquil day-to-day lives, doing something that seems quite unconnected with vision or lack of it. It is voting day, and 83% of them, after not going to the polls at all in the morning, go in the late afternoon and cast a blank ballot.

We see the dismay of bureaucrats, the excitement of journalists, the hysteria of the government, and the mild non-response of the citizens, who, when asked how they voted, refuse to say, reminding the questioner that the question is illegal. The satire is at first quite funny, and I thought it was going to be a light, Voltairean tale.

Turning in a blank ballot is a signal unfamiliar to most Britons and Americans, who aren't yet used to living under a government that has made voting meaningless. In a functioning democracy, one can consider not voting a lazy protest liable to play into the hands of the party in power (as when low Labour turn-out allowed Margaret Thatcher's re-elections, and Democratic apathy secured both elections of George W Bush). It comes hard to me to admit that a vote is not in itself an act of power, and I was at first blind to the point Saramago's non-voting voters are making. I began to see it at last, when the minister of defence announces that what the country is facing is terrorism.

Other ministers oppose him but he gets what he wants - a state of emergency, then the exodus of the government, by night, from the capital city, which is declared to be under siege. A bomb is exploded (by terrorists, of course, as the media report), killing quite a few people. An attempted evacuation of the 17% of voters who marked their ballots ends in failure, as the government forgets to tell the troops blocking all the roads to let the refugees through. The so-called terrorists in the city, still mild and peaceable, help the refugees carry back upstairs all they tried to take with them - the tea service, the silver platter, the painting, grandpa ...

The humour is still tender but the tone darkens, tension rises. Characters, individuals, begin to come to the fore - all nameless except a dog, Constant, the dog of tears from Blindness. The ministers jockey horribly for power. A superintendent of police is sent into the city to find the woman who did not go blind when everyone else did four years ago, sought as the link between the "plague of white blindness and the plague of blank ballots". The superintendent becomes our viewpoint and mediator; we begin to see as he begins to see. He brings us to the woman, the gentle light-bearer of the first book. But where that story began with an awful darkness that slowly opened into light, this one goes right down into the dark.

José Saramago will be 84 this year. He has written a novel that says more about the days we are living in than any book I have read. He writes with wit, with heartbreaking dignity, and with the simplicity of a great artist in full control of his art. Let us listen to a true elder of our people, a man of tears, a man of wisdom."

Ursula K Le Guin

"Centauro" conto do "Objecto Quase", na voz e antologia de contos de Nadine Gordimer

Centauro, de José Saramago, publicado numa antologia de contos

Informação, via Fundação José Saramago

Aqui, em http://www.josesaramago.org/centauro-de-jose-saramago-publicado-numa-antologia-de-contos/

“Centauro” de José Saramago, publicado numa antologia de contos na Alemanha, Itália, França, Grécia e México.

“Centauro” de José Saramago, originalmente publicado em Objecto Quase, fez parte de uma selecção de 21 contos de escritores internacionais, com a curadoria de Nadine Gordimer. A antologia conta com textos de: Chinua Achebe, Woody Allen, Margaret Atwood, Nadine Gordimer, Günter Grass, Hanif Kureishi, Gabriel García Marquez, Claudio Madris, Arthur Miller, Es’kia Mphalele, Njabulo Ondebele, Kenzaburo Oé, Amos Oz, Salman Rushie, Ingo Schulze, Susan Sontag, Paul Theroux, Michel Tournier, John Updike e Christa Wolf, além de José Saramago. Como refere Nadine Gordimer na introdução: “Las veintiún historias contenidas aquí están escritas con diferentes «voces», estilos intensamente individuales que reflejan las maravillosas posibilidades del uso de la palabra en la pluma de escritores vivos, entre los cuales se cuentan cinco ganadores del Premio Nobel de Literatura. Todos se unen para brindar el gozo de la lectura a cualquiera que tome entre sus manos esta excepcional y extraordinaria recopilación de talento creativo.”

Inicialmente publicada na Alemanha, em 2004 com a chancela da BvT, esta antologia foi também publicada em Itália (Feltrinelli, 2005), França (Éditions Grasset & Fasquelle, 2005), Grécia (Kastaniotis, 2005) e México (Sexto Piso Editorial, 2006).

No site do "The Guardian", existe a possibilidade de ouvir a voz de Nadine Gordimer, na leitura do conto "Centauro".

Aqui, http://www.theguardian.com/books/audio/2012/dec/26/nadine-gordimer-jose-saramago-centaur

"Nadine Gordimer reads 'The Centaur' by José Saramago

José Saramago tackles the conflict between mind and body in 'The Centaur', says Nadine Gordimer

It is in many ways a unique story. Here is a creature imagined, something that is higher and better and different from a man. Here is the dream of a creature that is half horse, half man, who has the physical fitness of a horse and the mental complexity of a man. This extraordinary fable shows the depths of the human confusion that the creature faces. It is a wonderful way of looking into the conflict between what one's body desires or dictates – sexual desire as part of our power; it's through sexual desire that you take possession, after all – and many of one's other ideals about how we ought to approach another being. There's as much in this little story as in 20 novels and 20 poems."

Quem é Nadine Gordimer?

Numa simples introdução recolhida na Wikipédia, aqui em http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadine_Gordimer

Nadine Gordimer (Joanesburgo, 20 de Novembro de 1923 — Joanesburgo, 13 de Julho de 20141 2 ) foi uma escritora sul-africana. É autora de mais de 30 livros, na sua maioria crónicas sobre a deterioração social que afetou a África do Sul durante o regime do apartheid. Desde o romance de estreia, The Lying Days (1953), até The Conservationist (1974), obra com que foi vencedora do Prémio Man Booker, dedicou-se a dramatizar as difíceis escolhas morais surgidas numa sociedade marcada pela segregação racial.

Recebeu o Nobel de Literatura de 1991 e, mais recentemente, a Legião da Honra, na França. Continua a explorar os problemas que assolam o país em livros como O engate (2004) e Beethoven Was One-Sixteenth Black (Beethoven era 1/16 Negro), uma colectânea de contos ainda no prelo.

A escritora foi uma das mais importantes vozes contra o apartheid na África do Sul e, a maior parte dos seus mais de 30 livros, foi focada na situação social do país durante esse período.