Been thinking about Portugal in the last couple of days, because of the death of Jose Saramago, and the impending departure from work of visiting Portuguese academic Rosa. I travelled through Portugal in October 2002 and it made a huge impression on me. I stayed in the country much longer than I intended, and was impressed by the massive diversity (both geographical and cultural) within such a small area.
“Portugal is cursed by God” – graffiti in Lisboa
“[pi]=3.14” – graffiti at the Ancora-Praia train station
Saramago was the source of my initial interest – the other moose loaned me The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis and it blew my head off. It also made me realize that I knew virtually nothing about Portugal, couldn’t even point to it on a map. And this one of the great powers of the age of exploration with colonies all over the world – a faded light, Ricardo Reis suggested, lost in an unarticulated sorrow.
“We are a sad people” – Tanya, a Portuguese girl I met in Lisboa, October 20th, 2002.
Saramago is probably my favourite author, inasmuch as I have a favourite author; I’ve enjoyed every book of his I’ve read. Their clever, magical concepts are expressed with a distinctive, embracing style, the kind of style I need to fight to kick out of my own writing for weeks afterward. More than this, however, what I think of when I think of Saramago is compassion. This is of a piece with his high concepts and his style – his authorial voice is embedded in the text, allowing the reader to sense his great compassion for his characters, and by extension, for the human condition.
That first Saramago book, Ricardo Reis, introduced me to writer/poet Fernando Pessoa, whose Book of Disquiet I read while travelling through Portugal. The straight-faced melancholy of the book served as counterpoint to everything I saw and did.
“Life is whatever we make it. The traveller is the journey. What we see is not what we see but who we are.” – Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
“I say grab life with both hands” – text received from my friend Alastair while in Portugal.