José Saramago

José Saramago
Photographed in 1999
Born	November 16, 1922 Azinhaga (Portugal)
Died	June 18, 2010 (aged 87) Tías (Spain)
Occupations	Writer, journalist, playwright
Notable work	The Gospel According to Jesus Christ Blindness Death with Interruptions
Spouse(s)	Ilda Reis (1944–1970) Pilar del Río (1988–2010)
Awards	Nobel Prize in Literature (1998) Camões Prize (1995)
Signature

José de Sousa Saramago (Azinhaga, November 16, 1922 – Tías, June 18, 2010) was a Portuguese writer, novelist, poet, journalist and playwright who went into self-imposed exile in Spain. Saramago prophesied that Portugal would end up becoming one more autonomous community of Spain, with the same rank as Catalonia, Galicia or Castilla–La Mancha, thus becoming integrated into a new Iberian country.

In 1998 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, which highlighted his ability to "make comprehensible an elusive reality, with parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony."

Biography

Early years

José Saramago was born in the Portuguese freguesia of Azinhaga (municipality of Golegã, in the central district of Ribatejo), near the Tagus River, 120 km northeast of Lisbon.

His parents were José de Sousa and Maria da Piedade, a landless peasant couple of scant economic means. This way of life would notably influence the writer's thinking, especially with regard to his political ideas, grounded on a vast formal and popular culture and a hyperesthetic life experience. The nickname of his father's family was Saramago ("Jaramago" in Spanish, the name of a wild herbaceous plant of the crucifer family).

The boy should have been named José Sousa, but the civil registry official made a slip of the pen and recorded him as José "Saramago," although some say it was a joke by the official, an acquaintance of his father. The official record gives the date as November 18, although he was born on the 16th. In 1925, Saramago's family moved to Lisbon, after a brief stay in Azinhaga, where his father began working as a policeman. A few months after the move, his brother Francisco, two years older, died.

In 1934, at the age of twelve, he entered an industrial school. In those years even technical studies included humanities subjects. In the free textbooks of those years Saramago encountered the classics. Even in his final years he could still recite some of those texts from memory. Although Saramago was a good student, he could not finish his studies because his parents could no longer pay for his schooling, so to support his family Saramago worked for two years in a mechanical blacksmith's shop.

Beginnings as a writer

He soon changed jobs and began working as an administrative employee in Social Security. After marrying Ilda Reis in 1944, Saramago began writing his first novel, Land of Sin, which was published in 1947 but was not successful. That year his first daughter, Violante, was born.

Saramago wrote a second novel, Skylight, which was not published until 2012, two years after his death. For the following twenty years he did not devote himself to literature. "I simply had nothing to say, and when one has nothing to say, the best thing is to keep quiet."

He went to work for an insurance company. At the same time he contributed as a journalist to Diário de Notícias, a newspaper of national reach, but for political reasons he was soon dismissed. He later contributed as a literary critic to the magazine Seara Nova and was a cultural commentator. He was part of the first board of the Portuguese Writers' Association, and also served as deputy director of Diário de Notícias. From 1966 he devoted himself exclusively to his literary work. He suffered censorship and persecution during the years of the Salazar dictatorship. He found work at a publishing house, where he worked for twelve years. In his free time he translated various works by authors such as Maupassant, Tolstoy, Baudelaire and Colette.

In 1966 he published Os poemas possíveis. In 1969 he joined the then-clandestine Portuguese Communist Party. That same year he divorced Ilda and left his job at the publishing house to devote himself fully to living from writing, whether as a columnist or as a novelist. In 1970 he published Provavelmente alegria. Between 1972 and 1973 he was an editor at Diário de Lisboa. In 1974 he joined the Carnation Revolution, which brought democracy to Portugal. In 1975 he published O Ano de 1993.

Consecration

His first great novel was Levantado do chão (1980), a fresh and vivid portrait of the living conditions of the workers of Lavre, in the province of Alentejo. With this book Saramago managed to find his own voice, that unmistakable, limpid and almost poetic style that distinguishes him. In the following years, Saramago published almost without pause:

Memorial do convento (1982), in which he recounts the harshest living conditions of the common people in the dark medieval world, in times of war, hunger and superstition. This book was adapted as an opera by Azio Corghi and premiered at La Scala in Milan, under the title Blimunda, the unforgettable female character of the novel.

Corghi also adapted his play In Nomine Dei, which premiered in Münster under the title Divara. Azio Corghi also composed the music for the cantata The Death of Lazarus, on texts from Memorial do convento, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ and In Nomine Dei. It was performed for the first time in the church of San Marco in Milan.

In 1984 Saramago published The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis and in 1986 A jangada de pedra (The Stone Raft), in which he recounts what would happen if the Iberian Peninsula broke away from the European continent. That year, when he was sixty-three, he met the woman who would be his wife until the end of his days, the Spanish journalist Pilar del Río, a native of the town of Castril in Granada, born in 1950, who eventually became his official translator into Spanish.

Move to the island of Lanzarote

Statue in Bouzas (Vigo)

The novel The Gospel According to Jesus Christ (1991) catapulted him to fame because of an unprecedented controversy in Portugal—which considers itself a secular republic—when the government vetoed its submission for that year's European Literary Prize, alleging that it "offended Catholics."

As an act of protest, Saramago left Portugal and settled on the Canary island of Lanzarote. In 1995 he published one of his best-known novels, Blindness, a novel that was made into a film in 2008 under the direction of Fernando Meirelles. In 1997 he published his novel All the Names, which also enjoyed great recognition.

In 1998 he won the Nobel Prize in Literature, becoming the first—and so far the only—Portuguese-language writer to win this prize. From then on, he divided his residence between Lisbon and the Canary island, taking part in the social and cultural life of both countries, whose close relations he invoked in an interview to put forward his utopian idea of creating a united Iberia.

A declared atheist, he occasionally contributed to the press, offering his point of view, always sharp and committed. In his own definition, "God is the silence of the universe, and the human being, the cry that gives meaning to that silence."

One of his last works was Death with Interruptions, which tells of a country whose name will not be mentioned, where something never seen since the beginning of the world occurs: death decides to suspend its lethal work, and people stop dying. From then on, situations imaginable or not are recounted, since no one dies but people keep growing old. The sentence that closes his last novel, Cain, is "The story has ended, there will be nothing more to tell."

Both his house and his private library are open to the public year-round in the town of Tías. In the hallways it is easy to run into Pilar del Río, his wife, who still frequents the residence and presides over the José Saramago Foundation. There, among other things, is the collection of clocks that the Portuguese writer stopped at four o'clock, as a symbol of his love for her, since they met at that hour.

Death

He died at the age of eighty-seven, on June 18, 2010, at his residence in the town of Tías (Lanzarote), from chronic leukemia that led to multiple organ failure. He had spoken with his wife and spent a peaceful night. Saramago wrote until the end of his life; it is even said that he had thirty pages of a forthcoming novel.

The Portuguese novelist's ashes were laid on June 18, 2011, at the foot of a centuries-old olive tree, brought from his native village and transplanted in the Campo das Cebolas, in front of the José Saramago Foundation at the Casa dos Bicos in Lisbon, on the first anniversary of his death.

Publications and tributes

• After José Saramago's death, sales of his books in Spain rose by 70%.
• On July 13, 2010, the majority of the center-right councilors of the governing team of the City Council of Porto, the second most important city in Portugal, voted against the proposal to name a street of the city after the writer José Saramago.
• His widow Pilar del Río presides over the José Saramago Foundation.
• On January 28, 2011, José y Pilar premiered, a documentary directed by Miguel Gonçalves Mendes, co-produced by El Deseo (Spain) and O2 Filmes (Brazil), which brings us closer to the last years of the couple's life, showing us the most intimate José Saramago as well as the commitments, people and places that marked his final years, with special attention to Tías, Azinhaga and Castril. On September 9, 2011, the Instituto do Cinema e do Audiovisual (ICA) submitted the documentary as a candidate for the Oscar in the category of best foreign-language film.
• In October 2011 the José Saramago Foundation announced the publication of an unpublished novel, Skylight, written in the early 1950s. After this unpublished novel, Saramago "kept a creative silence for two decades."
• In 2002, he was declared persona non grata in Israel for comparing that country's policy in the occupied territories with the Nazi extermination camps of Auschwitz. All his books were withdrawn from Israeli bookstores.
• In 2009 a cultural center bearing his name, the Casa de la Cultura José Saramago, was inaugurated in the Spanish city of Albacete; it houses the city's Popular University.
• La Cafetera, on Radiocable, begins all its programs by stating the peninsular time and the Canary Islands time with the formula "It is [...], [...] at the house-museum of José Saramago, in Tías, Lanzarote."

Work

So deep is the silence "So deep is the silence in the stars/ Not even the sound of words travels/ nor the song of miraculous birds./ But there, in the stars, when we are/ a redeemed star, is where one hears/ the intimate murmur that opens the roses." Romeo to Juliet "I go, my love, but I leave my life here, in the warmth of this bed I abandon, scattered sand that once was a dune. If the night made the day, and with the light the black parting comes between us, may the shadow of death reunite us. Juliet to Romeo "It is late, my love, the wind is rising, the dark dawn is being born, the night alone was our brightness. I shall no longer be who I was; what we shall be must be against the world, which rejects us, guilty of inventing freedom."

José Saramago

Novels

• Land of Sin (1947)
• Manual of Painting and Calligraphy (1977): a philosophical novel about the figure of the artist.
• Raised from the Ground (1980): the story of several generations of Portuguese peasants, witnesses to the hardships of the countryside and to an ill-fated time, culminating in the triumph of the Carnation Revolution.
• Memorial of the Convent (1982): the translation by Basilio Losada earned the National Translation Prize.
• The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis (1984)
• The Stone Raft (1986): the Iberian Peninsula breaks away from the rest of Europe and begins to sail across the Atlantic.
• The History of the Siege of Lisbon (1989)
• The Gospel According to Jesus Christ (1991): an original vision of the life of the founder of Christianity.
• Blindness (1995): a strange epidemic condemns a city to white blindness.
• All the Names (1997): a novel about Senhor José, a Kafkaesque bureaucrat who, upon finding in the civil registry the record card of a woman whose face he does not even know, falls hopelessly in love and sets out to find her.
• The Cave (2000): a novel that takes the Platonic myth as its starting point and criticizes consumerism.
• The Double (2002): two men identical down to the millimeter meet; the book explores the anguish of the anonymous being lost in a mass society.
• Seeing (2004): investigates the limits of democracy.
• Death with Interruptions (2005): about a country where people stop dying.
• The Elephant's Journey (2008)
• Cain (2009)
• Skylight (2011): written in 1953 and published posthumously.
• Alabardas (2014): unfinished; posthumous publication.

Short stories

• Almost an Object (1978)
• The Tale of the Unknown Island (1998)

Children's/Young adult

• The Biggest Flower in the World (2001): a first version of this story, "Story for Children," appeared in The Traveler's Suitcases (1973).
• The Silence of the Water (2011): an illustrated fragment of Small Memories (2006).
• The Lizard (2016): a version illustrated by J. Borges of a text of the same name, included in The Traveler's Suitcases (1973).

Diaries

• Lanzarote Notebooks 1993–1995 (1997)
• Lanzarote Notebooks II 1996–1997 (2002)
• The Notebook (2009): a compilation of Saramago's blog.
• The Last Notebook (2011): a compilation of Saramago's blog.
• The Notebook of the Nobel Year (2018)

Memoirs

• Small Memories (2006)

Poetry

• Possible Poems (1966)
• Probably Joy (1970)
• The Year 1993 (1975)

Chronicles

• Of This World and the Other (1971): chronicles published in the newspaper A Capital.
• The Traveler's Suitcases (1973): chronicles published in the newspapers A Capital and Jornal do Fundão.
• Notes (1976): chronicles published in the newspapers Diário de Lisboa (1972/73) and Diário de Notícias (1975)
• The Five Senses: Hearing (1979)
• Moby Dick in Lisbon (1996)
• Political Pages 1976–1998 (1999)

Travel

• Journey to Portugal (1981)

Theater

• The Night (1979)
• What Shall I Do with This Book? (1980)
• The Second Life of Francis of Assisi (1987)
• In Nomine Dei (1993)
• Don Giovanni, or the Dissolute Absolved (2005)

Essays

• Stockholm Speeches (1999)
• Da estátua à pedra (1999)
• Comment le personnage fut le maître et l'auteur son apprenti (1999)
• Direito e os Sinos (1999)
• Here I Am a Zapatista: Saramago at Bellas Artes (2000)
• Words for a Better World (2004)
• Questto mondo non va bene che ne venga un altro (2005)
• The Name and the Thing (2006)
• Andrea Mantegna: An Ethics, an Aesthetics (2006)
• Democracia e Universidade (2010)
• Saramago in His Own Words (2010): a catalog of personal, literary and ideological reflections.

Interviews

• José Saramago: The Possible Love (1998), with Juan Arias
• I Am a Hormonal Communist (2002), with Jorge Halperín
• José and Pilar (2013), with Miguel Gonçalves Mendes

Compositions by Azio Corghi based on the work of José Saramago

Opera

• 1989 Blimunda (based on Memorial do convento; opera in three acts)
• 1993 Divara (based on In Nomine Dei; musical drama in three acts)
• 2005 Don Giovanni ou Il dissoluto assolto (libretto by Azio Corghi and José Saramago; single act)

Symphonic music

• 1995 La Morte de Lázaro (based on In Nomine Dei, O Evangelho segundo Jesus Cristo and Memorial do convento; dramatic cantata for reciting voice, mixed choir, children's choir, brass instruments and percussion)
• 2001 Cruci-Verba (based on O Evangelho segundo Jesus Cristo; for reciting voice and orchestra)
• 2002 De paz e de guerra (text by José Saramago; for choir and orchestra)

Awards

José Saramago during the International Book Fair in Bogotá (Colombia)

• Order of Saurí, First Class. It is the highest distinction of Panama.
• Honorary Scholarship of the Student Residence of the Carlos III University (Spain).
• Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters (France).
• Commander of the Order of Saint James of the Sword (Portugal).
• Doctor Honoris Causa from the Autonomous University of the State of Mexico (Mexico).
• Doctor Honoris Causa from the Autonomous University of Madrid (Spain).
• Doctor Honoris Causa from the University of Brasília (Brazil).
• Doctor Honoris Causa from the University of Buenos Aires (Argentina).
• Doctor Honoris Causa from the Charles III University of Madrid (Spain) in January 2004.
• Doctor Honoris Causa from the University of Castilla–La Mancha (Spain).
• Doctor Honoris Causa from the National University of La Plata (Argentina).
• Doctor Honoris Causa from the University of El Salvador (El Salvador).
• Doctor Honoris Causa from the National University of Costa Rica (Costa Rica).
• Doctor Honoris Causa from the University of the Republic (Uruguay) in December 2000.
• Doctor Honoris Causa from the University of Manchester (United Kingdom).
• Doctor Honoris Causa from the University of Salamanca (Spain).
• Doctor Honoris Causa from the University of Seville (Spain).
• Doctor Honoris Causa from the University of Turin (Italy).
• Doctor Honoris Causa from the Polytechnic University of Valencia (Spain) on January 21, 1999.
• Doctor Honoris Causa from the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (Spain) on June 18, 1999.
• Doctor Honoris Causa from the University of Santiago, Chile (Chile, 2000).
• Doctor Honoris Causa from the University of Granada (Spain) (18/05/2001).
• Grand Prize for Theater, from the Associação Portuguesa de Escritores.
• Grande Prémio de Romance e Novela (of the Associação Portuguesa de Escritores), 1991 (The Gospel According to Jesus Christ).
• Honorary member of the Canary Academy of Language.
• Corresponding member of the Argentine Academy of Letters.
• Member of the European Academy of Yuste (Yuste, Spain).
• Member of the Universal Academy of Cultures (Paris).
• Member of the International Parliament of Writers (Strasbourg).
• Member of the Honorary Board of Trustees of the César Manrique Foundation (Lanzarote, Canary Islands).
• Honoris causa member of the Council of the Institute of Philosophy of Law and Historical-Political Studies of the University of Pisa (Italy).
• Archbishop Juan de San Clemente Prize (Santiago de Compostela).
• Brancatti Prize (Zafferana, Italy), 1992 (Blindness).
• Camões Prize (1995).
• City of Lisbon Prize, 1980 (Raised from the Ground).
• Career Consecration Prize of the Sociedade Portuguesa de Autores, 1995.
• Critics' Prize (of the Associação Portuguesa de Críticos), 1985 (The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis).
• Dom Dinis Prize (Fundação da Casa de Mateus), 1986 (The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis).
• Ennio Ennio Flaiano Prize (Italy), 1992 (Raised from the Ground).
• Premi Europeu de Comunicació "Jordi Xifra Heras" (Girona).
• Grinzane-Cavour Prize (Alba, Italy), 1987 (The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis).
• Mondello International Literary Prize (Palermo, Italy), 1992 (Blindness).
• Municipality of Lisbon Literary Prize, 1983 (Memorial of the Convent).
• Nobel Prize in Literature (October 8, 1998).
• Portuguese PEN Club Prize, 1983 (Memorial of the Convent).
• PEN Club Prize, 1985 (The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis).
• Penne Prize (Mosca, Penne, Italy).
• Rosalía de Castro Prize (Vigo).
• Scanno Prize (Gabriele d'Annunzio University, Chieti).
• Literary Life Prize of the Associação Portuguesa de Escritores, 1993.
• Non-executive Honorary President of the company Sintratel. [1]
• Honorary Member of the Sociedade Portuguesa de Autores (Lisbon).
• The Independent Foreign Fiction Award (England), 1993 (The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis).
• Favorite Son of Andalusia, 2007. Video of the speech

External links

• José Saramago Foundation
• José Saramago interviewed by Ángela Olalla in "El intelectual y su memoria", University of Granada, Faculty of Philosophy and Letters (1999)
• Cela and Saramago in 1999, on the Canal Televisión Valenciana program El Faro de Alejandría, with Fernando Sánchez Dragó: 1; 2; 3; 4; 5.