Saramago's Lisbon

About José Saramago's attitude towards Lisbon or - perhaps better said - the relationship between them, should be written about at least for two reasons. Saramago spent most of his life in that city. In it he wrote some of Romanian on the basis of which he entered the history of literature (although he did not create only in that literary genre, but above all he remained recognizable for it). Furthermore, various works of this author are set in Lisbon. It cannot be said that that city is the main hero of Saramago's works in question, but it can be seen as one of the characters in them. Lisbon is not only the city where this writer lived, but also the city that he created or expanded in the realm of fiction. Like a person, Lisbon is present in Saramago's life and work. It is difficult to determine who gave more to whom in their mutual exchange - the city to the writer or the writer to the city.

In the Serbian language, Lisbon is, of course, a masculine word. In Portuguese - it is not. Its inhabitants call it Lisboa, and it is not clear why in our language the names of some of the capitals of Europe are moved to the masculine gender instead of remaining feminine, that is, in the gender in which they are in the languages ​​that are primarily spoken in those cities. It is known that proper nouns are singular. Accordingly, it would be unusual to use the name of a city in the plural. However, in the case of Saramago's novels, one can speak of both Lisbon and the Lisbons.

With one break that was not radical, Saramago lived in Lisbon from early childhood, from 1924 to be precise. Seven decades after that move, he settled in the Canary Islands and continued to create in Tías. There is hardly any of his novels written in Lisbon in which the city is not mentioned or where a part of the plot does not take place, and some of these novels take place entirely in that city. Like the striking visual perspectives that Lisbon offers its viewers, never ceasing to fascinate them with the variations of its face, Saramago portrays Lisbon in different historical eras and through the lives of its characters, from the painter H. to Raimundo Silva, a proofreader who works in a publishing house. Handbook of painting and writing takes place in the modern era and ends with the Carnation Revolution of 1974, Seven Suns and Seven Moons takes us back to the Baroque era, Year of death of Rikard Reiš in the interwar period, and The story of the siege of Lisbon with one of its dimensions, it goes the deepest into history, to the Middle Ages. The duration of a city exceeds the lifespan of an individual, but its inhabitants, both real and imaginary, give it life.

Saramago lived in different parts of Lisbon. His childhood and youth were marked by severe poverty and his family moved frequently, living in neighborhoods such as Alto do Pina and Peña de France. You can read about it in his book Little memories, which includes the period of his growing up. This book is unique in his oeuvre because it is autobiographical in the full sense of the word. Saramago believes that everything we do is actually our autobiography, and the pages of his life and works are certainly indistinguishable from the (auto)biography of the city to which he was attached. As far as I could see, there is no trace of it on the facades of the buildings where he lived and wrote the above-mentioned and some other novels, in Ulica Nade in Madragoa and Ulica Ferreiros in Estrela. There is no memorial plaque on those buildings, probably because it was decided that other places should preserve his memory.

The writer's remains do not rest in the cemetery. After he died in Tías, his ashes were laid to rest in Lisbon under an olive tree in front of the square that today bears his name and is overlooked by Casa dos Bicuchs, a building with an unusual facade that houses the José Saramago Foundation. On one side of that olive tree, transplanted from his native Azinjaga, into the very surface of the paved ground is inserted a plaque with the writer's name and surname, as well as the years of his birth and death, and in the same line with it, on the other side of the tree, a plaque with the words from the end of the novel Seven Suns and Seven Moons, which in this context can be read "but he did not ascend to the stars if he belonged to the earth". Next to those plates and the olive tree is an elephant's foot, which is a clear allusion to the novel An Elephant's Journey, which starts in Belem. That whole is the work of David de Almeida, about whose art Saramago wrote.

Although the importance of institutions should not be underestimated, the memory of Saramago and any other writer lives on most strongly through reading their books. Of course, it is always read in a certain circumstance. Plot of the novel Blindness takes place in an unnamed city. In essence, it is not just the literal loss of sight of its citizens. The city is deliberately not given a name and it can be Lisbon. Today, thirty years after the publication of that novel, Belgrade reminds me of that city affected by an epidemic of white blindness. As in Saramago's novel, not everyone has lost their sight here either, at least that's what I believe.

In the book Political pages 1976-1998 originally, one text was published with the title "Words addressed to a city". Saramago called it a "love letter". Such letters are usually written to a woman or a man. I am reminded here of Fernando Pesso, who appears in the form of a phantasm in The year of the death of Rikard Reis - a novel whose main character is the poet's heteronym from the title of that work - more precisely, the lines signed by Alvaro de Campos, his other heteronym: "Love letters, if there is love, must be funny. But, finally, only those creatures who have never written love letters are actually funny". Saramago's text is not addressed to an individual human being, but to Lisbon. It will be said that the city as such cannot read it, or at least that it can do so through the people who live in it. After all, a love letter doesn't necessarily have to be written to be read by the one to whom it is addressed. Saramago talks about the "spirit" and "soul" of Lisbon and lists certain attributes, such as elegance and modernity, that the city should have. Through these qualities, the title of queen can be earned. "In this republic of ours, such queens will always be welcome." Because of the aforementioned gender-switching problem, translational ingenuity was required to respect Lisbon's view as queen in those lines. To call him a king through translation would be rude and wrong.