'Blindness' by José Saramago (Review)

Recently, I read my first book by José Saramago, and the success of that venture inevitably led to a second look at the Portuguese Nobel-Prize-winner's world.  While Raised from the Ground is perhaps a lesser-known work, today's review looks at what might be his most famous novel.  As always though, the question is, is it any good?

*****
Blindness (translated by Giovanni Pontiero, some revision by Margaret Jull Costa) is a great example of literary speculative fiction, with the whole premise of the book hinging on one single 'what if'.  The novel begins with a queue of frustrated drivers at a set of traffic lights, angry at a man who is sitting in front of a green light.  When someone comes to see what has happened, the explanation is unexpected - the man has gone blind.  But he's just the first...

Slowly, the blindness begins to spread, first to those around the blind man, and then to all the people they have contact with.  Before long, the government is forced to lock those affected in an old, abandoned mental institute in an attempt to stop the spread of the blindness before it is too late.  However, one of the people detained in the makeshift hospital-cum-prison has a secret - you see, she seems to be immune to the sickness...

It's a great premise and a great book, the story of an unprecedented epidemic and its consequences.  Even the type of blindness is unusual: not only is it contagious, but also milky-white...  As the first man to go blind says:

"He had even reached the point of thinking that the darkness in which the blind live was nothing other than the simple absence of light, that what we call blindness was something that simply covered the appearance of beings and things, leaving them intact behind their black veil.  Now, on the contrary, here he was, plunged into a whiteness so luminous, so total, that it swallowed up rather than absorbed, not just the colours, but the very things and beings, thus making them twice as invisible."
p.8 (Vintage, 2005)

The doctor's wife, the only person untouched by the epidemic, acts as the reader's eyes in this world of the blind.  Through her, we can see how, after initial panic and imprisonment, society starts to crumble as people come to terms with the thought that this may not be a passing event.  What would we do if everyone eventually went blind?

One of the most fascinating aspects of the story is the action taken by the authorities.  Those affected are immediately isolated from the rest of society as the government tries desperately to halt the possibility of an epidemic.  Despite claims that those afflicted would be looked after, the ethical dilemmas of the situation mean that they are effectively abandoned, with those outside struggling just to keep their sight.  The recorded loudspeaker announcements each day (the only way many of the 'patients' have of marking time) become increasingly ludicrous.  In claiming that "everything is going to be all right" if the blind people cooperate, there are obvious allusions to Nazi labour camps...

The scenario also allows the writer to explore what happens when people are unable to look after themselves.  Trapped in the hospital, with no supplies of any kind (and with soldiers ready to shoot them if they set foot outside the building), the norms of hygiene quickly disappear.  The floors are covered with human waste, and very soon other diseases begin to spread.  However, things are no better outside: cities are soon brought to a standstill (driving, for obvious reasons, is decidedly tricky), and the streets fill with rubbish and filth.  It doesn't take long for society to revert to a system of small groups or clans, each looking out for its own interests.

While the physical degradation is bad enough, the effect the blindness has on people's morals is worse.  The inmates immediately descend into squabbles and try to cheat each other out of food.  The soldiers outside loathe and fear the people (or things...) they are guarding, and once it becomes clear that the outside world is not going to get involved in matters inside the hospital, things get very ugly indeed.  This is a book which can be very disturbing in parts...

In such a disturbing world, it's the little things that help.  Rather than money or jewels, people just want some food, a bath, clean clothes.  Even water is becoming a luxury, one to be savoured when it is available:

"This time she took the lamp and went to the kitchen, she returned with the bottle, the light shone through it, it made the treasure inside sparkle.  She put it on the table, went to fetch the glasses, the best they had, of finest crystal, then, slowly, as if she were performing a rite, she filled them.  At last, she said, Let's drink.  The blind hands groped and found the glasses, they raised them trembling.  Let's drink, the doctor's wife said again.  In the middle of the table, the lamp was like a sun surrounded by shining stars.  When they had put the glasses back on the table, the girl with the dark glasses and the old man with the eyepatch were crying." (p.262)

It's a nice moment, but one which is surrounded by (a milky-white) darkness.  Surely, this can't go on for ever?

The story, in itself, is impressive enough, but Saramago's style gives it a little something more, making the novel even more fantastic.  Although there are chapters, most of them consist of fairly long paragraphs, full of unbroken sentences, streams of thoughts connected by commas.  There are no quotation marks, and a change of speaker is indicated by a comma and a capital letter - long, quick-moving conversations can be very tricky to follow.  Blindness has no real names for its characters, with each being described by their function or distinguishing features (the first blind man, the doctor, the girl with dark glasses), a choice which intensifies the (deliberate) feeling of disorientation.

"...we're so remote from the world that any day now, we shall no longer know who we are, or even remember our names, and besides, what use would names be to us, no dog recognises another dog or knows the others by the names they have been given, a dog is identified by its scent and that is how it identifies others, here we are like another breed of dogs, we know each other's bark or speech, as for the rest, features, colour of eyes or hair, they are of no importance, it is as if they did not exist..." (p.55)

In the land of the blind, voices are much more useful than names...

Returning to my question - is it any good?  Of course it is - it's a wonderful novel.  Credit must go again to the translator, this time Giovanni Pontiero, for the excellent work done in bringing this unique style across into English.  I can't wait to read more of Saramago's work, in particular Seeing, the sequel to Blindness.

I do like it when I find another great writer who's written lots of books :)

'Raised from the Ground' by José Saramago (Review)

José Saramago was a writer I already had on my (extensive) to-try list, but after a couple of pushes, his name was lifted right to the top.  The first was the excellent Saramago month which Miguel, over at St. Orberose, ran last November; the other was a podcast I listened to recently, in which translator Margaret Jull Costa talked about the Portuguese legend's work.  After deciding to give Saramago a try then, the next step was to work out where to start.  Luckily for me, both my sources had a recommendation ready and waiting...

*****
Raised from the Ground (translated by Margaret Jull Costa), begins in an almost Hardyesque manner, as we meet a family trudging along a dusty road in Portugal's Alentejo region.  There's bad weather on the horizon, both literally and metaphorically - rather apt for a man named Domingos Mau-Tempo.  Along with wife Sara and baby João, Domingos is looking for a new home and a new start after a series of setbacks.  He'll find one, but the other is destined to elude him...

The novel is not really about Domingos though; instead, it is a multi-generational tale of life as a peasant in twentieth-century Portugal.  It's a time of great historical change, as the country overthrows the monarchy to form a republic, one which later evolves into a dictatorship.  However, for the poor people nothing changes, even when the dictatorship comes to its peaceful end - the fields, and the hardship the workers face, remain the same.

Raised from the Ground is a personal novel for Saramago, as his grandfather was a poor farm worker.  He uses the work to describe the realities of a life of poverty, detailing the lives of people on the bottom rung of society's ladder:

"The family grows, even though many children die of diarrhoea, dissolving in their own shit, poor little angels, snuffed out like candles, with arms and legs more like twigs than anything else, their bellies distended, until the moment comes and they open their eyes for the last time to see the light of day, unless they die in the dark, in the silence of the hovel, and when the mother wakes and finds her child dead, she starts to scream, always the same scream, these women whose children have died aren't capable of inventing anything, they're speechless.  As for the fathers, they say nothing and, the following night, go to the taberna looking as if they're ready to kill someone or something.  They come back drunk, having killed nothing and no one."
p.80 (Harvill Secker, 2012)

Above all, it's a story of how the poor are always exploited, unable to make ends meet and violently persecuted for any move away from the status quo.  A good example is when four workers quit their temporary job, simply because they can't take the inhumane conditions any more.  Before the four exhausted workers even reach their home village, there are guards waiting to arrest them - for inciting a strike...

It's all made possible because of the vested interests of the landowners and their police defenders.  The land is divided into latifundios, vast, landed estates, passed down through the generations, and the landowners work together, in a kind of cartel, to keep the workers poor and ill-fed.  They treat their employees like animals, ignoring their basic needs and rights, although perhaps a better metaphor would be machines:

"Since they were born to work, it would be a contradiction in terms for them to have too much rest.  The best machine is always the one most capable of continuous work, properly lubricated so that it doesn't jam up, frugally fed and, if possible, given only as much fuel as mere maintenance requires, and, in case of breakdown or old age, it must, above all, be easily replaceable, that's what those human scrapyards known as cemeteries are for, or else the machine simply sits, rusting and creaking at its front door, watching nothing at all pass by or else gazing down at its own sad hands, who would have thought it would come to this." (p.344)

The sad thing is that nothing appears to be able to help the workers move above this semi-servitude, and that there is nobody who can stand by them in their attempt to do so.

The Norbertos, Gilbertos, Adalbertos and Bertos who lord it over the latifundios are less people than types, one interchangeable with any of the others, and with the protection of the guards (who are very much in their pockets), they are safe in their big houses.  They are also protected by the church, which teaches the workers that if they behave in this life, they will surely get their reward in the next one.  The ever-present Father Agamedes, as the narrator points out, is another type, a representative of the hypocrisy of the church, and his behaviour is not exactly designed to instill faith in a benevolent God...

If it all sounds a little grim, you'd be mistaken.  It's a serious topic, but handled ironically; Saramago has a unique style and can always find an intriguing angle from which to get his message across.  Starvation, death and torture are mostly described with a light touch (in one memorable torture scene, we view events through the eyes of an ant - lending matters a very different perspective).  In other hands, this could be an unreadable litany of sufferings; it is the sign of a great writer that Raised from the Ground rises above this.

If the beginning and the setting are reminiscent of Hardy, the style most definitely isn't.  Saramago's writing is unusual and fascinating, with his long sentences, full of short clauses, which constantly dart off on tangents and digressions.  There are no quotation marks and direct speech is introduced solely by use of a comma and a capital letter.  Another common feature is narratorial intrusion, with the narrator often becoming as much a part of the story as the people he is talking about:

"Then the man said, We were so near, and then all this rain, these were words spoken in mild anger, uttered almost unthinkingly and hopelessly, as if to say, the rain won't stop just because I'm angry, well, that's the narrator speaking, which we can quite do without." (p.8)

It's a style which does take a bit of getting used to, and I was initially suspicious of the verbal gymnastics.  However, the more I read, the more it appealed, and the more I appreciated the way Saramago set out his story.

While the writing is often humorous, occasionally it can simply be beautiful.  The best example of this is a ten-page section recounting the birth of baby Maria.  In this chapter, the writer sets out an adapted nativity scene, with the father, uncle and grandfather of the new-born child taking on the role of the three kings.  While the poor men are unable to produce much gold, frankincense or myrrh, they are able to bring some much more important gifts to bless the baby girl with...

In short, Raised from the Ground is superb.  Saramago's style takes time to get used to for a reader encountering it for the first time, but it's definitely worth the effort involved.  After nearly four-hundred pages of struggle, the upbeat ending is throughly enjoyable - just as long as you ignore Miguel's review telling you what really happens...  Jull Costa's translation is also excellent; it must have been tricky to perfect the voice needed, but I think she nails it. 

Oh, I almost forgot - I already have my next Saramago lined up :)

Revenge is a Dish Best Left Alone

With my leanings towards translated literature, it's not all that often that I get to experience writing from a new country, and a new language, but today's post is about one of those occasions.  Earlier this year, over at Wuthering Expectations, our friend Amateur Reader had a Portuguese Reading Challenge, in which novices like myself were introduced to writers like Eça de Queiroz.  As a result, when I saw that Dedalus Books were offering review copies of the latest of their translations of his work, I was eager to get on board :)

*****
Alves & Co. and Other Stories, translated (as you can see from the photo) by the wonderful Margaret Jull Costa, is a slender volume of writings from one of Portugal's great writers.  The collection consists of the titular novella and six short stories, bringing it up to about 170 pages in total, and it's an excellent starting point if you have never come across the writer before.

Alves & Co. introduces the reader to Godofredo Alves, a well-to-do businessman working in an import-export company.  One warm day, he remembers that it is actually his wedding anniversary, and as his partner, Senhor Machado, is out of town on business, he decides to leave the office early and surprise his wife.  Having ordered some delicacies from a local grocer's and bought a present for his beloved, he wanders happily home - only to get a very rude awakening...

Poor Alves immediately sends his wife back to her father's house and begins to consider how best to avenge his honour.  However, despite his initial overblown ideas of dramatic recompense, he gradually begins to reconsider.  Is giving up his position in society for revenge really worth it?  Or could he, perhaps, learn to live with the pain of betrayal?

This novella is an excellent first encounter with Eça de Queiroz, and it is especially interesting to compare his ideas on the importance of redeeming one's honour with those of other great nineteenth-century European writers.  Alves' friends' rather half-hearted attempts to arrange a duel can be contrasted with the rather more straight-forward proceedings in books like Phineas Finn or Effi Briest.  Also, our Portuguese friend's attitude towards a cheating spouse bears little similarity to the way events unfold in novels such as Anna Karenina or Madame Bovary.

All of which may make the story a little less dramatic (and a lot shorter!) than many other works on the subject of infidelity.  However, in terms of being true to human nature, perhaps Eça de Queiroz is closer to the mark.  Alves is a great character, precisely because of his ordinariness: he is not particularly handsome, but by no means ugly; he is a man of passion, but not to the point of getting carried away:

"He read a lot of novels.  Grand actions and grand Passions excited him.  He occasionally felt that he was made for heroism, for tragedy.  But these were dim, ill-defined feelings that stirred only rarely in the depths of the heart in which he kept them imprisoned." p.18 (Dedalus Books, 2012)

The words above are a good indicator as to how he will react when tragedy enters his life...

*****
Alves & Co. is an excellent novella, one I greatly enjoyed reading, but it did tend to overshadow the other stories in this collection (which I find is often the case when one story takes up a disproportionate chunk of a collection).  The first two of these stories, A Lyric Poet and At The Mill, are thematically linked to the novella, relating as they do tales of people damned by unrequited love.  These short tragedies perhaps provide a fitting contrast to the positive mood of Alves & Co.

The remaining four stories provide more allegorical fare, taking us into historical and fairytale territory.  The Treasure and Brother Juniper both explore the consequences of an unexpected occurrence colliding with human nature, while The Wet Nurse explores the notion of sacrifice to help others.  The Sweet Miracle, the final story in the collection, takes the reader back to biblical times, showing us that the only sure way to find Jesus is by not looking for him...

After reading this book, I am very keen to try more of Eça de Queiroz's work, and that shouldn't be much of a problem.  You see, Dedalus have already commissioned translations of most of his major works (all by Margaret Jull Costa), including his epic masterpiece The Maias, so all I have to do is head off and buy one when I feel the urge...

...which may not be far off ;)