In the beginning Jose de Sousa Saramago created Baltasar and Blimunda and Richardo Reis and Raimundo Silva and Lisbon and Jesus Christ and Nazareth and Mary Magdalene and Doctor’s Wife and Doctor and Central Register of Births and senhor Jose and Unknow Island and Cipriano Algor and Marta and Center and Tertuliano Maximo Afonso and Maria da Paz and Antonio and Seeing Woman and Prime Minister and all the names;
Saramago saw all he had made, and indeed it was very good.
And then the evening came.
ar fi un text bun pentru locul unde-l vor pune; cred ca i-ar fi placut.
un scriitor fabulos, desi mi s-a parut ca in ultimele doua carti – Calatoria Elefantului si Omul Duplicat- isi cam pierduse suflul. poate era doar un semn ca va pleca.
The voice that read these pages wished to be the echo of the conjoined voices of my characters. I don’t have, as it were, more voice than the voices they had. Forgive me if what has seemed little to you, to me is all.*
*Nobel lecture
That last phrase could be very well Saramago’s epitaph.
voiam sa evit cuvintul ‘epitaf’. prea conventional pentru un om care si-a imaginat moartea indragostita.
…the dead are all equal, what you can do to some you can do to all, jumble them up, confuse them, it doesn’t matter, the world doesn’t make sense anyway. All The Names
I have just finished this book, but I think it is not finished with me: http://silverseason.wordpress.com/2010/08/27/jose-saramago-all-the-names/.
the book will be finished when the last being on earth -aware that she has a name- will say: it doesn’t matter if the world makes sense or not, all I can do is to scribble my name on the very last page of the record book and greet the eternity with hello- goodbye.