The ultimate cause of Saramago – Overview

“After all, perhaps even go write another book. An old concern of mine (why there has never been a strike at a weapons factory) gave the foot a complementary idea that precisely allow the fictional treatment of the subject. Did not expect, but happened, sitting here, turning the head or giving me she turns to me. ” José Saramago wrote these notes in the Notebook (actually, in your notebook) on 15th August 2009 Scarce months after Cain novel with “stormy consequences,” the writer thus lit another fuse – far from biblical themes, and in landscapes riddled by bullets and other wicked inventions. And note another sentence: “The hook to start with the story and I have already told him many times:. The bomb that did not explode in the Spanish Civil War, as André Malraux account in L’Espoir” It’s a true story, that the newspapers of the 30s gave attention to the bomb dropped in Extremadura against the troops of the Popular Front (a coalition of Spanish left, created in 1936, which won elections before the coup that would lead to civil war): the device did not explode due to an act of sabotage, having found inside a paper with the message “this pump will not bust.” Two weeks later, Saramago corrects memory: after all, had not known this narrative detonator through the letter Malraux nor even Hemingway in For Whom the Bell Tolls. But the idea of ​​romance fired already, earning remoteness in thought, and even L’Espoir has a place in the three unpublished chapters left by Portuguese Nobel, and now revealed.

The title, that it took six months to be found, skipping between Bellona (named after the Roman goddess of war) or Products Bellona SA (arms factory in central narrative) until Saramago assestar the aim in halberds, pikes, rifles, Rifles – a line from Gil Vicente in Auto tragicomedy Exhortation of War. THE VISION, Pilar del Río, woman writer and “president” of the José Saramago Foundation, explains the connection: “What Gil Vicente is a work of José Saramago integrates a way to understand this work which includes respect for those who made it big . literature in Portuguese The most obvious cases, even if there are numerous references in all his books are Camões, in What I will do with This Book ?; Person in The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, Almeida Garrett, the epigraph of the Risen floor, and Father António Vieira, Traveling to Portugal in the start has been honored … It is not surprising that encloses his work with Gil Vicente. ”

Pedestrians in position

It can be said that the Vincentian way, there are farces, tragedies and comedies of errors in halberds (Harbour Publishing). Saramago gives us to meet a man obsessed with guns, and a woman who despises them with equal passion. Husband and separated by profaníssimos mechanisms triggered convictions and woman. The “great professional dream” artur semedo peace (lowercase are Samarago), gray man who “never fired a shot, not even Hunter weekend”, translates – in being named “responsible for the billing of a sections of heavy weapons instead of miuçalha of ammunition for light material. ” Among other lethal wonders, the “mortars open throat” or “shuttles missile Stalin’s body type,” it reads, was “the greatest pleasure that life could offer.” A pair of exquisite collection of war movies – “a real stroke of Staff,” Saramago shoots with fine irony. Felicia, the protagonist (antagonist) female, is a pacifist, challenging. An Eve that will help plant the seed of doubt in buttoned Arthur. “Felicia is in the XXI century, Blimunda [heroin Memorial do Convento]” defines Pilar del Río. “It’s a brave, daring woman, which triggers the action and maintains consistency. Causes, from their distinctive features, but Sara is the sister of Mary, History of the Siege of Lisbon, Women’s The Stone Raft, Mary Magdalene, the Gospel According to Jesus Christ, the doctor’s wife in Blindness and women Levantado do Chão “, defends the translator and journalist.

Saramago also drew other characters for these trenches: the managing director and the father, fearful of capitalist “social tranquility” ruling that chew the cud, “is never to be trusted”; and Arsenic and Sesinando, Laurel and Hardy respectful of bureaucratic minutiae and folk wisdom. Peace Semedo, a name that is a whole program (peace without fear), will scour the accounting files of Bellona SA in search of truth: the factory sold weapons to stakeholders wars in the 30s? There were people practicing “lese-economy” sabotage of shells? Is that Felicia reminds him, point blank, that “(…) the dictators only use the pen to sign death sentences.” The narrator, omniscient and familiar presence at work Saramago, who warns reads: “Prudence dictates that the past should only play with tweezers, and even then disinfected to prevent contagion.” We will not know whether ethical awakening Artur happens if the couple is reunited, the war reveals conspiracy: no final pages where desenlaçam tracks released almost detetivescas, or which shows that literary architecture halberds across his glory. And due to the bright promise contained these lines, emerges an inevitable feeling of orphanhood.

Writing, always

We return to the Notebook signs of life: in October 2009, Saramago corrected the first three chapters of halberds produced, stressing that “it is amazing well as what appeared to be the left, “and promising to work in the new book” with greater frequency. ” “You will leave the public in the next life if not me missing year”, bails. In December, after two months without writing, the author confesses not be “safe nothing could take the book out.” In February 2010, the enthusiasm resurfaces: “The ideas appear when they are needed,” he says. The disease, that chases him since 2006 when the writer if he surrenders definitely the June 18, 2010, leaving 22 pages of written new novel. One last breath narrative that already displays the “music of the prose” Saramago: orality, the rapid dialogues and chained each other, the singular points, the rich and fair vocabulary, humanist causes, ethical conflicts, characters outlined .. .? “Non sarcastic” irony and narrative “without moralizing or false didatismos” spoken Pilar. One hears, for example, the familiar voice and insurgent writer, to read about the entry of Bellona SA market, “with an inspired [tank] merkava Israeli army model ‘, shooting well:” They could not have chosen rather, they say the Palestinians. ”

“I do not understand how some halberds loose chapters, but as a work because there are Pulse, the characters, the plot, the scaffolding – or soul -. Sustain that the book And somehow , this is the proposal that each player ends the story to its responsibility, “said Pilar del Río. And she confesses to the VISION that when he read the three chapters survivors, it was a “shattering” experience: “I felt lightheaded because I knew that when I got to the end of the reading, it was truly the end.”

Farewell Ceremony

José Saramago expressed no desire to publish this book incomplete, confirms his wife. “Just one day left to write and not discussed more work,” Pilar says. But the writer, born in the village of Azinhaga in 1922, felt a “moral urgency” to create an explicit literary narrative about the “monstrosity” of war. Halberds will be published simultaneously in Portuguese, Catalan, Spanish and Italian. The Portuguese edition includes two texts, beyond words suspended Saramago, each fulminating your way. In An Unfinished Book a Firm Will Fernando Gómez Aguilera, poet, critic and curator of the Jose Saramago Foundation, writes that, “ultimately, it was not only to build your vision [Saramago] on the banality of evil, controversial subject that Hannah Arendt put it on the intellectual table. ” The complaint was betrayed by the desired time. “Is the heartbeat quickened its literature – – against death” and says the Spanish academic José Saramago transfigured this siege a “eloquent metaphor”: “Perhaps the perfect analogy is the candle that throws a flame higher when that goes out. ” I also met Artur Semedo Peace is a manifesto of Italian Roberto Saviano, author of Gomorrah celebrated that here remember those for whom the “gun was a word”: journalists killed or persecuted, as it is still your case.

The volume, with discrete graphics, halberds is punctuated by another graphics Nobel laureate, Günter Grass, a black and white dirty snow: dogs – wolves, ghostly silhouettes of soldiers in uniforms and landscapes referring to the First World War, as remembered by these days, founder of a global conflict violence, where the weapons were more important than bread. The editors chose to still follow the text with short sentences highlighted in red, evoking the gesture of handwritten notes on the page. “Beautiful object”, a “magnificent modernity,” says Pilar. It is a gem, yes: the last new material that does not have a Nobel chests to open. What makes it even more confusing and fearless late halberds indicted by Saramago in Notebook, the September 16, 2009: “The book ends with a resounding ‘Fuck you’, uttered by her A copy shot..”

Pre-publication – First
last paragraphs of the book

“The man called artur semedo peace and works for almost twenty years in the billing services of light weapons and ammunition from a historical weapons factory known for social reason BELONA productions sa, name that should clarify, they are already very few people who are interested in these useless knowledge, was the Roman goddess of war. most appropriate, Nothing recognize yourself. Others factories, mammoth industrial empires worldwide armament weight, or call Thyssen Krupp, but this BELONA productions sa enjoys a unique reputation, this stemming from of old, suffice to say that, in the considered opinion of some experts in the field, certain Roman military paraphernalia we found in museums, shields, breastplates, helmets, swords and spearheads, had their origin in a modest Forge Trastevere that was running second voice at the time, had been established in Rome by the very same goddess. Not too long ago, an article published in a magazine of military archeology would defend the point that some newly discovered remains of a sling shoot came this mythical forge thesis soon to be refuted by other scientific authorities who claimed that in such remote times, the fearsome a weapon that was named Balearic sling or catapult had not yet been invented. To whom it may concern, this artur peace semedo is neither single nor married, or divorced, or widowed, is just separated from his wife, not because he had so willed it, but because of her decision, being convinced peace activist, eventually no longer bear to see themselves bound by the ties of home life and forced conjugal duty one faturador of a company producing weapons. Sake of consistency had simply explained it then. The same consistency that had already led to change his name because, having been baptized as Berta, which was the name of the maternal grandmother, was renamed officially Felicia to not have to carry a lifetime with direct allusion to the cannon German rail that became famous in the first world war by bombarding Paris from a distance of eighty miles. “