Blindness (Vintage classics)

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a b c d e f g h i j Quoted in: Eberstadt, Fernanda (26 August 2007). "The Unexpected Fantasist". The New York Times . Retrieved 14 August 2009. Or consider Seeing, which Saramago published in 2004. Something of a sequel, or rather conclusion, to Blindness, this novel has people become lucid, with a vast majority of voters casting blank ballots during elections. Once again, the government reacts aggressively, accusing its own citizens of terrorism. And once again, our supposedly democratic institutions fail to respond to reality, as Saramago always warns us they will. Ursula K. Le Guin, whose literary work I consider to be as philosophically important as Saramago’s, felt that Seeing says more about the days we live in than any other book she had ever read. Had she not passed in 2018, she may well have related our recent pandemic and wars to Saramago’s writing as well. a b "Cannes Q&A: Fernando Meirelles". The Hollywood Reporter. Nielsen Company. 2008-05-13. Archived from the original on 2008-05-18 . Retrieved 2008-05-20.

Note: This essay is based on the podcast, PICT Voices #22: Burghard Baltrusch, “ From Blindness to Seeing with José Saramago,” hosted by Kristof K.P. Vanhoutte, 25 January 2021 [6 October 2022]. The English has been revised by David Selim Sayers. Kilday, Gregg (2006-11-01). " 'Blindness' gains Focus for int'l sales". The Hollywood Reporter. The Nielsen Company. Archived from the original on 2007-09-30 . Retrieved 2007-06-18. Dawtrey, Adam (2008-04-29). " 'Blindness' to open Cannes". Variety. Reed Business Information . Retrieved 2008-05-01. Saramago did not achieve widespread recognition and acclaim until he was sixty, with the publication of his fourth novel, Memorial do Convento (1982). A baroque tale set during the Inquisition in 18th-century Lisbon, it tells of the love between a maimed soldier and a young clairvoyant, and of a renegade priest's heretical dream of flight. The novel's translation in 1988 as Baltasar and Blimunda (by Giovanni Pontiero) brought Saramago to the attention of an international readership. [9] [13] This novel won the Portuguese PEN Club Award.Clavin, Tom (2008-06-04). "The 'Savage Grace' Of Julianne Moore". hamptons.com. Hamptons Online . Retrieved 2008-07-25. Meirelles screened Blindness privately for Saramago. When the film ended, Saramago was in tears, and said: "Fernando, I am as happy to have seen this movie as I was the day I finished the book." [47] Protests [ edit ] a b c Schneller, Johanna (2007-08-25). "Julianne Moore sees her way to a little bit of sanity". The Globe and Mail. Toronto: CTVglobemedia . Retrieved 2008-03-11.

His fledgling José Saramago Foundation is poised to move into new premises. Speaking through a translator, he says the aim is to "bring a new dynamic to cultural life in Portugal". The foundation's director is Saramago's wife of 20 years, Pilar del Rio, a journalist who is now his Spanish translator. The Unexpected Fantasist, a portrait of José Saramago, written by Fernanda Eberstadt and published 26 August 2007, in The New York Times Magazine As if foreshadowing a heightened conflict, the First Blind Man says to the Doctor, “Well, I’m not entirely convinced that there are limits to misfortune and evil” (Saramago 144). After the hoodlums run out of valuables to steal from the other internees, they demand that each ward send in all its women to satisfy their lust. Otherwise, the wards would not get their food. Immediately the men pressure the women to visit the hoodlums and have sex with them for the well-being of the others. The women, fearing for their lives, become enraged and chastise the men for suggesting they appease the hoodlums. While some of the women listened to the men’s reasoning, others challenge the men with the same attitude the men had expressed. “And what would you do if these rascals instead of asking for women had asked for men, what would you do then[?]” (Saramago 168). One man replies, “There are no pansies here,” while another woman says, “And no whores either” (Saramago 168). In desperation, the asylum has erupted into a mess of sexism and moral degradation. The men would be willing to give up their women in exchange for food, thus reducing and objectifying the status of women. A small group of women including the First Blind Man’s Wife and the Doctor’s Wife agree to prostitute themselves despite protests by their husbands, the former especially. The narrator concludes the women’s decisions: “[D]ignity has no price, that when someone starts making small concessions, in the end life loses all meaning” (Saramago 169). At the expense of the men, the group of women experience a brutal gang rape, resulting in the death of one of the women. To restore the dead woman’s dignity, the Doctor’s Wife finds water to wash her. This event indicates how much the community within the asylum has degenerated, for the men have put a price on the bodies of the women they know.

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a b c d "President defends Jose Saramago funeral no-show". BBC News. 21 June 2010 . Retrieved 21 June 2010. Saramago was highly distrusting of the Salazar regime and government, so he joined the Portuguese Communist Party in 1969. To do so was illegal under Salazar’s dictatorship. Within the last few years of Salazar’s rule, Saramago worked for two Lisbon newspapers, Diário de Lisboa and, later, Diário de Nóticias. He lost his job from the latter in 1975 after the new anti-Communist government had come into power. With no hopes of finding another journalistic position, he turned to writing literature and developed his unique writing, consisting of very little punctuation and dialogue within narration. The boy with the squint was a patient of the doctor's, which is most likely how he became infected. He is brought to the quarantine without his mother and soon falls in with the group in the first ward. The girl with the dark glasses assumes a motherly role for him, as she takes care of him and ensures his safety. [2] The car thief [ edit ] Garrett, Stephen (2008-05-15). "First Look from Cannes: A Review of Blindness". Esquire. Hearst Corporation . Retrieved 2008-05-20.

During the Second Intifada, while visiting Ramallah in March 2002, Saramago said that "what is happening in Palestine is a crime we can put on the same plane as what happened at Auschwitz ... A sense of impunity characterises the Israeli people and its army. They have turned into rentiers of the Holocaust." [4] In an essay he wrote expanding on his views, Saramago wrote of Jews: "educated and trained in the idea that any suffering that has been inflicted ... on everyone else ... will always be inferior to that which they themselves suffered in the Holocaust, the Jews endlessly scratch their own wound to keep it bleeding, to make it incurable, and they show it to the world as if it were a banner." [34] Critics of these statements charged that they were antisemitic. [10] [35] Six months later, Saramago clarified. "To have said that Israel's action is to be condemned, that war crimes are being perpetrated – really the Israelis are used to that. It doesn't bother them. But there are certain words they can't stand. And to say 'Auschwitz' there ... note well, I didn't say that Ramallah was the same as Auschwitz, that would be stupid. What I said was that the spirit of Auschwitz was present in Ramallah. We were eight writers. They all made condemning statements, Wole Soyinka, Breyten Breytenbach, Vincenzo Consolo and others. But the Israelis weren't bothered about those. It was the fact that I put my finger in the Auschwitz wound that made them jump." [4] Honeycutt, Kirk (2008-05-18). "Film Review: Blindness". The Hollywood Reporter. Nielsen Company. Archived from the original on 2008-05-17 . Retrieved 2008-05-20. When we think of someone, when we hear their name, we always conjure an image in our head; a picture is formed before our eyes. Here we are with a bunch of people who no longer can rely on their sight so, in not giving them names, Saramago also puts us in the dark, forcing us to rely instead on personal characteristics and descriptions given to conjure these characters ourselves. “Perhaps only in a world of the blind will things be what they truly are.” Abeel, Erica (2008-05-15). "Cannes 08: Fernando Meirelles on "Blindness" ". Independent Film Channel. Rainbow Media. Archived from the original on 2008-09-05 . Retrieved 2008-07-25. Sereno, M.H.S., 2005. Proverbial style in novelistic José Saramago. Estudos em Homenagem ao Professor Doutor Mário Vilela, vol. 2 p.657-665. Universidade do Porto. ( accessible as part of larger volume)

Still, as I already said, Saramago denied being a writer of historical novels, maintaining that his sole commitment was to “reinventing history,” in the sense of bringing to the forefront what has been excluded or silenced. He compared the novelist to the historiographer because he couldn’t conceive an apprehension of the world that was not fictional—just as neuroscientists and cognitivists today maintain that our memory is both highly selective and far from being objective. In one of his most crucial essays, “History and Fiction,” published in 1990, he said that both the writer and the historical researcher are “choosers of facts” and “makers of history.” Kelly, Brendan (2008-07-15). "Toronto unveils Canadian selection". Variety. Reed Business Information . Retrieved 2008-07-25. Saramago was expected to speak as the guest of honour at the European Writers' Parliament in 2010, which was convened in Istanbul following a proposal he had co-authored. However, Saramago died before the event took place. [22] Death and funeral [ edit ] "Thank you José Saramago", Lisbon, October 2010 We could certainly think of many other books that depict our troubled times. But Blindness goes beyond the experience of recent years to offer an incisive description of our human condition and shortcomings in general. It paints a vivid and disturbing picture of our reality and our attitude towards life on this planet, past and present alike, and especially when applied to the near future, when climate change will strike us mercilessly.