Diário

Examples from the Diário archives.

  Saramago first came to prominence in the 1980s with a series of novels -exploring various periods in Portuguese history, from the foundation of the nation in the twelfth century (History of the Siege of Lisbon), through the period of imperial power and wealth (Baltasar and Blimunda), to the New State dictatorship which had fallen as recently as 1974 (The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis).

However, these novels are not simply attempts to recreate a colourful depiction of an exotic past: each one is based on a powerful imaginative premise (for example, the flying machine invented by Father Bartolomeu in Baltasar and Blimunda, or the separation of the Iberian Peninsula from the rest of Europe in The Stone Raft) which then forms the basis for questioning assumptions commonly made in the present about the nation's past.

This powerful imaginative capacity is then turned in later novels to more universal themes: The Gospel According to Jesus Christ created some controversy on its publication in 1991 for its unorthodox adaptation of the New Testament, while Blindness (1995) is a devastating exploration of the human capacity for brutality and evil. It was after the completion of this work (said by the author to have been inspired by the atrocities committed in the Balkans in the early 1990s) and its successor All the Names (a Kafkaesque recreation of the individual seeking his own identity in a faceless and apparently senseless universe) that in 1998 Saramago became the first writer in Portuguese to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

There are many commonplaces regarding Saramago: a communist writer? He is certainly socially engaged, but his novels are far from being simplistic ideological parables. A figure who enjoys questioning widespread assumptions about Portuguese culture and tradition? Perhaps, but his work owes an evident and very conscious debt to two of the great icons of Portuguese literature, Fernando Pessoa and Camões, as well as to the Portuguese tradition of overseas exploration. The tribute paid to him by the Nobel Prize Committee stressed the elusive nature of the reality which his works depict: the power and originality of his ideas, his playful use of the Portuguese language, his ability to successfully mix comedy and tragedy and his gift for harnessing everyday experience within the context of his own vision of the world - all these make Saramago's novels a source of infinite surprises and constant intellectual challenges.