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The Centaur

José Saramago
2004

Introduction

José Saramago's "The Centaur" was first published in English in the collection Telling Tales, edited by Nadine Gordimer and published by Picador in 2004. Giovanni Pontiero translated the story from Portuguese into English. The short story was published earlier in Portuguese in Saramago's short story collection Objecto Quase (Almost an Object) published by Editorial Caminho of Lisbon in 1978 and 1984.

Like other stories by the author, "The Centaur" involves a blending of the fantastical with the everyday or mundane. In the story, a centaur, who is the lone survivor of the mythical species, roams the Earth evading capture and persecution by human beings. As he travels toward his home country, which he has avoided returning to for millennia, he struggles to reconcile the opposite needs of his two halves: he possesses the mind and upper body of a man and the lower body of a horse. In this tale, Saramago explores the universal themes of alienation, loneliness, dualism, and the human fear and hatred of the unknown.

Author Biography

José Saramago was born on November 16, 1922, in Azinhaga, Ribatejo, Portugal. He is best known as a novelist, and in 1998 he became the first Portuguese writer to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. Born into a family of rural workers, he grew up in the city of Lisbon, often visiting relatives in the countryside, and attended a technical school to learn a trade. Before becoming a full-time professional writer, Saramago worked as a mechanic, a civil servant, a translator, a literary critic, a political commentator, and a journalist. In 1944, he married Ilda Reis, and they had a child named Violante in 1947.

Saramago published his first novel Terra do pecado in 1947. Almost thirty years later in 1976, Saramago published his next novel entitled Manual de pintura e caligrafia (Manual of Painting and Calligraphy). His third novel Levantado do chao (Raised from the Ground) was published in Portuguese in 1980. Following this novel, Saramago published several novels that were translated into English and which established his worldwide reputation as a novelist, including Baltasar and Blimunda, published in Portuguese in 1982 and in English in 1987, and The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis published in Portuguese in 1984 and in English in 1991. In 1994, Saramago published two novels in English The Stone Raft and The Gospel According to Jesus Christ.

Saramago's other novels include The History of the Siege of Lisbon (published in English in 1996), Blindness (1997), All the Names (2000), The Cave (2002), and The Double (2004). Although primarily known as a novelist, Saramago has also written and published several collections of poetry, plays, non-fiction works, an opera libretto, and short stories. The short story "The Centaur" appears in the anthology Telling Tales (2004), a collection of stories by writers around the world, edited by Nadine Gordimer. The short story was translated into English by Giovanni Pontiero.

In addition to the Nobel Prize in Literature, Saramago has earned many awards, including Grinzane Cavour Prize, the Flaliano Prize, Premio Cidade de Lisboa (1980), Premio Vida Literaria (1993), and Premio Camoes (1995). In 1991, he received honorary doctorates from the University of Turin in Italy and the University of Seville in Spain.

Plot Summary

"The Centaur" opens with descriptions of a man and a horse moving over a riverbed and looking for a hiding place to sleep in as the day breaks. As the description continues, it quickly becomes obvious that the horse and the man are one mythical creature, the centaur, whose body consists of the head and chest of a man and the body and legs of a horse. After pausing to drink from a stream, the centaur finds a good spot to rest and sleep among some trees. As the centaur lies down to sleep, it struggles, since sustaining a comfortable position for both the man and the horse throughout the night is not possible.

Although the horse half falls asleep right away, the man lies awake for a while before falling asleep and beginning to dream. At this point in the story, the narrative shifts to the past tense: the narrator describes how the centaur became the lone survivor of his species. The narrator explains that after fighting in several battles, the centaurs were defeated by Heracles in an epic fight. The surviving centaur managed to escape somehow, after witnessing Heracles crush Nessos, the centaur leader, to death and drag his corpse along the ground. Since that battle, the surviving centaur—who remains unnamed throughout the story—has dreamed every day of fighting and killing Heracles as the gods watch and then recede into the heavens.

The narrator goes on to say how the centaur also roamed the Earth for thousands of years. At first, he was able to travel without fear during the day "as long as the world itself remained mysterious." During this age, people welcomed the centaur as a magical creature, giving him garlands of flowers and entrusting their children to him. People at this time embraced him as a promoter of fertility, occasionally bringing him a mare with which to copulate.

The narrator explains, however, that at some point the world changed, and the centaur and other mythological creatures were persecuted and forced to hide from human beings. For several generations, the creatures, including unicorns, chimeras, werewolves, and other beings, lived together in the wilderness, but eventually they found they could not live there. They either disappeared from the world or found other ways to adapt to humans. The centaur alone remained, an obvious throwback to ancient times, roaming the Earth on his own. Although he traveled widely, he avoided going back to his native country, which is presumably Greece. He learned to sleep by day to avoid detection and to travel at night, sleeping only to dream.

At one point, during the millennia in which he travels alone, the centaur witnesses a man with a lance riding a scruffy horse fighting some windmills. After seeing the man tossed into the air, the centaur decides to avenge the thrown man. After leaving the windmills with broken blades, the centaur escapes pursuit by fleeing to the frontier of another country.

Following the recounting of this episode, the story returns to the present, with the centaur sleeping and waking to the smell of the sea. As night approaches, the centaur rises and starts to head south, because in his dream, Zeus had headed southward, after the centaur defeated Heracles as usual. Although he has not dared to travel during the daylight for many years, the man part of the centaur feels emboldened and excited and decides to take the risk.

After walking along a ditch and over a plain, the centaur hears a dog barking and starts galloping between two hills, still heading south. As he runs, the barking comes closer, and the centaur hears bells and a human voice. Next, the centaur finds himself among goats and a large dog. A shepherd screams and runs away. As the man part of the centaur grabs a branch to fight off the dog, the horse part kicks the dog and kills it, much to the shame of the human side of the centaur.

The sun goes down, and the centaur continues south. After encountering a wall and some houses, the centaur hears a shot, which hits the horse's flank. The people pursue and shoot at the centaur, but the centaur leaps over the wall and runs through the countryside. As the chase goes on, with dogs and people coming after the centaur, it begins to rain. The centaur manages to outrun the mob and reaches a place he recognizes as the frontier of his native country. The people and dogs stop pursuing the centaur at the border. As the rain becomes a torrential downpour, he crosses into the land.

The rain suddenly stops, and the sun comes out. The centaur proceeds down a mountainside and looks at a valley with three villages in it. He wonders if he can pass by the villages safely. Exhausted, he looks for a place to rest until dusk, so that he can recover some strength before continuing his journey to the sea. He finds the entrance to a cave and goes inside it to sleep. Although he sleeps, the man part of the centaur wakes up anguishing, because he has not dreamed for the first time in millennia. He wonders why he hasn't dreamed and gets up and goes out into the night.

He travels under a bright moon and reaches the valley. He sees a river and the largest of three villages across the way. After walking across the river to the other side, the centaur pauses and thinks about his route. He realizes that he cannot travel in daylight, since news of his existence has probably reached the land, and so he decides to walk along the riverbank underneath the trees. He continues south toward the sea.

The centaur suddenly hears the sound of lapping water, and as he pushes back branches to look at the river, he sees a naked woman emerging from the river after bathing. Having rarely seen women, the man part of the centaur impulsively picks up the woman in his arms as she screams in terror. As he runs with the woman in his arms, the centaur comes to a curve in the river. The woman stops screaming and cries instead. They hear other voices, and as the centaur rounds a bend, they encounter some houses and people. The centaur pulls the woman to his chest, as some people flee, while others retrieve rifles from their homes. The horse part of the centaur rears up, and the woman screams again.

A shot is fired into the air, and the centaur flees, successfully outrunning the villagers. Finding himself way ahead of the persecutors, the man part of the centaur pauses, holds the woman up in front of him, and tells her in his native tongue not to hate him. When he puts her gently on the ground, the woman does not run away, but instead recognizes him without fear, lies on the ground, and asks him to cover her. In frustration, the man part of the centaur looks at the woman longingly and then runs away bemoaning his fate. The villagers reach the woman and carry her away crying and wrapped in a blanket.

The whole country becomes aware of the centaur's existence, and people set out to capture him. The centaur travels south all night, and at daybreak he finds himself on top of a mountain with a view of the sea. After enjoying a moment of peace, the centaur hears a shot, and as men advance toward him with nets and other gear, the centaur rears up and slips on the edge of the slope, falling to his death. The centaur lands on a jutting edge of rock, which cuts through him exactly at the conjunction of his human and horse parts. As he lies dying, the man looks at the sky as if it were a sea and feels himself finally as a man and only a man. He sees the gods approaching and knows it is time to die.

Characters

The Centaur

An unnamed centaur is the protagonist of the story. Half-man and half-horse, he is the lone survivor of the mythical species, which according to the story existed in numbers, until Heracles defeated the centaurs in an epic battle thousands of years ago. This centaur managed to escape Heracles and has roamed the Earth ever since, evading capture or being killed by human beings. The centaur is a divided creature, with both human and horse parts, which are essentially at odds with one another. In the story, the narrator sometimes refers to just the man or the horse, as each part of the centaur has its own desires, needs, and wills. The horse embodies the animal part of the centaur, with bodily needs such as thirst and raw emotions such as fear. The man expresses more complex emotions and does all the thinking for the centaur. Lonely, exhausted from persecution, and perpetually frustrated, the centaur is the last of the mythical creatures to survive in the modern world.

The Mob

Two mobs of humans or villagers appear in the story, each time trying to kill the centaur out of hatred and fear.

The Woman

An unnamed woman appears toward the end of the story. The centaur happens upon her as she emerges from bathing in a river and grabs her much to her dismay. Although she screams and weeps at first, the woman seems to lose her fear of the centaur after he talks to her. She recognizes what he is and that he exists.

Themes

Dualism

One of the major themes of the story is the tension between the physical and the mental parts of the self. Throughout the story, Saramago under-scores how these two sides of the character compete with one another for control, as the animal half expresses simple needs such as thirst, while the human half expresses more complex desires and thoughts. The author sometimes even refers to each part of the centaur separately as "the horse" and "the man," emphasizing how distinct they are. The human part of the centaur experiences great frustration as he is unable to fully realize his humanity until the very end of the story, after competing impulses in the centaur result in his falling to his death. A symbolic character, the centaur represents the human condition, as human beings continually struggle for reconciliation between the physical and mental parts of the self.

Loneliness and Isolation

The story's protagonist, the centaur, is an essentially lonely creature. The only survivor of his kind, he has been wandering the world alone for millennia, ever since Heracles killed the rest of his race. Although at one time the centaur had the company of other mythological creatures, he has persisted alone for thousands of years, evading persecution by human beings who fear and hate him. He experiences this state of exile or extreme isolation, because of his difference and is doomed to travel in the dark alone until he dies. Thus, the story dramatizes how someone who is fundamentally different from the majority is excluded and isolated.

Wilderness

The wilderness is a safe haven for the centaur and other mythological beings. When they first experience persecution by humans, these creatures lived together in the wilderness. However, the narrator states that after a while, even the wilderness was encroached upon and the creatures had to disperse with some of them becoming extinct and the others adapting in order to live among people. The centaur alone managed to persist for millennia as a remnant from a more mysterious age. At the end of the story, as he stands on top of a mountain looking out toward the sea, the centaur imagines that he is once again in a world that appears "to be a wilderness waiting to be populated." He is wrong. The world has changed, and soon afterward, the centaur falls to his death. As a motif, the wilderness represents an earlier, less civilized world, in which the fantastical could exist peacefully.

Modern Times

Another theme of the story is how modern times exclude or disregard the fantastical. The narrator of the story points out that for ages, people welcomed the centaur as a special creature, promoting fertility and virility. Then the world changed, becoming less mysterious or rather intolerant and uninterested in the fantastical. When this happened, the centaur and other mythological creatures such as the unicorn and the chimera were banished and forced to flee from people. The events of the story take place in some time in the twentieth century, as the narrator mentions army helicopters preparing to hunt down the centaur at the end of the story. In modern times, the centaur experiences violence and hatred at the hands of human beings who do not understand him.

Style

Setting

The short story takes place in an unspecified land sometime in the twentieth century, after the invention of helicopters. The reader can guess that the native country the centaur returns to at the end of the story may be Greece, as the centaur's species was wiped out by Heracles, a hero in ancient Greek mythology. The mountainous land is close to the sea.

Point of View and Conflict

The story is told from the third-person point of view, with an unnamed narrator relating the events. The primary conflict in the story is internal, with the protagonist of the story, the centaur, struggling to reconcile his animal and human impulses. The human part of the centaur, in particular, strives to realize his humanity. The story's central conflict becomes resolved when the centaur falls to his death, landing on a rock and splitting into his distinct animal and human halves. As he lies dying, the half-man experiences relief, as he is finally separated from his animal side.

Allusion

Saramago alludes to the novel Don Quixote, when the narrator describes the centaur's greatest adventure as witnessing the fictional character of the same name fighting windmills. The reference is to the seventeenth-century work by Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, a forerunner of the modern novel which explores the tension between illusion and reality.

Motifs

Saramago uses the motifs of the sea and the sky to represent the centaur's goal or final destiny. (A motif is a recurring image or object that unifies a work.) After waking from a dream, the centaur hears the sound of the sea, which is a "vision of beating waves which his eyes have transformed into those sonorous waves which travel over the waters and climb up rocky gorges all the way to the sun and the blue sky which is also water." Here and elsewhere, Saramago conflates the images of sky and sea, so that they become one in the centaur's experience. The centaur's vision of sky and sea foreshadows his ultimate vision. Right before falling, he stands on a mountain from which he can see the sea. As he lies dying at the end of the story, the man-half looks up at the sky, which appears to be an "ever deepening sea overhead, a sea with tiny, motionless clouds that were islands, and immortal life." The sea toward which he had been moving suggests immortality.

Another type of body of water, the river, signals change in the story. The centaur walks along a riverbed several times in the story, and upon entering a river to cross it, he appears to be merely a man, as his horse-half is hidden underwater. The river moves the centaur toward humanity, and not too long after fording the river, the centaur sees a naked woman emerging from the same river. He notes that it is the first time he had seen a naked woman in his home country, and seeing her awakens human desires. Here again, the river serves to change the centaur momentarily, emboldening his human half.

Symbolism

The centaur can be considered a symbol, representing the dilemma of the human condition in which people struggle to reconcile their physical and mental or spiritual sides.

Historical Context

Saramago wrote and first published "The Centaur" in Portuguese in his short story collection Objecto Quase (Almost an Object) in 1978. At that time, Portugal had just emerged from nearly fifty years of fascist rule. On April 25, 1974, a triumphant revolution ended the dictatorships of António de Oliveira Salazar and his successor Marcelo Caetano. During the fascist rule of these dictators, Portuguese writers experienced repression and censorship and witnessed the effects of Portugal's colonial wars in Africa during the 1960s and early 1970s. The ill effects of those wars on Portuguese citizens led to the military coup of 1974 known as the Revolution of the Carnations, which resulted in democratic rule in Portugal and independence for Portugal's former African colonies.

Saramago wrote this story and most of his other works during this post-revolutionary period in Portugal, which was initially marked by zealous revolutionary ideals and later characterized by more moderate Western European parliamentary methods. In his other writings, Saramago has often turned to Portuguese history as a source of inspiration, partly in order to reclaim and re-envision a history, which had become distorted by the official rhetoric of the ruling dictatorships. A committed Communist Party member and social activist, Saramago is the leading writer of Portugal's post-revolutionary generation.

"The Centaur" takes place in an indeterminate time, although one can conclude that the temporal setting is the twentieth century due to the references to army helicopters. Saramago may have chosen to make the time ambiguous to emphasize the setting as the modern age, as opposed to ancient times when the world appeared full of mystery. One of the themes of the story is how modern times exclude the possibility of the fantastical, with people misunderstanding and fearing the centaur. The author may have left the exact time of the story unspecified in order to highlight how people lost a sense of wonder long ago, much to the detriment of humankind. Although the story is not linked specifically to the time in which Saramago wrote it, the theme of an individual being persecuted for his difference resonates with the conditions Saramago worked under prior to the 1974 revolution.

Critical Overview

Because Saramago is mostly known as a novelist, the bulk of the criticism about his writings focuses on his many novels, which have been translated into over thirty languages and have been praised worldwide. Although the overtly political nature of some of his works has provoked censure from conservative critics who have denounced his writings as Communistic and anti-religious, many reviews of Saramago's work have been positive. According to the official Nobel Prize website, in awarding the author the Nobel Prize in 1998, the Swedish Academy lauded the author, "who with parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony continually enables us once again to apprehend an elusory reality."

Many critics have noted Saramago's use of universal themes and his drive to portray common human experiences. Writing in Portuguese Studies Luis Rebelo de Sousa states, "Next to the innovatory character of Saramago's style—a style that keeps changing—lies the universal appeal of his work. He chooses for his fiction themes of universal appeal, dealing with questions of deep human resonance." Similarly, Saramago's translator Giovanni Pontiero, in his introduction to a section devoted to Saramago in a 1994 issue of the Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, emphasizes the author's ability to convey the full spectrum of human experience: "Convinced that the writer's task is to look behind the scenes, Saramago uncovers every facet of human experience. His novels instill a keen awareness of human aspirations and failures, for human destiny is the ultimate concern in each and every one of his books. Man, for Saramago, is a remarkable creature but he can only achieve his true potential in a climate of truth and freedom."

In his review of Almost an Object in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, José N. Ornelas also highlights Saramago's humanism: "The volume, which comprises six short stories mixing the fantastic and science fiction, focuses on themes that are valuable to the writer, such as the struggle against consumer society and totalitarian systems that have stripped individuals of their humanity and/or subjectivity and are the direct cause of their alienation." In a rare review of the short story "The Centaur" published in Hispania, Haydn Tiago Jones notes how Saramago begins to explore themes and devices in this story that later appear in his novels: "In the genre of short stories, José Saramago introduced the fantastical devices prevalent in his longer works. These devices include the introduction of figures usually associated with fairy tales, and the endowment of characters with quasi magical powers."

Criticism

Anna Maria Hong

Anna Maria Hong is a published poet and an editor of the fiction and memoir anthology Growing Up Asian American. In the following essay, Hong discusses how Saramago uses the mythical figure of the centaur to explore the themes of isolation and the tension between the physical and spiritual sides of humanity.

Like much of Saramago's fiction, "The Centaur" blends the fantastical with the actual to explore themes common to all humanity. One of the central themes of the story concerns how people struggle to reconcile their physical and spiritual needs, even as they grapple with external forces that threaten their survival. Saramago illustrates the internal conflict between parts of the self through the story's protagonist, an unnamed centaur, who literally embodies the split, as he possesses the mind and upper body of a man and the lower body of a horse.

Throughout the story, the two halves of the centaur vie for dominance or control, and the centaur experiences his conflicting needs in a moment-to-moment kind of way. Saramago emphasizes how distinct the human and the horse parts of the centaur are by frequently referring to each part separately as "the man" and "the horse." Conflicts arise between the two halves, as they possess different kinds of desires. The animal half expresses physical needs such as wanting to quench thirst, while the human half experiences more complex longings such as the desire for revenge and love.

Sometimes, the needs of one half of the centaur are easily accommodated by the other half, as when the man half drinks from a stream to quench the horse half's thirst. Although the man does not feel thirsty, he can help the animal part without too much trouble. However, at other times, easy solutions evade the centaur. For example, the man finds himself perpetually fatigued, because finding a comfortable sleeping position for both the horse and the man is so difficult. The narrator states, "It was not a comfortable body. The man could never stretch out on the ground, rest his head on folded arms and remain there studying the ants or grains of earth, or contemplate the whiteness of a tender stalk sprouting from the dark soil." In descriptions such as this one, Saramago makes it clear that it is usually the human side of the centaur which suffers. The man half exists in a body that precludes comfort, but more than that, he is denied the pleasures of a full human, which would include being able to contemplate his surroundings in a leisurely way.

Perhaps the most frustrating thing for the human part of the centaur is his inability to connect with other creatures. The lone survivor of the once mighty race of centaurs, the centaur has been roaming the world alone for millennia, traveling by night to avoid detection by people. Saramago emphasizes that this state of extreme solitude was not always the centaur's lot, as he was once accepted and even embraced by human beings who regarded the centaur as a magical being with the power to promote fertility and virility. The centaur and other mythological creatures such as the unicorn and giant ants were free to travel openly and lived in harmony with people "so long as the world itself remained mysterious." The centaur's situation of perpetual exile occurred as a result of the world's losing its sense of mystery. The narrator notes that following this abrupt change, the centaur and other fantastical creatures of yore were persecuted and banished from the human world. Although they at first banded together, eventually only one centaur remained of his kind.

Saramago thus portrays the centaur's state of alienation as a direct result of humanity's transition into the modern age. The narrator stresses that at some point in the past few millennia, the centaur discovered that there was nowhere he could travel safely anymore. In his encounters with people, the centaur is consistently hunted by angry mobs with firearms and dogs. Rather than being recognized as a magical being, he is denigrated and loathed for his difference, and as he thinks about his situation, the centaur ruminates on "that incomprehensible hatred." In the modern age, people are intolerant of the fantastical, and in his depiction of the centaur's existence, Saramago underscores how violently people shun difference.

Ultimately, the centaur is unable to find fulfillment due to a combination of internal and external reasons. He is limited by his extraordinary body, which denies him full access to his own humanity. However, his state of internal conflict is severely complicated by the human world in which he lives. Long ago, people decimated his kind, leaving him to fend for himself for thousands of years. Over the millennia, as the expansion of human society encroached upon the wilderness where he could live safely, the centaur became increasingly marginalized, lonely, and exhausted.

The human part of the centaur's loneliness and longing for solace are depicted clearly when the centaur encounters a woman. Having never seen a woman before in his native land, to which he has just returned, the centaur grabs her and runs with her in his arms, inciting a chase by a mob of villagers. The woman is initially terrified, but after the centaur speaks to her and asks her not to hate him, the woman speaks kindly to him. Seeming to recognize him as he is, the woman lies on the ground and asks him to cover her, but the centaur recognizes that connecting with her physically is impossible. After looking at her for a moment, he continues to run away from the mob, with the man part of the centaur lamenting his state of perpetual frustration and isolation.

Soon after his encounter with the woman, the centaur dies, falling to his death from a precipice and landing on a sharp rock, which cuts him in two exactly at the spot where the man and the horse are joined. Once again, in this final instance, Saramago makes it clear that the centaur's death results from both his internal and external struggles. Outwardly, he is being hunted by people who want to capture him with nets, ropes, nooses, and staffs. Having found love impossible for a final time, he falls to his death because he cannot resolve the battle for control between his two halves. As the narrator notes, "The horse reared into the air, shook its front hooves and swung round in a frenzy to face his enemies. The man tried to retreat. Both of them struggled, behind and in front." The struggle ends with the centaur falling into the abyss.

With this conclusion, Saramago emphasizes how the competing impulses of physical and mental or spiritual cannot be sustained. The conflict ends with a definite separation of the two sides, and with the man finally freed into his full humanity. As he lies dying, the severed man seems to have a transcendent moment, as he watches the sky, which appears to be the sea that he had been moving toward all along. The story ends with the man examining himself for the last time: "The man turned his head from one side to the other: nothing but endless sea, an interminable sky. Then he looked at his body. It was bleeding. Half a man. A man. And he saw the gods approaching. It was time to die."

As he leaves the body that has burdened him for so long, the man experiences relief as well as the contemplative peace that has previously eluded him. He is finally able to lie on his back and view his surroundings in a leisurely way, without having to run anymore. For the centaur, death is the only solution, as the modern world will not accommodate his particular struggle. He is reviled, not only as a strange remnant of a former time, but also perhaps as a thinking being that wants more than it can have.

As a symbolic character, the centaur dramatizes the human condition, as Saramago seems to indicate that the spiritual side of human beings is constantly under siege from both the demands of the physical body and the miscomprehension of others who leave little room for recognizing extraordinary phenomena such as the movement of clouds or the travails of a centaur. The centaur remains thoughtful, perceptive, and utterly alone to the very end.

Source: Anna Maria Hong, Critical Essay on "The Centaur," in Short Stories for Students, Thomson Gale, 2006.

Luis de Sousa Rebelo

In the following paper delivered on the occasion of the celebration for Saramago's Nobel Prize in December 1998, Rebelo surveys Saramago's novels, identifying the original stylistic and thematic elements that make him a great writer.

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Source: Luis de Sousa Rebelo, "A Tribute to Jose Saramago," in Portugese Studies, Vol. 15, 1999, pp. 178-81.

Giovanni Pontiero

In the following interview, Saramago discusses with Giovanni Pontiero his approach, his style, and the content of his writing.

[Giovanni Pontiero:] Sr. Saramago, you started publishing your major novels late in life, at least relatively late for a writer of your stature and output. Were there sporadic publications before the appearance of your novel Levantado do Chão [Raised From The Ground], first published in 1980?

[Jose Saramago:] Leaving aside my first book, a novel, which appeared in 1947 when I was only twenty-five years of age, and which I do not include nowadays in my list of works, my literary activity started in 1966 with the publication of a book of poems Os Poemas Possíveis [Possible Poems]. But by 1980 I had published nine more books (two books of poetry, two collections of chronicles, two collections of political essays, a novel, a collection of short stories and a play). It's true that I started to write late in life, but less late than you imagine if you start counting from the first of my more important novels.

How would you describe your initial development as a writer?

I was eighteen years of age when, during one of those conversations between adolescents which are one of life's greatest pleasures, I told the friends I was with that I should like to become a writer. By that time all I had written were sentimental and dramatic poems typical of the poetry young people wrote at that time. Probably the most important thing for my future as a writer was my love of reading from an early age.

Your major novels seem to take us back to the tradition of classical fiction in terms of scope, thematic richness, wealth of ideas and associations.

That might be claiming too much and I'm certainly not the best person to reply, since I'd have to be my own judge and advocate. It is true, however, that for me the novel is inseparable from a certain sense of breadth and comprehensiveness, rather like a tiny universe which expands and starts gathering and assimilating all the errant 'bodies' it encounters, sometimes contradictory, but finally capable of being harmonised. From this point of view, the novel, as I understand and practise it, should always tend towards the 'excessive.' Now then, 'excess,' at least in principle, should be incompatible with the 'classical' if the facts weren't there to prove otherwise: 'classical' novels are, as a general rule, 'excessive'…

While your books are vastly entertaining, they make real demands on the reader in terms of knowledge and curiosity.

It pleases me to know that my novels make the reader think. As for me, I thought a great deal while I was writing them. I thought as best I could and knew, and I should be disappointed if readers didn't find something more than the entertaining narrative I've also provided. If the entertainment has some value in itself, that value is greatly enhanced when the story becomes a passport to reflection.

You exercised various professions, mechanic, technical designer, literary editor and journalist before becoming a professional writer. Have these had any influence on your formation as a writer?

I don't think any of the various professional activities I have exercised have helped with my formation as a writer. They certainly helped to make me the man I am, along with many other factors, some perhaps identifiable, others of which I'm no longer aware. Who knows, perhaps simply by being a child sitting on a riverbank and watching the water flow past. That child will one day become a writer without ever knowing why.

At one point in A Jangada de Pedra [The Stone Raft] you state that 'the objectivity of the narrator is a modern invention.' Could I ask you to comment on this concept, given your own clear preference for a non-objective stance?

I shouldn't call it a concept, merely the formulation of the attitude adopted by the author when he identifies with the narrator and who, more often than not, deliberately takes his place. I'm opposed to a certain idea, which is fashionable nowadays, of an absent, impartial and objective narrator, who limits himself to registering impressions without reacting to them himself. Probably all this has to do with my inability (unpardonable from a theoretical point of view) to separate the narrator from the author himself.

The writer and critic Irving Howe in his review of Memorial do Convento (translated into English under the title Baltasar and Blimunda) described you as 'a connoisseur of ironies.' Undoubtedly, there is a strong vein of satire in your writing. I suspect that you enjoy being provocative especially where you refer to politicians and plutocrats.

Irony, let's face it, is a poor safeguard against power and its abuses, whether that power be political, economic, or religious, just to give some examples. A great Portuguese novelist of the last century, Eça de Queiroz, once wrote that one way to overthrow an institution was to go round it three times with howls of laughter. I'm much less optimistic. Irony is like whistling as you walk through a cemetery at night: we think we can ignore death thanks to that tiny human sound which ill conceals fear. But it's also true that if we should lose the capacity of being ironic we should find ourselves completely disarmed.

How do you view the relationship between text and sub-text in your novels, with the frequent parentheses and cross-references?

That's a difficult question. As difficult as asking a tennis player, for example, how he executes a particular move. In reply, he would most likely repeat the move in slow motion before our eyes while explaining it step by step, breaking down, as it were, into fixed images what had previously been only one fluent and effective movement. The writer, I suppose, cannot observe himself as he is writing, nor do I believe that, once confronted with the written page, he is capable of analysing a relationship as complicated as the one your question raises. Molière, on bringing his 'bourgeois gentilhomme' to the conclusion that he was speaking prose without knowing it, wasn't merely presenting us with a situation, comic to the point of absurdity. There is more knowledge in the not-knowing than we imagine.

Your novels take us into a number of different worlds where we meet an impressive range of characters both real and fictitious. Your narratives are peopled by monarchs, poets, priests, artists, musicians, the professional classes, workers and peasants. Yet in the final analysis, for you, as for writers like Colombia's García Márquez and Russia's Solzhenitsyn 'the poor are the salt of the earth.' I refer to the 'poor in spirit' rather than those who are simply poor in material terms.

I don't think that the positions of García Márquez and Solzhenitsyn coincide on this point. I even believe they're referring to quite different things: whereas the Colombian writer would look for a primary and immutable innocence in his characters, the Russian, after establishing an implacable inventory of evils and crimes, would try to restore that innocence to those who had definitely lost it. As for me, who was born poor and am not rich, what drives me is to show that the worst waste is not that of consumer goods, but that of simple humanity: millions of human beings trampled underfoot by History, millions and millions of people who possessed nothing other than life itself, which was of such little use to them, yet much exploited by others, the clever, the strong, the powerful.

Your technique as a novelist is quite distinctive. On the one hand, you have a marked preference for austerity: punctuation limited to commas and full stops without any dashes, colons, semicolons, interrogation or exclamation marks. You rarely use the conjunctions and or but. On the other hand, you betray a penchant for baroque structures, circular oratory and ornate symmetrical patterns.

All the characteristics of my technique at present (I'd prefer to use the word style) stem from a basic principle whereby everything said is destined to be heard. What I am trying to say is that I see myself as an oral narrator when I write and that the words written by me are intended as much to be read as to be heard. Now, the oral narrator doesn't use punctuation, he speaks as if he were composing music and uses the same elements as the musician: sounds and pauses, high or low, some short, others long. Those tendencies which I acknowledge and endorse (baroque structures, circular oratory, symmetrical patterns), I suppose stem from a certain idea of an oral discourse accepted as music. I ask myself if there may not even be something more than a simple coincidence between the disorganized and fragmentary nature of spoken discourse today and the 'minimalist' expression of modern music.

Critics have commented on the amount of detail in your novels. How do you set about controlling so much detail as the narrative evolves?

I have no special method or discipline. Words emerge, one after another, in strict sequence, out of a kind of organic necessity, to put it loosely. But there is inside me a scale, a norm, which permits me to control, one might almost say intuitively, the 'economy' of detail. In principle, the logical I is open to all possibilities, but the intuitive I governs itself with its own laws which the other I has learnt to obey. All of this is clearly unscientific, unless as part of another involuntary and inherent science, impossible to define by someone like myself who simply practises the craft of writing.

Comparing the three major novels with which I have been closely involved as a translator, like all your readers I am impressed by your powers of invention. Memorial do Convento [Annals of the Convent], O Ano da Morte de Ricardo Reis [The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis] and A Jangada de Pedra [The Stone Raft] are all three vintage Saramago, yet each of these novels constitutes a fresh adventure, a new direction, a different perspective. Is there some point of unity here which you yourself judge to be important?

It's generally said (and so many people say it that there must be some validity) that the author is the person least qualified to define what he has written, that the intentions which moved him to write are one thing and the final result another, where the so-called intentions (which the author nearly always insists on defending as being paramount in his work) end up by becoming secondary because of the emergence of the subconscious, the aleatory, the humoral, through which he has come to express his deep desire. It is in this domain of intentions (perhaps unfulfilled) that I should look for this point of unity: the attempt to reconcile two opposites—compassion and radical scepticism.

In A Jangada de Pedra, in one of the most poetic and poignant passages in the entire novel, an anonymous voice reminds us that: 'Each of us sees the world with the eyes we possess, and our eyes see what they want to see.'

The phrase would be more precise if written as follows: 'Each of us sees the world with the eyes we possess, and our eyes see what they can.' Wanting to, as we know, is not the same as being able to.

Could I ask you to comment on one recurring image, that of the journey—either in the form of a pilgrimage, exodus, migration or private journey in search of one's past?

Perhaps something of my own nature is expressed in this. In fact, as a person I'm really somewhat sedentary, and the proof of this is that for me to make a journey is rather like pursuing the path that will lead me back to the point of departure. On arriving at any place, I immediately begin to feel the need to get away from there. I'm convinced that the characters in my novels travel a lot because they want to return to where they were, that place where, in the final analysis, they are.

Your use of topography intrigues me. On the surface there are carefully researched locations, landmarks and itineraries. Beneath the surface these are unmistakably linked to states of mind and feeling.

If in the Memorial do Convento Blimunda kills the friar who tried to rape her, it was because in that part of the sierra the author found the ruins of a convent; if in Jangada de Pedra the lands of Orce are described in great detail, that's because the author travelled more than a thousand kilometres to see them with his own eyes. And there is also the fundamental question of names: of inhabited places, of rivers, of mountains. They are the names, the words, that clothe the world of the spirit.

Gabriel García Márquez once observed that every author, however prolific, in fact only writes one book. He then went on to say that his was the book of solitude. Would you agree? And how would you define your own books collectively?

I believe authors write because, to put it very simply, we do not want to die. Therefore I would say that the book we persist in writing, one in many or all in one, is the book of survival. Needless to say, we are fighting a lost battle: nothing survives.

Jorge Luis Borges has also left us a much-quoted maxim in which he states that: 'Any great and lasting book must be ambiguous.' I find a strong current of ambiguity running through your novels.

Key phrases uttered by famous authors always leave me somewhat cold. Taken out of context, isolated from the work as a whole, they become somewhat contentious and intimidating, and somehow paralyse our own thinking. Ambiguity in a book, if not a defect, should not be considered a virtue to the extent of making it a condition of lasting value. I see things as being much simpler: the ambiguity of authors is what makes the ambiguity of books. And most likely ambiguity is really something inherent in the act of writing. In which case we really ought to look for other factors before deciding whether a book is important or not.

Sex and religion are examined from every possible angle in your fiction. But I want to ask you more specifically about your interest in supernatural forces, in things prodigious and mysterious; one critic even speaks of mysticism in your work.

Things supernatural, prodigious, mysteries, are simply the things I ignore. One day the supernatural will become natural, the prodigious will be within everyone's grasp, the mystery will cease to exist. The problem is solely between me and the knowledge I possess, and, from this point of view, the computer on which I write my books strikes me as being every bit as enigmatic as life after death. I am not a mystic. If I speak so much about religion, it's because it exists, and above all, because it conditioned and still conditions my moral being. But, being an atheist, I always say that one needs a fair dose of religion in order to make a coherent atheist.

Looking at Portugal's fortunes from the days of mighty empire to dwindling power and influence, you would appear to regret not so much her loss of importance and influence in the political sphere as the danger of losing one's national identity.

The Europe of the Common Market is a holding company with large and small shareholders. Power is in the hands of the rich, the small countries have no choice other than to abide by and fulfil the policies which are, in fact, decided by the large countries, even if there is the appearance of democracy. Today, being in the right means having money. The recent gathering of the Seven Richest Countries In The World is, in my opinion, an obscenity, all the more flagrant insofar as it took place during the commemorative celebrations of a revolution which launched an ideal of liberty, equality and fraternity throughout the world, but which has now become nothing more than a tragic mockery. To give but one example, seventy per cent of the forestation area of my country will be used to plant eucalyptus, not because the Portuguese people want it, but because it has been decreed by the E.E.C.

Portugal looms large in your writing. Your country's history and destiny, her people and their aspirations are evoked with a degree of passion and genuine concern.

If I were North-American, Russian or British, or German or French, perhaps I'd feel proud of my country's power and wealth, even if I reaped no benefits or compensations from that wealth and power. As a Portuguese, I feel it would now be idle to take pride in the power and influence which Portugal once enjoyed. Our present is what confronts us: supranationality, limitation of sovereignty, diverse acculturation. I should like at least to preserve my difference, because, frankly, if the World and Europe are not interested in knowing who I am (I, Portuguese, We, Portuguese), I'm not particularly interested in being a citizen of the World or even a European.

In your essay published in the TLS (December, 1988) under the title 'A Country Adrift,' there was one sentence which made a deep impression. I refer to those arresting words: 'Every manner of crime has been committed in the name of patriotism.' An accusation inevitably linked to your open distrust of Eurocentrism.

I think these words are self-evident. When you send thousands or millions of people to their death with the pretext that the Fatherland is in danger—although what's really in danger are the individual interests of those who, directly or indirectly, hold power—that is a crime committed in the name of patriotism. People go to their deaths thinking they know why, and they are deceived to such an extent that they accuse of being unpatriotic anyone who tries to tell them the truth.

After absorbing your intimate portrait of Portugal and her people, I'm almost persuaded that 'small is truly beautiful.'

Small is not beautiful simply because it's small. It's beautiful if it enjoys justice and happiness. But small countries cannot, in fact, be as ambitious as big countries nearly always are. A small country, by dint of much effort, can only hope to get closer to achieving happiness and justice. The worst thing is that there are plenty of small countries in the world which are deprived of both justice and happiness.

At one point in A Jangada de Pedra you write: 'Life itself enjoys cultivating a sense of the dramatic.' Does this account for your own keen sense of the dramatic in your writing, whether farcical or tragic?

I don't have a dramatic concept of existence, or rather, I have it, but I de-dramatize it through irony. I try as hard as possible to avoid turning life into a Wailing Wall: to have to die is misfortune enough, but even that has its hour.

Have any of your own plays been performed on the stage?

Yes, I have written for the theatre, although I don't see myself as a playwright but rather as a novelist who occasionally writes for the theatre on request. I have written three plays to date, and all three have been performed on stage: A Noite [The Night] (where the action takes place in a newspaper office during the night of 24th to 25th April 1974), Que Farei Com Este Livro? [What Shall I Do With This Book?] (in which the protagonist is Luís de Camões after his return from India, when he was looking for a publisher for his epic poem) and A Segunda Vida de Francisco de Assis [The Second Life of Francis of Assisi] (the hero is, and is not, the saint).

In May, 1990, an opera entitled Blimunda, based on your novel Memorial do Convento, will be given its première at La Scala, Milan. Can you tell me something about Azio Corghi, the composer of the opera?

Azio Corghi is one of Italy's most prominent contemporary composers. He has mainly composed music for opera and ballet. His opera Gargantua, based on Rabelais and staged several years ago, caused quite a stir in musical circles.

Have you been involved in the preparation of the libretto?

The libretto of Blimunda was prepared by Azio Corghi and based on the Italian translation of Memorial do Convento. Any intervention on my part was limited to a general exchange of ideas and helping to find solutions for the dramatic expression of certain situations in the novel once adapted for the opera.

Who would you cite as important influences on your work?

Although this statement might sound absurdly pretentious, I don't recognise any significant influences on my work, except perhaps of certain affinities with Portuguese writers of the seventeenth century.

Who are the writers with whom you feel a certain affinity of temperament and outlook?

Gogol, Montaigne, Cervantes, all of them pessimists, and Padre António Vieira, who was a practical Utopian.

In your contribution to the B.B.C. television series of programmes about Portugal and the Portuguese, you expressed certain fears about literacy and culture. Could I ask you to elaborate on the crisis as you see it?

I suspect that this concern is not confined to Portugal. The number of illiterates in the world is growing. And in this day and age, there exists a very large number of people who have been taught to read and write but who, because of lack of continuity in reading and writing, effectively end up with the illiterate majority. This state of affairs probably suits the super-powers wherever they may be, for all they require to maintain and extend their predominance is to rely on the services of highly specialized minorities who monopolise the skills and means which permit a global vision, without which tactics cannot be defined, let alone strategies.

In recent years, a considerable number of talented Portuguese writers have come to the fore. Worldwide interest in the centenary celebrations to mark the birth of your great poet Fernando Pessoa may have helped to focus greater attention on Portuguese literature in recent years. But perhaps there are other reasons for this sudden interest abroad?

One cannot deny the influence Fernando Pessoa has exerted and continues to exert in the recent projection of Portuguese literature abroad, but it would be a mistake to imagine everything begins and ends with Pessoa. What is interesting to note, within proper limits, is that the Portuguese writers who came after Pessoa have matched up to the expectations aroused by Pessoa's writing. In other words, while no contemporary Portuguese writer aspires to the greatness of a Pessoa, their works nevertheless appear to the outside world as being worthy of attention. It's also possible that a certain crisis in creative writing in some countries has also contributed to this tiny discovery of a peripheral literature: the principle of communicating vessels is not the exclusive domain of physics.

I suspect that even you must be surprised at the ever increasing interest in your fiction abroad. Your novel Memorial do Convento, for example, soon to be appearing in as many as twenty-five different languages.

Frankly, I don't know. One day, conversing with my German publisher, I asked him why he had become interested in the books of an author hitherto unknown in the Federal Republic of Germany, an author originating from a small, remote country with a literature virtually ignored by the rest of Europe. He replied by explaining that he was looking for unconventional novels to publish and that he had found them in my work. I can only offer you this explanation for what it's worth and which isn't mine.

Your latest novel O Cerco de Lisboa [The Siege of Lisbon] looks like equalling the success of your other novels. Is there any other novel on the way?

The title of my next novel will be O Evangelho Segundo Jesus Cristo [The Gospel According to Jesus Christ]. I leave the rest to the reader's imagination.

Source: Giovanni Pontiero, "Interview with Jose Saramago," in PN Review, Vol. 16, No. 4, 1989, pp. 38-42.

Sources

De Sousa, Luis Rebelo, "A Tribute to José Saramago," in Portuguese Studies, Vol. 15, 1999, pp. 178-81.

Jones, Haydn Tiago, Review of "Centauro," in Objecto Quase, in Hispania, Vol. 82, No. 1, March 1999, pp. 5-6.

Ornelas, José N., "José Saramago," in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 287: Portuguese Writers, edited by Monica Rector and Fred M. Clark, Thomson Gale, 2004, pp. 280-97.

Pontiero, Giovanni, "José Saramago: An Introduction," in Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, Vol. LXXI, No. 1, January 1994, pp. 115-17.

Saramago, José, "The Centaur," in Telling Tales, edited by Nadine Gordimer, Picador, 2004, pp. 15-34.

Tesser, Carmen Chaves, ed., "Introduction" to "A Tribute to José Saramago, 1998 Nobel Literature Laureate," in Hispania, Vol. 82, No. 1, March 1999, p. 1.

Further Reading

Bloom, Harold, ed., José Saramago, Chelsea House Publishers, 2005.

This collection contains an introduction by literary critic Harold Bloom and several scholarly essays by various critics on the author's works, focusing mostly on the major novels.

Bulfinch, Thomas, Bulfinch's Mythology, Modern Library, 1998.

During the nineteenth century, Bulfinch studied and retold the myths of Greek, Roman, and other cultures in several volumes, three of which have been collected in this useful book, which provides a handy reference to ancient myths, including those of the centaurs.

Cervantes, Miguel de, Don Quixote, Ecco, 2003.

Translated from the Spanish by Edith Grossman, this classic novel tells the adventures of Don Quixote, a romantic and idealistic knight, and his loyal squire Sancho Panza.

Gordimer, Nadine, ed., Telling Tales, Picador, 2004.

Edited by South African Nobel laureate Gordimer, this anthology comprises short stories by a diverse array of writers from around the world, including Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood, Chinua Achebe, Susan Sontag, and Kenzaburo Oe. The book's publishers donate the proceeds to HIV/AIDS preventive education and medical treatment for people suffering from the disease. "The Centaur" appears in this collection.

Hamilton, Edith, Mythology, Little, Brown, 1942.

Hamilton retells Greek, Roman, and Norse myths in this lively and comprehensive book, which includes sections on centaurs and the battle of Lapithae mentioned in Saramago's story.

Tamen, Miguel, and Helena Carvalhao Buescu, eds., A Revisionary History of Portuguese Literature, Garland Publishing, 1998.

This collection of essays explores the history of Portuguese literature from medieval times through the present, providing insight into the development of this literature.