Raising Social Awareness in Saramago´S Novels

International Journal of Language and Literature December 2017, Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 72-78 ISSN: 2334-234X (Print), 2334-2358 (Online) Copyright © The Author(s). All Rights Reserved. Published by American Research Institute for Policy Development DOI: 10.15640/ijll.v5n2a7 URL: https://doi.org/10.15640/ijll.v5n2a7 Raising Social Awareness in Saramago´s Novels Raquel Baltazar1 & Rita Amorim2 Abstract: José Saramago‟s works depict an unfinished and dormant modernity and contribute to a better understanding of the contemporary world, through a local spatiality which soon becomes a social discourse. As stated by the Swedish Academy, Saramago creates “parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony [that] continually enables us once again to apprehend an elusory reality". The universal theme of social identity does not suppress the historical reference, though it emphasizes the consequences of modernity as a decisive factor for the transformation of the global identity. The questioning of the paradigms of social evolution is associated with the absence of human justice, as well as the exploitation and domination of the modern subject through the decrease of freedom, the psychological imprisonment and ideological alienation. Keywords: José Saramago, social identity, social awareness, Nobel Prize, modernity, literature “talvez o romance possa restituir-nos essa vertigem suprema, o alto e extático canto de uma humanidade que ainda não foi capaz, até hoje, de conciliar-se com a sua própria face.” (Saramago 1994: 212-213) “maybe the novel can restore that ultimate vertigo, the high and mighty chant of a humanity who has not yet come to terms with its own image” It is thought that in literature the social theme “is never merely a surface layer […] it is the matrix within which all other terms are fleshed and shaped” (Eagleton 1988: 2) and that it is at the level of the values that literature “is seen to reinforce and illuminate purely sociological material […] it delineates man‟s anxieties, hopes and aspirations, is perhaps one of the most effective sociological barometers of the human response to social forces” (Swingewood 1972: 15-17). The literary text thus emerges as social matter with the capacity to question Man and raise his awareness. José Saramago‟s works portray an unfinished modernity and contribute to a better understanding of the modern world, through a spatiality which is initially local but which spreads rapidly to social discourse. The literary space works as a frame promoting a dialogue that questions the psychological, physical, moral, social, political and historical reality. The universality of this theme does not annul the historical reference, though it does highlight the consequences of modernity as a decisive factor in the transformation of the global identity. The capitalist fever under the form of excess consumption, the decentralization of the basic concepts of human reference previously established by traditional order, the media‟s trivialization of war and death and the fragmentation of time and space, are some of the factors that have socially united the individual citizens of the so-called globalized world or that have led to an attempt at homogenization. Claudio Guillén states that it was from that “tensão entre a integridade do mundo descrito pelas ciências naturais, ou abarcado pelas tecnologias, e a pluralidade de mundos – sociais, políticos, culturais, psíquicos – onde residimos, onde de facto vivemos, que verdadeiramente conhecemos, e que são, ou desenham, o horizonte de humanistas e criadores” (2001: 404). 1 Institute of Social and Political Sciences/ Centre for Comparative Studies (CEC), Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal. 2 Institute of Social and Political Sciences / Centre for Public Policy and Administration (CAPP), Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal. Baltazar & Amorim 73 (tension between the world‟s integrity as described by the natural sciences or embraced by technology and the multiplicity of the social, political, cultural and psychological worlds – we inhabit, we actually live in, we truly know, and which are or shape the horizon of humanists and creators.) In Saramago, the journalistic experience combined with the humanist spirit have left unquestionable marks in his literary works and have simultaneously begun to define themselves as “nexus, temas e obsessões que viriam a ser a coluna vertebral, estruturalmente invariável, de um corpo literário em mudança” (Saramago 1982: 13-14) (nexus, themes and obsessions that would be the structurally unvarying backbone of a changing literary body). A complex combination of ideological commitment and literary activity has resulted in a literary work filled with inter-texts and knowledge resulting from oral tradition. Saramago introduces a set of discursive constructions that question and deconstruct reality in order to question both social and individual identity. As an example, the onomastic designation used as element of identity is, on the one hand, nullified or typified for a social group or structure and, on the other hand, functioning as a symbolic representation of all those rescued from socio-historical oblivion. As he writes in Memorial do Convento/ Baltasar and Blimunda, “tudo quanto é nome de homem vai aqui, tudo quanto é vida também, sobretudo se atribulada, principalmente se miserável, já que não podemos falar-lhes das vidas, por tantas serem, ao menos deixemos os nomes escritos, é essa a nossa obrigação, só para isso escrevemos, torná-los imortais, pois aí ficam, se de nós dependem” (1992: 211). (All Men‟s names are written here, all lives too, especially if troubled, particularly if miserable. Since we cannot speak of such lives, for they are so numerous, at least we write their names. That is our duty, we write to immortalise them. There they shall be, if they depend on us). Saramago‟s most recent novels dwell with the concept of identity in a more significant manner, through a diversity of different sociological registers and a timeless compromise which places the reader in contact with the other. The reflection about identity matters derives from the erasure of identity categorisations, through the suppression of the basic elements to life support associated with onomastic elimination, the shaping of an abstract space and the political and economic powers‟ inability to communicate resulting in repressive behaviours. This thematic elasticity enables a universal reading of the subject‟s constraints nowadays and the use of the word “essay”3 for Saramago‟s novel for fitting into this social questioning. The conscious choice of this word as “auto-exercício da razão” (“self- exercise of reasoning”) enables “tornar inteligíveis as coisas através do auto-exercício das faculdades, da liberdade pessoal, e do esforço constante pelo pensar original” (Moisés 1985:188) (to make things intelligible through the self- exercise of faculties, of personal freedom, and of constant strive for original thought). This expository writing focuses on a vast range of themes based on interpretation, information and explanation with a strong persuasive component associated with the ethic and aesthetic state and aiming to reflect a philosophical and critical perspective. The epistemological and ideological dimensions and the writing‟s timelessness, combined with the wish for a more aware humanity, placed Man as the theme of Saramago‟s narrative as he himself emphasized in the Nobel speech at the Swedish Academy on December 19, 1998: we pervert reason when we humiliate life, that human dignity is insulted every day by the powerful of our world, that the universal lie has replaced the plural truths, that man stopped respecting himself when he lost the respect due to his fellow-creatures.4 The appeal towards active social participation in a fight against its opposite, i.e., collective passiveness, is recurring in several of the Portuguese author‟s notes and in remarks that aim to raise the reader‟s awareness, himself a subject of a dormant modernity. 3The publication of José Saramago‟s novels has very amusing episodes associated to the problematics of the titles of his works.There is an incident with the Angolan government who requested hundreds of copies of Manual de Pintura e Caligrafia / Manual of Painting and Calligraphy(1977)as a learning book. In turn, the title Ensaio sobre a Cegueira has different translations which, for editorial reasons in the majority of the cases, do not use the word “essay” for philosophical and academic reasons. In English the translation is Blindness, in French L’Aveuglement, in Italian Cecità, in German Die Stadt der Blinden. In Saramago‟s work Ensaio sobre a Lucidez there is the same use of the word essay and the correspondent translation in English is Seeing, in French La Lucidité, in Italian Saggio sul la Lucidità and in German Die Stadt der Sehenden. 4 http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1998/saramago-lecture.html. 74 International Journal of Language and Literature, Vol. 5(2), December 2017 If there is no awareness revolution, if people do not shout: “Não aceito ser apenas aquilo que querem fazer de mim, ou não recusarem ser um elemento de uma massa que se move sem consciência de si própria, a Humanidade estará perdida. Não se trata de regressar ao individualismo, mas há que reencontrar o indivíduo num tempo em que se pretende que ele seja menos do que poderia ser” (GómezAguilera 2010: 155). (I refuse to be just what they want to make of me”, or I refuse to be a piece of a mass moving unaware of itself, then Humanity is lost. We do not have to return to individualism, but we have to find the individual again as there is a wish for him to become less than what he could be). In his poetic writing “Se não tenho outra voz” (If I have no other voice), in Os Poemas Possíveis/ Possible Poems, or in the wise words of universalist characters as the old man with the black blindfold in Ensaio sobre a Cegueira/ Blindness, appear intricate subjects with the capacity to articulate different fields of knowledge: Não sei se haverá futuro, do que agora se trata é de saber como poderemos viver neste presente.

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