“The
Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis”
by Jose
Saramago
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jose Saramago, (born
November 16, 1922, Azinhaga, Portugal—died June 18, 2010, Lanzarote,
Canary Islands, Spain), Portuguese novelist and man of letters who was
awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998.
The son of rural labourers, Saramago grew
up in great poverty in Lisbon. After holding a series of jobs as mechanic and
metalworker, Saramago began working in a Lisbon publishing firm and eventually
became a journalist and translator. He joined the Portuguese Communist Party in
1969, published several volumes of poems, and served as editor of a Lisbon
newspaper in 1974–75 during the cultural thaw that followed the overthrow of
the dictatorship of António
Salazar. An anticommunist backlash followed in which Saramago lost his
position, and in his 50s he began writing the novels that would eventually
establish his international reputation.
One of Saramago’s most important novels
is Memorial do convento (1982; “Memoirs of the Convent”; Eng.
trans. Baltasar
and Blimunda). With 18th-century Portugal (during the Inquisition) as a backdrop, it chronicles the
efforts of a handicapped war veteran and his lover to flee their situation by
using a flying machine powered by human will. Saramago alternates this
allegorical fantasy with grimly realistic descriptions of the construction of
the Mafra Convent by thousands of labourers
pressed into service by King John V. Another ambitious novel, O
ano da morte de Ricardo Reis (1984; The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis), juxtaposes the romantic involvements
of its narrator, a poet-physician who returns to Portugal at the start of the
Salazar dictatorship, with long dialogues that examine human nature as revealed
in Portuguese history and culture. Saramago’s practice of setting whimsical
parables against realistic historical backgrounds in order to comment
ironically on human foibles is exemplified in two novels: A
jangada de pedra (1986; The
Stone Raft; film 2002), which explores the situation that ensues
when the Iberian Peninsula breaks off from Europe and becomes an island, and O
evangelho segundo Jesus Cristo (1991; The
Gospel According to Jesus Christ), which posits Christ as an
innocent caught in the machinations of God and Satan. The outspoken atheist’s ironic
comments in The Gospel According to Jesus Christ were deemed too cutting by the Roman
Catholic Church, which pressured the Portuguese government to block the book’s
entry for a literary prize in 1992. As a result of what he considered
censorship, Saramago went into self-imposed exile on the Canary Islands for the
remainder of his life.
Among
Saramago’s other novels are his first, Manual de pintura e caligrafia(1976; Manual
of Painting and Calligraphy), and such subsequent works asHistoria do cerco de Lisboa (1989; The
History of the Siege of Lisbon), Todos os nomes (1997; All
the Names), O homem duplicado (2002; The
Double), As intermitências da morte (2005; Death
with Interruptions), and A viagem do elefante (2008; The
Elephant’s Journey). Ensaio sobre a cegueira (1995; “Essay on Blindness”; Eng.
trans. Blindness; film 2008) and Ensaio
sobre a lucidez (2004;
“Essay on Lucidity”; Eng. trans. Seeing) are companion novels.
In 2012 his novel Claraboya (“Skylight”), which had been written
in the 1950s but languished in a Portuguese publishing house for decades, was
posthumously published.
Saramago also wrote poetry, plays, and
several volumes of essays and short stories, as well as autobiographical works.
His memoir As pequenas memórias (2006; Small
Memories) focuses on his childhood. When he received the Nobel
Prize in 1998, his novels were widely read in Europe but less well known in the
United States; he subsequently gained popularity worldwide. He was the first
Portuguese-language writer to win the Nobel Prize.
ABOUT THE NOVEL
This novel was originally published in Portuguese
in 1984. It isn’t simply a
book about a man’s final year of life; it is an artistic presentation of man’s
relationship to the art, culture, and the circumstances of his times.
This is the story about the final
year of Ricardo Reis, who is the title character. Ricardo is a doctor who has
been living in Brazil, but decides to return to Portugal upon hearing that the
Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa has died. He arrives on a steamship, and
finds a hotel. He checks in, and for some reason, decides to just live there
for 3 months. In the meantime, he develops an affair with a chambermaid, Lydia,
and also develops a friendship with romantic overtones with Marcenda, a young
girl who happens to live in Coimbra and is a frequent guest of the hotel, since
she has been seeking treatment for her paralyzed arm. Three
months pass, and he decides to move on, so he finds an apartment, and decides
to continue his medical practice. His relationship with Lydia continues, albeit
lukewarm. The novel ends with his death, after witnessing a small mutiny that
happens involving three battleships.
Characters
|
|
In the novel...
|
In reality...
|
|
Ricardo Reis
|
·
The
main character of the novel.
·
A
doctor who has emigrated to Brazil, returns to Lisbon at once when he
receives news that Pessoa has died.
|
·
Ricardo
Reis was one of three pseudonyms deployed by Portugal's most admired
modernist poet, Fernando Pessoa.
·
Sums up his
philosophy of life in his own words, admonishing: 'See life from a distance.
Never question it. There's nothing it can tell you.'
|
|
Fernando Pesoa
|
·
A ghost of a Portuguese poet who is dear to
Ricardo Reis. He visited Reis and they chat
away about the ethics of romantic life and death, the nature of art,
individual identity and all kinds of existential notions.
|
· A Portuguese poet, writer, philosopher, literary critic and
translator, described as one of the most significant literary figures of the
20th century and one of the greatest poets in the Portuguese language.
· Famous for his heteronyms, one of his 70
heteronyms is Ricardo Reis.
|
|
Lydia
|
·
A chambermaid of Hotel Braganca whom Reis
developed an affair with.
|
·
The muse in one of Ricardo Reis’ odes.
|
·
Marcenda Sampaio— She is a young girl who is a
frequent guest of the hotel, since she has been seeking treatment for her
paralyzed arm. Ricardo Reis developed companionable love towards her.
·
Dr.
Sampaio—He is an attorney and the father of Marcenda. He keeps on
going to Lisbon from Coimbra for two reasons: for the regular treatment of
Marcenda and for his mistress.
·
Salvador—He
is the manager of the hotel Ricardo Reis stayed in for three months.
Distinctive
Literary Style
The novel is written in Saramago's
distinctive style, in which he uses no punctuation except commas and periods,
denoting dialogue and changes of speaker using only capital letters. He uses
long, flowing sentences and paragraphs often several pages in length. Saramago
also digresses from the story frequently, occasionally even in the first
person, remarking philosophically on the significance of images, objects or
situations encountered in the story.
ANALYSIS
Ø “The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis” is a surreal historical novel.
· Ricardo Reis is a
literary alter ego originally created by the great Portuguese modernist poet
Fernando Pesoa. The very same Ricardo Reis is the protagonist of the novel. The
story appeared surreal because it produced a fantastic imagery by means of
unnatural juxtaposition. The combination of Ricardo Reis the alter ego and
Ricardo Reis the main character presented an unexpected combination.
· The novel is historical in the
sense that it is set at the beginning of the Spanish
revolution, and rise of dictators Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and Salazar. It
densely evoked historical context of encroaching fascism at Portugal and
abroad.
·
Another thing that made
the novel surreal is the juxtaposition of the fantastic and the reality. Reis was visited twelve times by
the ghost of Pessoa and the two have lively discussions on many subjects,
including art, life, politics, religion, and history. The bizarre occurrence happened with the
juxtaposition of the fantastic and the reality. The novel is a combination of the potentially fantastic and
the banal as well as the metaphoric and the everyday.
Ø The novel presented Ricardo Reis’ alienation from the society.
· Alienation is the state in
which a person has completely forgotten his identity and becomes a new person,
alien to his former self. Ricardo Reis
in that case is partially alienated. With his society and even with himself.
This was shown in the novel when he can’t tell who he really is. He also keeps
distance between himself and the other characters. Reis is a wanderer who doesn’t seem content trying to
describe his reasons for returning to Portugal, nor his relationships with two
women, nearly his only contact with the outside world beyond his discussions
with Pessoa. His greatest alienation happened when he loses a clear concept of the
nature of life and death and the difference between the two.
Ø The novel included the
element of supernatural or magical realism.
· These elements are inserted in the story as though they are
fact with little attention drawn to the wonder of the occurrence. In the
novel, the fantastical element is observed in the visitation of Dr.
Reis by his posthumous friend, Fernando Pessoa, the famed Portuguese poet who
died in November 1935, just one month prior to the novel’s beginning.
Throughout the novel Fernando pops in to visit Ricardo, and unlike a ghost,
Fernando has a physical form that is merely unique in that his form is visible
only to those he chooses to view him. Fernando’s appearances are like the
appearance of any other character, he converses with Ricardo, discusses
politics and Ricardo’s feminine exploits, and criticizes the poetic odes that
Ricardo writes to occupy his time.
Ø The novel is a rejection of the traditional narrative.
· The novel is an exercise in
meta-literature. Fernando Pessoa created the character of Ricardo Reis fifty
years or more before this novel was written, giving him a biography and writing
many poems in that name. Saramago placed
the two characters side by side. This suggests a deliberate blurring of the
boundaries between fantasy and reality. The novel has
a multitude of stories framing it, running alongside it or visible just beyond
its borders. in the case of the novel, the fantastical retellings of official
history was used. This is needed to be
included in the story he is telling us to let us imagine or believe we imagine, that what is unfolding in
the labyrinth of his text is one, unending metastory. In this novel, not only is a real-life character made dead,
but a fake character was made alive and able to talk to a dead person.
Ø Methapors
· The town cemetery
-
When
Reis pays a visit to the cemetery where Pessoa is buried, it appears to be a
mirror image of the city itself, whose inhabitants have become deadened and
passive.
· Reis’ gradual loss of the concept of ‘living and death’
-
Ricardo Reis from the start of the novel is presented as a moribund
character. This refers to his gradual detachment from the society.
· The course of time before the death of Reis
-
The time signifies his gradual detachment to the world.
· The death of Ricardo Reis
-
Reis
"dies" by calmly putting on his jacket and following Pessoa to the
graveyard. This shows his attempt to resist any sort of cultural
contextualization and reject any place in society.
-
This
suggests that Reis has taken his place among the living dead of fascist-ruled
Lisbon, on the other hand he has secured a transcendent bond with Pessoa that
is a counterpoint to the terrible times in which he was living. Reis was
content to live a contemplative life in a crisis-torn Lisbon because fascism
was simply not a part of his interior life. His inner exile into a poetic,
literary, and philosophical world secures an identity untouched by the evils of
the day.
PORTUGUESE LITERATURE
Portuguese literature
is distinguished by a wealth of lyrical poetry, prose and verse. Literature has
always been widely celebrated in Portugal and following the Roman occupation
there was an abundance of historical writing that documented the country’s
rulers, conquests and development.
·
cancioneiros ("song-books") evidence a school of love
poetry that spread with the language to Spain at a time when Spanish literature
was as yet undeveloped for lyrical purposes
·
romanceiro was influenced by Spanish literature, though not
sharing the latter's predilection for the heroic.
·
Os Lusiadas by
Luis Vas de Camoes is the most notable of all Portugues epic poem
Common themes in Portuguese Literary works:
·
Pastoral occurrences
·
National identity
·
Historical events
·
idealised and banal daily urban
life
Notable
Writers:
·
Eca de Queiroz
·
Alexandre
O'Neill
WHAT MADE THE YEAR OF THE DEATH OF RICARDO REIS PORTUGUESE
LITERATURE?
Ø The novel
embodied within it historical events, it showed the ordinary living of the
urban people; it is heavy with the context of national identity.
.
PERSONAL EXPERIENCE IN READING THE
NOVEL
While
reading the novel, I would often lose myself in the text, transported by the
fluidity of Saramago’s narration that is light on the punctuation and can
include paragraphs that go on for several pages. At times the narrative
voice would interject opinions smoothly into the description without failing to
lose track of the forward movement of the descriptive process. To provide
an example of this narrative style, read the following passage that depicts a
conversation between Ricardo Reis and his lover, Lydia:
“The
people are like me a hotel chambermaid who has a revolutionary brother and
sleeps with a doctor who is against revolutions. Who taught you to say
these things. When I open my mouth the words are there, its just a matter
of letting them come out. Generally, one thinks before he speaks.
Well perhaps in my case it is like having a baby, which grows without our
noticing it and is born when the time comes. How have you been feeling
lately. If it weren’t for missing my periods, I wouldn’t believe I was
pregnant. You are still determined, then to have the child, My baby boy,
Your baby boy, Yes, and I am not likely to change my mind, Think about it
carefully, But I don’t think.” (324)
The above passage not
only ignores the expected apostrophes to separate dialogue, but towards the end
the back and forth banter is only indicated by a comma followed by a
capitalization of the other character’s first word of dialogue. This
style caused confusion or frustration
for me but then I think this is necessary towards placing the reader in the
mind of Ricardo Reis. For Ricardo Reis is a unique man who admires life
but does not question it. He is an observer who distastes both
traditional and revolutionary thought. He is man that pleasures in being
without question. Saramago uses the narrative style I’ve described above
to paint a view of the world from Reis’s perspective, a perspective that is
both detached and involved.
References:
Jose
Saramago. Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved from http://www.britannica.
com/EBchecked/ topic /523937/Jose-Saramago. September 21, 2012.
Hartnet, Kevin. Poetic Doubles:
A Review of Jose Saramago’s The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis. Retrieved
from http://www.themillions.com/2008/04/poetic-doubles-review-of-jose-saramago.html.
September 29, 2012.
Migtang,
Herbert. Books of the Times: Two Women, One Man, One Poet. Retrieved from http://
www.nytimes.com/books/98/10/04/specials/saramago-reis.html.
September 29, 2012.
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