.

Social and political issues are present as background on all Saramagos's novels. And they have center stage at one of my favorites - "Levantado do Chão" -, a historical saga of the struggles of the rural proletariat in Alentejo (in the South of Portugal).

Saramago is a nice character if, somehow, also a reclusive man, which was aggravated by the petty intrigues of the portuguese literary and political milieu. I have met him a couple of times. He is a longtime CPer and fought well, on his assigned trench (at the editorial board of "Diário de Notícias", the then leading portuguese daily) during the revolution. More recently - late 80's - he sided with a reformist rebellion within the party. The protagonists of the episode were expelled but he remained, cultivating a personal friendship with the old patriarch Alvaro Cunhal. He is considered "patrimony" of the PCP, though his political statements are somehow heterodox (and, sometimes, frankly puzzling).

I recommend his reading, with the caveat that Saramago's writing is kind of baroque and verbally excessive, not at all fit for the standards of american prose. Most anglo-saxonic editors would, no doubt, say that he "overwrites".

One thing I have to say about him, however, is this: he is not only a fine man and a good comrade, he is also a great writer. He has a powerful, relentless, marvelously subtle and bewitching imagination. His prose is like a chant from the earth: magical, udder, abounding.

I'm not quite sure how his prose stands in english. (For some reason he has won most critical acclaim in Brazil, Spain and Italy.) But I strongly recommend "Baltazar and Blimunda" for whoever wants to make first acquaintance with him.

Much time is wasted, on the portuguese literary circles, whispering maliciously about Saramago not having a "stable culture". Of course, he is a learned and erudite man. But his imaginary is indeed anchored in the fertile soil of folksy tales and myths. He is a force of nature, a kind of tellurical phenomenon. Rude and gentle. He expresses himself like village sorcerer. He embodies that magical, feminile force of a dry field in the summer. These things you cannot learn at "creative writing" academies. You have to breath them.

It's these kind of things I also fear might get hopelessly "lost in translation". Or, worst still, be seen as "exotic".

"Baltazar and Blimunda" ("Memorial do Convento" on the original portuguese version) is the best known novel of Saramago and perhaps justly so. It is conceived around the building of the monumental convent of Mafra, a pharaonic enterprise financed with the gold from Brazil. It also recreates the story of an unconventional portuguese priest - the friar Bartolomeu de Gusmão - and his eccentric flying machine. The novel has recently been adapted for an opera by a very accredited contemporary italian composer, Azhio Corghi.

The PCP, based on a position of rigorous republican secularism, has a long history of appeasement and conciliation with the hierarchy of the Church. Curiously enough, Saramago, who is very much attuned with the folksy paganist pantheism, has, by that way, a reputation of anti-clerical. He is two times the devil (as a communist atheist and as, nonetheless, a researcher of certain paths of free spirituality). "L'Osservatore Romano" (the pope's mouthpiece) has made very ugly remarks about this years Nobel prize (well, after Dario Fo nothing worst could have come their way really), which Saramago has very fittingly retributed in kind and with interests.

Saramago is a first generation intellectual, or, as he likes to put it, was "brought up in a house without books". In fact, the house where he was born didn't even had a window. His father was a rural worker (he would appear every morning on the central square of his village, where laborers were pick up by the landlords). Later he moved to the capital and became a police officer. Saramago dropped out of high-school after two years and learned the art of locksmith. At 18 he was a manual worker. Later he became a journalist (and also, occasionally, translator, editor and draughtsman).

After the coup of April 1974 (that deposed the fascist regime), as in many other fascist organs, the workers took control of "Diário de Notícias" (which was the very officious organ of the late regime) and demanded changes in it's editorial line. It was in this context that Saramago, in April 1975, accepted the post of sub-director. Sure he was a party man. The "DN" became very close to the PCP at this time. Some old-timers were sent off by the workers' plenary. After the right-wing coup of November 25, 1975, Saramago was, in his turn, fired and indeed barred from making journalism anywhere. He was forced to earn a living with translations (48 books, in all). But then, for him personally, this may also have been a blessing in disguise. It was during 1976-7 (he was 55 years old) that he operated the interior revolution that turned him into the author he is now. We lost the revolution, won a great artist.

Saramago (under extreme mediatic pressure) has absolutely no excuses to present for this episode. Leaving aside politics (he was a good soldier of the revolution), from a poetic perspective his passage through the editorial body of "DN" was quintessentially saramaguian. Saramago was and remains proud to have been a pen at the service of the workers. At that time, the "DN" was, for once, ruled by it's true makers. Saramago was the voice of the typographers, of the printers, of the sellers on the streets. He was the servant of that cry on the streets of Lisbon, the voice of the people. No excuses for that.

After the Nobel, Saramago was invited to visit the installations of the "DN" (which is now a very mainstream organ of the "serious press"). Someone asked him to leave a message on a computer. He wrote:

"Search the truth".