ABDELJELIL LARBI
Baltasar and Blimunda in Arabic: characteristics of reception and translation

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Today, José Saramago is the most well-known Portuguese writer in the Arabic world and many of his books have been translated. In 2019 Baltasar and Blimunda was the first to be translated directly from Portuguese to Arabic. This presentation strives to summarize the characteristics of this work (among others) and analyze the strategies and challenges of translation.

ANA PAULA ARNAUT
Baltasar and Blimunda: robbing the vault of History

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Built on three fundamental ingredients—official historical sources, informal records and the writer’s imagination—Baltasar and Blimunda recreates the historical period that corresponds to the reign of John V, composing a narrative score where what was is replaced by what could have been. Combining historical events and characters with made up ones (or maybe not as made up as we might think), José Saramago incorporates into this novel the motifs that characterize his fictional production in one way or another. Namely, the protection of the weak and oppressed; the importance of women; the critique of religion; and the power of man to heretically surpass divine power, in this case through the journey of Baltasar and Blimunda. Alongside Bartolomeu Lourenço de Gusmão, these form the dazzling earthly holy trinity that dethrones the king and his basilica from the foreground of the novel.

ANNABELA RITA
“Behind the skylight / a face, another, / watching itself, / watching us” (Severo Sarduy)

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In this presentation we will look at the way in which Baltasar and Blimunda reflects on Portuguese culture though an interplay of texts, images, symbols and eras. Drawing on counterpoint, chiaroscuro and sfumato, Saramago memorially interweaves past and present, utopia and dystopia, different social spaces (court, clergy and people), reality and vision, reality and fiction, romanticism and modernity, life and death…

ANTÓNIO JOSÉ BORGES
Women in the work of José Saramago – women work in the shadows

and Saramago composes his Baltasar and Blimunda…

This theme was chosen based on four essential premises of Saramago’s thought: the prevailing voices are still male; women can be instrumental in changing the world; women do possess a sixth sense (not only these characters, but women in general…); all the female characters in Saramago’s work are variations of Blimunda, the protagonist of Baltasar and Blimunda, who received Baltasar in her body during their love story, and also when the Inquisition killed him (like Maria de Magdala…). So Blimunda said “Come” to Baltasar’s will and his spirit “did not ascend to the stars, for it belonged to the earth and to Blimunda”. Today, with all her wisdom and generosity, Blimunda belongs to the readers. Blimunda is the first word for celebrating José Saramago, bringing to life the harmony and good sense that we learned from him. And from Blimunda.
 

CÂNDIDO DE OLIVEIRA MARTINS
Forms of Parody in Baltasar and Blimunda

Saramago’s Baltasar and Blimunda cannot be fully apprehended without an extensive reflection on the presence and modes of operation of the parody, understood in an actualized theoretical-literary perspective, especially after the contributions of M. Bakhtine and other contemporary literary thinkers.
Firstly, an intertextual parody stands out, whenever this novel summons other texts, both literary and non-literary. Alongside this dimension, there is also an architextual parody, when the writing of the narrator presupposes a dialogue with other literary genres. Last but not least, there is an interdiscursive parody, where the literary word dialogues with other ideological-cultural systems. These and other similar reflections can be oriented towards a didactic reading of Baltasar and Blimunda, allowing us to understand the meanings behind the architecture and semantics of this work.
 

CARLOS FIOLHAIS
Bartolomeu de Gusmão, the Passarola and the first hot air balloon flights

In 8 August 1709, the student of the University of Coimbra Bartolomeu de Gusmão embarked on the first hot air balloon flight, at least in the West. It is interesting to look at the authorization—a kind of patent—given by John V, five years younger than him. The flying object, which was widely publicized as a drawing and became known as Passarola, was somewhat the product of fantasy and would never fly. The demonstration at the Royal Palace used a small hot air balloon, similar to the sky lanterns seen in the festival dedicated to Saint John in Porto. The project was not carried out and apparently the prototype was never put to use. In any case, it is remarkable that several decades passed before the Montgolfier brothers built and tested a balloon in 1783, first an unmanned model and later a manned one. In Portugal, the first manned flight was performed by the Italian Vincenzo Lunardi in 24 August 1794, i.e. 225 years ago.
 

CARLOS NOGUEIRA
Literature and evil: José Saramago

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José Saramago’s entire work deals with the definition, manifestations, characteristics and causes of evil. In this conference, we try to make a contribution towards understanding the question of evil, both in Saramago or, based on his writing, in individual action and social and political practice (in a word: in ethical life). To this end, we draw on a number of theses about the nature of evil, which are brilliantly confirmed by Saramago’s literary discourse and thought, in a vast and heterodox dialogue with literature, philosophy, history, sociology, anthropology, religion, psychology, etc.—“evil is a permanent state, good is a temporary state”; “evil is ontological, good is ontic”; “evil is not a mystery, it is everywhere and no other substance is as universal” (Miguel Real).
 

CARLOS REIS
“Putting it in a novel”: Saramago and the narrativization of space

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Drawing on a reflection of José Saramago about the origin of Baltasar and Blimunda, in this conference we analyze the representation of space in his work. Developed selectively, this analysis strives to go beyond a view of fictional space as a static element of the narrative world. Instead, the spatial component of many Saramago’s novels (e.g., Baltasar and Blimunda, The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, The Stone Raft, Blindness) tends to be incorporated into the narrative itself, welcoming actions, historical episodes and figures that instill life in what is no longer a relatively passive element in the construction of the account. This is a major trend in José Saramago’s work, present since his earlier, more foundational texts, such as Journey to Portugal.
 

DANIELA MARCHESCHI
José Saramago and the traditions of the 20th-century novel

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In literature, one thinks according to tradition, one writes according to tradition: carefully examined and chosen traditions, which are “presented” based on a critical assessment of reality and of how one would like it to be. A man of utopias and freedom, José Saramago (1922-2010) was a novelist, poet, journalist, translator, literary critic and playwright, i.e. one of the most multifaceted writers of the 20th century. Our presentation strives to reflect on the multiple narrative traditions considered by Saramago when composing his novels; on the formal issue of a writer who employed both “simple words” and paradoxes as cognitive tools, and who produced a profoundly innovative narrative work, which uniquely measures up to the liveliest substance of 20th-century literature.

GUILHERME D'OLIVEIRA MARTINS
The importance of Baltasar and Blimunda as an element of cultural heritage
 

At a time when the Convent of Mafra has been classified as a World Heritage site by the UNESCO, we should point out that besides the intrinsic qualities of material heritage we cannot forget that, as immaterial heritage, José Saramago’s novel constitutes a crucial element for the promotion of cultural heritage as a dynamic and complex reality, projected into the future.

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ISABEL PIRES DE LIMA
Medial transposition in Baltasar and Blimunda: Saramago and Abel Manta

In 2016, Guerra e Paz published a special edition of José Saramago’s Baltasar and Blimunda, with 20 original illustrations by João Abel Manta, a painter, illustrator, and Saramago’s contemporary, whose body of work is widely known. These 20 powerful visual artworks perform what Irina Rajewsky called a “medial transposition”, in this case a transposition from the novel to the visual series. We will seek to identify the various strategies adopted by the painter to carry out this important work, which, stemming from the novel, urges us to constantly return to it, in a heuristic quest that leads to new gestures of interpretation and to the creation of novel ways of interpreting it.
 

ISABEL PONCE DE LEÃO
The violation of the erotic code in Baltasar and Blimunda

If etymologically “to violate” suggests violence, devastation, or even profanation, by applying it to Saramago’s work, the author links it to transgression. This sign was chosen due to the humor, originality and even vehemence that characterizes the ostentation of infractions. Baltasar and Blimunda is built on numerous violations of the codes seen as canonical, at the same time as it represents the ritual and worship of an assumed heterodoxy, when prominence is given to beings that fly, women that probe souls and a king whose primary goal is to build a convent. The author highlights the violation of the erotic code in the relations of repression and transgression, with dichotomous characteristics, such as the ones established between John V and Queen Maria Anna Josepha and between Baltasar and Blimunda.

JOSÉ MANUEL MENDES
To be announced
 

MANUEL FRIAS MARTINS
Blimunda and José Saramago’s clandestine spirituality

Through the unique figure of Father Bartolomeu de Gusmão and his Passarola, the novel Baltasar and Blimunda provides a superior representation of the quasi-eternal conflict between the power of scientific dream and the overwhelming force of religious blindness. If this is true, it is no less true that, literarily speaking, the tutelary figure of this conflict is an extraordinary woman, a ray of light, human energy and gentle spirituality called Blimunda, a captor of wills by nature (as a character) and vocation (as an expression of her literary creator).

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Based on this analysis, Saramago’s critical stance has two consequences. On the one hand, it demonstrates that José Saramago’s intellectual profile does not consist in polemicizing systematically and necessarily against religion. Nor does his horizon of creative stimuli center on that controversy.  On the other hand, it helps us understand the significance—more humanistic than historical—of historical novels such as Baltasar and Blimunda, which above all emerge as manifestations of an ethical performativity that stages possible ways of responding to the yearning, fear and bewilderment of contemporary readers. In Blimunda’s eyes coexist the creative power of fiction and, through it, the spiritual nature of Saramago’s gaze. The latter operates clandestinely through the virtues of Blimunda’s spirit—a strong literary character, who in the wake of the great heroes of Western literature, symbolizes extraordinary individual feats that transcend current material conditions. José Saramago’s clandestine spirituality entails the aspiration to beauty, justice and good that orients the novel Baltasar and Blimunda, among other works. But it is mainly Blimunda who inscribes Saramago’s spiritual unveiling and enlightenment in the concrete aspects of earthly life.

MARIA FÁTIMA MARINHO
Imperfect and mismatched identities

José Saramago’s work is marked by a tacit but persistent quest for identity, by the individual or the collectivity. In this essay, we strive to reveal the way in which the multiple facets of these identities interweave and become complete in works that seemingly choose subjects dealing with different and unrelated issues. From historical novels to those that explore the vicissitudes of individuals fighting against a labyrinthine and incomprehensible society, the multiple narrators lay bare the ambiguities and contradictions that must be faced by the individual. The analysis of Saramago’s intricate plots will show this undeniable fight and its masterful resolution.

MARIA FERNANDA MONTEIRO DOS SANTOS
Mafra National Palace and Baltasar and Blimunda, before and after the Nobel

The historical reading of Baltasar and Blimunda in a school setting. What king, society, people, town, and country were these? Baltasar and Blimunda as an opportunity to talk about the History of Portugal, heritage and current events. Two decades later, thousands of youngsters have visited the monument, thanks to the study of one of the great novels of Portuguese literature.

MIGUEL REAL
Baltasar and Blimunda and the Portuguese novel in the 1980s

We intend to place Baltasar and Blimunda in 1980s Portuguese fiction, comparing, with regard to literary themes and genres, José Saramago and Mário de Carvalho, Teolinda Gersão, Rui Zink, Luís Costa Gomes, Agustina Bessa-Luís and António Lobo Antunes.

ORIETTA ABBATI
Historical and fictional discourse on the role of the Inquisition in the 18th century in Baltasar and Blimunda

Considering that every historical discourse is always a fictional narrative, as defended by critics of “obvious fame”, even if they refer to past events that are well-known both by scholars and by readers, we should not be surprised by the vast and profound historical-fictional incursion into the 18th-century Portuguese Inquisition, carried out by José Saramago in Baltasar and Blimunda.

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Even though the Portuguese Inquisition has been studied at length by renowned historians, and there are numerous comprehensive essays from a scientific point of view, naturally these do not address the simple life of the working class, which generally struggles to survive. Therefore, Our Writer’s contribution extensively fills this gap. In fact, in the narrator’s words, this is “a story that is at the same time History and story: i.e. told not only from the point of view of the powerful (...), but also of the little, (...) introducing small charges that explode” the contradictions of unsustainable narrations. With this presentation we intend to explain Saramago’s thesis more thoroughly.   
 

PIERO CECCUCCI
Writing, perspective and historical time in Blindness and José Saramago’s Baltasar and Blimunda

In this presentation, we analyze how Saramago uses History, i.e. res facta, linking it to fiction, or res ficta, based on two novels: Blindness and Baltasar and Blimunda. We will focus on Saramago’s take on the events that he describes and his personal historical reading of the res facta, which he investigates and narrates. We intend to show how this distinction is not corroborated by a thorough analysis of the narrative text, introducing a few considerations regarding how Saramago views history, which is both History and story.

PILAR DEL RÍO
Reading José Saramago
 

VÍTOR VIÇOSO
Baltasar and Blimunda: the fictional practice and the rewriting of History

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For José Saramago, “History is partial and fragmented”, hence the emergence of an empty space that can be occupied by fiction, which, on the other hand, implies a new framing of past events. The novel Baltasar and Blimunda arises from that perspective, reinventing the stories of History, where forgotten collective actors and a sense of utopia contrast with traditional narratives concerning the 18th century in Portugal or the symbolism attached to the foundation of the Convent of Mafra. A work that breaks with the canonical historical novel (the author rejects this designation for his novels), it is coded according to a new path of memory and the polyphonic virtuality of saying/writing. In this respect, it also opens itself up to the fantastic and the supernatural, another facet of the inscription of fiction on the horizon of History.