Baltasar and Blimunda

Rating:
Summary: I SHALL NEVER LOOK INTO YOUR SOUL
Review: "...Laughter is so close to tears, reassurance so close to anxiety, relief so close to panic, and the lives of individuals and nations hover between these extremes."

Reading innovative, inventive maze-like books of Saramago's caliber are difficult to review because they so easily speak for themselves. Saramago mixes reality with fiction and does so seamlessly, effortlessly and creatively. The reader is simply lost in the splendour of his prose, lost in the relationships of the characters. I can only imagine how the prose flows in its original Portuguese, but the English translations generally convey the essence of Saramago's stories with clarity.

Sete-Sóis (Baltasar) is a soldier ("there is no existence more miserable than a soldier's.") His hand is amputated in war, and he has attachments made to use in place of his missing hand. Blimunda is the daughter of a condemned woman. Baltasar and Blimunda meet when her mother is sentenced to exile in Angola. They meet simply when Blimunda turns to Baltasar, a stranger, and asks his name. They make love upon their first meeting, and Baltasar is completely bewitched by Blimunda. "When Baltasar woke next morning, he saw Blimunda lying at his side, eating brad, but with her eyes firmly closed. She only opened them when she had finished eating, at that moment they looked grey, and she told him, I shall never look into your soul." From that moment on they are never apart. Baltasar and Blimunda deeply love each other in a simple, uncomplicated way and learn about each other as time goes by. Baltasar learns that Blimunda must eat when she wakes up: when she has been fasting (as anyone does while sleeping) she can see inside of people. Baltasar worries that Blimunda is connected with the supernatural and will fall victim to the Inquisition (as indeed Blimunda's mother and many other people have). "I only see what is in the world, I cannot see what lies beyond it, whether it be heaven or hell, I practise neither enchantments nor hypnosis, I simply see things, Yet you signed yourself with your own blood, then made the sign of the cross on my chest with the same blood, surely that is witchcraft, the blood of virginity is the water of baptism..." Blimunda can see inside of people's bodies and sometimes beneath the earth.

Baltasar meets Padre Bartolomeu Lourenço, who is widely known as the Flying Man. Padre Lourenço knows Blimunda quite well, and when Baltasar asks the Flying Man about her, the Padre answers, "Flying is simple when compared with Blimunda." The Flying Man, it turns out, is called such because he is building a flying machine, which he calls the Passarola. The Flying Man enlists Baltasar and Blimunda to help him build the Passarola, and for a long while this is how they occupy their time.

Throughout the book a story is told of a convent being built in Mafra (which is Baltasar's hometown). The convent takes years to be built, and the story of its complications and problems is weaved throughout the story of Baltasar and Blimunda.

The Passarola will fly, according to the calculations of the Flying Man, using the wills/souls of people. Also "If the sun attracts the amber, and the amber attracts the ether, and the ether attracts the magnets, and the magnets attract the metal, the machine will be drawn toward the sun without being able to stop." The Passarola will have sails to prevent it from sailing directly to the sun. The Flying Man asks Blimunda to collect souls of people because she is gifted with the ability to see within people which souls are willing to leave their bodies. She does so, but she becomes gravely ill and is revived only once the palace musician Domenico Scarlatti comes to see the Passarola and plays his harpsichord. Scarlatti exclaims that he wishes he could play his harpsichord when the Passarola is aloft. Blimunda states, "'Once the machine starts to fly, the heavens will be filled with music', and Baltasar, remembering the war, interjected, `Unless the heavens turn out to be hell.' This couple can neither write nor read, yet they can say things that seem most unlikely at such a time and in such a place."

Blimunda also meets Baltasar's family in Mafra and at various points in the book, Baltasar and Blimunda visit, live or work in Mafra (usually working at the site of the convent's building).

The Passarola eventually does fly, carrying the Flying Man, Baltasar and Blimunda, but it does not fly under the ideal circumstances. The Flying Man is being pursued by the Inquisition, and he would rather escape than have them catch him ("Drawn curtains also serve for the confessional, the father confessor seated on the outside, the penitents, one after the other, kneeling on the inside, which is precisely where both constantly commit sins of lust, besides being cohabitants, if that word is not more grievous than sin itself, a sin readily absolved, however, by Padre Bartolomeu Lourenço, who has before his eyes an even greater sin, namely that of ambition and pride, for he plans to ascend into the heavens one day, where so far only Christ and the Virgin have made their ascent along with a few chosen saints...") When Baltasar and Blimunda deliver what should be good news to Lourenço about the completion of the Passarola, he manages only to be nervous, "If the machine were to fly now, the Holy Office might decide that there is some Satanic power behind this flight, and if they were to investigate which parts of the invention cause the machine to fly, I should find it impossible to reveal that there are human wills inside the globes, in the eyes of the Inquisition there are no wills, only souls, they will accuse us of imprisoning Christian souls and of preventing them from going up to paradise." Blimunda wants to know where they will flee to; Lourenço simply replies that they should go somewhere "where the arm of the Inquisition cannot reach us, if such a place exists." As the Passarola ascends, no one looks up or seems to notice, "This nation, which expects so much from heaven, scarcely ever looks up where heaven is said to be."

Eventually the threesome lands someplace, and Lourenço begins to panic, "We're in more danger now as we were before leaving the estate, if the Inquisition didn't find us yesterday, they will certainly capture us tomorrow. But where are we, what is this place called. Every place on earth is the antechamber of hell..." Eventually after nightfall Lourenço attempts to set the Passarola on fire, "If I have to be burnt in a fire, let it at least be this one."

Baltasar and Blimunda return on foot the next day to Mafra and live there for many years to come, while Baltasar returns every few months to check on the Passarola, which is hidden under brush. Lourenço escaped to Spain and apparently died in Toledo (according to what the musician Scarlatti later reported to Baltasar and Blimunda).

On one of his visits to clean the Passarola in its hiding place, Baltasar accidentally gets caught in the machine, and it flies away. For nine long years thereafter, Blimunda wandered the entire country searching for Baltasar. As she wanders, she comes to be known as the Flying Woman on account of her strange tale. In her search she endures hardship and even has to kill a man. She passes through Lisboa six times and on her seventh, she does find her Baltasar, but not in good circumstances.

The story, perhaps needless to say, does not end happily, but Saramago is never overly dramatic or emotional with his prose. It is complex and rich with detail but never sentimental. "Eleven people have been sentenced. The stake is already ablaze and the faces of the victims are barely distinguishable. The last man to be burned has his left hand missing. Perhaps because of his blackened beard, a miraculous transformation caused by the soot, he looks much younger. And there is a dark cloud in the centre of his body. Then Blimunda said, Come. The will of Baltasar Sete-Sóis broke free from his body, but did not ascend to the stars, for it belonged to the earth and to Blimunda."

Rating:
Summary: A masterpiece of fiction, feeling and language
Review: Baltasar and Blimunda is a masterpiece of fiction, feeling and language. History is rewritten as an ironic, sometimes painful parable for all kinds of religious fanaticism and despotic power, where common people play a very important role. Baltasar and Blimunda's love is touching and moving beyond words and the books's final moments tell us about the most beautiful and everlasting feelings. Saramago's revolutionary writing is extremely rich in metaphors, word games and alternative meanings. Actually, Saramago writes poetical prose, dense at first sight, but surprisingly easy to understand after some pages, playing with proverbs, idiomatic expressions and intertextual passages and offering us unexpected poems, motivated by simple, tender details.

Rating:
Summary: "I have flown, Father. My son, I believe you."
Review: BALTASAR AND BLIMUNDA is a wonderful, richly detailed account of life in early 18th century Portugal. It is a time when Portugal fought the ruthless French, maintained an important colony in Brazil, and was constantly under the threat of the Holy Inquisition. The King of Portugal, Dom Joao V, desperately wants an heir to the throne. One night he promises a Franciscan friar that if he can foretell a succession to the throne then he would build a convent in Mafra. After the Queen gives birth Dom Joao V fulfills his promise by building a convent that is destined to be the greatest in Portugal. Meanwhile, after losing his hand on the battlefield Baltasar travels to Lisbon where he eventually meets Blimunda while watching public executions of condemned individuals. An eccentric Padre Bartolomeu Lourenco recruits Baltasar and Blimunda to work in secret creating Passarola, a flying machine that resembles a giant bird. Centuries before the modern airplane is created, the act of flying is often beyond the comprehension of individuals and could be seen as a holy sign. The sections of this book detailing the plight of Passarola are most entertaining and fun. This creates a good balance with the harsh details of the building of the convent. Saramago succeeds in writing entire passages revealing how much work and sweat were involved in such acts as dragging a giant slab of marble a considerable distance. One might think these passages are dull and tedious, but I believe Saramago highlights these arduous aspects of life that are often ignored by other authors who create works of historical fiction. Throughout the years Saramago has solidified his reputation for being a wonderful storyteller who create novels that are both shocking and revealing of the human condition, and BASTASAR AND BLIMUNDA is no exception. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Saramago at his best
Review: Baltazar and Blimunda is Saramago at his best. As in his other novel, All the Names, the reader can feel the sympathy, tolerance and even love the author his for his characters. That is what makes his books so understanding. Baltasar and Blimunda may live in the middle ages, in Protugal, believing in different superstitions, constrained by irrational morals and rules. Yet Saramago lays out their aspirations and feelings, their outlook of the world and their love in a way that makes them close to us.

The author has the amazing talent to develop a good story and interwine his phislosophical reasonings in it. His style is sometimes overwhelming and requires some getting used to. However, the humanitarian spririt that I associate Saramago with is worth the investment.

Rating:
Summary: A qualified success
Review: For a writer of Saramago's caliber, this should be considered a disappointment, although for mere mortals, it could be considered an admirable accomplishment. The 4 star was a round off of 3.5 stars I wish I could give.

I dissent from the common view expressed in this circle that Saramago tells a beautiful love story. I find it slow, wanting, and monotonous. Sometimes even tedious. I can understand that the two protagonists are not educated and can't be expected to quote Goethe or Keat every other page, but sure there can be more ways to describe their relationship than: 1. the dozen of times they ran to the nearest bushes and found carnal pleasures, and 2. the blind trust they have in each other and the glove-over-hand match which makes words superfluous. These are nice things (the sex part a bit overdone, not because I'm a prude, but because there is no enough "variety" in Saramago's depiction), but not enough to carry a story.

The strength of the book lies elsewhere, quite apart from a mediocre love story. I read it as an allegory of, or a sequel to Adam and Eve, the other famous uneducated couple falling in love. In the middle of the book, Padre Bartelomeu Lourcenco compared the trio to the Holy Trinity. I beg to differ. The two B's strike me as uncanny models of Adam and Eve after their exile, and the Padre is the snake tempting them for another sin, flying. Sure enough, our Adam and Eve did it again. If the book is read in that light, one can come away learning something. Unfortunately, Saramago digressed left and right, with, in my judgment, over-indulgent commentaries on royal lives and senseless exaggeration (or misleading emphasis) of debauchery among the royals, clergymen, and common people alike. I can't see why these extraneous stuff is necessary.

Despite it all, I like Saramago as a writer, and his prose is always first rate.

Rating:
Summary: Pure Genious
Review: I had the oppurtunity to read this charming novel a few years ago and I have never been able to stop returning and re-reading the book. Saramago does an excellent job of telling a truly beautiful love story without so much as having one word in the novel hinting towards it. His descriptions were so vivid in the book that I felt as if I were in Portugal watching those poor men build a monument for the sole pleasures of the portuguese monarchy. The thing that I love most is that book is also historically correct. There really was a king who had a huge convent built as a thank you for a male heir and there really was a priest who tried to make a flying machine during the Inquisition. I recomend this book to all people. The sheer magic of a beutiful age in Portugal will make you feel one with the author and the characters. And may I add that I have visited the Convent of Mafra and it's absolutely beautiful and it's great to see something that had so much meaning in the novel.

Rating:
Summary: A Soaring, Poetic Novel of Tremendous Beauty
Review: I have read every book Jose Saramago has ever published and, without question, BALTASAR AND BLIMUNDA is my very favorite. Set in 18th century Portugal, BALTASAR AND BLIMUNDA is a rich flight of fantasy, a soaring and heartbreaking love story and a story of cruel autos-da-fe and the Inquisition. BALTASAR AND BLIMUNDA combines fact and fiction in the very best way...in a way that makes the fact as delicious and interesting as the fiction and the fiction as believable as the fact.

BALTASAR AND BLIMUNDA is the story of King Joao V and his wife, Dona Maria, and their efforts to produce an heir. It is the story of Padre Bartolomeu Lourenco, a priest who dreams of soaring above the clouds...literally. It is the story of Domenico Scarlatti and his efforts to teach the King's daughter to be a musician...and to help Padre Bartolomeu fly. It is the story of the Inquisition and unbelievably harsh autos-da-fe. But, more than anything else, BALTASA AND BLIMUNDA is the story of Baltasar and Blimunda and the unquenchable and undying love they shared. BALTASAR AND BLIMUNDA is a book bursting at the seams with richness, with imagination, with fantasy, with love. It is a book of beautifully braided plot strands that come to life in vivid and heartbreaking detail.

BALTASAR AND BLIMUNDA contains both comedy and tragedy and the book opens on a comic note as poor King Joao implores the Franciscan friars to intercede with heaven on his behalf so that he will be granted an heir. If they are successful, he tells them, he will build them an enormous convent in Mafra. The king gets his wish and the convent is built.

While the Portuguese peasants are building the convent, Padre Bartolomeu, who risks certain death by denouncing the Holy Trinity, decides that he can, and will, build a machine that will allow him to soar above the clouds of both Portugal and the Inquisition. He decides to call it "the Passarola," which, in Portuguese means, "big bird." Helping him are Scarlatti as well as the young lovers, Baltasar and Blimunda, both of whom have been touched by tragedy. Baltasar has lost a hand in war and Blimunda, who is clairvoyant, has lost her mother. Fittingly, Baltasar and Blimunda want to live the same life, breathe the same air and die the same death.

Not only does BALTASAR AND BLIMUNDA contain wonderfully braided plot lines, these plot lines are scattered with rich, and sometimes harshly cruel, set pieces of autos-da-fe, bullfights, scenes of battle, and, the voice of Saramago, himself, as narrator, giving us jokes, sardonic insights and much needed doses of sometimes harsh realism.

BALTASAR AND BLIMUNDA covers a span of many years and, as the book nears its end, it loses much of the comedy that was apparent in its early pages and becomes quite dark, though it still retains its beautifully poetic and lyrical qualities. This is a beautiful, wondrous and enchanting novel. I found all of the plot lines to be wonderfully written and very memorable, however, the love story between Baltasar and Blimunda simply soars. There is magic in the very best of books and BALTASAR AND BLIMUNDA certainly contains more than one dose of magic.

Saramago's trademark prose is in evidence in BALTASAR AND BLIMUNDA, but don't think the long sentences and lack of standard punctuation make Saramago an author "difficult" to read or understand. He's not. His prose is so perfect that reading it seems almost effortless. He is an author who demands little from his readers, but gives so very much.

BALTASAR AND BLIMUNDA is one of the most beautiful books I've ever read. I absolutely cherish it and I would recommend it without hesitation to anyone. You really haven't experienced Saramago in all his greatness until you've experienced this beautiful and unforgettable book.

Rating:
Summary: Absolutely Compelling
Review: I read this book and was both transfixed and biwildered. I enjoyed most every moment of the book, the use of language and crafting of discriptions is absolutely stunning. In some ways I could see much of real human suffering and pain, fantasy and a compelling reason to continue moving forward. Read this book, you won't want to put it down.

Rating:
Summary: About History and Humanity
Review: I was really impressed by this book. I think that if an alien would come on Earth I would let him read this book to get a grasp on what Humanity has been and still is.
He'd find out that History mostly was made by the foolishness of the Mighty (and still is, but today foolishness=greed and the mighty=rich); he'd learn about the animal instincts of human and that some of these are the most beatiful of our traits (as the love between Baltasar and Blimunda, which I find is somehow "animal"); he'd wonder how some ideals can govern the life of men and lie them together (father Bartolomeu's dream to fly); finally in the subtle irony of Saramago, he'll understand what degree of selfconsciousness we've reached through 3000 thousand years of civilization.
The life of Baltasar and Blimunda somehow shows how simple people can live a significant life in spite of History trying to make them do what it wants (a knowledge that in our conformistic democraties is of great importance).
By the style of this book, one could easily think that it was written some 2 centuries ago, because of his illuministic feel. Maybe Saramgo is the most "classical" of modern writers, despite of his strange form of punctuation and of placing his observations everywhere in the book.

Rating:
Summary: Somewhat like a good dream
Review: Jose Saramago's "Baltasar and Blimunda" is really more of an transcription of somebody's dream than a novel. The opening, while slow-moving and chaotic, is a good indicator of what the rest of the book is going to be like. If you can't stand the sentences which pour out like water, you're reading the wrong book. Similarly, if you're looking for some high action, logical plot, or a particularly compelling story, this probably isn't your book either. Saramago weaves a couple different stories through the book -- that of Baltasar and Blimunda, that of Lorenco, that of Dom Joao V -- and often switches from one to the next or passes fluidly between them. The endless sentences and unrelenting (though beautiful) descriptions of the world in which Sete-Sois and Sete-Lunas live is so vivid that it seems hyper-real, dreamlike. The book is not one to be second-guessed, though, and the already shifting plots take numerous unexpected turns. The book, like an exceptionally hot bath, is not easy to get into, but very enjoyable, and similarly difficult to leave.