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Title: Baltasar and Blimunda by Jose Saramago, Giovanni Pontiero ISBN: 0-15-600520-4 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: 05 November, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.57 (37 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: "I have flown, Father. My son, I believe you."
Comment: 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: 5
Summary: Pure Genious
Comment: 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: 5
Summary: A sensuous history lesson
Comment: There seems to be an affinity among Hispanic authors like Garcia Marquez, Vargas Llosa, and Carlos Fuentes, whose fiction tends to combine rich, often fantastical, narrative landscapes with sensitive attention to socioeconomic issues and political and religious oppression. Jose Saramago is Portugese, but "Baltasar and Blimunda" shows that he is very much part of this esteemed group.
The novel takes place in Portugal in the early eighteenth century. An ex-soldier named Baltasar "Sete-Sois" (Seven Suns) Mateus arrives in Lisbon in 1711 looking for work. His options are limited, as he has lost his left hand in battle and replaced it with a hook, which qualifies him for employment in a slaughterhouse. He meets and falls in love with a girl named Blimunda, whose mother, accused of heresy by the Inquisition, has been banished to Africa. Blimunda purports to having some strange powers: She can look inside people's souls and even collect their "wills", a skill which will prove invaluable later in the novel.
Baltasar and Blimunda befriend a learned and mechanically-minded Brazilian priest named Padre Bartolomeu Lourenco, who is something of a flight pioneer. He convinces Baltasar to help him build a flying machine called the Passarola, which, he envisions, would be powered by a complex system of components including human "wills" that Blimunda, conveniently enough, is able to collect. That the Passarola is a ludicrously unfeasible contraption does not stop it from flying fortunately, for it allows its makers to escape angry Inquisitors.
Meanwhile, the King of Portugal, Dom Joao, anxious for a royal heir, is making a deal with a Franciscan friar to donate money for a new convent if the Queen, Dona Maria Ana, will deliver, so to speak. The Queen makes good on this several times over, so the King buys land from some farmers, one of whom happens to be Baltasar's father, and construction of the new convent is begun. As a source of boastful pride and a symbol of the overt alliance between the Church and the Crown, the convent turns into a Tower-of-Babel-like project, a ruthless shedder of blood, sweat, and tears.
Calling "Baltasar and Blimunda" a love story -- even a brilliant one -- is not giving it full credit. Saramago incorporates real historical figures and events into the plot, such as the Italian harpsichordist Domenico Scarlatti who emigrates to Lisbon; and, apparently, a priest named Lourenco really did build a working flying machine. (Of course, it's unlikely that Lourenco and Scarlatti actually ever met, but for the purpose of fiction, that possibility needs to be milked for all it's worth.) Saramago's prose is like a stiletto wrapped in silk; his sardonic tone offers wry observations on the disparities between royalty and peasantry and the cruelty and pageantry of the Church at the time. Yet, in one of the most beautiful and bittersweet endings I've ever read in any novel, he reminds his reader that love is the ultimate sovereign.
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Title: The Gospel According to Jesus Christ by Jose Saramago ISBN: 0156001411 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: September, 1994 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Blindness by Jose Saramago, Giovanni Pontiero ISBN: 0156007754 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: October, 1999 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis by Jose Saramago, Giovanni Pontiero ISBN: 0156996936 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: April, 1992 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: All the Names by Jose Saramago, Margaret Costa ISBN: 0156010593 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: October, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Cave by Jose Saramago, Margaret Costa ISBN: 0156028794 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: 15 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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