Novel · A way to begin
Baltasar and Blimunda
Memorial do Convento
José Saramago · 1982
Synopsis
At the beginning of the eighteenth century, King John V, who has no heir, promises a convent to the Franciscans if the queen gives him a child, and an immense building site is opened at Mafra where the workers wear themselves out and die. Baltasar, a soldier back from the war with one hand missing, meets Blimunda in front of the auto-da-fé where her mother is condemned; she sees the inside of bodies. Father Bartolomeu de Gusmão takes them in: he is building a machine that flies, and to make it rise he needs human wills, which only Blimunda knows how to collect.
Context
The book interweaves two real affairs and an invented one: the building of the convent of Mafra, commissioned by John V, the flying machine of a priest from Brazil, who really did attempt to rise into the air at the beginning of the century, and the couple of Baltasar and Blimunda who links them. It takes up the manner found two years earlier with Levantado do Chão: commas in place of full stops, dialogue merged into the narrative without dashes. It was with this novel that this spoken style of writing was recognised and that its author made his name.
Who it is for
Long sentences, minimal punctuation, unmarked dialogue: it takes about ten pages to get into the rhythm.
Prizes and reception
The novel that made his name, on the Portuguese secondary-school syllabus; Azio Corghi drew from it the opera Blimunda, premiered in Milan in 1990.
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