José Saramago

""A viagem não acaba nunca. Só os viajantes acabam. E mesmo estes podem prolongar-se em memória, em lembrança, em narrativa. Quando o visitante sentou na areia da praia e disse:
“Não há mais o que ver”, saiba que não era assim. O fim de uma viagem é apenas o começo de outra. É preciso ver o que não foi visto, ver outra vez o que se viu já, ver na primavera o que se vira no verão, ver de dia o que se viu de noite, com o sol onde primeiramente a chuva caía, ver a seara verde, o fruto maduro, a pedra que mudou de lugar, a sombra que aqui não estava. É preciso voltar aos passos que foram dados, para repetir e para traçar caminhos novos ao lado deles. É preciso recomeçar a viagem. Sempre.""


Some months ago, José Saramago, 1998 Literature Nobel Prize, died in his bed in Lanzarote (Spanish Island), where lived most of last 18 years. The reasons for his move were several but clear. As he once said, a person takes nine months to die, so his house was open to public only a month ago, having had, with me, just a few visitors. Everything still as it was, the clocks stoped at 4pm and, Camões, the twelve years old dog, seams like still waiting for his owner to return. As he also wrote, the travelers may extend in remembrance and narrative.
Myself, as a (relatively) good (relatively) young Portuguese, never had finished a book from Saramago before. Now, after visiting his ”A Casa” I did, and highly recommend it in your own native language.
Now in Stockholm, not far from the same place where that Nobel Prize was to him dedicated once, where todays morning walk took me, I take his Drummond quote "E agora, José?"


""The journey does not end ever. Only the travelers end. And even those may extend in memory, remembrance, in narrative. When the visitor set down on the beach sand and said:
"Nothing else to see", beware not the case. The end of a travel is only the beginning of another. One needs to see what has not been, see once again what has already, watch now in spring what before during summer, see under daylight what seen during the night, under the sun where the first rain is to fall, watch the green harvest, the ripe fruit, the stone that changed its place, the shadow that was not here before. One needs to return to the steps once taken, to repeat and chart new paths alongside these. One needs to resume the journey. Always.""