“A disgusting stench to medicines flooded the atmosphere of the room. He breathed with difficulty. The air, too hot, almost did not reach the sickle of the sick, whose body was outlined under the scalored bedspread and gave off a dizziness smell of fever.”
This is the beginning of the widow (Alphagua), an unpublished novel in Spanish of José Saramago.
And the first one he published.
It was in 1947. José Saramago himself (Azinhaga, 1922-Tías, Lanzarote, 2010) remembered it that way in third person, as if it were not with him, in a text that appears as a prologue.
“The author is a 24-year-old boy, quiet, introverted, who earns life as a scribe in the administrative services of the Lisbon civil hospitals, after having worked for more than a year as an apprentice of mechanical locksmith in the workshops of those
Hospitals “.
The very young José Saramago did not receive a shield for the novel, nor signed any contract, it was barely a verbal agreement.
And for height, the director of the Editorial Minerva changed the title, he did not like Terra do Sin.
Saramago, that 1947 had been a father of a girl she named rape, did not argue, “he lowered his head and went from there to announce the family and friends who had opened the doors of Portuguese literature.”
The widow addresses the situation in which a woman, mother of two children is found, to which the husband dies.
She now she will have to take care of the administration of a hacienda in the Portuguese Alentejo.
She will suffer duel, depression and desire.
A copy of the first edition of the novel showed him yesterday the widow of him, pillar del río.
He appeared, wrapped in a paper, in the drawer of a comfortable.
In the first pages, the dedications of several friends appear.
The book discovered a man who handed it to a psychiatrist, who shared him and the widow of the writer.
Why has not the novel been published until now?
Pilar del Río, translator of several books from her husband, considers that he has been due to the humility of Saramago.
“He said he could introduce confusion and that he did not deserve so much, that many books are published. ‘We do not take care of people with this,” said Joseph. ”
He remembered Pilar del Río that Saramago found the style of her with raised from the ground, from 1980. And the arrest that produced her the second book of her because she did not receive any answer, so for 20 years she dedicated himself to other menes.
After the publication of the widow, translated by Antonio Sáez Delgado, the Alphaguara publishing house will recover a score of Saramago books in three periods;
As of January 27, and with the new design of Manuel Estrada (“covers with doors, windows that help enter the book”), the Gospel will appear on the blindness, the Gospel according to Jesus Christ, Memorial of the Convent …
;
Since March 17, the Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, the stone raft, history of the Lisbon fence … and on June 16, the two Tomos of Notebooks of Lanzarote and the small memories, their full theater will be recovered.
Existing translations will be respected.
Pilar del Rio recalled that it was the then editor Juan Cruz who hired José Saramago for Alphaguara and during his stage, from 1993 to 1999, published close to a dozen, new and recovered titles.
In addition to the books, on November 2, an exhibition with photos of Daniel Mordzinski will be inaugurated and a recite of José Luis Gómez will be held with the texts of honorean, Azaña, Machado and Unamuno, who suffered exile in neighboring Fuerteventura.
Dramatized and academic readings, debates, conferences, a show of light and sound, others of dance, exhibitions, adapted films, an opera, concerts … in various cities of Spain, Portugal and Ibero-America, just as Carlos Reis advanced, expert
In Eça de Queirós, in Saramago and Commissioner for the centenary of José Saramago.
And something different: the plantation of one hundred olive trees from Azinhaga, its native land, to Lisbon.
They will be baptized with the names of a hundred characters of José Saramago, that loving man, patient and a moral height that is so lacking.
