Baltasar and Blimunda [Paperback]

Jose Saramago (Author), Giovanni Pontiero (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 5, 1998 | Series: Harvest Book

From the recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature, a “brilliant...enchanting novel” (New York Times Book Review) of romance, deceit, religion, and magic set in eighteenth-century Portugal at the height of the Inquisition. National bestseller. Translated by Giovanni Pontiero.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Saramago has blended fact and fiction in much the same way as Marquez and others use magical realism, to create an elegantly written, surrealistic reflection on life in 18th century Portugal. It is a time of astonishing excessautos-da-fe, the Inquisition, an outbreak of the plague, colonialismand the two central characters, Baltasar, a soldier just home from the wars, and Blimunda, a clairvoyant who can actually see inside people, are enlisted by the renegade priest, Bartolomeu Lourenco de Gusmao, to help him construct a flying machine. (A mad genius, Bartolomeu actually existed and is now considered a pioneer of aviation.) The machine does fly, but with disastrous consequences for all involved. This is a dark, philosophical tale that shows off the talents of Portugal's premier contemporary writer.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Saramago's epic novel is set in 18th-century Portugal, a kingdom bloated with plundered wealth and top-heavy with churches and priests. Real events (the erection of an enormous convent in the tiny village of Mafra) and real personages (an heretical priest bent on building a flying machine) figure prominently. But the maimed soldier and his visionary lover named in the title are bit players, for the real protagonist here is Portugal itself in travail. Distanced and ironic, Saramago's novel might well have been written to illustrate Walpole's dictum that "the world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel." Recommended for collections emphasizing modern continental fiction. Grove Koger, Boise P.L., Id.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 360 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books; 1ST edition (November 5, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0156005204
• ISBN-13: 978-0156005203
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.9 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (47 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #636,679 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 33 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Love in the Time of Inquisition January 13, 2000

By Chinmay Hota

Format:Paperback

LOVE IN THE TIME OF INQUISITION

What's love got to do in a society that is governed by religious bigotry and royal whims? Apparently nothing. But it is love between two ordinary human beings around which José Saramago, weaves his tale of historical fantasy, `Baltasar and Blimunda'. And to what great effect! The romance, spanning almost a lifetime, traversing the length and breadth of Portugal, even soaring into the sky, brings a breath of fresh air to a plot that abounds in filth, brutality, indifference and decay. The tenderness of the relationship serves to make the surrounding evil appear murkier, while the all-pervading depravity indirectly gives more substance to the experience of love.

The lovers, Baltasar, a former solider and Blimunda, a woman with a mysterious power of clairvoyance, meet each other in the killing fields of Inquisition. While Baltasar has lost an arm fighting a war for his motherland, Blimunda has been separated from her mother who has been banished to a far-off land by the Holy Office of Inquisition. But wars and Inquisition are not the only forces of evil that are eroding the foundations of a nation that has left its glory far behind. 18th-century Portugal is full of blood and gore. Take for instance, the brutal bull-fight sessions so vividly presented by Saramago, `The place smells of burned flesh, but this odour gives no offence to nostrils accustomed to the great barbecue of the auto-da-fe, besides the bull ends up on somebody's plate and is put to good use in the end' (page-90). There are also murdered bodies scattered in the streets of Lisbon. Famines, plague, earthquake, Spanish invasions, poverty and squalour -- all add to the misery of the land.

Strange it may seem, but this harsh milieu spurs the ambitions of two very different characters in the novel. The king, Dom Joăo, the Fifth, wants to build the biggest Basilica in the country to redeem a pledge, when God grants him a male heir. `In a king, modesty would be a sign of weakness' (Page-4). Padre Bartolemeu, a scholar priest entertains the ambition to fly in a machine made of steel and cane, one that is fuelled by human `will'. The king's project is a product of his fancy, while the priest's is born of true conviction.

Baltasar and Blimunda get drawn into both these projects, by turns. After conquering the sky with the help of the Padre's machine, they move to Mafra to work on the construction of the Basilica. Wherever they are, their ardour for each other remains undiminished. Doing justice to their nick names -- Seven-Suns and Seven-Moons -- they attract each other like heavenly bodies, eternally.

The author excels in his depiction of contrasts. The king and the queen present the most incongruous pair in the novel. But even the seemingly harmonious Baltasar and Blimunda are at bottom quite disparate. Baltasar's iron arm and capacity for tough physical labour represents hard reality whereas Blimunda with her visions, dreams and the `collection of wills' appears magical and ethereal. But the biggest contrast is reserved for the two long and arduous processions, which make up a substantial part of the narrative. The frustrations, accidental deaths and other painful incidents during the expedition to transport a big slab of stone to the construction site is skillfully counterpoised by the opulence, pomp and ceremony of the royal family is cavalcade. The cumbersome and labourious journey of the slab also finds a matching antithesis in the free soaring of the flying-machine.

The breathlessly long, run-on sentence is Saramago's trademark. He strays from or gets involved in the narrative as the situation demands. The pithy one-liners, though less frequent here than in `The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis', lend colour to the narrative. (`By eating frugally, we can purify our thoughts, through suffering we can purge our souls' (Page-20)). To check the severity of the proceedings, the author intervenes with humour from time to time, (`... stone slabs suspended from yokes that rest on their necks and shoulders, forever be praised whoever invented the pad that lessens the pain' (Page-224)).

`Baltasar and Blimunda' is a compelling novel, which celebrates the power of love and human will, even in the face of dark and sinister forces. Magical elements like visions, dreams, fantasies and so on give a new perspective to the hard reality and a new dimension to our experience of history.

( Quotations from The Harvill Press,London edition.)

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A sensuous history lesson January 20, 2003

By A.J.

Format:Paperback

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.

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Pure Genious April 24, 2003

By "mcb12271983"

Format:Paperback

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.