The story of the unknown island
The story of the unknown island ( Portuguese O Conto da Ilha Desconhecida ) is a short story by the Portuguese Nobel Prize winner for literature José Saramago , which was published in 1997 in Lisbon by Assírio & Alvim. The text was translated into Swedish (Sagan om den okända ön), 1997 into English ( Tale of the unknown island ) and Spanish (Cuento de la isla desconocida), 1998 into Italian (Racconto dell'isola sconosciuta), 2000 into Korean (미지 의섬), translated into Hebrew (סיפור על האי הנעלם) in 2002 and into Bengali (Acina dvīpera galpa) in 2011 .
The cleaning lady and the man are found in this love story.
content
With remarkable perseverance, the man asks the king for a sailing ship. With the ocean-going watercraft, the supplicant wants to cross the oceans and discover the unknown island. Nonsense - say the geographers of the king. Everything has already been discovered. The man is still heard by the ruler. However, he has to wait in front of the right door for three days. Because the king would much rather be praised than begged. The man has to hire the crew himself.
The king's cleaning lady is fed up with rubbing the palace, gives up her job and follows the man for good reason. There will be no shortage of windscreen water at sea. The man does not hire the woman. Although the harbor master surrenders a ship on royal instructions, he remains skeptical. Because the man turns out to be a landlubber.
While the man in the harbor area looks around for the crew, the cleaning lady goes on board the ship and soberly states that the deck urgently needs to be scrubbed. It chases an angry flock of seagulls from their nests on board. The cleaning lady ponders worriedly, at the latest after sunset the man will come on board hungry. What to do if he really has a team?
The man returns alone. Nobody wants to risk the journey. Man and cleaning lady say goodnight and fall asleep on board. The man dreams of his ship, loaded with provisions, going to sea. The main sail inflates. The sailors rest. Animals on board make the sailing ship Noah's Ark . The man dismisses the mobile crew. Only the plants have to stay on board. Oh no, the birds stayed in the trees. From the dream. The man wakes up in the cleaning woman's arms. After sunrise they both name their ship: Unknown Island . The tide comes at noon. The two-man crew and the ship embark on a journey into the unknown.
Quote
"If you don't get out of yourself, you will never know who you are."
reception
- December 7, 1998, in the mirror : The man and the fairy tale
- January 2012, Britta Höhne on the fiction couch
German-language editions
- The story of the unknown island. German by Ray-Güde Mertin . 59 pages. Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek 1998 (1st edition), ISBN 3-498-06335-9 (edition used)
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Edition used, p. 38, 3rd Zvu