Hope in the Alentejo
Hope in the Alentejo ( Portuguese Levantado do Chão ) is a novel by the Portuguese Nobel Prize winner for literature José Saramago , which was published in Lisbon in 1979 by Editorial Caminho . The Berliner Aufbau-Verlag brought Rainer and Rosi Bettermann's transfer to the German-speaking book market in 1985.
In this novel of the century - the author modestly calls it a “report” with reference to realities - tells of the life, struggles and death of the day laborer João Mau-Tempo, who is decried as a communist .
overview
1905 to 1975 in Portugal - mostly in the Alentejo in rural areas around the village of Monte Lavre in the district of Montemor-o-Novo : The counterpart to the eponymous hope is the misery in which the Alentejan day laborers lived with their families before the Carnation Revolution . Work is carried out on the latifundium from sunrise to sunset. The wages are so low that they go hungry.
content
misery
The shoemaker Domingos Mau-Tempo moves with his wife Sara da Conceição and their first child, João Mau-Tempo, from Monte Lavre with the sparse household items overland to São Cristóvão in rainy weather . Mau-Tempo means bad weather. The donkey cart reaches the low hut over the muddy paths. A shoemaker is needed in the village.
Domingos beats his wife up at every bagatelle. Sara suffers in silence. Domingos make her child after child. The drinker does not stop in São Cristóvão. When he tried his luck in this or that village with the enlarged family in vain, he left his family, wandered the country for two years and hanged himself. Sara's father Laureano Carranca brings the daughter and grandchildren back to Monte Lavre at their request. The republic has long since replaced the monarchy . However, nothing has changed in the rule of the Patrões, Lambertos, Nobertos, Gilbertos, Dagobertos and other latifundia owners in the area.
João, “a skinny guy”, at ten years of age the oldest in the family after his mother, clears the bush with a hoe for a starvation wage. When he was around twenty, he was declared unfit for service in the military, to his chagrin. But at home on the dance floor, João with his blue eyes is a popular dance partner. Faustina and João find each other; want to stay together forever and ever. That's why. Soon the couple becomes husband and wife; Don't wait for the later wedding. The children António, Gracinda and Amélia are born; grow up. António, the oldest child, tends the pigs. At the age of thirteen the boy did heavy forest work with the men and at fifteen he learned to peel cork.
At the cost of the landlord, the day laborers are transported to Évora on a Sunday for a rally by Salazar's followers against the communists. João, who wants to keep his job and actually has enough gardening on Sundays, is forced to take part.
Manuel Espada and three other single young men are accused by the administrator of the strike when they stop the dusty work on the threshing machine and demand the rest of the daily wage. The community leader lets the stupid boys run again - also because men had campaigned for those who refused to work.
Sara da Conceição goes insane and spends the rest of her life in the Rilhafoles insane asylum.
João Mau-Tempo and Manuel Espada are among the leaders of the strike in Monte Lavre. The day laborers only want to harvest the grain for thirty-three escudos . The Patrões don't want to pay that. The conspirators are taken to Montemor. Gracinda, who had visited her white-haired grandfather João on foot in Montemor, exchanges glances with the conspirator Manuel Espada. The two find each other. The revolters are lucky. After the interrogation in Montemor-o-Novo, they are released, but have to pay for the transport back to Monte Lavre out of their own pockets. The proud Manuel Espada prefers to walk. The 27-year-old Manuel marries the 20-year-old Gracinda.
The reaction of the landlord Adalberto to the strike: The harvest remains on the stalk.
Not all of them were as lucky as João and Manuel after their arrest. Germano Santos Vidigal is beaten to death. José Saramago dedicated the novel to him and to a second person who was murdered years later, his name is José Adelino dos Santos (see below).
João Mau-Tempo takes part in a conspiratorial meeting of the communists in Terra Fria (Cold Earth). In 1949 he was arrested for playing the Avante! has distributed. In Vendas Novas he was given solitary confinement for thirty days. The “Communist Pig” does not reveal any names. He is beaten and has to stand at attention for three days - "be a statue". Torture left João suffering from damage to his health. Broken he was taken to the Aljube prison and then to the Caxias prison in room number six. Faustina and some relatives are allowed to visit him there. In January 1950, João was released. For him the prison was a university with lessons in reading and arithmetic . He did not come before a judge. On the way home, João stayed with Ricardo Reis for one night in Lisbon.
There is no work in the Alentejo. António goes to France in Normandy . Gracinda and Manuel have a daughter. Maria Adelaide has the blue eyes of her grandfather João.
In agreement with the government, landlord Adalberto punishes the day laborers for one of their crimes. You celebrated Delgado . As a punishment, the harvest fails. The day laborers have once again no work. Under the new president - that is the "river admiral" Tomás - hunger continues.
On June 23, 1958, day laborers pleaded for work on the town hall square in Montemor - José Saramago spoke in bitter mockery of the “rural mob”. The PIDE is present and answers with a sheaf of machine pistols. José Adelino dos Santos falls. António Mau-Tempo, having returned from France, takes revenge in his own way. At night he throws stones on the roofs of the Montemorans and escapes unrecognized to his parents in Monte Lavre.
In 1972 João Mau-Tempo died. Manuel Espada fights for the eight-hour day in Monte Lavre .
hope
On April 25, 1974 , the government was overthrown. The May 1 should be celebrated. The PIDE has had its day. The day laborers take possession of the goods of the Lambertos, Nobertos, Gilbertos, Dagobertos in the Alentejo without a single shot.
Quote
"... we take all our sufferings with us to death, ..."
shape
The reader can imagine the author as the first-person narrator, a city dweller , because José Saramago lived in Monte Lavre for a while.
Although José Saramago sometimes acts ahead, he doesn't want to violate “the rules of storytelling”.
The structure is episodic and the novel is full of side stories. For example, João and Faustina come by Aunt Cipriana's on their hikes. The widow lives on the banks of the Pego da Carriça. The raging river during a thunderstorm had devoured Augusto Pinteú's husband, carts and mules at a ford in such a storm. Now, however, this tiny side story, presented at the beginning of the novel, does not stand in isolation; José Saramago draws on it in his biblical-allegorical narrative pose at the end of the novel. Speaking of thunderstorms, the relentless outside world - here the treacherous force of nature - plays one of the main roles in the novel. José Saramago writes that their anger is "much worse than you can tell" and cites as an example the men, one of whom is sometimes waved from the cork oak while peeling cork during a storm and unfortunately injures himself with a cork knife when falling.
The narrator's anticipation mentioned above is associated with over-the-top-phantasy narration - sometimes pathetically exaggerated -: For example, at the above-mentioned rally in Évora, the day laborers are not as advanced as at the end of the novel; don't start the song Vamos lá saindo yet . However, some episodes are hauntingly narrative (here the fantastic element is missing), for example the one in which José Calmedo, a village policeman, arrested João Mau-Tempo in 1949 under a pretext.
Almost without exception, the author uses indirect-encrypted timestamps. For example, the four stupid boys stopped working on the threshing machine two days before the bombing of Salazar - in plain language: that was in 1937 . Manuel Espada, who refuses to work, is demoted to swineherd as punishment. Sometimes the history of Monte Lavres goes way back to 1427. The married Christian and lord of the castle Lamberto Horques Alemão rapes a young girl at the well - just like that. For his king has ordered that the land be peopled. And when it goes back centuries, of course, the author's imagination comes into play. In this case, the lord of the castle, who utters incomprehensible things because he comes from Germania, is given blue eyes that the child of the violated virgin inherits at the well. How lovely - that child is the ancestor of the protagonist with the blue eyes and his granddaughter, the blue-eyed Maria Adelaide.
The mockery of José Saramago in every nook and cranny is one of the constituent semantic elements - for example when speaking of Senhor Professor Salazar or the “river admiral” Tomás.
reception
- 1998, Tobias Gohlis in der Zeit : Where hope grew : the reviewer aptly describes the life story of João Mau-Tempo as the “ secularized version of the Passion of Christ ” and emphasizes the documentary character of the text. The events described were not invented, but found out in 1976 by the author himself on site; the names of the localities not made up.
- 2010, Lax at lovelybooks.de : The author knows his way around because he comes from a family of agricultural workers who worked on the latifundium of a large landowner. The reviewer relativizes the classification of the protagonist in the communist drawer - speaks of "allegedly communist actions". Another comment by the reviewer falls under the heading of relativization : Only those familiar with modern Portuguese history could recognize some of the author's politically colored allusions and classify them appropriately.
German-language editions
Used edition
- Hope in the Alentejo. Novel. German by Rainer and Rosi Bettermann. 314 pages. Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek 1987 (rororo 22302; edition 1998), ISBN 3-499-22302-3 (Licensor: Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin and Weimar 1985)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Port. Psychiatric Hospital Rilhafoles
- ^ Portuguese entry 1945
- ^ Monument to José Adelino dos Santos in Montemor-o-Novo, see also monument
- ↑ Edition used, p. 209, 5th Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 210, 12. Zvu
- ↑ Edition used, p. 222, 16. Zvo
- ^ Port. Aljube prison
- ↑ Edition used, p. 313, 14th Zvu
- ↑ Edition used, p. 102, 22. Zvo
- ↑ port. Lavre , subsection history , last section
- ↑ Edition used, p. 53, 7th Zvu
- ↑ port. Vamos lá saindo (Let's go!) On YouTube
- ↑ port. Anno 1427
Remarks
- ↑ José Saramago was also a communist .
- ↑ José Saramago lists the work of a day laborer:… sowing, plowing, felling, making firewood, clearing, leveling the terrain, mowing, sickling, chopping, digging, hunting, threshing, baking, harvesting hay and maize, peeling cork, building wells , ... (Edition used, p. 73, 9. Zvu)
- ↑ The imprisoned 44-year-old João Mau-Tempo testifies during interrogation that he has not been active for four years. He names the year of that last activity 1945. So he was born in 1905. The protagonist dies in 1972 and the last episode in the novel takes place three years later.
- ↑ Patrão: employer, boss, owner.
- ↑ The good-natured mocker José Saramago likes to try the biblical story. After Maria Adelaide, the child with blue eyes, was born, João Mau-Tempo, his son António and Manuel Espada, the biological father, came to the manger one after the other as the Three Wise Men . The presents are meager. Manuel even comes empty-handed. (Edition used, pp. 252–256)
- ↑ The narrator gives enough samples of his imagination. This is how he imagines trees to scream. (Edition used, p. 228, 11. Zvo)