The Ghosts of Empire

On the 18th June, 2010 the exiled Portuguese author Jose Saramago died. He was 87 years old, and had been suffering from leukaemia. He spent his final years on the Spanish island of Lanzarote. This was an important refuge for him, allowing him the space and the freedom to write without the fear of censure.

Saramago had long been the bugbear of the Portuguese establishment. His work was a great affront to those in power. He wrote from a place of profound conviction, determinedly opposed to authoritarianism in its numerous guises. It did not matter the source, whether it derived from the Catholic Church, the Government or the associated agencies engaged in imperialism or militarism overseas. Enforced conformity had the same effect, whoever enacted it.

Portugal had an intensely turbulent history, marked by revolution, counter revolution and dictatorship. Saramago’s personal experience of living through this history both informed and inspired him. It provoked an instant and visceral dislike of any regime or institution that attempted to control the population. His approach, however, was characteristically oblique. He preferred to employ allegory and metaphor to draw out uncomfortable truths.

His novels are part of a tradition of metafiction, an obvious homage to his compatriot Fernando Pessoa who cultivated elaborate literary personas, or heteronyms to reveal alternate realities. These characters are created to provide a mirror of society. It is pertinent to note that every authoritarian regime in history has deliberately manipulated the population to maintain their control. It is psychological gaslighting on a grand scale.

The 1997 novel, “Blindness” illustrates this, in graphic detail. An entire nation has been cursed with the affliction of blindness, and is left wholly dependent upon the authorities. A helpless population is easy to control, and is easily manipulated. The state of blindness is a metaphor, an allusion to historical regimes which utilised indoctrination to keep people unenlightened to the truth. In the book, people are literally living in darkness.

However Saramago’s most controversial work was the novel published six years earlier, “The Gospel According to Jesus Christ”. This was regarded as objectionable and offended a deeply pious Portuguese elite. Saramago was reimagining the Gospel in his own inimitable way, and attempting to expose both religious hypocrisy and the abuse of a divine office like the Catholic Church.

Saramago was a staunch defender of the powerless, and he devoted his life and work to express his distaste of the exploitation and abuse of the powerful. Throughout history, those invested with power and influence have used their might to crush dissent. It is a strange paradox that Saramago is regarded as essentially Portuguese, and still bound up with the culture and the history that shaped him, but also the fiercest critic of Portugal as a political entity. He learned to live with the ghosts of his previous existence, and his legacy remains with a body of work that champions the courage of the individual amidst oppression.