Estórias e historias
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| Estórias e historias | |
|---|---|
| Name | Estórias e historias |
| Author | José Saramago |
| Title orig | Estórias e historias |
| Country | Portugal |
| Language | Portuguese language |
| Publisher | Caminho |
| Pub date | 2017 |
| Pages | 212 |
| Genre | short stories |
| Isbn | 978-972-212-142-7 |
Estórias e historias
Estórias e historias is a posthumous collection of short narratives attributed to José Saramago, published in Portugal by Caminho in 2017. The volume gathers brief tales, fragments, and vignettes that reflect Saramago’s late style, connecting to works such as All the Names, The History of the Siege of Lisbon, Blindness, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, and The Stone Raft. Its release generated discussion across literary circles including Prémio Camões, Nobel Prize in Literature, Assírio & Alvim, Bertrand Editora, and critical platforms in Lisbon, Porto, Madrid, and São Paulo.
Etymology and Title Significance
The title uses orthographic variation to juxtapose Estórias (folk or oral tales) and historias (chronicles or records), echoing debates seen in Ferdinand de Saussure-inspired linguistic discourse and in the work of Mikhail Bakhtin, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva, and Gérard Genette. The capitalization and diacritics recall Portuguese literary precedents like Luís de Camões, Fernando Pessoa, Eugénio de Andrade, Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen, and António Lobo Antunes. The title gestures toward tensions explored in The History of the Siege of Lisbon between fabrication and documentation, resonating with concerns raised by Italo Calvino, Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Octavio Paz about narrative ontology and historiography.
Historical Context and Publication
Compiled and edited after Saramago’s death in 2010, the collection reflects editorial choices informed by estates and institutions including the José Saramago Foundation, Universidade de Lisboa, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Portuguese Writers Association, and private archives in Azinhaga. Its publication followed controversies surrounding posthumous volumes like editions of Marcel Proust and Franz Kafka, invoking debates present in cases involving Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, and Vladimir Nabokov. The editorial process engaged figures from Caminho and literary executors who had previously managed editions of The Stone Raft and Blindness, prompting commentary in outlets such as New York Review of Books, The Guardian, El País, Le Monde, and Folha de S.Paulo.
Themes and Literary Style
The collection continues Saramago’s experiments with narrative voice evident in All the Names and the dialogic interruptions found in The Cave. Themes include memory and forgetting as in Blindness, statecraft and dissent as in The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, love and mortality reminiscent of Baltasar and Blimunda, and metafictional play akin to The History of the Siege of Lisbon. The prose employs long sentences, sparse punctuation, and free indirect discourse aligned with stylistic lineage involving Gustave Flaubert, Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and William Faulkner. Political and ethical inflections recall oppositional stances comparable to Álvaro Cunhal, António de Oliveira Salazar, Carnation Revolution, Estado Novo (Portugal), and disputes represented in Prémio Camões debates.
Structure and Contents
The book comprises dozens of brief pieces varying from parables and anecdotal sketches to fragmentary essays and fictionalized recollections. Structural affinities link to Saramago’s earlier short forms found in The Lives of Things and the episodic constitution of The Stone Raft. Individual items reference geographies such as Lisbon, Azores, Alentejo, Seville, Madrid, Rome, Paris, Berlin, New York City, and São Paulo, and intersect with persons and artifacts evoking Camões, Pessoa, Clarice Lispector, Miguel Torga, Eça de Queirós, Alexandre Herculano, Luís Vaz de Camões, and Fernando Pessoa heteronyms. The ordering alternates between urban vignettes, rural anecdotes, imagined biographies, and meta-narrative reflections, creating a mosaic comparable to collections by Gabo (Gabriel García Márquez) and Calvino.
Reception and Critical Analysis
Critical response mixed admiration for the familiar Saramago prose with scrutiny about editorial assembly and authorial intent, echoing controversies in posthumous receptions like those surrounding Emily Dickinson and David Foster Wallace. Reviews in The New York Times, El País, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, Folha de S.Paulo, and The Guardian highlighted recurring motifs and stylistic signatures, while academic commentary from Universidade de Coimbra, Universidade do Porto, King’s College London, Harvard University, Columbia University, and Universidade de São Paulo debated canonicity and the ethics of publication. Scholars invoked theoretical frameworks from Mikhail Bakhtin, Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Gérard Genette, and Michel Foucault to situate the work’s paratextual elements and intertextual webs, assessing its contribution to Portuguese letters and to Saramago’s corpus alongside Baltasar and Blimunda and The Gospel According to Jesus Christ.
Translations and Adaptations
The collection has been translated into languages including Spanish, English, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Swedish, Polish, and Spanish (Latin America), appearing via presses in London, New York City, Madrid, Paris, Berlin, Milan, and São Paulo. Adaptations for radio, theater, and short-film formats were undertaken by companies and institutions such as BBC Radio, Rádio Renascença, Festival de Teatro de Almada, Teatro Nacional D. Maria II, Cineteatro Capitólio, and independent producers in Lisbon and São Paulo, often pairing dramaturges and directors who had previously worked on Saramago’s novels for stage and screen.