My favorite writer in the whole world said:
The wisest man I ever knew in my whole life could not read or write. At four o'clock in the morning, when the promise of a new day still lingered over French lands, he got up from his pallet and left for the fields, taking to pasture the half-dozen pigs whose fertility nourished him and his wife.
-- Jose Saramago, speaking of his grandfather Jeronimo. Nobel Prize speech, 1998 --
Have a great Thursday!
Do you realize that Harold Bloom has called Saramago "the most gifted novelist alive in the world today"?
ReplyDeleteI love Saramago's work. It's interesting that a man of his linguistic brilliance so often points out the limits of language in those things of utmost importance to the human condition.
I am thinking, for example, of this: "Inside us there is something that has no name, that something is what we are."
Still waiting for your Stafford commentary, by the way. (A reading public can be quite demanding.)
Dear anonyMOUSE:
ReplyDeleteI wasn't aware of Bloom's comment, but I most certainly do agree with him.
You must be psychic, or somehow clairvoyant! I mean, my blog tonight is all about The Dude! It is so refreshing to come home and find someone else commenting about how they are also in love with this venerable geezer's work!
The Stafford commentary is on the back burner, it is going to come forth in a blaze of unprofessional interpretation... oh yes... as sure as there are three bewildered pigeons on my balcony right now....
Thanks for the response...even though you allude to me in diminutive terms...I am more cat than mouse, I assure you.
ReplyDeleteGlad you haven't forgotten the Stafford - I find that things kept simmering on back burners are often well worth the wait.
Though not one of our major poets, he is a Midwest (U. S.) treasure.
As far as your giving an "unprofessional" interpretation of his work, if you ask me, that approach beats a lot of highbrow nonsense that passes for critical gospel.
I'll be waiting.
Always a pleasure, Cipriano.
Sincerely,
A Fellow Pigeon Aficionado