"A man linked to another man." Homage to José Saramago

A man joined to another man.

My heart is sad, very sad! died one of the most controversial writers of this century. I mean, Jose Saramago, who was born on November 16, 1922 in Azinhaga, Santarem, Portugal. Portuguese Communist Party member since 1969. In 1998 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. The Swedish Academy noted its ability to "understand a reality elusive back with parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony."

Undoubtedly one of the most beautiful stories of Jose Saramago, is linked with his grandfather, Jerome Melrinho and trees. A very humble man, very supportive, very human. I agree with you Saramago's words: "I am the grandson of a man who, premonition that death was waiting for you at the hospital where they were taking, down to the garden and went to say goodbye to the trees that were planted and cared for, crying and hugging each of them, as if it were a loved one. "

Personally, I think a beautiful detail that gives me goosebumps. Not surprisingly Juan Gelman, once said: "Poetry is a leafless tree that gives shade" really interesting thing is that this act was real, was not the product of poetic license by Saramago. Our author goes on to say: "This man was a simple shepherd, an illiterate peasant, not an intellectual, not an artist, not an educated person and sophisticated in the world had decided to go with a grand gesture that posterity would record. It seems that was goodbye to what until then had been his property but the property were also the animals that lived and walked up to them to say goodbye. He left the family and the trees as if everything was for him his family. In many years I never heard my grandfather's mouth word about trees in general and in particular those who were not motivated by practical reasons. Then I could not wait, one might expect, the last known conscious personality of the old man touched the line of the sublime. And yet it happened. I'll never know what happened in the spirit of my grandfather in that last hour, what he thought or felt, what his steps urgent call to the trees unsafe waiting for him.

Perhaps he knew that the trees can not be moved, which are subject to land by roots and can not separate them, except to die. At the bottom of your heart may know my grandfather, a mysterious find difficult to express in words, that life on earth and trees is a single life. Or trees can live without the earth or the earth can live without the trees. Even some argue that the only inhabitants of the planet's natural they are, the trees. Why? Because they feed directly from the earth, because they grab with their roots and are caught by it. Earth and Tree, here is the perfect symbiosis. "

In a recent interview they did to Saramago (and based on this wonderful detail of his grandfather with the trees) was asked: Being the face of death, repeat the detail of your grandfather? And he replied: "repeat that detail would desecrate it. What I ask or do, is to put a message on a tree, whose legend read: a man linked to another man. Maybe some think that there is too much lyricism in these words . It is possible, because, as the earth and the trees, feeling and reason always go together. "

He died at age 87, on June 18, 2010, at his residence in the town of Tias (Lanzarote, Las Palmas) due to chronic leukemia that led to multiple organ failure. He had spoken with his wife and spent a quiet night. Saramago wrote until the end of his life, it is said that had 30 pages of an upcoming novel.