Ensayo sobre la lucidez = Seeing (Blindness #2), José Saramago

Seeing is a novel by Nobel Prize-winning Portuguese author José Saramago. It was published in Portuguese in 2004, and it is a sequel to one of his most famous works, Blindness.

Seeing is set in the same unnamed country featured in Blindness. The story begins with a parliamentary election, in which the majority (83%) of the populace cast blank ballots.

The first half of the story focuses on the struggles of the government and its various nameless members as they try to simultaneously understand and destroy the amorphous non-movement of blank-voters. Some of the characters from Blindness appear in the second half of the novel, including 'the doctor' and 'the doctor's wife', and the 'dog of tears' now with the name, Constant.

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????? ?????? ????? 28/07/1399???? ???????? 28/06/1400???? ???????? ?. ??????? Mark André 129 319

Powerful. Sinister. Cynical. Idiosyncratic. Sagacious. Fun.
Modern, imaginative, well written. This guy's got game!novels-i157 s8 comments Renato36 142

I chose José Saramago's Seeing as an October read because Brazil held Presidential Elections on October 5th (1st round) and October 26th (2nd round, since no candidate received more than 50% of the valid votes the first time). Brazilian voting system is similar to that of the book's unnamed place in that it is compulsory. We've had the closest race ever, with elected President winning by 51.6% against second place with 48.4%.

The book's story begins precisely on Election Day. Only the race wasn't that close, even though it came out without a clear winner: 83% of the votes were cast as blank. It's as if Saramago just read The Trial and asked himself: "what if people rebelled against bureaucracy for once?", thus revenging K's sad fate. In Brazil, it is always emphasized that voting is not only an obligation, but also a right. I suspect the population in this story also believed that to be true...

"Casting a ballot is your irrevocable right, and no one will ever deny you that right, but just as you tell children not to play with matches, so we warn whole peoples of the dangers of playing with dynamite."
Once again, Saramago proposes that we ponder on a very difficult situation in this follow-up to his masterpiece Blindness. Not only the blank votes could be seen as a similar pest to the inexplicable blindness that happened in his early work - both are represented by the color white -, characters that experienced the blindness also appear in Seeing. The doctor's wife, the only known person who didn't go blind back then, could, somehow, be related to this apparent insurgence? The government, desperately in search of someone to blame, might think so. Without any sort of analysis, the leaders's first reaction was to wonder whether this was a conspiracy taking place before their very own eyes. Were they worried about the city in the first place, that would be ok. It turned out that was not the case.

"It is an unwavering rule for those in power that, when it comes to heads, it is best to cut them off before they start thinking, afterwards, it might be too late."
The dialogues between the leading men in charge - the fact that there wasn't any female character in the government is a sad subject that deserves a whole book about it - were realistic but also disgusting to read. It's just one more example where we are able to witness how corruptive - and addictive - power can be to our race: it seems to be humanity's Achilles' heel. The very power that was given by the people to the government is used against them - no matter what - in order to be sustained.

"But truths need to be repeated many times so that they don't, poor things, lapse into oblivion."
Another parallel to our Brazilian election was the role played by the press. A couple of days before the second round, the leading weekly publication in the country and one of the most influential outlets released an extra edition carrying severe complaints about one of the candidates (the one who would end up winning). It seems it was all manipulated and that the source for the article never uttered the bombastic words used in the headlines. In Seeing, the author described how the press serves the government in order to bias the public opinion and how the vehicles that try to go against it and remain impartial can suffer drastic consequences.

"We are born, and at that moment, it is as if we had signed a pact for the rest of our life, but a day may come when we will ask ourselves Who signed this on my behalf"
This is my third Saramago novel, and it definitely won't be the last. His witty remarks, fun observations and sarcasm applied to sensitive subjects but also to daily, ordinary ones that one wouldn't normally pay any attention to always make me smile and warm my heart.

Rating: 4 white stars.2014 reviewed saramago103 s Dalia Nourelden609 884

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