we are amputees

At this moment I thought I had three or four ways to begin. In the end, I won't use any of them, and the reason for the change was the offer of two statuettes that you see here. Those familiar with Francisco Stockinger's work will not be surprised that they are mutilated human figures. The man has his right arm reduced to a stump, with which he raises a kind of spear. His left arm is also amputated. And, like the man, the woman has both arms mutilated. When I looked at these figures, I remembered that perhaps the most important question we should discuss, not only now, but every day, not only here, but everywhere, would be to ascertain whether we are, in fact, mutilated beings and, if we recognize ourselves as such, to what extent and in what way are we so? I am not referring, of course, to those people who are physically so, but rather to those who do not appear to be. That is to say, I am referring to each and every one of us…

In my books, a theme that we could call "constant mutilation" has appeared and reappeared repeatedly. Consider this: Baltasar from *Memorial do Convento* lost his left hand in the war; Marcenda from *Ano da Morte de Ricardo Reis* has a paralyzed left arm; the centaur from *Objecto Quase* dies cut on a thin rock, like a blade, separating his human part from his animal part; in another story in that book, we witness the castration of a pig. I am not saying that I was unaware of what I was doing in describing all this or that I did not premeditate it, but I am saying that on none of these occasions did I perceive that I was using and repeating an idea with roots certainly deeper than those the reader will deduce for themselves from the evident cruelty of the situations.

The idea of a non-physical amputation of being, even if it may not seem so at first glance, has something to do with a part of the speech I just gave. I remind you of the passage in question (which I took care to emphasize in my reading), the one in which I referred to a humanity understood as a "carrier of time" and in which I stated that all understanding of the world and of life can only be fictional – historical for the past, because that is what History is for, chaotic for the present, for the reasons that are obvious, and utopian for the future, because I do not believe it is possible for anyone to live without a sense of utopia. Let us now pass over the usual objection that utopia means what is nowhere and therefore has no existence, and respond that this place, being by definition a desert, since nothing exists in it, can also, like any desert, become habitable through work, effort, and will. Utopia, thus considered, would be that time and place where human beings would cease to see themselves as mutilated, as amputees.

Why do I think we are like amputated beings? Because of our own resistance to recognizing that we are. A few weeks ago, in Granada, Spain, I dared to say, against the most obvious evidence, that each of us is three meters tall, but that we either don't know it, or we don't realize it, or we simply don't believe it. And I dared to say more: that there is something above us that we could reach if we tried. To anyone who tells me that only God is above us, I will answer: "No, what is above us is ourselves." Reaching that other that we cannot reach, but that we could touch with our fingers, should be the work of our lives. If we don't reach it, it's because we don't imagine that we are already there; if we don't reach it, it's because we don't know that it's possible; if we don't reach it, it's because we are not allowed to reach it: all of these are secondary expressions of mutilation. It is this mutilation, especially if we are not aware of it, that surrounds us with perplexity, anguish, and doubt, when most of the time there is neither the time nor the conditions to think about anything other than fighting for survival, keeping our heads above water at all costs. I suppose I will not stray too far from the topic, perhaps I can even make it a little clearer, if I pause now, for a moment, to invoke another type of survival, one that is positive, both in its necessity and in its consequences.

Despite my deep-seated skepticism about the usefulness of such events, I was invited some time ago to participate in a meeting in Spain where proposals for the next millennium would be presented and debated—ten from each participant. Philosophers and sociologists were in the majority; the group consisted of only one writer: myself. Now, being a fiction writer, it seems that such a topic should have stimulated my imagination. The opposite happened: while my colleagues were setting sail on a limitless future, I contented myself with presenting ten proposals for the following day… In fact, it doesn't seem serious to presume to know today what will be suitable for people who will inhabit this planet in the year 2999. If a congress had been held in the year 1000 to present and discuss proposals for the following millennium, we could safely bet that the wise men gathered wouldn't have gotten any of them right. Even a congress held in 1899 with the same goal, thinking not of the next thousand years but simply of the immediate century, would be far more wrong than right. Let us therefore leave the third millennium in the peace of the cosmic future and think about tomorrow. Even more: let us prepare for it by beginning to live now as survivors.

What is generally understood by survivors? What we usually call a survivor is someone who has gone through great danger—an earthquake, a flood, a shipwreck, a fire, an accident, a serious illness—and was lucky enough to escape. Because they survived, perhaps they come to better understand the importance, value, and meaning of being alive. Now, looking at all of us, I think that if we don't start living now as lucid and conscious survivors, tomorrow may be too late. When the crimes against the planet we live on become irreversible, when garbage invades our homes, when pollution turns the atmosphere into a toxic substance, when the destruction of forests turns the world into a desert, when rivers and seas become fetid sewers, the survivors will not survive. Unless, in the meantime, they find another planet to live on and are already committing the same atrocities that we have been committing on this one…

It is fitting, and will serve to soften the serious tone of this conversation, to share my thoughts on the magnificent work that was divine creation. First of all, I think that when God created the universe, what He had in mind was to entrust it all to His other great creation, that is, humankind. Truly, it would have made no sense to have created something so vast – pardon the inadequacy of the words "so vast" when applied to the universe – only to then place humankind, His most perfect creation, since He created them in His image and likeness, to live on a tiny planet in a very secondary galaxy. Let's acknowledge that this is not what one could expect from a God. Therefore, the logical and obvious thing is that we began by inhabiting the entire planet. How long that lasted, I neither know nor can know. What is certain is that God realized we were destroying what had cost Him so much work, and, moreover, knowing that He could not create another universe, since this one occupies all of space. So, what did God do? He seized upon those ancestors of ours, all of them, and brought them here, saying, “Since you like to destroy, then let it be one planet at a time, and not the entire universe.”.
Now that we've smiled, let's wrap up the topic. The survivor, as I understand him, has the awareness, or perhaps the premonition, of the value and meaning of life, and is therefore one step away from leaving behind the mutilated animal he once was, that amputation of dignity and respect, that amputation of what is or should be consubstantial to the human being, or rather, to this being that we have become, to this long and painful process of humanization that is ours. Mutilation is the incomplete being, amputated of what it lacked to be three meters tall, amputated of itself because it cannot reach itself.

I won't keep you much longer. It used to be common to say that wisdom came with age and grew with it. Some old people did their best to behave as if this were true; the young, when it suited them, pretended to believe it. It wasn't a wisdom resulting merely from a body of knowledge, but a wisdom that was, so to speak, the natural consequence of the very duration of existence, as if within us there were a mechanism that only needed to wait for a certain time in life to kick in and begin producing wisdom. In truth, I don't believe that age makes us wiser. More lucid, yes, perhaps, at least until age itself begins to take away our lucidity. In any case, we must consider the fact that a long life always has the advantage of showing us the spectacle of the world for a longer time, which may teach us something, especially if we are not content with merely contemplating it… All this to conclude that I must have some wisdom, after all, even though my lack of knowledge is so obvious. It is this awareness, this will not to be deceived by appearances, that compels me to tell you that, while it is true that from today I am an Honorary Doctor of this University, it is even more true that you, and not I, are the true university students, from the first professor to the last student. That is why the mechanical locksmith I once was often wonders if you, students, are truly aware of the privilege it is to be able to spend a part of your lives at university.

Let's not delude ourselves, however. While we are creating and developing universities that professionally prepare people for life, we are fostering societies that, in many cases, will make life unbearable for those whom the university prepared thinking only about the profession they will have. Allow me, then, to venture that perhaps something is missing from this picture, that perhaps a more or less effective transmission of a set of objective knowledge is not enough, that perhaps the university should urgently include in its curriculum another type of knowledge, a critical and active awareness, an ethic of dialogue and participation, a wisdom, in short, that, to be formed, does not have to wait for old age… Among this knowledge I would include the guided learning of effective human respect, not universal love, to which none of us is obliged, but simple respect for the other as the reason and condition of a just reciprocity.

At first glance, the Catholic Church asks more than respect of us when it asks us to love one another. But frankly, it doesn't seem to me that we have an obligation to love one another. We do have a higher obligation, a much higher one, and that is to respect one another. Put respect in the place of love, and we will have taken a great step forward. Who knows? If we achieve respect, perhaps we will achieve love.

In Stockholm, during the Nobel Prize ceremony, I denounced the failure to uphold the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I will not repeat here the speech I gave then. I will limit myself to observing that the continuous and systematic disregard of economic and political power for these rights, the offenses and humiliations they suffer every day and everywhere, also represent for us multiplied forms of amputation, infinite modes of mutilation, no longer internal to our being, but coming from a relentless exterior for which we are nothing more than instruments to be used and discarded. The Declaration of Human Rights is a promise that no one seems willing to keep. Perhaps because the simple duty to respect them and ensure respect has not yet instilled in our minds the idea that, from an ethical point of view, the duty of a right is as valuable as the right of a duty. Perhaps it is worth thinking about this. In simpler terms, to conclude: let us claim our rights, yes sir, let us claim them every day, here and wherever we may be, but let us also claim, and fully assume, our duties.

* On April 26, 1999, José Saramago received an honorary doctorate from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, in Brazil. As protocol dictates, the writer delivered an academic speech at the ceremony. However, after reading the text he had prepared, José Saramago announced that, with the consent of the university's rector, he would say a few words extemporaneously. What the reader of Blimunda now reads is the transcription of that speech by the writer, which was collected by UFGRS and published in a booklet in 1999.