Monastery Chronicle

Memorial do Convento

In an age of scarce imagination, I choose to be a heretic.
◢Editor's Recommendation◣
◢This is a famous work by the 1998 Nobel Prize winner in Literature, Saramago. Saramago also won the highest award in Portuguese literature, the "Camões Prize", for this book.
◢Praised by the media as a masterpiece of magical realism comparable to "One Hundred Years of Solitude", the background of idealism and the color of magic will play a symphony of the pinnacle of human imagination.
◢ His work was selected by the Nobel Academy as one of the "100 Best Works of World Literature of All Time." The Nobel Prize citation reads: Saramago's allegories, sustained by imagination, compassion, and irony, continue to move us.
◢The only Nobel Prize winner in literature in the Portuguese-speaking world, he is a literary idol of cultural celebrities such as Yu Hua, Su Tong, Liang Wendao, Zhan Qingyun, Xu Zechen and Luo Yijun.
◢Reading Saramago is like seeing the world anew.
Introduction
He was called Balthazar, the "Seven Suns," for he could see what was in the light; she was called Blimunda, the "Seven Moons," for she could see what was in the dark. He had hooks sprouting from his severed arms, she had eyes that pierced everything. Their bodies and minds loved each other, and love emboldened them to defy convention. It was an age of impoverished imagination. A great king sought to build a world-class monastery, carrying a 31-ton boulder solely by human effort. A mad priest and his young lover dreamed of building a machine capable of flight, but the world declared flight a sin. Ultimately, the aircraft crashed, their bodies burned, and the monastery was built. Ultimately, theocracy was deposed, royal authority crumbled, but love and will endured.
◢About "The Monastery Chronicles", Saramago said◣
◢I was born poor, and I write to prove that the worst waste is not the waste of goods, but the waste of humanity. Millions of people are trampled under the feet of history, and millions of people have nothing but life itself.
I'm tired of books that make love so complicated. Why, I ask myself, does falling in love have to be so complicated? Blimunda can look at Balthazar and think: I like him. What moves me is the gestures: a scene where one person puts their hand on another's arm is enough to bring me to tears.
◢ Let’s face it, irony is a safeguard against power and its abuse, and if we lose our ability to be ironic, we find ourselves disarmed.
◢Media Comment◣
◢It is comparable to any work by García Márquez at his peak. - Philadelphia Inquirer
◢The flying machine is a symbol of redemption in Saramago's works. In a heavy world, where wealth is squandered, poverty forces people to leave their homes, and ignorance and oppression drive people to build harsh and exquisite monasteries, the human will is attracted by the sun, giving birth to liberation, lightness and flight. - Los Angeles Times
◢Reading "The Monastery Chronicles" will make you understand: the world is a comedy for those who think, and a tragedy for those who feel. ——"Library Journal"
◢Text Excerpt◣
◢People with will, I hope you will preserve and use it well. People without will, continue to endure the pain of lack of will.
◢If we were the same as God, equal, then we could judge him for not receiving this equality from him.
Now is the time to atone for past excesses, to discipline the soul so that the body, this depraved and vile body, this unruly and foul body, this swine in its sty, which is Lisbon, may feign remorse.
◢This body is mine, entirely mine, the product of my direct intercourse with myself, of the world descending upon my secret face, as it appears on the outside, and therefore unknown to others.

2023-09-01

河南文艺出版社

Duoke Culture

384

9787555915430