When I met Jose Saramago

BRUSSELS, Belgium — Jose Saramago was a die-hard communist whose writings appealed for individual liberties. He was a confirmed atheist who wrote novels based on the life of Jesus Christ and Cain, son of Adam; and he created dark, obtuse novels with fiendishly complex prose, which became bestsellers around the world.

The Portuguese-speaking world's only Nobel Literature Prize winner died Friday at his retreat in Spain's Canary Islands at the age of 87 after a long illness. "Our culture has been made poorer by his loss," said Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Socrates, who declared two days of national mourning.

I once spent a couple of hours talking with Saramago in the little book-lined apartment he shared with his Spanish wife, Pilar, in the Estrela district of Lisbon. Long an admirer of his books, I tried to get him to explain the apparent contradictions that run through his life and work,

"There is an assertion of the individual that is a constant in my books," Saramago told me back in 1991. "That can also be understood as a meditation on power. I have a project to bring individual values out of the collective mass."

How did he reconcile that with his unshakable, lifelong support for the Portuguese Communist Party? “I see communism as a situation in which the relation of man with society could be the most perfect harmony possible," he confided during that Associated Press interview.

On the three occasions we met while I was serving as AP correspondent in the 1980s and 1990s, Saramago exuded dry wit, patience and a polite, old-world charm. But he could be a pugnacious polemicist and withering in his criticism.

His criticism of Israeli policy toward the Palestinians led to accusations of anti-Semitism. Saramago opposed Spain and Portugal joining the European Union, insisting the Iberian nations would be better off renewing ties with Africa and Latin America. In 2007, he provoked outrage in his homeland by suggesting that the Portuguese would be better off if their country were absorbed by Spain.

However, his biggest battles were with the Catholic Church. The clergy reacted furiously to his 1991 novel “The Gospel According to Jesus Christ” which portrays Jesus as the victim of the machinations of a ruthless God who sacrifices his son in a plot to expand his influence over the world.

The novel was pilloried by the Catholic Church in Portugal but sold 20,000 copies in the first week of publication, in a country where the average print run for a work of fiction was 3,000. Saramago was prepared for the backlash from the clergy. “If I was of the church, I wouldn't like it either," he told me.

He was mortified, however, when the then-conservative government in Lisbon caved in to church pressure and removed the book from a list of Portuguese novels in the running for a European prize.

Considering himself the victim of censorship, he exiled himself to the Spanish island of Lanzarote. He renewed his battle with Church last year, with his most recent novel named for the Cain — the Bible’s first murderer.

Born into a modest family in a rural area east of Lisbon, Saramago’s radical politics were forged through opposition to the fascist-inspired dictatorship founded by Antonio Oliveira Salazar that ruled Portugal from 1928 until 1974.

Self-educated, the young Saramago produced works chronicling the grim social struggle between agricultural workers and landowners backed by the Salazar regime. However his career took a turn in 1982 with “Baltasar and Blimunda” — a historical romance set against the background of the inquisition in the 17th century and influenced by the magical-realist style emerging from Latin America. The book brought Saramago enduring international success, particularly in Spain and Latin America where each of his subsequent novels shot into the best-seller lists.

“Spaniards and Portuguese today not only share the same pain, but also the same example that he left us with his legacy of solidarity, intelligence and affection, ” said Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. Brazil’s President Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva called him a “militant for freedom” who expanded the scope of the Portuguese language.

For a Brit struggling to learn Portuguese, Saramago’s tortuous sentences, often running for several pages, were not the easiest textbooks. But there was nothing better for learning the richness and beauty of the language. Beyond the daunting structures and unconventional punctuation, there is a purity and directness to his writing, which led to his award from the Nobel committee in 1998.

Many of his works share the common theme of an underdog struggling against oppressive authority, be it the Inquisition, the Salazar dictatorship, the unnamed bureaucracy of “All the Names,” or the overwhelming shopping mall in “The Cave.”

Saramago, long refused to allow his books to be filmed, but in 2007 he gave his blessing to Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles’ adaptation of “Blindness,” a novel inspired by the Bosnian bloodletting of the 1990s that the describes the violent breakdown of society after a mass epidemic of sightlessness.

“Only a few are privileged with Saramago’s level of lucidity … without him the world has become blinder and more stupid,” Meirelles said Friday.