Homens, perdoai-lhe, porque ele não sabe o que fez: a ascensão do homem e a queda de Deus em José Saramago, uma alegoria da religiosidade moderna

Abstract

One of the predominant themes in José Saramago’s work is the re-reading and the intertextuality with the sacred scriptures which compose the gospels of Christian Judaísm. This technique is built from the deconstruction of biblical narratives and from a subversive reading of some of the precepts that founded western ideology. Firm atheist, in these non religious inversions, Saramago, at the same time that questions unwavering beliefs, presents us a desmystification of western official History, from a humanizing view of the biblical episodes. In this dialog, one of the main subversions the author brings is the inversion of roles between God and man: this one, through Jesus Christ figure, assumes the sacred functions of God (mainly the one of being the measure for everything), while that one embodies typical human qualities, proving, to the author, his insufficiency as a superior entity. Our study proposes to assume that Saramago materializes the perspective of modern Christianism in his work, by the adoption of the philosophical idea of cultural death of God, through humanization and unveiling of the cruel and bloodthirsty nature of this character. The idea of divinity will reborn in Jesus Christ, as a man, strengthening, thus, an anthropological thought which sees man as the measure for everything, occupying, because of this, the place of God in the context of Christian religion. Our work intends, therefore, to comprehend the way this face of modern religiosity is incorporated in the analyzed narratives, through the inversion of roles between God and Jesus Christ. For this purpose, we will use some premises of Comparative Literature, as well as some concepts that define allegory, parody and dialogism, besides other literary theories that occur less frequently in our analysis. According to this, we will also proceed to a historical description that categorizes Saramago as a post-modern author, bearing in mind the transgression of historical, mythical and religious truths that he brings in his works. Also, we point out the use of polyphony of the incorporated discourse to the author’s work, which will let emanate, through the analysis of allegorical ruins, other discourses silenced by traditional and religious History, in the contexts of the intertextualities that the author establishes. Our studies focus on the structures of composition of biblical texts, and on the possibility of treating these writings under a literary perspective. Furthermore, we disseminate the use of data from the sacred scriptures, as well as the profane, which tell about the Jesus’s walk in the Earth, in an attitude disconnected from any dogmatism or tendentious intention, revealing, so, the discourses overcame by their theological reading. We consider, however, that even materializing this perspective, Saramagos’s texts continue inhabiting literary universe, not working, then, as a “destroyer” of sacred truths of Christianism.