The Gospel According to Jesus Christ by José Saramago

Saramago’s Jesus has a distinct voice, and it’s easy to feel the rough fabric of his tunic and to smell the sweat and the desert in his hair.

There’s nothing believable in an automaton who approaches life as if reading from a script.

Saramago, however, manages to create a true personality, and it is Jesus’s torment that brings him alive. It’s a beautifully told tale full of heartbreak, insecurity and not being able to know oneself, in other words, the hallmarks of what makes us human.Īs for the character of Jesus, it’s too easy to put him on a pedestal, quoting Scripture with a stern face and picturesque hand-waving, because he has to tick all the doctrinal boxes of any given denomination. Saramago’s keen eye for irony and the absurd colors the proceedings, and with lucid determinacy he shifts from the farcical to elegiac, from earthly to poetic, never losing us into the mechanics of the story or the theoretical narrative framework behind it all. It might be that people of a certain persuasion won’t be able to see the forest for the trees, but I find Saramago’s warmth and compassion for his characters the stuff of marvelous literary merit and entertainment. His atheism lends a satirical perspective to the happenings, but here he’s far subtler than he ever was in Cain (2009), whose primary objective was to be a full-on parody, a kind of Gospel on steroids. Saramago’s insight into the human nature and psychology is as humane, his wit as biting yet at the same time as nuanced, and therefore his humor as cunning, delicious and hilarious as ever. But that’s changed with The Gospel According to Jesus Christ (1991). Until now, my favorite Saramago has been his 1982 novel, Baltasar and Blimunda. Queríamos a história de um homem, afinal. Daí que pra mim, em que pese a absoluta jogada de mestre da conversa entre Jesus, Deus e o Diabo, e sua plausibilidade teológica como alternativa séria, mesmo que em meio ao tom irônico de Saramago no final, como eu dizia, o livro pede um pouco de força (mas ainda assim é um baita livro): é que Deus tem pressa e esta faz com que os milagres tenham de se realizar de modo claro, a gerar convencimento e seguidores, e em seu afã de conquista dos corações humanos, Saramago acompanha essa pressa de Deus em uma aceleração dos eventos, como se o interessante tivesse sido o humano, o final vem como um corolário. A história de Jesus Cristo contada de modo sensível, com um uso muito astutos das máximas, a fazer com que seus deslocamentos soem como deslocamentos das outras versões em relação ao relato aqui realizado, não deixando a ficcionalidade mas adicionando ao ficcional real da história de Jesus mais um ficcional real, ainda mais por todos seus primeiros dois terços de escrita, em que os milagres comparecem apenas de modo escasso e ambíguo.

The Gospel According to Jesus Christ by José Saramago