New York Diary

The Tale of the Unknown Island...

...is a fairy tale written through a haze. The characters are everymen, with a king who would rather recieve favors than petitions, a dreamer who wants a boat to find an island that he doesn't know exists, and a washerwoman who is sucked into his dream. There is a moral: life follows belief (or desire), and not vice versa. The man and washerwoman end up living together on their impossible island (if only in yet another dream), drifting asea in forests and in love. They never find their unknown island, precisely, but they do make The Unknown Island out of their boat itself. They float together, perhaps in perpetuity, living their ideal; their hopes, dreams, beliefs, and desires are made real precisely because they indulge them.

All this is well and good, and the style is appropriately fluid and flowing (little punctuation breaks up the dreamy stream of words). But Saramago's little story didn't really do that much for me, even if I recognize a kind of textual richness in it. Perhaps it said a lot, but it evoked very little in me.

posted by Skay @ 12:30 PM