6/8/2023 0 Comments Cain by José SaramagoFrom the destruction of the Tower of Babel to the mountain where Abraham is about to slaughter Isaac ("nothing is impossible for the lord, Not even error and crime, asked Isaac, Especially error and crime …") to the immolation of Sodom and Gomorrah ("There must have been innocent people in Sodom and in the other cities that were burned, If so, the lord would have kept the promise he made to me to save their lives, What about the children, said Cain, surely the children were innocent. His protagonist is Cain, whose condemned wanderings are imagined as not merely geographic, but as "sudden time-travelling shifts," in which Cain witnesses the Lord's many atrocities.įrom the beginning, Cain contests the Lord's arbitrariness and injustice: "Am I my brother's keeper, You killed him, Yes, I did, but you are the one who is really to blame, I would have given my life for him if you had not destroyed mine, It was the question of putting you to the test, But why put to the test the very thing you yourself created, Because I am the sovereign lord of all things…"Ĭain's journeys bring many lessons. Portuguese Nobel-laureate José Saramago's final novel, the posthumousĬain, focuses harshly on "the lord" of the Hebrew Bible.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |