“Lanzarote is my rock raft”: José Saramago and the memorialistic writing of exile

Abstract

The current paper offers a reading of the initial Saramago’s Diaries, writ­ten by the Portuguese José Saramago and published between the years of 1993 and 1997, as it rehearses drafting a possible relation between the role of the intellectual, as performed by the writer and the composition of an autobiographical literature. This latter is constituted by means of a unique acquisition and learning of memory, from his exile in the Spanish island of Lanzarote. Edward Said´s writings will guide the discussions on exile pro­posed in this work, as much as Philippe Lejeune´s, whose writings appear in the dialogue between autobiography and memory.