Something about this picture embodies the last two weeks spent in that city better than all the tiled façades and wrought iron balconies and pastel loveliness, more than the hilly streets and clanging trams, and much more than the throngs of tourists eating their natas, and buying shoes and clothing from international fashion shops. Beneath all of that is a melancholy solitude that is difficult to glimpse or grasp, but seems as deeply embedded in the city's spirit as the two-inch chunks of black and cream stone, laid in geometric patterns, that pave the sidewalks and plazas: installed originally, I learned, by prison work crews.
The tradition of fado, and the now-overused Portuguese word saudade... these seem increasingly exploited as commercial expressions, losing meaning rather than being an entry into the soul of the place and the people. Saudade, which has no English equivalent, means a longing for an absent something or someone who may never return; saudade brings both happy and sad feelings, but it is more than nostalgia. It is described as "the state of mind that has subsequently become a 'Portuguese way of life'': a constant feeling of absence, the sadness of something that's missing, wistful longing for completeness or wholeness and the yearning for the return of what is now gone, a desire for presence as opposed to absence." Fernando Pessoa, the greatest of Lisbon's poets, wrote an unfinished work called The Book of Disquiet:
"The fragmentary, the incomplete is of the essence of Pessoa's spirit. The very kaleidoscope of voices within him, the breadth of his culture, the catholicity of his ironic sympathies – wonderfully echoed in Saramago's great novel about Ricardo Reis – inhibited the monumentalities, the self-satisfaction of completion. Hence the vast torso of Pessoa's Faust on which he laboured much of his life. Hence the fragmentary condition of The Book of Disquiet, which contains material that predates 1913 and which Pessoa left open-ended at his death. As Adorno famously said, the finished work is, in our times and climate of anguish, a lie." --George Steiner
So, I walked. Where do all those kilometers of pattern lead? I wondered. To the plazas, certainly, but then they wind out, up another hill, into a narrow maze of streets, curving out and down again to the edge of the sea, along the edges of buildings the color of marigolds, lavender, sky, up into the maze again. It is a city that leads the walker to walk, but toward what? Toward incompleteness itself, perhaps. The image at the top of this post shows the only conclusion I found: a place where the pattern changed into green growth and light, at the end of a small dark tunnel.
I also kept a journal with some drawings, which I'm still adding to; I'll probably share them here as time goes on. But I struggled with making art there. I had the sense that drawing and photographing were, to some extent, futile -- I left Lisbon feeling that it was impossible to capture its essence, because we cannot capture incompleteness, absence, and longing, even in the present age where the emphasis is on having a "complete experience", of checking items off a list, taking selfies at the proscribed spots to prove we were there. The Time Out Market, a concept that was first tried in Lisbon, is a perfect example: the tourist doesn't need to discover anything for him or herself; they can just go to a centrally-located and packaged "destination market" -- an upscale food court where a curated selection of restaurants and shops have stalls with the same signage, the same style, offering a sample of their wares, with long tables for seating in the center of the space. It's enticing and exciting on the first visit; on the second, not quite so much. All major cities will soon have these markets, and they will all look alike, too.
Better then, perhaps, to write in fragments, like Pessoa, or to express feelings in music, or simply to reflect on experience in solitude. Even as a brief visitor, I sensed Lisbon's elusive, melancholic undercurrent, and I find I'm appreciating it even more now that I am home.
This is so beautiful, evocative and thought-provoking - thank you! Maybe there's a visual artwork to be made of questioning and fragments, just as you've made this haunting and suggestive essay?
The patterned pavements are like Copacabana in Rio...
or rather, Copacabana is like Lisbon, I suppose. Rio is an old but still vivid memory for me, while Lisbon, forty years ago, is too long ago to be more than a brief flicker of remembered light and hills.
Posted by: Jean | April 09, 2019 at 06:02 AM
You articulate so insightfully and eloquently what I felt and thought during my visit to Lisbon over a decade ago. When I think of that city, the moments I recall are so often ones that we arrived at by following a smell (sardines grilling over a grill on an old metal barrel) or a sound (acoustic guitar, solo voice in a shaded square; Brazilian jazz that led us through a curtain-door, up stairs, to a rooftop lounge). . . and the walking. Walking and walking . . .
Posted by: Frances | April 09, 2019 at 09:38 AM
I've visited both Lisbon and Porto. There is of course the language barrier since Portuguese doesn't link helpfully with any of the more familiar European languages. On top of that is the ever-present conviction that Portugal is one of the "ends" of Europe, that the next westward step is 2000 miles of ocean. Also the country is small dimensionally and by population (a mere 10m, 88th in the world). In terms of news little seems to happen there, especially when compared, say, with Greece which has a similar population. One isn't entirely surprised to learn that Portugal supported one of the most enduriug of tyrannical presidents (Salazar; 33 years) and that his reign extended into quite modern times (he died in 1970). I am, however, slightly surprised to discover that Portugal was one of the original signatories of NATO.
You talk of struggling with its essence. My feeling is that Portugal is, obviously, isolated and that it is content to be so. Unaffected and seemingly uninterested in what lies to the east. Its most famous product, the fortified wine port, is perhaps typical of the country. Vintage port is comparatively rare and may involve decades of maturation - nothing very exciting there.
Posted by: Roderick Robinson | April 10, 2019 at 03:52 AM
Oh Beth, I wish I'd known you were going to Portugal! I would have given you my dear brother's address, or at least his phone number, and you could have been in touch. He lives in a lovely part of the Algarve - not near Lisbon, I know - but maybe you were planning to go south as well.
Anyway, as always your travel impressions are fascinating. I loved Brazil where, as you know, I lived for a while and I love what I've seen of Portugal. It's 'otherness' is one of the attractions for me and the quintessentially Portuguese sound of Fado resonates deeply within me, in a similar way as Flamenco.
I want to hear and see much more about your Lisbons experience!
Posted by: Natalie | April 13, 2019 at 10:21 AM