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José Luís Peixoto presentsLaura Restrepo
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By LauraRestrepo
“Centuries later, there are no more friars, but the thousands of books and the huge stones are still there, unchanged.”
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The body has a memory. It is both archive and testimony of passage, imprinted on paper and in conjured-up verbal tenses. Laura Restrepo, a 72-year-old Colombian writer born in Bogotá, is fascinated by the textures and interweaving of the mind, a quest that is transversal to her life and her many literary geographical locations.
With a bachelor's degree in Philosophy and Literature and a post-graduate degree in Political Science from the University of the Andes in Colombia, the writer is also a university professor, having taught at the National and Rosario Universities in Bogotá and Cornell University in New York, USA. At the same time, she has devoted herself to journalism and worked for a number of major media publications, including the magazine Semana, where she collaborated closely with Gabriel García Márquez, and the Mexican newspapers Proceso and La Jornada.
Social and political causes have accompanied her from an early age; she has been involved with Médicos Sem Fronteiras and has written articles on the situation in countries such as Yemen, Somalia, Ethiopia, India, Greece, Colombia and Mexico.
Considered one of the biggest names in Latin American literature, Laura Restrepo's novels The Leopard in the Sun (Archbishop Xoán de San Clemente Prize, 2003), Sweet Company (Sor Juana Ines de La Cruz Prize, Mexico, 1997 and Prix France Culture, 1998), The Obscure Bride, Delirium (Alfaguara Novella Prize, 2004, awarded by the jury led by Nobel Prize winner José Saramago and Grinzane Cavour Prize, 2006), and Too Many Heroes have all been translated into Portuguese. Hot Sur (2013), Sin (2017), Los Divinos (2018) and Canción de Antiguos Amantes (2022) are the most recent titles of the author’s work.
She currently lives in Barcelona, working as a correspondent for the Spanish newspaper El País and has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Instituto Cervantes, Madrid for the last six years.
To hear Laura Restrepo read an excerpt on Mafra, from the chapter “From Mondego to Sado, stopping all the while” from José Saramago's book, Journey to Portugal.
From Mondego To Sado, Stopping All The While
There Was Once a Slave
«(…)
As he continued south, the traveller was worried by the memory of that hotel. The cliff was no doubt strong, but could it really withstand such a monstrosity? His worry was not so much over the weight of the building, but the right that any honourable stone has not to have to bear such an unbearable physical and moral weight on its tired shoulders. Then the traveller remembers where he is headed, and gives a sigh of both relief and apprehension. He has yet to visit Ericeira, and enjoy the painted ceiling beams of the church there, and then beyond it the monastery of Mafra, which he can already see so clearly in the distance that he can almost count the windows in the façade. There is no way the traveller can avoid it. He advances feeling hypnotised, incapable of thought. And when he finally gets out of his car, and sees the distance he still has to go to the vestibule of the church, the grand stairway, and the atrium, he almost faints, But then he recalls Fernão Mendes Pinto, who travelled to such distant lands often along such awful roads, and with this example in mind, swings his knapsack on his back and sets off in heroic mood.
The monastery of Mafra is big. Big is the monastery of Mafra. Mafra's big monastery. Three ways of saying it, and there could be many more, all of which could be resumed in the simple phrase: the monastery of Mafra is big. It may seem a joke, but the traveller is at a loss as to how to come to grips with this façade more than 200 metres in width, an overall area of 40,000 square metres, with its 4,500 doors and windows, its 88 rooms, the 62-metre-high towers, the turrets, the dome of the basilica. The traveller searches anxiously for a guide, and clutches on to him like a drowning man. The guides at Mafra must be very used to this. They are patient, they don't raise their voices, they treat their charges with great care, aware of the challenges awaiting them. They miss many rooms, doors and windows, leave out whole wings of the palace, and only give the strictly necessary information so as not to overwhelm the brain or the heart. The traveller saw the atrium, and all the statues brought from Italy: they may well be masterpieces - who is the traveller to say - but they leave him absolutely cold. And the basilica, which is vast but seems to lack the proper proportions, does nothing to warm him either.
There have been plenty of saints already during this journey, but here there are more of them than all the rest put together. In village churches and in larger ones, the traveller saw half a dozen saints celebrated, and he celebrated as well, praising them and even believing in their proclaimed miracles. Above all, he saw they had shown love. The traveller has been moved by many imperfect images, and felt deep emotion over many other perfect works of art, but in Mafra the St Bartholomew in stone displaying his flayed skin causes him an indefinable sense of repugnance. The statues at Mafra are for religious fanatics, not simple believers.
The guide's words buzz like wasps. He knows from experience what he has to do to put the visitors to sleep, how to anaesthetise them. The traveller is so confused he thanks him for it. By now they have left the basilica, they climb an endless staircase, and he can remember vaguely that they saw (how on earth does the guide survive all this?) Dona María's apartment, in richest imperial style, the hunting-trophies room, the reception room, the friars' infirmary, the kitchen, this room, that room, room upon room upon room. Now it's the library: 83 metres long, books which are so high up they can hardly be made out, let alone touched to see what stories they are telling; the guide hurries on, and soon it's time to leave. Then it's back to the basilica, this time seen from a high window, and the traveller only keeps up out of politeness. The guide looks pale, and the traveller realises he must be made of the same clay as other mortals, he must get dizzy, have sleepless nights and suffer from indigestion. It's no easy thing to be a guide at Mafra.
The traveller escaped out into the street. Thank goodness, the sky was blue, the sun was shining, and there was even a refreshing breeze blowing.
The traveller slowly came back to life. In order to recover completely, he visited the church of St Andrew, the monastery's oldest victim. It is a pure and beautiful late thirteenth-century building, and the harmonious encounter between its Romanesque and Gothic elements comes as a sheer relief. Beauty is not dead.
Paradise Encountered
On the Ericeira road the traveller finally turned back, after reaching the northernmost point on the bend of the River Cheleiros, and headed south. The roads here are rather erratic: they spring up with the firm intention of serving all the tiniest villages in the region, but they never take the shortest route: they meander up and down hills, completely losing their head when they spot the Serra of Sintra in the distance. This wouldn't be a problem if the sierra had been the traveller's immediate goal: it is so obviously in front of him that any of them would do. But before that there is a hamlet called Janas, famed for the chapel of San Mamede which has a rare circular layout, and so the traveller made the necessary detour. He did not regret it.
(…)
All roads lead to Sintra. The traveller has already chosen his. He will go round by Azenhas do Mar and Praia das Maçãs, and take a look first at the houses cascading down from the clifftop, then the sandy beach lashed by the ocean waves; but he must admit he did all this without much enthusiasm, as if he could sense the sierra behind him, asking over his shoulder: “What's keeping you?” The same question must have been heard in that other paradise when the Creator was messing about with the clay before he created Adam.
On this side of the sierra, he first comes to Monserrate. But which Monserrate? The oriental palace, inspired by the moguls, now in a state of ruin, or the park that sweeps down from the road into the valley? The fragility of stucco, or the exuberance of vegetation? The traveller takes the first path he comes to, goes down the uneven steps that penetrate the foliage, the deep-green avenues, and finds himself in the kingdom of silence. It is true that there are birds singing, and every now and then some creature crawls through the undergrowth, a leaf falls or a bee goes buzzing by, but these are the sounds of silence. Tall trees rise on both sides of the valley, the tree ferns have thick trunks, and at the very bottom of the valley where streams flow, there are plants with huge, spiky leaves under which a fully grown man could stand to protect himself from the sun. Waterlilies abound on small lakes, and every so often a dull thud startles the traveller: it's a dry pine cone falling from a branch to the forest floor-
Up above stands the palace. From afar, it still has a certain grandeur. The round turrets with their characteristic lintels catch the eye, and the moulding of the arches is softened by distance. Close to, it saddens the traveller: this English folly, paid for by the cloth trade, and Victorian in its inspiration, shows how fleeting all revivals are. The palace is being restored, which is all to the good: Portugal has more than enough ruins. But even when it is fully restored, and open to the public, it will still be what it has always been: a monument to an age that had every taste imaginable, but never really defined any of them. These nineteenth-century architectures are usually imported, and are eclectic to the point of eccentricity. As empires dominated the world economically, they amused themselves with alien cultures. And this was always also the first sign of their decadence.
From the palace verandah, the traveller looks down at the mass of vegetation below. He already knew the land was fertile: he is more than familiar with wheatfields and pine forests, with orchards and olive groves, but it is only here that he realises that this fertility can reveal itself with such serene force, like a pregnant womb nourishing itself on what it is creating. Just by placing his hand on this trunk, or dipping it into a water-tank, or touching a fallen moss-covered statue, or closing his eyes and listening to the subterranean murmuring of roots. And the sun completes all of this. A small push from the trees would lift the entire earth all towards it. The traveller can feel the vertigo of the great cosmic winds. To make sure he will not be cast out of this paradise, he retraces his steps, counts the tree ferns and discovers a new one, and departs thinking that perhaps the earth will not come to an end so soon after all.»
“(...) the National Hunting Grounds of Mafra, an enchanted forest as of a fairy tale, lavish, shady, illuminated at times by rays of sun filtering through its foliage.”
“The famous Mafra Convent and Palace is a huge, eighteenth-century stone building carved in resplendent Portuguese baroque. In fact, it is three monuments in one: a Convent, a Basilica, and a Royal Palace. Besides dream gardens, a hunting lodge, and an extraordinary library with an infinite number of books, who can only wonder if someone has read them all, maybe an ancient scholar, perhaps a 19th-century scientist, or most likely José Saramago.
This architectural wonder was built with the blood, sweat, and tears of thousands of workers who gave their all in this huge endeavour. We know the story of those men and their suffering: José wrote about it in his great novel Baltasar and Blimunda (Memorial do Convento). I say that it required the sweat and tears of Portugal... and also the gold of Brazil: a tiny golden spoon, forgotten in a dusty glass case at the back of the convent, is a humble record of all the gold and human effort invested in the endeavour. Even so, something else was also essential: a miracle.
It so happened that, at that time, Dom João V, the already departed monarch, was suffering because his queen Maria Ana could not give him offspring. Until along came a monk offering a beneficial arrangement: a miraculous pregnancy for Maria Ana and a guaranteed heir if the king agreed to build a Convent for his community. And, oh, what a miracle! The child is born, a female one at that, but there is no less joy and gratitude because, in Portugal, the king and queen were equal, and both inherited the throne. So, Dom João V builds the monument that is Mafra, fulfilling his part of the commitment. Centuries later, there are no more friars, but the thousands of books and the huge stones are still there, unchanged.
The entire building is rather plain, but it is said that when the friars were young, the façades were a cheerful shade of pink, but a rose-pink, like the dress of a teenager on a party day. Besides, the kings were no fools: they would not remain locked up in their monument, letting the hours die out in solemn halls, listening to the echoes of their own voices and roaming long corridors. They were much more likely to revel in the surrounding gardens, which stretched down to the beach and were of a Versaillesque style, though freer and more wildly diversified, with a flair for trees, a knack for flowers, imagination for fountains, waterfalls, ball games, sea-bathing, and country banquets. This, is at the front. Behind the Palace, there was a leafy “coutada” (hunting ground), which offered their Majesties, in moments of frenzied shooting and pleasure, the heads, antlers and tusks of the many deer and wild boar that today, stuffed, look down at us from the walls with eyes of meek and moist sweetness.
The former 'coutada' (hunting ground) has been encircled in the vastness of its greenery to become a beautiful nature reserve, the National Hunting Grounds of Mafra, an enchanted forest as of a fairy tale, lavish, shady, illuminated at times by rays of sun filtering through its foliage: century-old horse chestnut trees; flowering laurels; leafy sycamores; ash trees clinging to waterways; a proliferation of pepper trees. One's skin glistens with the contrast between the warm sunny spots and the icy shade. Elk, deer, wild boar, and birds of prey have their Eden here. And, at the end of the trail, as a resting place for us hikers, tea and biscuits are served by a fireplace in the old forest rangers' house, while outside, the curious adult deer, with their imposing frames, and the little ones, playful like Bambi (although not the Disney one - a childish, facile version - but the original Bambi, the one from Felix Salten's wise and profound novel).
The neighbouring town of Ericeira has the pleasant semblance of a 1950s-style seaside resort. On the shores of a foaming and wild sea - a surfers' passion - with an enchanting breeze and an indigo sky, we can eat shrimp açorda (bread stew) at the Ti Matilde restaurant. Or wandering down the adjacent hillsides, enjoy the typical Mediterranean delicacies of Tasquinha do Gil, in the tiny and exquisite Mata Pequena, a village of elves, with pots of geraniums, whitewashed walls, and sheep in the meadows. In a small stone pigsty, there is a huge friendly pink pig, although the sign warns: 'Do not come any closer'.
In such a bucolic and lovely setting, it is hard for us to imagine that in other times, in these same parts, cannons thundered, and the blood of countless invasions flowed. Violence no longer smoulders. Only the memory of the fragments of war remains in the showcases of a nearby museum: miniature battalions of lead soldiers, heavily armoured and regally uniformed according to origin, hierarchy, and regiment.
In the dimly lit Church of São Pedro, in the centre of Ericeira, beautiful tile murals tell the true stories of unlikely miracles. And, on Ericeira's coastline, in the bluest little chapel in the world, the Blessed Virgin Mary holds a small sailboat in her hand. It was in this harbour that the royal family embarked, at the beginning of the last century, when they fled to exile. Needless to say, the monarch who bade farewell to his kingdom in front of this sailing Mary was a shy and withdrawn man, who fell to the throne more by chance than by his own will. His name was Dom Manuel II and he had the nickname The Unfortunate One.
But now let's go back to the beginning, to the imposing Convent and Palace, where he spent his last night as monarch this Dom Manuel II, youngest son of the extinct dynasty. We like to believe that the room where he spent his last night may have been the same room where Dom João V, following his first child, impregnated Dona Maria Ana several more times. But unlike his predecessor, no one performed the miracle of descent for the Unfortunate One.
Ultimately, it was these woods that won the day. The hunter kings are no longer here, neither the invading warriors, nor the friars, and in exchange, wild boars and handsome deer are multiplying, nibbling, and grazing unaware, free to run and come close to observe humans, those beings - how miraculous! - here and now harmless.”
Laura Restrepo
What to visit
In José Luís Peixoto's revisited journey, these are some of the places singled out by both his gaze and his writing.
“I stood for a few minutes a couple of metres away from a fallow deer. I was staring at it, struck by the beauty of its fur, and it was looking at me, astonished perhaps. The twinkle in its eyes appeared to be asking: what kind of tree is this? Then, a snap or some tiny movement I cannot quite place, sent it bounding off, leaping over the undergrowth. The harmony of that body, the coordination of long legs and a haughty neck, then seemed to me to be the ultimate in elegance.
In the Tapada Nacional de Mafra, encounters like this are not uncommon. It is striking to know that it was first created in the 18th century but seems to have been here since the beginning of time. We pass the same pool where princes learnt to swim, a sign of its royal background, yet the overgrown moss everywhere also seems to hold a wisdom of its own, the leaves of the plane trees along the paths looking as if they could reveal ancient secrets.
Perhaps only the Bonelli eagles, as they fly over this thousand-plus hectares, know for certain the reasons why nature is here, at all times, just like a miracle.”
José Luís Peixoto
Discover more
Inspired by the grand design of the gardens of Versailles, the Cerco Garden is characterized by its baroque style and the perfect symbiosis between nature and culture. Commissioned by King João V, it was created by the Franciscan friars of Mafra and later further improved by the French gardener Jean Baptiste Désiré Bonard. In addition to a collection of statues alluding to Roman mythology and its monumental tree specimens, this garden, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2019, also has an aromatic herb garden, a century-old noria (water wheel) and a number of both resident and migratory birds.
A walk through Mafra and Ericeira beckons a detour towards this quaint,rustic village, a hidden treasure nestled among the hills, which still preserves its traditional architecture from the Saloia region. The whitewashed houses, painted in blue and yellow, the central square, the farmhouse, the belvedere with stone seats and a view over the lush green landscape as well as the restaurant with traditional local dishes are all elements inviting you to take a break and enjoy the peacefulness of nature. Finish your tour with a coffee in an enamel cup in this Protected Area of Penedo do Lexim.
Located in an old medieval hall, this space mirrors the social life that developed around the town of Mafra, preserving the estate and legends that characterize it. In this complex, the Interpretation Centre of the Village of Mafra - CIVIMafra, the Interpretation Centre of the Lines of Torres of Mafra - CILT, the Ernesto Soares Documentation Centre, the Atelier of Plastic Arts, USEMA - The Senior University of Mafra and the Conservatory of Music of Mafra all operate together.
If you visit the Ericeira Tourism Office, in the centre of Mafra, go up to the second floor and explore the World Surfing Reserve Interpretation Centre, inaugurated in 2016. The room includes a set of panels for projection and video mapping - showing the seven amazing waves of the coast, the evolution of surfing in Ericeira and testimonials from people who enjoy this sport - and an interactive table with a topographic model - that represents the diversity of fauna and flora found in this town.
Once you go through the doors of this parish church in Ericeira, a former chapel, it is impossible to remain indifferent to the decorative wooden ceiling, with painted frames, and the walls covered with blue and yellow tiles. This religious building stands out for its rococo architecture and the figures that allude to Peter the Apostle's miraculous fishing story. The Manueline stonework, located in the adjacent baptismal chapel, has been preserved to this day and is considered to be the oldest feature of this monument, declared a Site of Public Interest in 1984.
Guimarães
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