Cipriano Algor, an elderly potter, lives with his daughter Marta and her husband Marçal in a small village on the outskirts of The Center, an imposing complex of shops, apartments, and offices to which Cipriano delivers his pots and jugs every month. On one such trip, he is told not to make any more deliveries. Unwilling to give up his craft, Cipriano tries his hand at making ceramic dolls. Astonishingly, The Center places an order for hundreds, and Cipriano and Marta set to work-until the order is cancelled and the three have to move from the village into The Center. When mysterious sounds of digging emerge from beneath their apartment, Cipriano and Marçal investigate, and what they find transforms the family's life. Filled with the depth, humor, and the extraordinary philosophical richness that marks each of Saramago's novels, The Cave is one of the essential books of our time.
L'homme qui conduit la camionnette s'appelle Cipriano Algor, il est potier de profession et a soixante-quatre ans, mais il en paraît moins.
Citations
Informations provenant du Partage des connaissances anglais.Modifiez pour passer à votre langue.
Cipriano Algor would like to go on luxuriating in the tranquility of his bed, to take advantage of that delicious morning sleep, which, perhaps because we are vaguely aware of it, is alway the most restoring.
Moments never arrive either late or early, they merely arrive at the right time for them, not for us, there is no need to feel grateful when what they propose happens to coincide with what we need.
...some people spend their entire lives reading but never get beyond reading the words on the page, they don't understand that the words are merely stepping stones placed across a fast-flowing river, and the reason they're there is so that we can reach the farther shore, it's the other side that matters...unless each reader is his or her own shore, and that shore is the only shore worth reaching. (p.62)
...very few people are aware that in each of our fingers...there is a tiny brain...the organ which we call the brain...has only ever had very general, vague, diffuse and, above all, unimaginative ideas about what the hands and fingers should do....the fingers are not born with brains, these develop gradually with the passage of time and with the help of what the eyes see....(p.66-67)
only with the invisible knowledge of the fingers will one ever be able to paint the infinite fabric of dreams. (p.68)
Fortunately there are books. We can leave them on a shelf or in a trunk, abandon them to the dust and the moths...they wait quietly, closed in upon themselves so that noe of their contents are lost, for the moment that always arrives, te day when we ask ourselves, I wonder where that book about firing clay has got to...(p.159)
I'll get used to it, we say...what no one asks is at what cost do we get used to things. (p.213)
The only time we can talk about death is while we're alive, not afterward. (p.23)
...there will again be the first flame from the wood, the first hot breath of air that encircles the dry clay like a caress, and then, very gradually, the slight tremor in the air, the rapidly increasing glow, the dawning splendor, the dazzling irruption into flames. (p.24)
I don't doubt that a man can live perfectly well on hhis own, but I'm convinced that he begins to die as soon as he closes the door of his house behind him. (p.29)
the important thing was not to stand there [at the grave]...the important thing is the road you walked, the journey you made...(p.32)
Cipriano Algor, an elderly potter, lives with his daughter Marta and her husband Marçal in a small village on the outskirts of The Center, an imposing complex of shops, apartments, and offices to which Cipriano delivers his pots and jugs every month. On one such trip, he is told not to make any more deliveries. Unwilling to give up his craft, Cipriano tries his hand at making ceramic dolls. Astonishingly, The Center places an order for hundreds, and Cipriano and Marta set to work-until the order is cancelled and the three have to move from the village into The Center. When mysterious sounds of digging emerge from beneath their apartment, Cipriano and Marçal investigate, and what they find transforms the family's life. Filled with the depth, humor, and the extraordinary philosophical richness that marks each of Saramago's novels, The Cave is one of the essential books of our time.
Comme d'habitude avec Saramago, le style est au service d'une histoire, un conte métaphorique qui nous délivre une analyse et vision de notre monde très angoissante.
Dans ce roman "La Caverne", Saramago nous décrit notre monde comme étant le prolongement de la caverne de Platon. Nous sommes enchaînés au fond de la caverne, fascinés par les ombres projetés sur le fond de la grotte et persuadés qu'il s'agit du monde réel. Au travers de ce roman, j'ai lu une dénonciation de notre société de consommation, d'une société du futile et du superficiel, gouverné par les marchands, créant des besoins inutiles et mortels.
On ne sait jamais ce qu'est réellement le Centre, qui sont ces gens, qui gouvernent. Cipriano Algor, le potier, n'a des relations qu'avec des fonctionnaires, des subalternes, des sous-chefs. Son gendre, Marçal, est recruté comme garde résident, sans que l'on comprenne vraiment la raison de ces gardes dans le Centre. Tout au long du roman, on ne peux que penser à l'univers de Kafka. Notamment cet échange entre un sous-chef et Cipriano qui fait irrésistiblement pensé à la chute du Procès de Kafka :
"Mon cher Monsieur, je suppose que vous ne vous attendez pas à ce que je vous dévoile le secret de l'abeille, J'ai toujours entendu dire que le secret de l'abeille n'existe pas, qu'il s'agit d'une mystification, d'un faux mystère, d'une fable qu'il faut encore inventer, d'un conte qui aurait pu être mais qui n'a pas été, Vous avez raison, le secret de l'abeille n'existe pas, mais nous, nous le connaissons."
On relèvera dans cette citation, le style si particulier de Saramago, n'employant que des virgules et des points pour la ponctuation et utilisant les majuscules pour introduire les échanges de dialogues.
Saramago crée un parallèle entre les corps enchaînées découverts au fond de la caverne sous le Centre et les figurines d'argiles fabriquées par Cipriano et sa fille. Mais à la différence des cadavres qui nous représentent enchaînées face à la paroi du fond d'une grotte, les figurines sont le symbole du nouvel homme, libre en ce sens, qu'elles ont été sorties du four, image de la grotte, exposées à l'extérieur et que la pluie les transformera en boue et le soleil en poussières, retournant ainsi à leur origine naturelle dans un cycle sans fin de création. ( )