Manual of Painting and Calligraphy by José Saramago Page A

the affinity between writing and painting (but almost certainly between painting and writing) or observed how these two sciences are so closely related that they are interdependent, although at present they somehow appear to have become separate. Yet every man, however wise and experienced in whatever field of learning, will discover that in all his works he is forever emulating the skillful painter who carefully touches up his pictures until he achieves the right effect. Now, on examining the books of antiquity, there are few really famous texts which do not resemble paintings and altarpieces. And without question, the most ponderous and muddled of these texts are by authors without any feeling for design or sense of structure, while the clearest and most concise are by writers with an eye for visual detail. And even Quintilian in his admirable books of rhetoric affirms that the orator should not simply master the distribution of words but in his own hand he should be able to trace out their pattern. And that is why, Signor Michelangelo, you are often described as being a great scholar and preacher and a skillful painter, and why great artists are referred to as men of letters. And anyone who takes the trouble to study antiquity will discover that painting and sculpture were simply called painting and that in the time of Demosthenes they were called antigraphy, which means to draw or write, a term common to both of these sciences, so that the writings of Agatharcus may be referred to as the paintings of Agatharcus. And I believe that the Egyptians also knew how to paint and if they had to write or express something, the hieroglyphics they used were painted animals and birds, as we can see here in this city on certain obelisks which were brought from Egypt.” Next day I could not remember having read any further, nor can I be sure whether I suddenly fell asleep at the end of the paragraph or if I sat there for a while, gazing at this extract from Lactantio’s lengthy discourse. I fell asleep and had no dreams except perhaps for those undulations which seemed liquid and slowly swirled, written or sketched, and passed before my eyes for who knows how many hours of sleep.
    I spent the morning working on the second portrait. I had woken up determined (what had provoked this resolve during my sleep?) or had determined at some point while awake (but when and for what reason?) to persevere with the portrait. Not that it was not making good progress, but unlike the first one, obedient to a set plan of methods and procedures (naturally subject to the introduction of factors and variants peculiar to each model), the second one allowed for and demanded a different freedom, further changes in accordance with new elements I had or thought I had at my disposal as I tried to discover the true S. For the first time I transferred the picture from the storeroom into the studio without removing it from the easel and placed it alongside the first portrait. There was scarcely any resemblance except for that one finds between one man and another, both belonging to a species characterized and distinguished from others by certain forms. Even I was not aware of having painted them so differently, although deep down I knew that they were the same person. Yet there was something else I had to clarify. Was this the same person because just as meaningless (what I am doing here is not painting), or the same person because finally captured in the second portrait and an essentially different image? As far as likeness goes, the first portrait is a portrait of S.; his own mother (mothers are never deceived) confirmed as much the only time she ever came with her son to the studio. But the second portrait, which even his own mother would not recognize, is just as good a likeness in my eyes, although quite different from the first one, just as one drop of water differs from another. Who would see this second portrait as a true likeness? In other words, at what