"We all have an obligation to intervene"

'In his first interview in an English newspaper, 83-year-old Portuguese novelist José Saramago [is asked if he believes] that the artist is obliged to take on a political role?'

"It isn't a role," he says, almost sharply. "The painter paints, the musician makes music, the novelist writes novels. But I believe that we all have some influence, not because of the fact that one is an artist, but because we are citizens. As citizens, we all have an obligation to intervene and become involved, it's the citizen who changes things. I can't imagine myself outside any kind of social or political involvement. Yes, I'm a writer, but I live in this world and my writing doesn't exist on a separate level."

Still a street-fighting man in yesterday's Observer