Because of the density of this novel, which stems in part from its historical and cultural Portuguese references in its specificity, as well as from what constitutes its fabric, a game of back and forth between the lie of reality and the truth of the mirage, the essential dimension of this novel, the ambiguity of the double, opens it up to the escapism within the boundaries of identities. This is what the three testimonies issued actually suggest. When the career of Ricardo Reis as Pessoa’s alternate name ends, the career of the character José Saramago begins. As if to echo Pessoa’s phrase, “I am the character of a novel that has yet to be written,” Saramago concocts, after the historical, topographical, and political constants of his novel have been established, the encounter between these two non-existences: the dead poet’s existence and the existence of his illusory double.