The Ritual Master Light or Darkness. Do you value both the same ?
Are you more of a midnight sun type or person, or do you long for the polar night ?
We always think we can imagine how living closer to the Arctic Circle would affect us, but really, who better suited than those living there to tell us about it. Today I’m bringing you an Icelandic novel that has this same subject as a starter, and then envelops us in the story to the point we don’t even remember where we started.
Summer Light, and then comes the Night by Jón Kalman Stefánsson is a novel that doesn’t stand comparison. Winner of the Icelandic Literature Prize and long-listed for the French prize Médici étranger, the book tells the many stories that make up every day life in an Icelandic village, somewhere in the western part of the island. The chapters focus on different characters, connecting them through invisible strands that make up a subtle network of meanings. Whether it is the meaning of life, the quest for the unknown, lightning romance or the life of the immaterial, every one of the villagers has a surprising approach to life.
What I find to be remarkable in this novel is the contrast between the story and the writing. How to write poetry about the most ordinary, mundane events of a community that lives by the music of nature. Complete light or utter darkness, and in between, farming and tending the land, gathering for a dance or two and keeping up with local events. This is how Jón Kalman Stefánsson chose to describe Icelandic rural life :
“The world is full of dreams that never come true. They evaporate and settle like dew in the sky where they transform into the stars in the night.”
“Tears are shaped like rowing boats, pain and heartache pull the oars.”
“He listens sometimes to the sound of the winter darkness pressing up against the windows of the houses.”
The mysteries of simple living, an aura of enigma that contrasts the rustic landscape, and through it finds its unique charm.
Until tomorrow, listen to the sound of winter !
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