When I Sing, Mountains Dance

Product Information

Es evocador, triste, bello, muy sensitivo, con un sentimiento tan puro y vívido que ha logrado teletransportarme a esa zona de los Pirineos de los que habla: la casita de Matavaques, Mia, Jaume, Lluna, e Hilari (¡Ay! Hilari🖤) la dureza de la vida en la montaña, el paso del tiempo, las tradiciones, leyendas... I had to read very slow for about the first ten percent — re-reading sentences…and I didn’t think I was going to like doing it much longer — My inner voice got louder….”ok, ok, I can clearly see that the prose is extraordinary….but I’m not sure I’m understanding any of it”…..

Mercè Rodoreda’s darkest novel takes place in an unspecified time and is set in an isolated and unnamed mountainous region, where a village is surrounded by dangers; the “caramens” – creatures that no one has ever seen – or the battering of a fierce river which threatens to sweep away the houses. The townsfolk are ruled by primeval and nightmarish laws and rituals. The surroundings of this village are merciless, but such ferocity seems a trifle compared to human cruelty. I’ve come away feeling a little more loved —with less need to be so critical of the world we live in…. And when the spring breezes blow up the valley; when the spring sun shines on last year‘s withered grass on the river banks; and on the lake; and on the lake’s two white swans; and coaxes The new grass out of the spongy soil in the marshes—who could believe I’m such a day that this peaceful, grassy valley brooded over the story of our past; and over it’s spectres? People right along the river, along the banks wear side-by-side lie many paths— and fresh spring breeze blows through the valley in the sunshine. On such a day the sun is stronger than the past”.Slowly, the story unfolds, each chapter like a small symphony. The clouds carry a storm, and within the storm a lightning bolt that strikes a man dead. The man, Domènec, has been collecting chanterelle mushrooms and attempting to rescue a calf that was tangled in wire. He leaves behind a widow, Sió, and two small children; daughter Mia, and son Hilari, the latter only two months old. After the villagers take away Domènec’s burnt body and plant a cross in the place the lightning drilled into him, the witches drop by from time to time and piss on the cross. Such is their role; to sully and enliven, to corrupt and to enhance. To me..this slim book is very advance ….and of course I’m not the best person for the job of reading it….but I included my struggles… remembering I one of the little peas a part of the human race and we all have struggles…(reading this book might not be yours- but we all struggles with something)…. Blanca, your mother, wanted company. Before. And she went to find a man. And she found one. She found a strong man who worked in the fields… And they loved each other in the evenings, Blanca and your father, under the trees and upon the grass.

This is the route of the retreat into exile. Where the Republicans fled. Civilians and soldiers. Toward France. It’s a damp morning. I inhale, bringing all that clean, wet, pure mountain air deep into my lungs. That aroma of earth and tree and morning. It’s no surprise the people up here are better, more authentic, more human, breathing this air every day. And drinking the water from this river. And looking out every day at the majesty of these legendary mountains, so beautiful it pains the soul. The coiled snails shuddered in their secluded homes, godless and without a prayer, knowing that if they didn’t drown, they would emerge redeemed to breathe the dampness in. When I Sing, Mountains Dance may leave you baffled at first. So, again, approach it not as a novel but as a celebration of language and inventiveness. It’s not quite poetry, not quite narrative, but rather a mélange of the two; a distinctive set of voices and narratives that somehow merges into a whole. And as in all good but challenging literature, meaning eventually arises like the mist lifting on a fresh, dewy morn to reveal a hidden landscape of preternatural, previously unknown beauty.

Moving to impossible wildernesses, here is an architectural one. Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi summons a world of endless interior halls filled with sculptures, with an open sky and tidal floods. As with The Vorrh, a prolonged stay in the halls seems to have a crippling psychological effect on humans. As Piranesi, its ever-cheerful main character, writes: “May your Paths be safe, your Floors unbroken and may the House fill your eyes with Beauty”. Homesteads dot a mountain high in the Pyrenees, climbing up to a village whose residents have weathered wars and tragedies, knit together by the myths and memories of their shared pasts. Among the village’s generations of healers, poets, butchers, and giants, there dwell spirits and sprites who interact with the populace. In one age, lightning strikes a moody farmer, whose foraged goods then feed the ghosts of women accused of witchcraft; the farmer’s wife, once a city dweller, has to reconstruct her future in the wake of her loss. The space opened by her mourning is filled by the witches’ musings, which themselves give way to the memories of the woodland fauna, and of the mountain itself; later, the farmer’s children encounter new challenges as they traipse into the modern age. Just when I was surrendering to the difficulty that this book was going to be, but still wanting to stay with it…