“You are You, that was what was written.”For the past week, every time I stepped into my room, an inquisitive man bombarded me with string of questions I had no answers to. “What’s the use of having so many turnips?”, he asked as he lay gazing at the naked sky. A faint whiff of camphor emitted from his smile, as he repeated how he pompously waved to Anna and Inger from the pier with sheer happiness, the boiled sweets gently being tossed by his tongue. The songs of the bird have no regulations sprouting from the petite beak on the whims and fancies of its colourful singer; coded messages of the birds veiled under those melodious tunes. For Mattis, I kept aside the astute reader dwelling within me and opted to take a lesson or two from the rebellion avian wonders and read the book with pages twisting according to my whims and fancies. Like, the spontaneous birds, I opened up a page, read Mattis’s words and then traced my path back and forth through the graceful prose deciphering each footprints and clandestine messages pricked by the beak of the woodcock trying to comprehend the language of birds through the optimistic eyes of Mattis. I resisted my nasty urge to pry into the story-line or the sub-plot, all I sought after was to perceive the world of Mattis through his words, his mind, his frustrations and longings while seeking a plausible answer to the avian greeting, “You are you!” “Why are the things the way they are?”Since the days when the reviewed prose found solace only in the confined dwelling of my notebooks, all ever that was written in those single-lined pages were incessant lists of questions searching for answers from the inner world of books, responses that were dismissed in the external milieu. When does the mind stops asking questions or rather does discharge them through frivolity? Do we surrender our curiosity to the obstinate barriers hurled by the resolutions? Why have we stopped asking questions? Is it a mark of an idiocy or naivety if one poses too many questions? If I had a penny for each of my mushrooming questions being disposed by a recurrent resonance of “It’s the way things are.... grow-up. Is there nothing on the television?” Do then, the “grown-up” minds never have the need to ask question? Or, is it that the winds of maturity bring along clouds of ignorance and indolence? There were times when I ached to offer an ardent listening ear to Mattis’s copious questions, to the undemanding man who longed to talk about himself and his struggle and in them I could have searched my own clarifications. A simple mind is child-like, naive and inquisitive. Unlike the fearful judicious mentality, simplicity is fearless in its own way. Pristine and unscathed by the corrupted ways of life, it flourishes through sense of sympathetic and comforting communication. Silly as it may sound, I found Mattis’s plain, childlike mind to be courageous for not only being able to produce plethora of queries but, for giving a voice to them even at the risk of their reckless dismissal. How come those who possess the three gifts of vigour, intelligence and beauty; the very endowments that Mattis desired, are unaware of its commendable merit? Do we take granted the precious gifts of our mind because we are born with it and never have known a world without it? If only, the worldly wise could frequently ask, “Why are things the way they are?” perhaps, someday, someone might just stop saying, “It’s the way things are.” And, then Mattis would never feel like an outsider in this sophisticated intellect masquerade. “But, hush there it was. The flapping wings, the bird itself, indistinct, speeding through the air straight across the house and off in the other direction..........”The surprise flight of the woodcock over Mattis’s home enchants Mattis and in the bird’s recurrent airborne moves, the woodcock becomes one of the central characters in Mattis’s life. The bird becomes a herald of a secret-language, an omen prophesying the probability of a vulnerable future and one of nature’s many essentials that equates its uniqueness with Mattis. Vesaas’s employment of woodcock as an ornithological symbol signifies the fundamental spiritual intimacy through which Mattis relates to the exquisiteness of nature. Similar to the woodcock, the existence of the lake becomes a spellbinding ironical personality permeating the habitual existence of Mattis and Hege. The boat that he ferries across the lake, the cool waters of the lake, the solitary aspen trees, the turnips in the field, the thunderstorms become a gratifying compensation to Mattis’s innermost life filling it with explorations of his enthusiasm and apprehensions. “The world was full of forces you couldn’t fight against which suddenly loomed up and aimed a crushing blow at you.........What could you do when things were like this?”Drops of change come from the subtle dilution of resistance, however, when the dregs of resistance precipitate into substantial despair, the opaqueness of change becomes an impenetrable substance. The two slender aspen trees with withered tops, swayed between these distressing elements of change and resistance. The lush forest , the serene lake, the coquettishness of two gorgeous women, the fierce lightning, the menacing toadstools, the gentle wrestling of Hege’s knitting needles with its optimism resting within the eight-petalled woolen roses and the soaring flight of the woodcock gradually seep into the inherent life of Mattis. It is his world, only for him through which mirrors the mysticism of nature and the meaning of being alive with the helplessness and fullness of an inner-life that is beyond the comprehension of normalcy. Tarjei Vesaas scripts a simple story of a simple mind juggling in between the unexpected lunacy and the expected “normalcy” of life. Simplicity has no place in this complex world, its existence ridiculed through mocked “Simple Simon” labelling. Vesaas depicts a memorable world of simplicity unconsciously whittling a harbinger eminence, a simple life set in the idyllic Norwegian rural town merging into the transitory happiness and perplexity of agonies that arrive through loneliness, patience, love, hope, death, desolation, and change, antagonism of an independent survival and above all the perils of being a Simple Simon. Mattis’s journey maybe one-dimensional and chaotic, nevertheless it is numinous, poetic and deeply emotional. Vesaas’s masterpiece etches profoundly the poignant and compassionate narrative of Hege and Mattis , leaving me as mesmeric as the voyage of the woodcock. Oh, my dear Mattis, you have been such a charming roommate for the past few days, please do visit me again and bring along that chirpy woodcock fellow and maybe, Mr. Vesaas too. You are you, Mattis! You and the woodcock!***[The above photographic illustrations were taken from the book inspired 1968 Polish movie – ‘Matthew’s Days’ ( Żywot Mateusza)]
The main reason I picked this up, I admit, was because of the BookRiot Read Harder Challenge -- this year one of the categories is to read a translated work. I found a copy of this secondhand, the story sounded compelling and I couldn't recall reading anything by a Scandinavian author before so I thought this might be something cool and different to try out. I was even more intrigued after learning that author Tarjei Vesaas (1897-1970) was actually a two-time Nobel Prize for Literature nominee!The story The Birds itself is pretty simple. Forty year old spinster Hege is living with her mentally challenged brother, Mattis (3 years younger). Hege struggles to make enough money for them to live off of, begging Mattis to go out every day and find some kind of work. While Mattis does go out each day, he seems easily distracted so by day's end he typically comes home with little to no money earned. At night Mattis has a recurring dream of birds, then whenever he sees birds during the day he feels there's great symbolism behind it, that it's a sign of a great change coming for them. Hege, while loyal her brother and dedicated to protecting and taking care of him, is clearly and increasingly depressed over her life situation and the lack of opportunities for her. Even Mattis mentions that he notices her sadness and wants to help her. He eventually finds work as a ferryman. One day Mattis picks up Jorgen, a lumberjack who comes to the area looking for work. He stays with Mattis & Hege one night and then never really leaves. Mattis notices something developing between Jorgen and Hege, at first pleased to see his sister smiling again but then he grows increasingly uncomfortable with the changes in the household, worrying that the now fixed presence of Jorgen will mean that Hege might want to kick Mattis out. Tensions grow between the three of them until the kettle of emotions between them starts to squeal and the reader is brought to a climactic ending... or not...I'm not sure if something was lost in the translation, but I kept waiting for an intense, emotional build up that never really got there for me. The story isn't very long at all but by the end it felt like a whole lotta nothing had happened. There was decent brother-sister development between Hege and Mattis, and I could feel Mattis' frustration at not having the ability to express himself better but elsewhere the story fell short for me. The "romance" between Jorgen and Hege was pretty lackluster. It was essentially a few smiles back and forth and Jorgen confessing to Mattis "your sister and I have become close. *wink wink*" Oh stop. My heart palpitations. And then Mattis' freak out at the end left me completely confused. I just wanted to be on the shore yelling "Dude! Where are you even going?!" And then the story just stops there. I almost felt like I was watching one of those artsy French films with little to no explanation. I wouldn't be against trying something else of Vesaas' because there was something to his writing (or at least from what I could gather from this translation) that I did like. I was just left a little underwhelmed by this one. It felt like a quiet little character study with a big ol' dramatic ending.... but without the proper buildup to justify that kind of emotional ending I think Vesaas was going for.
Do You like book The Birds (2002)?
Translated: Torbjørn Støverud and Michael BarnesPublished: 1957Review: The story is of two adult siblings living in a rural setting, Norway, though I don’t think it actually ever says it is Norway so this story could occur anywhere. There are two withered aspen in front of their place that others in the area refer to as Mattis and Hege. The two siblings. Mattis doesn’t know what this means. It is obvious that Mattis is a grown man but he thinks like a child. Mattis has some kind of cognitive disability. I think he might be considered autistic in this day but when this story is set, he is thought of as ‘simple’. Mattis has some misperceptions and feels others make fun of him. He has a lot of anxiety. We only see Hege from Mattis perspective and by what she says. Hege is growing old, she is trying to care for them by knitting sweaters. They must be in a tourist area. It's very quiet and beautiful. Mattis enjoys sitting on the water in his leaky boat lost in his thoughts. First sentence It was evening.Last words How big or small that bird was, you couldn't really tell.The story is about death; the woodcock, the aspen tree. The landscape is a big part of the writing. My Opinion: Very Good
—Kristel
Tour de force.Is symbolism perceived by a half-wit more perspicacious than by a normal eye made indifferent to hidden meanings by the grind of life? Maybe. It is different at the very least, and any art will do well to bring this difference to light. 'Birds' does just that. Our third-person narrator is entwined with Mattis', the Simple Simon's, consciousness. His world is both wondrous and constricted, like a combination of a Kawabata character with one from Kafka. He is often fooled, even ultimately fooled, but his inner life grants his actions an extraordinary dignity that we, lucky we, are made privy to. His inner life is a thing of Beauty. And its rendering here is a work of genius. Where Vesaas was understated in 'The Ice Palace,' especially during the interactions between the main characters, he is generous in 'Birds'. Even the absurdity in conversations does the task of deepening the signifiers, pushing us closer to semblances of meanings. There is nothing unclean, nothing that was not supposed to me. Vesaas work has no excess, and through this quality he forces the reader to look up from the page and just think. For this reason, the book is perhaps best read in the mountains.
—Tanuj Solanki
The world is a hostile place and, according to Mattis, people don’t mean what they say when they speak. A simpleton, a weirdo, a child imprisoned in the body of an adult man, Mattis muses over the factors that separate him from the rest of the small community of the nameless village lost somewhere in a rural area in Norway where he and his sister Hege subsist in a cottage by the lake.Condemned to be permanently out of work due to his slow-witted faculties and lack of social skills, Mattis is bitterly aware of his inadequacy and secretly yearns to possess the wisdom and strength of other townsmen while his sister wastes away the remnants of her youth knitting sweaters that will provide some coins to get by without starving. Unable to keep his job as a hired hand working the fields of a neighboring farm because“his fingers won’t do as they are told”, Mattis creates a world of his own where time dissolves into thin air as soon as the woodcock flies over the cottage leaving a radiant trail of light, which precludes the thunder of the upcoming storm, before it glides down on the entangled branches of the twin aspens that guard the garden. A world where he can articulate witty remarks to flirt with farmgirls, find a job as a ferryman shuttling people across the lake, meet two playful mermaids trapped in women’s limbs and invent a system to read The birds’ language."You are you, a voice inside him seemed to be saying, at least that was what it sounded to him. It was spoken in the language of birds. Written in their writing. You are you, that was what was written."The human need to stablish bonds that will break down the barriers between individual isolation and collective belonging is written all over Mattis’ actions. What transforms the worn out theme of the stereotyped misfit resisting an unyielding society into a beguiling narration that interweaves menacing natural imagery with occasional outsburts of genial writing is Vesaas’ astute tapestry of symbolic and recurrent hints anticipated by an omniscient voice, capable of generating a tension as thick as fog, which is reflected on the aseptic frozen lake where Mattis rows his dreams, longings and fears. Nature is as beautiful as it is lethal, deadly lightening might fulminate the aspens, the wind might whistle lost birdsongs of the ensnared woodcock and Mattis’ boat might bring Jørgen, the muscular lumberjack, into Hege’s life and destroy the fragile ecosystem that Mattis so assiduously constructed over the years in the blink of an eye, but Vesaas’ stark prose and the disturbing blend of tenderness and apprehension that paints the tone of the narration with the colors of a barren landscape will remain long after the last page is turned. And the wind will subside and in the lake, now a becalmed pool, the birds will make a solitary dance and speak through their graceful footprints and you, the reader, will miraculously understand their language because somewhere in-between fable and hapless reality Mattis has become the reader and the reader is now Mattis and when the boat sails the glacial waters of an ominous future, you two will walk, hand in hand, towards the sound of flapping wings and create a cozy nest with sundrenched memories of a long gone but never lost childhood. “The bird came, bringing with it all those things for which there were no words.”Perfect Soundtrack for this book
—Dolors
