I hadn't the least suspicion that this was the perfect book to read right after I’d completed a long Virginia Woolf season but my reading life has a way of finding connections in spite of me. Having finally finished with Woolf last week, I searched my book pile for something I thought would be completely different and this slim little book by William Maxwell caught my eye. It's a book I’d been meaning to read since last year when a friend recommended it, and other than remembering vaguely that it was connected with WWI, I knew very little about it. A couple of pages in, I began thinking, this reminds me of Proust: a young boy focused so closely on his mother, on books, on the life of the imagination. But before long, it was echoes of Virginia Woolf I was hearing, particularly To the Lighthouse. Unmistakeable. And then another friend, who knows I've been reading Woolf, sent me a link to a Paris Review interview in which William Maxwell speaks of his debt to Virginia Woolf, who, it turns out, was one of his favourite authors:And think what 'To the Lighthouse' meant to me, how close Mrs. Ramsay is to my own idea of my mother . . . both of them gone, both leaving the family unable to navigate very well. It couldn’t have failed to have a profound effect on me.Since I had recently been reading Woolf’s diary entries where she acknowledges that To the Lighthouse was partly autobiographical, recalling her own childhood before her mother died and before the family’s life changed for ever, Maxwell’s words were exciting for me to read. So he was acknowledging that They Came Like Swallows was also autobiographical? I had wondered about that as I read Maxwell’s book but had reminded myself that every autobiographical-sounding novel isn’t necessarily autobiographical. But autobiographical means different things to different people. Maxwell has clear views on this:I don’t feel that my stories, though they may appear to be autobiographical, represent an intention to hand over the whole of my life. They are fragments in which I am a character along with all the others. They’re written from a considerable distance. I never feel exposed by them in any way.I like that explanation, and it fits with the way Virginia Woolf used the circumstances of her own life in her novels to a certain extent, mining her experience and that of her family and friends to imagine characters and scenes that she then goes on to dramatise, to fictionalise, sometimes in ways she didn’t initially foresee. Maxwell describes that process exactly:Autobiography is simply the facts, but imagination is the landscape in which the facts take place, and the way that everything moves...Flaubert said that whatever you invent is true, even though you may not understand what the truth of it is.There is another parallel between Maxwell and Woolf: the way they use language, the way they can conjure a scene so simply but lastingly. This one from Maxwell could well be found in The Waves:Bunny listened. For a moment he was outside in the rain. He was wet and shining. His mind bent from the wind. He detached a wet leaf. But one did not speak of these things. Maxwell set They Came Like Swallows in 1918. The war is still going on but he only refers to it obliquely, the way Woolf does in Jacob's Room. But sometimes oblique can be just as powerful as ‘straight on’. This little book holds a lot of power.They came like swallows and like swallows went,And yet a woman's powerful characterCould keep a Swallow to its first intentThose lines of Yeats could just as well have served as an epigraph to Jacob's Room. I love when the different strands of my reading life join together like this.PS: I liked Maxwell's writing so much that I immediately bought So Long, See You Tomorrow and read it almost in one sitting. Looks like I'm heading into a Maxwell season.
Published in 1937, "They Came Like Swallows" is an autobiographical novella about the darkest time in William Maxwell's childhood. The year was 1918. A flu epidemic was raging and tore through the lives of a family living in the U.S. Midwest. The story of the Morison family reflected with heart-searing sharpness the loss 10-year-old Maxwell must have experienced at the sudden death of his mother. The story was told in three parts from the perspective in turn of 8-year-old Bunny, his 13-year-old brother Robert, and their father, James. For me, the narrative that carried the greatest emotional charge was Bunny's. Maxwell wrote movingly out of the depth of his own pain and I felt keenly the fragility of Bunny's world and the unutterable horror of his loss. "They Came Like Swallows" had echoes of "So Long, See You Tomorrow" that captured an adolescent's grief when his widowed father remarried. In both novels was the ambivalence of the relationship between father and son that made both boys that much more dependent on their mother for her love and affirmation. Both novels etched a scene of the son pacing the room with the grief-stricken father. This very likely sprang from Maxwell's own encounter with loss. Maxwell is a strategic story teller and set the stage well for the sorrow, anguish, and disorientation that eventually swept the family. The ordinariness of domestic life, the varying levels of closeness amongst family members, the comfort often taken for granted were artlessly detailed with a ring of familiarity. That these can be irrevocably taken away is not a thought normally entertained, and hence the poignancy when it comes to pass, like a thunderbolt out of a clear blue sky. The story opened on a rainy November sabbath morning, and in a few strokes, Maxwell fleshed out a picture of Bunny as a child you felt compelled to protect. That he slept with an Indian papoose doll as a kind of security blanket made me feel tenderly toward him. But it was his mother who was his true security. And immediately I hoped that she would be there for him for a long time. Maxwell's novella is written with compassion and lived-in wisdom about what holds a family together. This is my third Maxwell novel and it did not disappoint. Maxwell’s prose is always beautiful and a joy to read.
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“Quando eu era criança , falava como uma criança, entendia o mundo como uma criança…..mas quando me tornei homem acabei com as coisas de criança”. – Coríntios 13:11 Como é difícil crescer e libertarmo-nos dos nossos cordões umbilicais.A andorinha é uma ave migratória monogâmica, ou seja, possui um parceiro durante toda a vida e, por esse motivo, está associada ao amor. É conhecida como "ave da partida e do regresso".Com uma magnífica epígrafe de um poema de W.B.Yeats “Vieram como andorinhas” narra , sob o ponto de vista de duas crianças ( 8 e 13 anos) e do seu pai ,o trágico acontecimento que assolou a sua família no Inverno de 1918 durante a pandemia da gripe espanhola.Bunny, o mais jovem Morison , enterneceu-me com a ligação à sua adorada mãe, o seu amor filial tão dependente da figura materna. E, como todas as leituras nos remetem para outras mais antigas, lembrei-me de um poema do Mestre Almada Negreiros:Mãe!Vem ouvir a minha cabeça a contar histórias ricas que ainda não viajei!Traze tinta encarnada para escrever estas coisas!Tinta cor de sangue, sangue verdadeiro, encarnado!Mãe! passa a tua mão pela minha cabeça!Eu ainda não fiz viagens e a minha cabeça não se lembra senão de viagens!Eu vou viajar. Tenho sede! Eu prometo saber viajar.Quando voltar é para subir os degraus da tua casa, um por um.Eu vou aprender de cor os degraus da nossa casa. Depois venho sentar-me ao teu lado.Tu a coseres e eu a contar-te as minhas viagens, aquelas que eu viajei,tão parecidas com as que não viajei, escritas ambas com as mesmas palavras.Mãe! ata as tuas mãos às minhas e dá um nó-cego muito apertado!Eu quero ser qualquer coisa da nossa casa. Como a mesa.Eu também quero ter um feitio que sirva exactamente para a nossa casa, como a mesa.Mãe! passa a tua mão pela minha cabeça!Quando passas a tua mão na minha cabeça é tudo tão verdade!Um livro extraordinário!
—Celeste
O romance “Vieram Como as Andorinhas” foi editado em 1937 pelo escritor norte-americano William Maxwell (1908-2000).Um “pequeno” grande romance sobre a família Morison, num retrato emocionante - que decorre no final da Primeira Guerra Mundial e no período em que a Gripe Espanhola, se espalhou pela América - centrado numa pequena cidade no Illinois. “Vieram Como as Andorinhas” está dividido em três livros: Livro I “Quem é o meu anjo?”, sob o olhar inseguro e ansioso de Bunny, com oito anos de idade; o Livro II “Robert”, o irmão mais velho de Bunny, de treze anos, retratado como uma personagem intolerante e por último o Livro III “Numa agulha de bússola”, sobre o indeciso e inseguro James Morison. “Vieram Como as Andorinhas” é uma verdadeira preciosidade literária, numa escrita límpida e intemporal, repleta de sensações e emoções trágicas, num dramatismo que nos vai progressivamente asfixiando. As minhas emoções “agrupei-as” nestas frases soltas – a ordem é arbitrária…LIVRO I – “Quem é o meu anjo?”1 - O som das folhas a cair é ensurdecedor2 - Choro lágrimas de chuva3 – Na escuridão do meu quarto 4 – O vento assobia intensamente4 - Estou preso no labirinto das minhas emoções5 – Fecho os olhos, abro os olhos, fecho os olhos, abro os olhos,6 – O sonho desvaneceu-se no nevoeiro matinal 7 – Uma imagem nebulosa e imprecisa assusta-me8 – Sinto-me cansado num tempo interminável9 – O rosto da minha mãe afoga-me numa doce alegria 10 – Adormeço no negrume da música11 – Grito por um silêncio estrondoso12 - Acordo com o choro do meu irmão13 – “As lágrimas vieram quentes e espontâneas” (Pág. 49)14 – “Vá, Vá, meu anjo, não fiques assim!” (Pág. 81)LIVRO II – “Robert”1 – A sombra das árvores é realçada na obscuridade da noite 2 – A serenidade acordou a vigília do sono3 – Num só fôlego a alegria desapareceu 4 – A luz matinal perturbava e confundia os meus pensamentos5 – A penumbra da sala cresce no tempo 6 – Estou inseguro nas vozes que sussurram7 – Ouço o som da minha imaginação9 – “O céu é um lugar de abundância…” (Pág. 96)10 - Fecho os olhos para não pensar em nada11 – O vento da noite arrastou-me para um sono angustiado 12 – Sou arrancado pelas raízes do meu sonho13 – Não precisava de ter pressa14 – Os olhos cobriram-se de lágrimasLIVRO III – “Numa agulha de bússola”1 – Um rosto dominado pelo desespero e o sofrimento 2 – De olhos fechados sinto o eco dos meus passos3 – Os olhares cruzam-se numa tristeza impulsiva 4 – Um rosto reflectido no espelho da infelicidade 5 – Pesadelos incompreensíveis no egoísmo da vida6 – Uma noite fria ensombrada pelas árvores 7 – O vento amainou na tempestade escura9 – A leveza dos sentimentos desce vagarosamente10 – Sinto o toque assustadoramente11 – “Soube que havia uma possibilidade de as coisas se resolverem. De sermos capazes de os criar como ela gostaria.” (Pág. 126)12 – Caminho sozinho em direcção aos raios de sol
—João Carlos
I don't know about you, but I find that my favorite book by an author is often the first one I read by him or her. I think So Long, See You Tomorrow will always be my favourite William Maxwell work but it is a book he wrote over forty years earlier, They Came Like Swallows, that many contend is his greatest work. It is hard to argue. The story revolves around an eight-year-old boy living in a small mid-western farming community when the 1918 influenza epidemic hits, taking the lives of many including the child's mother. This book has so much raw emotion in it and yet the writing is so firmly controlled that the resulting tension is unbelievable. I do not believe anyone can read this novella and not be deeply moved. No doubt the book derives much of its power from the fact that it is largely autobiographical. Maxwell was only ten when his mother died of influenza.
—Tyler Jones
