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Cargando... The Tower at the Edge of the World: A Poetic Mosaic Novel about My Earliest Youth (1976)por William Heinesen
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The Tower at the Edge of the World is William Heinesen's last novel written when he was 76, and is the summation of all of his work. He is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, Nordic author of the twentieth century.William Heinesen describes The Tower at the Edge of the World as a poetic mosaic novel about earliest childhood. There is the perspective of both the child and the old man looking back at his life as a child. Although there is a lot of tangible detail and recognisable characters the book has a mythic quality. The events in a small community in the windswept Atlantic ocean being recorded by the writer in his room, his tower at the edge of the world, have a larger than life feel. Torshavn and his childhood are used to tell the history of the world and of creation. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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 Google Books — Cargando...GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)839.8Literature German and related languages Other Germanic literatures Danish and Norwegian literaturesClasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio: (4)
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2
The narrator, Amaldus, in 1976, looks down from his metaphorical tower at the (chronological) end of his own world at the child-Amaldus living in the early years of the 20th century on a little rocky patch of land in the sea, a world that clearly stretches no further than the lighthouse at the tip of the island. But the years pass, he learns that there is a bigger world out there, places his father's ships sail to, and indeed that he is living on a round ball, spinning through space, that can project its shadow onto the Moon.
He is also, as children are, brought face to face with the realities of birth and death, with the inscrutable complexities of adult relationships, with the mysteries of religion, folklore, and witchcraft; with the complicated feelings he has for his friends, the clever and subversive girl Merrit and the would-be juvenile delinquent Hannibal, and so on.
But this isn't just an "end of innocence" novel, it's more complicated than that. Heinesen plays with biblical metaphors, weather-imagery, and all kinds of other structural and poetic devices, he brings his older narrator-self in and out of the story. And, as ever, there is a lot about the human need for beauty and the arts, and the damage that happens when that need is frustrated.
In the background to start with, but gradually taking over at the centre of the plot, there's another version of the story of The lost musicians, in this case driven by the ambition of Amaldus's hard, "practical", sea-captain/capitalist father to gain full control of the family business from his "feckless idiot" brother-in-law, Amaldus's uncle Hans. Hans prefers to spend his time drinking and making music with three close friends, when he isn't chasing girls or sailing his pleasure-yacht. Of course, there are tragic consequences to the father's intervention, but it's strange to see how strong the parallels are between the crazed Evangelical bank-manager in the earlier book and the ultra-sane, sceptical captain in this one.
Another lovely little book, and it makes me want to leap onto a ship and head for the North Atlantic! (