#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream

Maple Wings in rain

It’s a drenching rain and the wind has picked up. Mostly an unremarkable storm here. I woke with the sense, I will swim. And I went up to Kingsbury and swam a mile in the rain. I loved it. I was alone in the pool and the rain was falling steadily in a pleasant way on my back. The quiet was wonderful. The water was warm. I was very happy. I did some research and some drafting today for poems, but nothing substantial. It was mostly a clear my head day and have some rest day. We brought all the garden seedlings in before the storm because they are not yet in the ground. I’m afraid this wind and rain will bring down many branches and sticks for me to clean up. Rain projected for next two days. House cold and it feels quite wintery. Cozy, too. I am still immersed in Independent People, the Iceland novel. It’s a beautiful novel, and I’ve never read anything about Iceland before. These sweet maple wings were blown of the red maple onto the front doorstep.

About this listen

This magnificent novel - which secured for its author the 1955 Nobel Prize in Literature - is now available to contemporary American audiences. Although it is set in the early 20th century, it recalls both Iceland's medieval epics and such classics as Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter. And if Bjartur of Summerhouses, the book's protagonist, is an ordinary sheep farmer, his flinty determination to achieve independence is genuinely heroic and, at the same time, terrifying and bleakly comic.

Having spent 18 years in humiliating servitude, Bjartur wants nothing more than to raise his flocks unbeholden to any man. But Bjartur's spirited daughter wants to live unbeholden to him. What ensues is a battle of wills that is by turns harsh and touching, elemental in its emotional intensity, and intimate in its homely detail. Vast in scope and deeply rewarding, Independent People is a masterpiece.

©1946 Halldór Laxness (P)2017 Tantor