It's been a while since I read a book as moving as 'The Birds' by Tarjei Vesaas.

What a beautiful book, with echoes of classical myth and biblical parable! And what profound simplicity throughout! Just three characters (two siblings living alone and a newcomer to their home), always in the same place (a place with broad horizons, next to a lake, with forests nearby). Hege, the sister, will soon be forty and is already starting to count gray hairs. She knits: she makes sweaters, which she then sells. Her brother, Mattis, known to everyone as the Talos Because he's a different boy, three years younger than Hege, and has no job or subsidy. Of course, his questions often reveal the deepest cracks in his sister's conservative mentality. They think he's a complete fool, but, without realizing it, he possesses a kind of almost prophetic, disconcerting wisdom. Near where they live, there are two twin trees, two tremors: Mattis has always believed they represented the two siblings.

One morning, one of the tremors appears burned by lightning, and the young man attributes it to a bad omen, though he doesn't know which of the two it refers to: his sister or himself (he worries if it foreshadows his own death, but also if it foreshadows Hege's, because he is). A little before that, one evening, he heard the sound of wings above the house, and, going out into the open air, he saw a woodcock performing a sort of flight that he attributed to what usually preceded mating. And he also sees a sign – in this case, of blessedness: "In Mattis's bosom, everything was song: it was the woodcock and him."

A candor that touches our hearts

The great achievement of the story is this character of Talós, a spirit more enlightened than obtuse. He lives in a reality that doesn't quite coincide with that of Hege or the rest of the town's inhabitants: a reality supported by a magical dimension and a symbolic expectation. His candor touches our hearts: he is terrified that his sister will abandon him, because everyone has led him to believe that he is, in fact, a talós. The last thing he wants, then, is a change in his daily routine. He has always slept on a wooden bench, which, under the lid, preserves some drawings and scratches he had made as a child. Mattis is terrified of storms and, especially, lightning. But everything seems to change on this night of the bird's discovery: "The woodcock's wings were in the sky, in the warm night air, but they also touched Mattis's heart" (there are passages in the work in which it seemed to me that the protagonist, a visionary if not a visionary, came from some verses of Marius Torres). You'd say the narrator warns us at all times that we must be very aware of everything the two brothers are experiencing: that his pale gaze complements the woman's, striving to make it, paradoxically, more complex. Because, after all, everything that happens is caused by Mattis, The Talòs.

And although the boy lives in constant terror of lightning strikes, there comes a moment when he's about to drown in a poorly caulked little boat. However, this will allow him to meet two girls who treat him as if he were normal. And, a little later, he will have the thought of becoming a boatman, to help whoever needs to cross the lake, from one shore to the other. He aspires to row straight. The young man's pure gaze is that of an admiring poet: "What a pity the wake dissolves so quickly, the lines should remain drawn on the water for days and days." He had also expressed this desire for permanence regarding the stripes described in the air by the wings of the woodcock (which will eventually meet a bad end, by the way). This impossible job as a ferryman (there is no one who needs to hire his services) will allow him to meet a discreet woodcutter, who will embody the third leading role in the story, whose arrival threatens to disrupt Mattis's peaceful life. And here begins a decisive part of the novel. Odysseus had to carry an oar inland. Mattis will embrace two... the reader will soon know under what circumstances.

It's been a while since I read such a moving text! After all, a story about the fear of death, about the fears of existence. The sentences are short, with an eminently lyrical quality, and the paragraphs are brief. There is a lot of dialogue, a very remarkable aspect because Mattis's elliptical and elusive language seems much more indebted to symbol than to strict reference. Repetitions carry a fundamental weight. The translator, Carolina Moreno, writes a magnificent epilogue. I can't help but quote the final words: "It is the sober yet imposing beauty of the vast, smooth surface of the lake, of the uniform green of the mountain slopes, of the cloudless sky that is rent with a shriek that cleaves the air. The shriek contains it." Well, she has translated it very insightfully, and has turned it into a memorable word.