Upon the final morning of my journey through Sjón’s second novel, From the Mouth of the Whale, I found myself lying on a cattle trailer, grease beneath my fingernails and a layer of lead on my skin (the perfect reagents for thought), listening to Rachmaninoff and staring up into the sky, a sky seemingly empty aside from the spatter of clouds. After my eyes adjusted I saw flying high above me barn swallows playing war, and after some time turkey vultures joined playing doctor at the scent of the button-buck who was playing dead (far too convincingly) at the fringe of the forest. This is the kind of thing, I have decided, that From the Mouth of the Whale has the capability to make you do. It lets your eyes see things they would normally overlook.
Sjón, an Icelandic writer, was best known internationally for his collaborative work with the Icelandic singer Björk until breaking through in the literary scene, when he won the Nordic Council’s Literature Prize for his debut novel The Blue Fox in 2005. Sjón published From the Mouth of the Whale in Icelandic in 2008, and the novel finally floated across the sea in English in 2011 on a raft paddled vehemently by translator Victoria Cribb.
From the Mouth of the Whale is the long life-tale of naturalist, poet, and healer Jónas Palmason ‘The Learned’ who is branded as a heretic and exiled from the mainland onto a tiny island with few friends but the sandpipers, where he reflects upon his life. The novel is set in Iceland circa 1600, not long after the last Catholic bishop, along with Icelandic Catholicism itself, was beheaded and replaced by Lutheranism. From the Mouth of the Whale vividly evokes that time and place. Through the combination of religious piety, pagan practices, and alchemical science, the reader is placed inside Jónas’s life experience. Sitting beside him, listening to his tale in that precarious, violent age in Iceland’s history, a time when mere poetry could be seen as blasphemous and every odd utterance read as a whisper of witchcraft.
Sjón makes a point, in writing From the Mouth of the Whale, of making the reader feel isolated and exiled with the form of the novel itself. For much of it there is hardly a paragraph break except when it comes to dialogue, or for Jónas’s definitions of and stories related to plants, alchemical materials, and beasts (which are all wonderful). While this technique is effective in creating empathy with Jónas, it makes the novel intimidating to approach, and could alienate some less patient readers. The lack of paragraph breaks and the novel’s rambling nature makes the book take its time with the reader because those little breaks are sparse. Had I all the time in the world (or been a much faster reader) I’d have read each section in a sitting, let each soak into me in whole before continuing on my path.
One thing that Sjón does particularly wonderfully with From the Mouth of the Whale is to make Jónas keenly aware of the natural world, be it comparing himself to a sandpiper or seeing the near-scientific similarities in the design of all kinds of animals as proof of a single designer. But Sjón’s natural world is not precisely natural. There are many mythical and supernatural occurrences in the novel (the ghost, the dead man under the sea, the unicorn, mythic whales) yet the novel never feels in any way like mere fantasy. Sjón is able to weave the reader slowly into a world sitting on the precipice, perhaps like Iceland itself with respect to Europe. This is a position where it is as easy to fall backwards into an ocean of fantasy as forwards onto the stony beach of reality, a place where it’s as easy to lose yourself in lore as science.
Some of the most significant power in the novel, though, comes from the historically real (or realistically possible) incidents. One of the most notable is the secret Catholic ceremony on the mountain where the villagers climb the mountain with sticks painted to look like torches (so as to not to signal what they are doing), and dig up an old wooden statue of a saint hidden beneath a mound thought to hold monsters. An act as blasphemous as witchcraft in the freshly Lutheran Iceland, this act shows the people’s incredible devotion to their holy images.
Another powerful scene is that of the massacre of the Basque Whalers. I have never read, in a novel, a scene more gruesome than that, while at the same time one that is only tastefully graphic. Never was I disgusted in Sjón’s portrayal. Horrified, yes. Angry, of course. But never did it feel like the scene was trying to be a gore-fest. I was held there, watching the sublimely wrought horror with the fascination of a child:
At that moment a man leapt forward with a great axe and struck Martinus, aiming for his neck but hitting his collar bone instead and only making a small gash. Recoiling violently from the blow, Martinus took to his heels and fled from the hut down to the sea. It looked as if he was lying on the waves, stroking his head with one hand and his thigh with the other, swimming sometimes on his back, sometimes with arms whirling in the air, sometimes on his front, turning his head from side to side. A boat was launched with great palaver, containing men, weapons and stones, to defeat this Viking. When Martinus saw this he swam further out to sea, chanting in Latin all the while. Many thought it a wonder to hear his skill at singing.
The novel, as tragic as it was, ends in a way that was relatively pleasant. And it stands as some proof that the happy (perhaps a tad bitter-sweet) ending is not overplayed. At the end of it all, the end of the journey, the awareness of Jónas in particular rubs off onto the reader. Read the book and take a walk in the forest, or simply stare into the sky as I did, and you may just notice a difference—a difference in noticing itself.
At the end of it all the novel is a philosophically and mythically tragic romp through the lore and history of Iceland, a novel that is at turns comic as well, that even though requiring patience does not leave the reader at a loss for satisfaction. Sjón shows to me, again, that Icelanders should be watched very closely, just as the naturalist Jónas ‘the Learned’ might study a sandpiper.
Telegram Books | 288 pages | $14.95 | paper | ISBN #978-1846590832
‘From the Mouth of the Whale’ by Sjón
Book Reviews
Upon the final morning of my journey through Sjón’s second novel, From the Mouth of the Whale, I found myself lying on a cattle trailer, grease beneath my fingernails and a layer of lead on my skin (the perfect reagents for thought), listening to Rachmaninoff and staring up into the sky, a sky seemingly empty aside from the spatter of clouds. After my eyes adjusted I saw flying high above me barn swallows playing war, and after some time turkey vultures joined playing doctor at the scent of the button-buck who was playing dead (far too convincingly) at the fringe of the forest. This is the kind of thing, I have decided, that From the Mouth of the Whale has the capability to make you do. It lets your eyes see things they would normally overlook.
Sjón, an Icelandic writer, was best known internationally for his collaborative work with the Icelandic singer Björk until breaking through in the literary scene, when he won the Nordic Council’s Literature Prize for his debut novel The Blue Fox in 2005. Sjón published From the Mouth of the Whale in Icelandic in 2008, and the novel finally floated across the sea in English in 2011 on a raft paddled vehemently by translator Victoria Cribb.
From the Mouth of the Whale is the long life-tale of naturalist, poet, and healer Jónas Palmason ‘The Learned’ who is branded as a heretic and exiled from the mainland onto a tiny island with few friends but the sandpipers, where he reflects upon his life. The novel is set in Iceland circa 1600, not long after the last Catholic bishop, along with Icelandic Catholicism itself, was beheaded and replaced by Lutheranism. From the Mouth of the Whale vividly evokes that time and place. Through the combination of religious piety, pagan practices, and alchemical science, the reader is placed inside Jónas’s life experience. Sitting beside him, listening to his tale in that precarious, violent age in Iceland’s history, a time when mere poetry could be seen as blasphemous and every odd utterance read as a whisper of witchcraft.
Sjón makes a point, in writing From the Mouth of the Whale, of making the reader feel isolated and exiled with the form of the novel itself. For much of it there is hardly a paragraph break except when it comes to dialogue, or for Jónas’s definitions of and stories related to plants, alchemical materials, and beasts (which are all wonderful). While this technique is effective in creating empathy with Jónas, it makes the novel intimidating to approach, and could alienate some less patient readers. The lack of paragraph breaks and the novel’s rambling nature makes the book take its time with the reader because those little breaks are sparse. Had I all the time in the world (or been a much faster reader) I’d have read each section in a sitting, let each soak into me in whole before continuing on my path.
One thing that Sjón does particularly wonderfully with From the Mouth of the Whale is to make Jónas keenly aware of the natural world, be it comparing himself to a sandpiper or seeing the near-scientific similarities in the design of all kinds of animals as proof of a single designer. But Sjón’s natural world is not precisely natural. There are many mythical and supernatural occurrences in the novel (the ghost, the dead man under the sea, the unicorn, mythic whales) yet the novel never feels in any way like mere fantasy. Sjón is able to weave the reader slowly into a world sitting on the precipice, perhaps like Iceland itself with respect to Europe. This is a position where it is as easy to fall backwards into an ocean of fantasy as forwards onto the stony beach of reality, a place where it’s as easy to lose yourself in lore as science.
Some of the most significant power in the novel, though, comes from the historically real (or realistically possible) incidents. One of the most notable is the secret Catholic ceremony on the mountain where the villagers climb the mountain with sticks painted to look like torches (so as to not to signal what they are doing), and dig up an old wooden statue of a saint hidden beneath a mound thought to hold monsters. An act as blasphemous as witchcraft in the freshly Lutheran Iceland, this act shows the people’s incredible devotion to their holy images.
Another powerful scene is that of the massacre of the Basque Whalers. I have never read, in a novel, a scene more gruesome than that, while at the same time one that is only tastefully graphic. Never was I disgusted in Sjón’s portrayal. Horrified, yes. Angry, of course. But never did it feel like the scene was trying to be a gore-fest. I was held there, watching the sublimely wrought horror with the fascination of a child:
At that moment a man leapt forward with a great axe and struck Martinus, aiming for his neck but hitting his collar bone instead and only making a small gash. Recoiling violently from the blow, Martinus took to his heels and fled from the hut down to the sea. It looked as if he was lying on the waves, stroking his head with one hand and his thigh with the other, swimming sometimes on his back, sometimes with arms whirling in the air, sometimes on his front, turning his head from side to side. A boat was launched with great palaver, containing men, weapons and stones, to defeat this Viking. When Martinus saw this he swam further out to sea, chanting in Latin all the while. Many thought it a wonder to hear his skill at singing.
The novel, as tragic as it was, ends in a way that was relatively pleasant. And it stands as some proof that the happy (perhaps a tad bitter-sweet) ending is not overplayed. At the end of it all, the end of the journey, the awareness of Jónas in particular rubs off onto the reader. Read the book and take a walk in the forest, or simply stare into the sky as I did, and you may just notice a difference—a difference in noticing itself.
At the end of it all the novel is a philosophically and mythically tragic romp through the lore and history of Iceland, a novel that is at turns comic as well, that even though requiring patience does not leave the reader at a loss for satisfaction. Sjón shows to me, again, that Icelanders should be watched very closely, just as the naturalist Jónas ‘the Learned’ might study a sandpiper.
Telegram Books | 288 pages | $14.95 | paper | ISBN #978-1846590832