«El valle del Issa ha estado siempre habitado por una ingente cantidad de demonios…» Así empieza una de las descripciones que hace el narrador del entorno en que vive Tomás , el niño lituano que protagoniza esta historia. Al igual que Milosz, Tomás habita un mundo donde todavía no han llegado los ritos religiosos tradicionales, y un tiempo, a principios de nuestro siglo, en que la naturaleza producía un éxtasis pagano y un horror maniqueo. La historia del Valle de Issa también está poblada por la imaginería propia de un poeta, y por innumerables anécdotas que, sin dejar de remitirnos a referencias autobiográficas, están lejos de ser comunes y corrientes.

"El valle de Issa" ha sido siempre habitado por una ingente cantidad de demonios..." Así empieza una de las descripciones que hace e narrador del entorno en que vive el niño lituano que protagoniza esta historia. Tomás, el niño. five -al igual que Milosz- en un mundo donde los ritos religiosos tradicionales llegaron tarde a su vida y en un tiempo, a principios de nuestro siglo, en que la naturaleza producía un éxtasis pagano y un horror maniqueo. la historia de El valle de Issa también está poblada por la imaginería propia de un poeta y las anécdotas que nos relata, aun cuando pudieran remitirnos a referencias autobiográficas, están lejos de ser comunes y corrientes.

"The Issa Valley has the distinction of being inhabited by an unusually large number of devils."

So begins this magical autobiographical coming of age novel by Nobelist Milosz. Thomas lives in a remote valley in the disputed area between Lithuania and Poland with his grandparents. The time is just after World War I, and pagan spirits and ancient spells are very real to the villagers and to Thomas. As a young boy, Thomas explores nature with scientific avidity. When he's a bit older, he idolizes one of the peasants who is a skilled hunter, and seeks to emulate him, until he discovers he is unable to kill. As Thomas comes of age, the cycles of nature in all its glory and wonder are also prominently displayed. Although there is not much plot, Milosz writes beautifully of Thomas's world, with a unique sense of place and time. ( )

"The Land of Lakes, the place where Thomas lived", 4 Dec. 2013
By
sally tarbox

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This review is from: Issa Valley (Hardcover)
A beautiful book, set in the countryside of Lithuania in the early part of the 20th century. The main character, Thomas, is of Polish lineage and lives in a manor house with his grandparents; his parents are away, while his father serves in the army.
In the village of Gine, Thomas is introduced to the beauties of nature:
"Autumnal smells, the origin of which, the blendings of which lay beyond his or any other man's power to describe: the rot of leaves and needles; the dank effluvium of fungi and white filaments embedded in black, beneath the slime of decaying, peeling debris."
He has to try and square his growing interest in hunting expeditions with his love for the creatures themselves:
"Thomas spotted an ermine...a white sickle, arching and straightening. With a gaping mouth, Thomas stared in awe and ached with desire. To have. If he'd had a rifle with him he would have shot it...but what good would that have done? Then there would have been neither ermine nor any sense of wonder, just dead matter lying on the ground; no it was better to feast one's eyes and let it go at that."
Meanwhile the villagers form a backdrop to his life: Aunt Helen and her romantic liaisons; drunken Balthazar; poor Magdalena, the priest's mistress, who returns as a ghost after her suicide. There are echoes of Lithuania's pagan past, with wizards and stories of the old gods; and an awareness of politics, as the local poor look to parcelling out the land of the wealthy, to the consternation of Thomas' family.
A lovely tale of life in a world I knew nothing of. ( )

What a poetic novel this is, perhaps not surprisingly so since Milosz is a poet, and a Nobel Prize-winning one at that. At least partly autobiographical, the novel is at once a coming-of-age story, a paean to nature, a study of character, a history of Lithuania, and a portrait of a rural, largely pre-industrial world that was soon to be utterly destroyed. Milosz was born in Lithuania (then part of the Russian empire) in 1911, but his family had for several generations spoken Polish, and while he was fluent in both languages (as well as several others), he considered himself a Polish poet and wrote in Polish.

In the novel, young Thomas has been sent to live with his maternal grandparents in the Issa Valley, a remote area in Lithuania that is filled with lakes and forests, as his father is fighting with some army (either the Russians or the Poles, who are fighting each other) and his mother is stranded over the border; his paternal grandmother is also living there. He is probably about 9 or 10 when the novel begins, but his age isn't specified until much later. The family was previously better off than it is now, but they own a "manor" house and quite a bit of land, including forests. Later on, this puts them slightly at odds with some of the local population who, inspired no doubt by what little bits of information they have heard about the Russian revolution, are itching for land distribution.

It is probably a lonely time for Thomas, and he first finds comfort in his grandfather's library, discovering books that had been gathering dust on the shelves for decades. Later he becomes completely enamored by nature, learning first about plants and then about birds, loving both his observations of them in their habitats and their names and the whole Linnean naming system. Eventually he meets a neighboring landowner who initiates Thomas into hunting. At first, Thomas is very proud to be included with the grown men, and is fascinated by how hunters creep through the woods, call to birds, and set their dogs to work. Everything about the way Milosz describes the forests and the animals is utterly lyrical. Ultimately, Thomas finds it difficult to kill the birds and other animals they are hunting.

But this novel is about much more than Thomas, and the voice of the novel is not Thomas's but someone who is able to see all of the society of the little town of Gine and its surroundings. The reader sees many of the inhabitants of the area, including the priest who is having an affair with his housekeeper (who comes back to haunt the town), a tormented forester, a bitter and cruel but persuasive poor boy, the local priests, and many others, and gains some knowledge of their histories and characters. Thomas's family is also explored: his maternal grandfather tells him about Lithuanian history, his paternal grandmother meditates on her own life story and her husband and sons, and his mother's sister, his aunt Helen, enjoys some extramarital adventures. The portrait Milosz paints of Thomas's paternal grandmother is particularly rich, and the scene where she is dying is one of the most beautiful and insightful I have read. At the same time, the novel is rich with the spirits, both good and evil, that people still believe guide the residents of the Issa Valley. All in all, this novel is poetry in prose, with much left unsaid.

I was eager to read Milosz after I read My Century, in which Milosz interviews Aleksander Wat, a Polish poet of an earlier generation, and another LTer recommended this novel. I'm glad she did, I'm glad I read it, and I will look for more of Milosz's work.