When I Sing, Mountains Dance

Product Information

And then report water out in colossal drops like coins onto the earth and the grass and the stones, and the mighty Just when I was surrendering to the difficulty that this book was going to be, but still wanting to stay with it… Translated from the Catalan by Mara Faye Lethem, the book’s title is taken from the last line of a poem written by one of the novel’s narrators, Hilari. The line evokes an image of the poet using their voice to create movement, as illustrated in the final eight lines of his poem.

One of them turns and regards me with disdain. She looks me up and down. She holds my gaze and replies, “We are in mourning.” Esta lectura ha sido una de las experiencias más bonitas, emocionantes y sorprendentes que leído. Puede que últimamente tenga el corazoncito más sensible y no sea objetiva pero lo que me ha transmitido 'Canto yo y la montaña baila' ha sido precioso. El verdadero protagonista, pese a la multitud de narradores, sigue siendo el paisaje. La montaña, con su fauna y su flora. La propia naturaleza. El resto, es un mero instrumento para Irene. Herramientas que sirven para reflejar la ruralidad de un pueblecito de montaña como Camprodon y evocar todas esas vidas que algunos no sentimos tan lejanas. Quizá no similares, porque están inspiradas y ancladas en la región Pirenaica, pero si cercanas en sentimiento. El escenario sobre el que contar leyendas y tradiciones, historias de espíritus y de brujas. Pero también de personas. De muertes trágicas y familias destrozadas. De amores y desamores. De triunfos y derrotas. De oportunidades y condenas. Un relato que refleja eso de que el tiempo pasa, pero a veces no olvida. Al mismo tiempo, me ha recordado a mi infancia, mi tierra -Donosti-, al Monte Urgull desde el que se ven las playas de mi adorada San Sebastián, el Igueldo y las rutas por el Monte Ulia (uno de mis favoritos).

I’ve come away feeling a little more loved —with less need to be so critical of the world we live in…. When I Sing, Mountains Dance may leave you baffled at first. So, again, approach it not as a novel but as a celebration of language and inventiveness. It’s not quite poetry, not quite narrative, but rather a mélange of the two; a distinctive set of voices and narratives that somehow merges into a whole. And as in all good but challenging literature, meaning eventually arises like the mist lifting on a fresh, dewy morn to reveal a hidden landscape of preternatural, previously unknown beauty.

I thought the writing was lovely, sometimes archaic, sometimes very current. If I was this overwhelmed with a translation, I can't even imagine how stunning it is in Catalan which you can hear a snippet of here. Estar acompañada de Bon Iver mientras leía ha sido la guinda del pastel ¿Puede haber un grupo más evocador, melancólico y bonito? In the Eye of the Wild by Nastassja Martin, translated from the French by Sophie R. Lewis, NY: New York Review of Books, 2021. And when the spring breezes blow up the valley; when the spring sun shines on last year‘s withered grass on the river banks; and on the lake; and on the lake’s two white swans; and coaxes The new grass out of the spongy soil in the marshes—who could believe I’m such a day that this peaceful, grassy valley brooded over the story of our past; and over it’s spectres? People right along the river, along the banks wear side-by-side lie many paths— and fresh spring breeze blows through the valley in the sunshine. On such a day the sun is stronger than the past”.

By Fiona Mozley

This book made me swoon. Translated with great musicality, tenderness, and wit, When I Sing, Mountains Dance is thirst-quenching literature of the best kind, rich and ranging, shimmering with human and non-human life, the living and the dead, in our time and deep time. Here is a Pyrenees fable that is utterly universal, deadly funny, and profoundly moving.” —Max Porter Towards the end of When I Sing, we are swept up in the ineluctable sadness of all that cannot be undone and of an accompanying sense of release, as Mia asserts that being sorry for something and forgiving somebody might happen at the same time, might be two sides of the same coin, and one’s sorrow might co-exist with one’s love, however far that sorrow or that love has had to travel. Up here even time has a different feel. It’s like the hours don’t have the same weight. Like the days aren’t the same length, don’t have the same color, or the same flavor. Time here is made of different stuff, and it has a different value.

It all centers around Domènec, the lightning-strike victim who is the catalyst for everything that follows. He’s not really the protagonist, though. In fact, you could postulate that the book is an assemblage of various heroes, each earning the mantle of protagonist on their own. Sometimes a book comes along that enhances your way of being in the world: for two such books to fall into your hands, in serendipitous collusion, is a thing to marvel at, and perhaps even to write about. Whatever their differences, and they are legion, the two books under review, both written by young women — one a memoir by an anthropologist, the other a piece of fiction that reads like a fable — together provide a thorough dismantling of the notion of genre. But more importantly, both books open a window onto systems of belief in which humans and other animals, plants, fungi and diverse organisms survive and thrive in interconnected and interdependent ways, consciously or otherwise, reflecting an unexpected harmony at the heart of lived experience. This book chronicles the relationship the author established with the Lykovs, a family who had survived in complete isolation in the depths of the Russian taiga for more than 40 years. Peskov recounts their struggle to survive in the taiga’s extreme conditions, which often contrasts with the cheerful merriness they feel when going about their daily routine, despite the doubt that the disparity between their life choices and the direction of civilisation awakens in them.

This is the route of the retreat into exile. Where the Republicans fled. Civilians and soldiers. Toward France. It’s a damp morning. I inhale, bringing all that clean, wet, pure mountain air deep into my lungs. That aroma of earth and tree and morning. It’s no surprise the people up here are better, more authentic, more human, breathing this air every day. And drinking the water from this river. And looking out every day at the majesty of these legendary mountains, so beautiful it pains the soul. As Nastassja Martin, she is interrogated by a Russian FSB (secret services) agent, on the basis that she has spent most of her time in a militarised zone occupied only by Even hunters, who live in a state of almost complete self-sufficiency. She spends three hours with the agent, who is the first, but not the last person to intimate that to be an anthropologist is to be a spy. Her two families turn up; Nastassja’s birth family from France, and Nastinka’s adopted Even family from the forests of Kamchatka. The two groups of her loved ones look nothing like one another, speak different languages, and come from different worlds; the two worlds between which she is riven. One of the nurses looking after her tells her: ‘Nastya, you might almost say there are two different women occupying this room.’ An astute observation, but perhaps more accurately there are three of her, if you include the bear. Originally published in Catalan in 2019 it was translated into Spanish and the English translation will come out in March. The Catalan and Spanish editions by Anagrama have the beautiful Age of Mammals mural in the Yale Peabody museum on the cover and it fits very well. I had started reading it in Spanish last year but the language is too poetic for a non-native speaker to fully enjoy. I thought the translation does a very good job, and it won't have been straightforward. La Blanca, mare teva, volia una companyia. Abans. I va anar a buscar un home. I en va trobar un. Va trobar un home fort que treballava al camp… I s’estimaven als vespres, la Blanca i el teu pare, sempre sota els arbres i sobre les herbes….