Tharei Vessus’ Novel ‘The Snow Palace’: A Poignant Tale of Separation and Guilt

Word by Word by Jayakrishnan

05 January 2024, 09:42 AM IST Author Tarye Vasus, Book Cover | twitter.com/_tolma, Amazone

Tharei Vessus’s novel ‘The Snow Palace’ is an epic poem of separation and guilt, an extraordinary portrayal of the heart-to-heart relationship between two eleven-year-old girls named Sis and Un. About the book;

mIt is winter; A winter that turns even a flowing river into stone. But within you is the warmth of happiness. It’s getting dark early. Scary figures rise from the road in the darkness; But the light of joy is in your mind. But the next moment you fall from that happiness into a waterfall of sadness from which you can never come back. Can you describe that situation? There is only one book that shows that it can – that is Norwegian author Tarjei Vesaas’ novel ‘The Ice Palace’.

Vessus is a writer who can be described as the predecessor of Yoon Fosse, who won this year’s Nobel Prize for Literature. Like Fosse, he also wrote in Nynorsk, a minority language of Norway. His works like The Winds, The Birds and The Boat in the Evening are considered by many to be great. Several times between the 1950s and 1970s, Vessus’s books were nominated for the Nobel Prize but did not receive it. It was not him who lost the honour, but the Nobel Prize.

The novel is also an epic poem of separation and guilt, an extraordinary portrayal of the heart-to-heart relationship between two eleven-year-old girls named Sis and Un. Unn, who is new to Sis’s school, was brought there by her village grandmother when her mother died. Un was the polar opposite of Sis, who was the leader of the children in the class and was not contained.

Although highly intelligent, she always kept her distance from everyone; Except for Sis. Soon they became intense friends. Once, Un called Sis home. She has a secret to tell. However, Un reveals the secret long after Sis arrives. Sis felt wounded; Don’t you have faith? Or is she kidding herself? Sis left without saying anything.

The next day both of them woke up feeling guilty. Sis’s problem was that she got tangled up with him. Feeling that he had insulted Sis, Unna also swelled. Sis thought that everything would be over if they got to school and talked to each other. However, the introverted Unn could not face Sis so quickly. So she went to the nearby forest with her book bag saying she was going to school. One day she had to be alone. Walking through the forest, along the river bank, she reached the waterfall. That’s when she saw: the waterfall was hiding in the cold and a giant snow castle was forming!

The next chapter is a marvel of world literature itself. When he saw the snow castle, he reached out to Sis. I will see Sis tomorrow and all the strife will be over. Delighted, she stepped into the snow castle through a crack like a door. First she came to a room with a dim green light filtering through it. An ominous room with nothing but bitter cold. she shouted. Trembling after hearing the noise, instead of going out, she went into another room like a corridor. As she entered the next room from there, her breath stopped for a moment. She was in the middle of a frozen forest. It was like the cold’s own home, full of trees of snow. There was not even an echo of her voice. Fearing danger, she went to another room. There was the echo of the sound that had been made earlier waiting for her!

Through the crack in the wall of the snow castle, she reached the room of tears. Even her happiness that had been there till then was extinguished in the falling snow. She just has to get out of there. But the gap in the ice wall was thin. She had to leave behind a thick coat of fur and food pouch to get across. There was light and joy again. She called Sis. But in the ice castle that forms itself in the cold, the ways she came were closed forever….

In the last scene of the book, Unn is incapacitated by cold, but not even cold. Her thoughts faded. Everything is long gone, everything is far away. There is nothing more heartbreaking than the image of a little girl falling asleep with her frozen legs folded and falling asleep in the closed solitude of no one’s reach.

There are some books whose story cannot be summed up and should not be told. They should be read and experienced. One such book is ‘The Snow Palace.’

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2024-01-05 04:12:23