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The Issa Valley: A Novel

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Renowned Polish-Lithuanian poet, Czeslaw Milosz crafts his poetry with prose-like clarity and his prose with flowing rhythm and sententious weight. His coming of age novel, 'The Issa Valley' is a stunning example of how the mediatative lyric can be woven into a novel.

The novel takes place in the wild forests of central Lithuania near to where Milosz spent his youthful summers at the manor houses of his grandparents. The central character, Thomas, an adolescent school-boy of an aristocratic Polish family is sent away to his grandparents for the summer. Grandfather Surkont is the model of noblisse oblige, a Polonized Lithuanian aristocrat who strives to keep his household and his villagers happy despite the violent changes which threaten to engulf this forgotten paradise. The time is just after the Great War, when the newly-formed Republic of Lithuania is struggling with its indepedence after centuries of foreign domination, by the Russians on a state level, by the Polish landowners on the local level. Polish 'pan,' Thomas, is abruptly thrown into a fresh and vibrant world completely foreign from the fast-paced city life he has known until now. Here in the villages and manors around the Issa River, the world is pagan and Lithuanian. Ancient spirits and gods dwell in the minds and souls of the Lithuanian peasants who people Thomas's new world. And most of all, Thomas meets up with his newest passion, that which teaches him more than any school-book ever could, the rich and primeval natural world.

More than anything, Milosz's novel is a giant mediatative prose poem on the shape and workings of nature. Sentence after sentence drips with near religious reverence for the water-lillied, cobalt-colored Issa, for the inpenetrable jungles of black pine, home to the bullet-headed snipe, siena-shaded mule deer, the fearsome black-bodied, red-hooded forest vipers whose lethal injection will put the strongest of men down before he can whisper, 'Holy Jesus, home to an infinite variety of bird and bug. Thomas is immediately captured by such an environment and sets out to become a 'naturalist.' In the Issa valley that means 'hunter.' Thomas soons attaches himself to the local hunter, Romauld, who initiates Thomas in the arts of tracking, waiting and dropping prey. Thomas hungers to learn this ancient art but fails dismally. Always a step behind, a little too hestitant to pull the trigger, he fails to make the big kill. Until the squirrel. Thomas' deliberate wounding of his unsuspecting and innocent victim causes a painful enlightenment. Through his tears of remorse and agonizing pang of guilt, Thomas grows up in a moment. He has taken life, thereby losing his Adam-like innocence. This two-page metaphor for the fall of man is in itself worth the whole book.

This seminal climax in Thomas' life underscores Milosz's central theme: we are all inextricably attached to our environment, slaves of the brutal and beautiful outside world that holds us in her hand. The natural world forms the backbone, muscle and tissue of this novel. The characters whom surround Thomas's microcosm are mere pawns of omnipotent nature and through them, Milosz makes his creed clear: accept your place in the nature of things or woe is your lot. Magdelena covets the village priest and finally gets her wish, but at a dire cost. Ostracized from her surroundings, she choses suicide and her ghost haunts the village until she finally finds her place again. Balthazar, the manor's forester, covets a life not his, more land, more money, a prettier wife. A dangerous desire. One which eventually leads to madness, mayhem and murder.

Milosz sketches these characters with a light brush. Milosz leaves out emotional depth for the sake of proving his teleology. Thus, the characters, Thomas included, often seem like indistinct shadows cast in the background. But Milosz's sun, the portrayal of nature in all its savage colors, nonetheless burns an indelible image on the brain if not the heart. 'The Issa Valley' is not only a vibrant and melancholy journey around that world that surrounds us but a detached, yet oddly moving, examination of those passions within us which hunger to connect with something greater. Those longing for such a journey would do well to pick up 'The Issa Valley.'

Yes to the above. A classic coming-of-age story that, as do the great ones, asks the question, What does it mean to be a man? (Think of Gilgamesh or Huck Finn or precious young Werther.) A question mediated here between two European aristocratic types: There is the guy-man, Pan Romauld, who triumphs with the ladies and as a hunter/killer of birds (so very much the European aristocrat). And there is the whole man, Grandfather Surkont, who does not hunt and is generous to those in his charge--and he has a library!! As well, there are the abundant (perhaps too much so), brilliant, luxurious, and precise descriptions of the natural world of northern Lithuania. In this he joins several East European writers, not only his compatriot Henry Sienkiewicz, but also Paustovsky and (alas!) Gregor Rezzori, this latter with his descriptions of the natural glories of the Bukovinian Carpathians. A fine work of autobiographical fiction in a grand tradtion.

Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature,Czeslaw Milosz here writes deftly
yet with the right amount of passion about the child,Thomas. What an inner
life,what thoughts,what dreams,this child has. He soars with Aurora.then
blends with the trees in his beloved Issa Valley. What poetry in writing..
I was enchanted as you will be,too.Let Mr. Milosz and the Issa Valley wrap you in it's gentle and mercurial embrace.
M.Baker

So often a book's story can leave you a day after you finished it. I'm writing this review a year or more after I read the book, and there are still scenes that are fresh in my mind. Other 5 star reviews in this chain are more articulate than anything I could write, so I will just say ditto to them!