Winter Mythologies and Abbots by Pierre Michon
French fiction
Orignal title – mythologies d’hiver and Abbés
Trans;lator Ann Jefferson
Source – Personal copy
I read a number of years ago The Eleven by Michon. He is considered one of the leading writers in the French literary scene. His book Small Lives is regarded as a masterpiece. He is known for his short style of vignettes. This collection consists of two of his French books that have been put together. He has been compared to Borges and is one of those writers who should be better known. He has had many of his books translated into English, but he isn’t one of those names you see when people talk about great French writers. I loved these two books. You can see his love of history, but also how he reframes it through his own prose style.
They take communion in their white robes. Leary is there, wavering. He has combed his beard and donned his fur-lined cloak. They kneel, Patrick stands very tall above them, they receive the body of the Bridegroom from his hand. They are now in His presence, although He remains hidden. They have closed their eyes. Opening them, Brigid sees only the impassive face of the king. It is over. They step out into the May sunlight, and in the sunshine, one after the other, they fall to the ground: one on the steps, one on the path, and Brigid beside the rose-bush. One has her head in her arm, one in the dust of the track, Brigid is turned toward the sky, her eyes wide open. They are impeccably dead. They are contemplating the face of God.
The last lines of the first story Brigid’s Fervor
The first collection has the first three stories about Irish Christian history retold. The first tale is Brigid Fervor. The first story is the tale of one of the tribal leaders in early Christian times converting to Christianity. AS there is much violence, he wants to see the god of Brigid face to face. I was reminded of when I was young at my grand house, there was a book of Irish mythology. They were all a little like these three tales, the second is connected to St. Columbkill, a saint who was one of the early figures in Irish Christianity and was buried in Iona and connected to Donegal, where I spent a number of childhood holidays. The second collection, Abbots, is the tale of three monasteries and the head abbots and the history of these monasteries told; he has made these men of religion all the more human with their many flaws and sins in the tales.
All winter long on horseback he raises his warriors, forty decades of young men in Drumlane, twelve decades in Kells, thirty in Derry. At the feasts of alliance, when he is drunk and weary, he pictures the incalculable blue that seems to rise from David’s harp. He is happy; he sings to himself the refrains from the psalms. In the spring all the O’Neills are under arms. He hurries to Moville with long day-marches and six hundred horse. Diarmait is waiting for him with a thousand horse in the bog of Culdreihmne beneath a clearing sky. Columbkill kneels down: he prays for Faustus, who is in heaven, the blue place which awaits us and favors us. He wants to laugh. He gets to his feet; they draw their swords. On the dark and slippery way they merge and set about each other; many young men are laid in the byre of death. At noon Diarmait lies in the marsh with a thousand horses, you cannot see them because it’s raining much harder now, but you can hear them dying and you can hear the crows cawing with delight. Covered in blood and mire, laughing and drunk, Columbkill takes forty horses and gallops flat-out to Moville
I connect with this tale most as my family has a history going back to the 16th Century connected to Derry
I loved the first three tales in this book. I sometimes struggle with historical fiction where I don’t know much about the history. Unfortunately, with trying to read several books from my TBR this month, I didn’t have time to look into all the history in the tales set in France, which I may later go back and learn more about. I loved the Irish stories at the start as they were bits of history I vaguely knew or had read similar tales over time, or had been to some of the old sites around Ireland when I was younger. He has a great way of telling historical events and gripping modern readers. I have two more books from Michon on my shelves to read, including his master piece Small Lives. He is a writer I want to read more from, so I won’t wait as long between his books this time. Have you read Michon?
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