It is with renewed pleasure that we find the ethereal and poetic prose of the Icelandic Gyrðir Elíasson, whom La Peuplade has been introducing us to since 2017.
Posted at 12:00 p.m.
Requiem is a sublime novel, of great delicacy, which completes the triptych on loneliness and artistic creation begun with At the edge of the Sandá and The south window. With a pen with dreamlike accents reminiscent of that of Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir, the novelist transports us to his reflections on existence and on art, on death, too, as well as on the absence of desire for life in society.
Jónas is a copywriter who has chosen to isolate himself for a summer in a country house far from his home and his wife, from whom he has slowly drifted apart over the years. Ever since he was little, he has “heard notes” through everything around him and puts down in a small notebook these melodies which unexpectedly come to his ear. This retreat is an opportunity for him to compose without restraint, according to his desires, even if no one will ever hear his works. In this lair that he has created for himself, it is there that he will find what really fulfills him and that he will finally reveal himself to himself – an artist who only needs his art to live.
Requiem
Gyrðir Eliasson
Translated from Icelandic by Catherine Eyjólfsson
The People
184 pages