Ordinary Things Described in Extraordinary Sentences

Among the many things I track in my reading are extraordinary things described in extraordinary ways. I have a collection of them, which I’ll share in three or four quotes at a time.

But I’m starting with just one today because it’s so stunning. The reason I’m sharing this alone is that the more I read it, the more I realize it’s a Godly paragraph.

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Ladies and gentlemen, here comes the paragraph by Halldor Laxness from Independent People

SLowly, slowly winter day opens his arctic eye.

From the moment when he gives his first drowsy blink to the time when his leaden lids have finally opened wide, there passes not merely hour after hour; no, age follows age through the immeasurable expanses of the morning, world follows world, as in the visions of a blind man; reality follows reality and is no more– the light grows brighter. So distant is winter day on his own morning. Even his morning is distant from itself. The first faint gleam on the horizon and the full brightness on the window at breakfast-time are like two different beginnings, two starting-points. And since at dawn even his morning is distant, what must his evening ber Forenoon, noon, and afternoon are as far off as the countries we hope to see when we grow up; evening as remote and unreal as death, which the youngest son was told about yesterday, death which takes little children away from their mothers and makes the minister bury them in the Bailiff’s garden, death from which no one returns, as in grandmother’s stories, death which will call for you, too, when you have grown so old that you have become a child again.

Today, while chatting with my friend Andri, I confirmed what I’d been sensing: this is actually a paragraph that describes day, life, death, childhood, and old age (and there’s probably much more). So it’s one paragraph that describes all of humanity, which is anything but ordinary, despite what some people might believe.

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I also learned another thing about Laxness. He initially moved to Hollywood and wrote Salka Valka (another favorite of mine) for a silent movie. For an extraordinary writer to write for a silent movie is also so beautiful in its own way.