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rbcp82's review against another edition
4.0
I believe I should have liked this book more; what the book offers (narrative style, theme, etc) is commensurate with what I look for when I read a novel. However, it lost me a couple times. Maybe the problem lies with its translation.
The comparison to Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude is inevitable; and the latter is far superior. Their aims are different, so to be sure, comparison is not warranted.
This was my first time reading Tokarczuk, and I'll get to her other works sooner rather than later (especially Flights.)
-------------------------------
Knowledge that is only grown on the outside changes nothing inside a man, or merely changes him on the surface, as one garment is changed for changed for another. But he who learns by taking things inside himself undergoes constant transformation, because he incorporates what he learns into his being. p. 19
Early in March he went out on his first walk about the park, and saw an ugly, grey world again, full of decay and destruction. National independence didn't help, nor did the constitution. On a path in the park he saw a red, child's glove sticking out of the melting snow, and for some strange reason the sight of it sank deep into his memory. Dogged, blind regeneration. The apathy of life and death. The inhuman machinery of life. p. 37
The threadbare uniform of a beaten army hung on him as on a stick, without a single button.
People think they live more intensely than animals, than plants, and especially than things. Animals sense that they live more intensely than plants and things. Plants dream that they live more intensely than things. But things last, and this lasting is more alive than anything else. P. 43
Then, to be quicker, they started scooping them off the shelves in entire rows. The books spread their flightless wings and torpidly fell in heap. When they ran out of boxes, they left it at that, took the full boxes and went. Only later did it turn out that they had taken everything from A to L. P. 153.
God sees
Time escapes
Death pursues
Eternity waits
Oh, you have misunderstood, my dear boy. We have no intention of reforming the world in anybody's name. We reform God. P. 191
Gradually they resigned themselves to the idea that Misia would die, that she was going somewhere else. But what they feared most was that in the fervor of dying, the separating of the soul from the body or the fading of the biological structure of the brain, Misia Boska would be gone forever, all her recipes would be gone, all the chicken liver and radish salads, her iced chocolate cakes, her gingerbread, and finally , her thoughts, her words, the events she had taken part in, as ordinary as her life, and yet -- each of them was sure of it -- lined in darkness and sorrow, because the world is not friendly to mankind, and the only thing to be done is to find a shell for yourself and your loved ones, and stay in there until you are released.
The comparison to Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude is inevitable; and the latter is far superior. Their aims are different, so to be sure, comparison is not warranted.
This was my first time reading Tokarczuk, and I'll get to her other works sooner rather than later (especially Flights.)
-------------------------------
Knowledge that is only grown on the outside changes nothing inside a man, or merely changes him on the surface, as one garment is changed for changed for another. But he who learns by taking things inside himself undergoes constant transformation, because he incorporates what he learns into his being. p. 19
Early in March he went out on his first walk about the park, and saw an ugly, grey world again, full of decay and destruction. National independence didn't help, nor did the constitution. On a path in the park he saw a red, child's glove sticking out of the melting snow, and for some strange reason the sight of it sank deep into his memory. Dogged, blind regeneration. The apathy of life and death. The inhuman machinery of life. p. 37
The threadbare uniform of a beaten army hung on him as on a stick, without a single button.
People think they live more intensely than animals, than plants, and especially than things. Animals sense that they live more intensely than plants and things. Plants dream that they live more intensely than things. But things last, and this lasting is more alive than anything else. P. 43
Then, to be quicker, they started scooping them off the shelves in entire rows. The books spread their flightless wings and torpidly fell in heap. When they ran out of boxes, they left it at that, took the full boxes and went. Only later did it turn out that they had taken everything from A to L. P. 153.
God sees
Time escapes
Death pursues
Eternity waits
Oh, you have misunderstood, my dear boy. We have no intention of reforming the world in anybody's name. We reform God. P. 191
Gradually they resigned themselves to the idea that Misia would die, that she was going somewhere else. But what they feared most was that in the fervor of dying, the separating of the soul from the body or the fading of the biological structure of the brain, Misia Boska would be gone forever, all her recipes would be gone, all the chicken liver and radish salads, her iced chocolate cakes, her gingerbread, and finally , her thoughts, her words, the events she had taken part in, as ordinary as her life, and yet -- each of them was sure of it -- lined in darkness and sorrow, because the world is not friendly to mankind, and the only thing to be done is to find a shell for yourself and your loved ones, and stay in there until you are released.
jermalaite's review against another edition
5.0
Skaičiau atsiliepimus, skaičiau įvairiausius ir, galų gale, nusprendžiau, kad jau atėjo laikas.
Istorija pasakoja išgalvoto Praamžių kaimo gyventojų likimus - susipynusius arba visiškai tolimus, tačiau visus, be išimties, neįtikėtinai skaudžius. Su kaimo gyventojais skaitytojas keliauja per du pasaulinius karus, patenka į magiško žaidimo sūkūrį, vaikšto kitų žingsniais ir bando atskirti, kas iš tiesų yra tikra.
Būna knygų, apie kurias sunku kalbėti. "Praamžiai ir kiti laikai" yra viena iš tokių. Iš tiesų, skaitydama nusikėliau į studijų laikus, kai tokia literatūra (tamsi, išraiškinga) buvo įprastas reikalas. Kai šiek tiek atsitrauki, į rankas patenka lengvesnė literatūra, sugrįžus tenka pasivažinėti linksmaisiais emocijų kalneliais. Džiaugsmo, tiesa, čia mažai.
Labai patiko pati knygos struktūra: suskirstyta į 84 trumpus skyrius - daiktų ir žmonių laikus. Įdomu tai, kad pasakojamos ne tik gyvųjų istorijos - kvestionuojama ir negyvų daiktų būtis. Trumpi skyreliai pripildyti daugiau mįslių, nei atsakymų, tačiau srūva jausmais. Ir tie jausmai nereiškiami atvirai - viskas ateina per gestus, prisilietimus, žvilgsnius, nutylėtus žodžius ir paslėptas šypsenas.
Galiu drąsiai teigti, kad tai stipriausia knyga, perskaityta šiais metais. Nežinau, ką dar galėčiau pasakyti. Reikia tiesiog atsiversti, kad suprastum.
Istorija pasakoja išgalvoto Praamžių kaimo gyventojų likimus - susipynusius arba visiškai tolimus, tačiau visus, be išimties, neįtikėtinai skaudžius. Su kaimo gyventojais skaitytojas keliauja per du pasaulinius karus, patenka į magiško žaidimo sūkūrį, vaikšto kitų žingsniais ir bando atskirti, kas iš tiesų yra tikra.
Būna knygų, apie kurias sunku kalbėti. "Praamžiai ir kiti laikai" yra viena iš tokių. Iš tiesų, skaitydama nusikėliau į studijų laikus, kai tokia literatūra (tamsi, išraiškinga) buvo įprastas reikalas. Kai šiek tiek atsitrauki, į rankas patenka lengvesnė literatūra, sugrįžus tenka pasivažinėti linksmaisiais emocijų kalneliais. Džiaugsmo, tiesa, čia mažai.
Labai patiko pati knygos struktūra: suskirstyta į 84 trumpus skyrius - daiktų ir žmonių laikus. Įdomu tai, kad pasakojamos ne tik gyvųjų istorijos - kvestionuojama ir negyvų daiktų būtis. Trumpi skyreliai pripildyti daugiau mįslių, nei atsakymų, tačiau srūva jausmais. Ir tie jausmai nereiškiami atvirai - viskas ateina per gestus, prisilietimus, žvilgsnius, nutylėtus žodžius ir paslėptas šypsenas.
Galiu drąsiai teigti, kad tai stipriausia knyga, perskaityta šiais metais. Nežinau, ką dar galėčiau pasakyti. Reikia tiesiog atsiversti, kad suprastum.
nikeyam's review against another edition
adventurous
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
relaxing
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.75
readbyrodkelly's review against another edition
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
5.0
spenkevich's review against another edition
5.0
‘The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?
Answer.
That you are here—that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.’
-[a:Walt Whitman|1438|Walt Whitman|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1392303683p2/1438.jpg]
Novels have a beautiful way of emphasizing events to draw a contained meaning from them. Some novels hone in on a short period of time, or a single life, and make epics of the moment, whereas some are epics for their grand scale. While Primeval, by Polish author and Nobel Prize recipient Olga Tokarczuk falls into the latter category, the delivery of the narrative simultaneously grants an epic quality to the small passing moments, just as much as it does to the larger timeline of events. This is a brilliant novel of people, place, and time that manages to successfully accomplish in just over 200 pages what would normally be expected of a door-stop of a novel. Primeval, a fictitious town ‘at the center of the universe, ’ functions as an amalgamation of Poland during the 20th century and humanity at large. Like the best of metaphors, it is both singular and universal all at once and satisfies the nuances of both the condensed and broad scope. This is an astonishing achievement to say the least. Tokarczuk has created a quiet little masterpiece somewhere along the lines of [b:One Hundred Years of Solitude|320|One Hundred Years of Solitude|Gabriel García Márquez|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327881361l/320._SX50_.jpg|3295655] but in a minor key and has unlocked Polish history in a way that can be universally identified with and processed. Being a novel so entrenched in family history and place, it is nearly impossible for me to separate the narrative from my own reading experience, and the book came at the right time in my life as I sat over my newborn daughter in the NICU. The access to the ancestors that this book gave me, as well as its own characters, was a powerful force in my life, as it is within its own narrative. This is a novel that seeps deep into the reader and pays homage to both the small and grand moments in history in order to demonstrate how each of our individual waltzes across a finite timeline becomes an eternal dance of humanity across time.
Despite having owned Primeval for many years, I had never read it. Over the past year, I read both [b:Flights|36885304|Flights|Olga Tokarczuk|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1512417961l/36885304._SX50_.jpg|2014747] and [b:Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead|42983724|Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead|Olga Tokarczuk|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1547225640l/42983724._SY75_.jpg|8099373] and found them to be utterly delightful. As the grandson of Polish immigrants, I’ve always been drawn to Polish literature and have found in Olga Tokarczuk a voice that speaks more profoundly to my being than [a:Bruno Schulz|142899|Bruno Schulz|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1651322168p2/142899.jpg] or even the existential works of [a:Witold Gombrowicz|9632|Witold Gombrowicz|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1655576009p2/9632.jpg] did to my younger self. Tokarczuk’s way of paying subtle homage to the spiritual aspects of Polish history, most prominently here in Primeval with the four archangels guarding each cardinal direction of the city, has a transcendent quality that allows for creativity and history to collide into a gorgeous union of philosophical insight.
Although the Slavic gods of pre-Christian imperialism are not called upon in the novel, a Polish spirituality with the natural world is always close at hand and butting heads with the violent progression of history and strife that befalls the region. And although Tokarczuk speaks out against the right-wing Caltholic influence and its patriarchal hierarchy in Poland throughout her oeuvre (very prominently in Drive Your Plow… in fact) as well as against the rotation of oppressive regimes that come to dominate the country, her primary theme--particularly here--is connection with nature and time as if the two were a flowing river abruptly disrupted by the forces of humankind. Akin to the family narrative in Hamsun’s [b:Growth of the Soil|342049|Growth of the Soil|Knut Hamsun|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1420733175l/342049._SY75_.jpg|2435698] and their progress and adaptations within an ever rapidly changing world, Primeval is a multigenerational narrative that primarily focuses on the Niebieski and Boski families (eventually united by marriage) and their village contemporaries as they follow the passage of time beset by violent interruptions of war and human progress. A novel of ancestry and struggle confined to a specific place, this was the perfect novel to read when I finally cracked the cover.
My younger daughter was born in early October of 2019 and within moments of birth we were taken to the NICU as she had been born prematurely (a medically induced birth out of a potential concern that she was not growing properly; in the end, she was fine, just a small child, and she is perfectly healthy as I write this now). If you haven’t endured this experience, words are poor vessels to adequately capture the hodgepodge of emotions that arise from being only a passive force in your newborn’s life, returning to your home to sleep and feeling like you are only in the way as nurses care for your child and you spend your days in the hospital hoping for her to grow and survive. And also wondering how to be supportive of her amazing mother who is going through it along with you. It was on my first night home without our daughter that I noticed Primeval sitting neglected on the shelf. It was as if it was calling to me and, unbeknownst to me, this novel of family legacy was the perfect way to tap into a communion with my own Polish ancestors as I sat and rocked the tiny infant who was next in my timeline to bear my “I’ll just spell it out for you” last name and hoped for the best. When Olga Tokarczuk was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature a few long days later, I felt as if the cosmos were aligning to reassure us. As I read late into the autumnal evenings, falling asleep in hospital chairs, this book felt like my armor against the forces of the world. ‘ He who learns by taking things inside himself undergoes constant transformation,’ Tokarczuk writes, ‘because he incorporates what he learns into his being.’ Perhaps, then, this book felt like a talisman that would ensure our infant daughter would finally be able to eat on her own and come home with us as long as I took a long hard look back into the forces of life that had brought my own lineage into being and swallowed this knowledge deep within me. This book and the support my wonderful wife and I gave to each other is what made the time bearable.
‘God sees Time escapes Death pursues Eternity waits’
As a reader, we follow the generations from the end of The Great War up until nearly modern times. We watch as Cornspike, once a small orphaned child, grows, has her own daughter, and functions as the closest thing to a link between humanity and nature that the novel has to offer. We watch Squire Popielski, who once fruitlessly waged a war against nature to stop the flooding of his crops, spend his life on a divine game to better unlock the meaning of the universe. And most importantly, we watch a depiction of God as a passive yet insecure lover of humanity.
Humans are left to their own devices in the grand scheme of things and the sweeping changes of history are of their own making. While the natural world takes and gives in a sustainable manner, people wage war and bring devastation upon each other. Invasions from both Germans and Russians occur, women holding their infants are gunned down in the street, and even the ghosts who haunt the local forest awake and shake their heads at the foolishness of power and its destructive forces. ‘Do you know that the name of this race comes from the Latin word sclavus, a servant?’ a German officer states. ‘This is a nation with servility in its blood.’ The conquests of power and dominance are contrary to the natural course, and the two are brilliantly juxtaposed in the novel.
‘People – who themselves are in fact a process – are afraid of whatever is impermanent and always changing, which is why they have invented something that doesn’t exist – invariability, and recognised that whatever is eternal and unchanging is perfect. So they have ascribed invariability to God, and that was how they lost the ability to understand Him.’
The passage of time becomes a way that generations try to find their identity and reshape it as the world changes around them. Like the world, we must be in a constant state of flux, adapting, deconstructing, and reconstructing. It is the only way forward. While there are horrific and sad moments from war, affairs, miscarriages, and abusive relationships (an episode late in the novel condemns the patriarchal society by having Cornspike’s beautiful daughter, Ruta--already victim to the whims of German soldiers during the war--come into the matrimonial grips of an older, repulsive man who sees her as merely a trophy to demonstrate his grandeur), the novel balances these with peaceful, pastoral scenes and bonds with the natural world. A giant mushroom spore even gets its own chapter. Finding peace with the world becomes essential to actual happiness, even if it means understanding its limitations in order to better understand our own. In one of the more magical realist nudges of the novel, Ruta, who has befriended Izydor--who has many mental and physical barriers--tells Izydor that the borders of Primeval are the ends of existence. Briefly playing into the metaphor of Primeval as The World, she asserts that there is nothing beyond and that travelers just manifest themselves into reality in order to “come” there. In keeping with the many musings on God in the novel, and metaphorically calling out Izydor’s own limitations, this becomes an opportunity to question the nature of existence as something that just appears and reappears in a seemingly magical way. Violence and modernity, it seems, always comes from outside the borders. When Ruta flees her abusive relationship and pops up around the world in letters she writes to Izydor (the novel contains a comical segment on how Izydor uses the mail system to earn money, though it later marks him as a potential spy under the Communist government that will later take control), Izydor must confront an idea of permanence in a person that has left the physical world. If Primeval is all there is, and Ruta is beyond it, does she truly exist? This is the nature of death, and her metaphorical exploration of it is subtle enough to not call attention to itself, yet beautiful enough to be deeply moving even if you can’t put your finger on why.
Tokarczuk shows that what is truly lasting in life is the physical world and we are all just passing through it. In a novel rife with symbolism, a passage on a coffee grinder brought back from the war shapes one of the most permanent images. ‘Perhaps coffee grinders are the axis of reality,’ she writes, ‘ around which everything turns and unwinds, perhaps they are more important for the world than people. And perhaps Misia’s one single grinder is the pillar of what is called Primeval.’ The family mill, which works on an axis as well, is one of the few lasting images across the novel’s timeline. These physical, unliving things, speak just as loudly of our time here as the people. Reflections of nature itself offer some of the most impressive musings on reality, such as when the eldest son Misia contemplates the seasons of apple and pear trees and how the former are brief but intense while the latter have deep roots for heartier beings. Both are equally important and beautiful.
For a relatively short novel, Primeval has enough philosophical heart to keep one endlessly chewing and digesting. The novel is directly linked to ideas of place, and the forest, as well as kitchens, bedrooms, and rooftops, all become elegant stages upon which the human comedy plays out. It was the ideal novel to read while navigating the emotional squalls of a children’s ward in a hospital, one that made me look long and hard at life and mortality but in a way that was humbly empowering and hopeful. Quiet and contemplative in tone, yet never dull or slow, Tokarczuk has created a masterpiece on human history that functions on multiple levels. It reminds us of our fleeting existence without making the realization one of terror or sadness but of joy to take part in a long lineage of roles in history. ‘The powerful play goes on,’ as Whitman wrote, ‘and you may contribute a verse.’ Let your verse be beautiful.
5/5
People tread new paths. They fell forests and plant young trees. They build weirs on rivers and buy land. They dig the foundations for new houses. They think about journeys. Men betray their women, and women their men. Children suddenly become adults and leave to lead their own lives. People cannot sleep. They drink too much. They take important decisions and start doing whatever they have not done until now. New ideologies arise. Governments change. Stock markets are unstable, and from one day to the next you can become a millionaire or lose everything. Revolutions break out that change regimes. People daydream, and confuse their dreams with what they regard as reality.
Florence also approves!
Answer.
That you are here—that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.’
-[a:Walt Whitman|1438|Walt Whitman|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1392303683p2/1438.jpg]
Novels have a beautiful way of emphasizing events to draw a contained meaning from them. Some novels hone in on a short period of time, or a single life, and make epics of the moment, whereas some are epics for their grand scale. While Primeval, by Polish author and Nobel Prize recipient Olga Tokarczuk falls into the latter category, the delivery of the narrative simultaneously grants an epic quality to the small passing moments, just as much as it does to the larger timeline of events. This is a brilliant novel of people, place, and time that manages to successfully accomplish in just over 200 pages what would normally be expected of a door-stop of a novel. Primeval, a fictitious town ‘at the center of the universe, ’ functions as an amalgamation of Poland during the 20th century and humanity at large. Like the best of metaphors, it is both singular and universal all at once and satisfies the nuances of both the condensed and broad scope. This is an astonishing achievement to say the least. Tokarczuk has created a quiet little masterpiece somewhere along the lines of [b:One Hundred Years of Solitude|320|One Hundred Years of Solitude|Gabriel García Márquez|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327881361l/320._SX50_.jpg|3295655] but in a minor key and has unlocked Polish history in a way that can be universally identified with and processed. Being a novel so entrenched in family history and place, it is nearly impossible for me to separate the narrative from my own reading experience, and the book came at the right time in my life as I sat over my newborn daughter in the NICU. The access to the ancestors that this book gave me, as well as its own characters, was a powerful force in my life, as it is within its own narrative. This is a novel that seeps deep into the reader and pays homage to both the small and grand moments in history in order to demonstrate how each of our individual waltzes across a finite timeline becomes an eternal dance of humanity across time.
Despite having owned Primeval for many years, I had never read it. Over the past year, I read both [b:Flights|36885304|Flights|Olga Tokarczuk|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1512417961l/36885304._SX50_.jpg|2014747] and [b:Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead|42983724|Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead|Olga Tokarczuk|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1547225640l/42983724._SY75_.jpg|8099373] and found them to be utterly delightful. As the grandson of Polish immigrants, I’ve always been drawn to Polish literature and have found in Olga Tokarczuk a voice that speaks more profoundly to my being than [a:Bruno Schulz|142899|Bruno Schulz|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1651322168p2/142899.jpg] or even the existential works of [a:Witold Gombrowicz|9632|Witold Gombrowicz|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1655576009p2/9632.jpg] did to my younger self. Tokarczuk’s way of paying subtle homage to the spiritual aspects of Polish history, most prominently here in Primeval with the four archangels guarding each cardinal direction of the city, has a transcendent quality that allows for creativity and history to collide into a gorgeous union of philosophical insight.
Imagining is essentially creative; it is a bridge reconciling matter and spirit. Especially when it is done intensely and often. Then the image turns into a drop of matter, and joins the currents of life. Sometimes along the way something in it gets distorted and changes. Therefore, if they are strong enough, all human desires come true – but not always entirely as expected.
Although the Slavic gods of pre-Christian imperialism are not called upon in the novel, a Polish spirituality with the natural world is always close at hand and butting heads with the violent progression of history and strife that befalls the region. And although Tokarczuk speaks out against the right-wing Caltholic influence and its patriarchal hierarchy in Poland throughout her oeuvre (very prominently in Drive Your Plow… in fact) as well as against the rotation of oppressive regimes that come to dominate the country, her primary theme--particularly here--is connection with nature and time as if the two were a flowing river abruptly disrupted by the forces of humankind. Akin to the family narrative in Hamsun’s [b:Growth of the Soil|342049|Growth of the Soil|Knut Hamsun|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1420733175l/342049._SY75_.jpg|2435698] and their progress and adaptations within an ever rapidly changing world, Primeval is a multigenerational narrative that primarily focuses on the Niebieski and Boski families (eventually united by marriage) and their village contemporaries as they follow the passage of time beset by violent interruptions of war and human progress. A novel of ancestry and struggle confined to a specific place, this was the perfect novel to read when I finally cracked the cover.
My younger daughter was born in early October of 2019 and within moments of birth we were taken to the NICU as she had been born prematurely (a medically induced birth out of a potential concern that she was not growing properly; in the end, she was fine, just a small child, and she is perfectly healthy as I write this now). If you haven’t endured this experience, words are poor vessels to adequately capture the hodgepodge of emotions that arise from being only a passive force in your newborn’s life, returning to your home to sleep and feeling like you are only in the way as nurses care for your child and you spend your days in the hospital hoping for her to grow and survive. And also wondering how to be supportive of her amazing mother who is going through it along with you. It was on my first night home without our daughter that I noticed Primeval sitting neglected on the shelf. It was as if it was calling to me and, unbeknownst to me, this novel of family legacy was the perfect way to tap into a communion with my own Polish ancestors as I sat and rocked the tiny infant who was next in my timeline to bear my “I’ll just spell it out for you” last name and hoped for the best. When Olga Tokarczuk was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature a few long days later, I felt as if the cosmos were aligning to reassure us. As I read late into the autumnal evenings, falling asleep in hospital chairs, this book felt like my armor against the forces of the world. ‘ He who learns by taking things inside himself undergoes constant transformation,’ Tokarczuk writes, ‘because he incorporates what he learns into his being.’ Perhaps, then, this book felt like a talisman that would ensure our infant daughter would finally be able to eat on her own and come home with us as long as I took a long hard look back into the forces of life that had brought my own lineage into being and swallowed this knowledge deep within me. This book and the support my wonderful wife and I gave to each other is what made the time bearable.
‘God sees Time escapes Death pursues Eternity waits’
As a reader, we follow the generations from the end of The Great War up until nearly modern times. We watch as Cornspike, once a small orphaned child, grows, has her own daughter, and functions as the closest thing to a link between humanity and nature that the novel has to offer. We watch Squire Popielski, who once fruitlessly waged a war against nature to stop the flooding of his crops, spend his life on a divine game to better unlock the meaning of the universe. And most importantly, we watch a depiction of God as a passive yet insecure lover of humanity.
’Come back to me. The world is terrible and it can kill you. Look at the earthquakes, the volcanic eruptions, the fires and the floods,’ he thundered from the rain clouds.
‘Oh, come on, I’ll manage,’ man replied, and was gone.
Humans are left to their own devices in the grand scheme of things and the sweeping changes of history are of their own making. While the natural world takes and gives in a sustainable manner, people wage war and bring devastation upon each other. Invasions from both Germans and Russians occur, women holding their infants are gunned down in the street, and even the ghosts who haunt the local forest awake and shake their heads at the foolishness of power and its destructive forces. ‘Do you know that the name of this race comes from the Latin word sclavus, a servant?’ a German officer states. ‘This is a nation with servility in its blood.’ The conquests of power and dominance are contrary to the natural course, and the two are brilliantly juxtaposed in the novel.
‘People – who themselves are in fact a process – are afraid of whatever is impermanent and always changing, which is why they have invented something that doesn’t exist – invariability, and recognised that whatever is eternal and unchanging is perfect. So they have ascribed invariability to God, and that was how they lost the ability to understand Him.’
The passage of time becomes a way that generations try to find their identity and reshape it as the world changes around them. Like the world, we must be in a constant state of flux, adapting, deconstructing, and reconstructing. It is the only way forward. While there are horrific and sad moments from war, affairs, miscarriages, and abusive relationships (an episode late in the novel condemns the patriarchal society by having Cornspike’s beautiful daughter, Ruta--already victim to the whims of German soldiers during the war--come into the matrimonial grips of an older, repulsive man who sees her as merely a trophy to demonstrate his grandeur), the novel balances these with peaceful, pastoral scenes and bonds with the natural world. A giant mushroom spore even gets its own chapter. Finding peace with the world becomes essential to actual happiness, even if it means understanding its limitations in order to better understand our own. In one of the more magical realist nudges of the novel, Ruta, who has befriended Izydor--who has many mental and physical barriers--tells Izydor that the borders of Primeval are the ends of existence. Briefly playing into the metaphor of Primeval as The World, she asserts that there is nothing beyond and that travelers just manifest themselves into reality in order to “come” there. In keeping with the many musings on God in the novel, and metaphorically calling out Izydor’s own limitations, this becomes an opportunity to question the nature of existence as something that just appears and reappears in a seemingly magical way. Violence and modernity, it seems, always comes from outside the borders. When Ruta flees her abusive relationship and pops up around the world in letters she writes to Izydor (the novel contains a comical segment on how Izydor uses the mail system to earn money, though it later marks him as a potential spy under the Communist government that will later take control), Izydor must confront an idea of permanence in a person that has left the physical world. If Primeval is all there is, and Ruta is beyond it, does she truly exist? This is the nature of death, and her metaphorical exploration of it is subtle enough to not call attention to itself, yet beautiful enough to be deeply moving even if you can’t put your finger on why.
Tokarczuk shows that what is truly lasting in life is the physical world and we are all just passing through it. In a novel rife with symbolism, a passage on a coffee grinder brought back from the war shapes one of the most permanent images. ‘Perhaps coffee grinders are the axis of reality,’ she writes, ‘ around which everything turns and unwinds, perhaps they are more important for the world than people. And perhaps Misia’s one single grinder is the pillar of what is called Primeval.’ The family mill, which works on an axis as well, is one of the few lasting images across the novel’s timeline. These physical, unliving things, speak just as loudly of our time here as the people. Reflections of nature itself offer some of the most impressive musings on reality, such as when the eldest son Misia contemplates the seasons of apple and pear trees and how the former are brief but intense while the latter have deep roots for heartier beings. Both are equally important and beautiful.
For a relatively short novel, Primeval has enough philosophical heart to keep one endlessly chewing and digesting. The novel is directly linked to ideas of place, and the forest, as well as kitchens, bedrooms, and rooftops, all become elegant stages upon which the human comedy plays out. It was the ideal novel to read while navigating the emotional squalls of a children’s ward in a hospital, one that made me look long and hard at life and mortality but in a way that was humbly empowering and hopeful. Quiet and contemplative in tone, yet never dull or slow, Tokarczuk has created a masterpiece on human history that functions on multiple levels. It reminds us of our fleeting existence without making the realization one of terror or sadness but of joy to take part in a long lineage of roles in history. ‘The powerful play goes on,’ as Whitman wrote, ‘and you may contribute a verse.’ Let your verse be beautiful.
5/5
People tread new paths. They fell forests and plant young trees. They build weirs on rivers and buy land. They dig the foundations for new houses. They think about journeys. Men betray their women, and women their men. Children suddenly become adults and leave to lead their own lives. People cannot sleep. They drink too much. They take important decisions and start doing whatever they have not done until now. New ideologies arise. Governments change. Stock markets are unstable, and from one day to the next you can become a millionaire or lose everything. Revolutions break out that change regimes. People daydream, and confuse their dreams with what they regard as reality.
Florence also approves!