“Oh blessed winter. Oh mysterious darkness in which I find a little light. A flickering flame in the stove. And the kindness of a cat.”
Michael Harding has bestowed on us a beguiling meditation on life and death, in these quiet and profound reflections on how he endures the midwinter months. The decaying leaves, dead birds, broken branches, of the landscape in which he lives remind him of his own ageing and of the encroaching spectre of death.
His mood is melancholic. The weather is terrible; it rains every grey day, as he longs for the brightness of snow. While the prevailing tone of the book is lyrical, rich as it is in exquisite descriptions of rivers, woods, all of nature in her seductive hibernation, Harding doesn’t shy away from expressing unpalatable opinions – such as, that Christmas is “often a time of intense depression and disturbing emotions”.
And, while a running theme is the comfort engendered by his sense of being at one with the environment, and resting like the earth – “Winter is my season” – the only dramatic content of the book focuses on the suicide of a young man, fictional, but representative of the many who despair and abandon life in Ireland’s gloomiest season. (The book is dedicated to Pieta.)
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A prose poem, Midwinter captures perfectly that damp, decaying feeling of winter in the Irish countryside. Without being facetious – because it is a remarkable, true book – it made me grateful that I spend winter in a city, where we can more easily evade the winter slough of despond.
But even in Leitrim, winter ends. Michael Harding closes his journey on joyous St Brigid’s Day, when he “will get busy” touring the country, telling stories and doing interviews, singing “Anois teacht an earraigh” as he sets off in his spring-cleaned car. “I love February.” And he reveals that it hasn’t all been sombre walks by the swollen river; much of winter was spent writing, in his cabin in the garden.
A comforting book, beautifully written and with gorgeous illustrations by Enagh Farrell, this is one to dip into with a cup of hot chocolate at your elbow and the fire or the candles glowing.
Éilís Ní Dhuibhne is a writer and critic. She is the current Laureate for Irish Fiction
