Whitehorn's Windmill by Kazys Boruta

I have stumbled across a hidden gem in the back catalogue of CEU Press. CEU Press introduced me to my first Polish classic in translation almost 20 years ago (The Doll by Bolesław Prus, 1890, translated by David J. Welsh, 1996). I am thrilled that this specialist publisher continues to put the literature of Central and Eastern Europe in the spotlight as part of its CEU Press Classics series. The gem in question is a masterpiece of Lithuanian literature: Whitehorn's Windmill or The Unusual Events Once upon a Time in the Land of Paudruvė by Kazys Boruta (1905 – 1965). The translator is Elizabeth Novickas, and her translation is based on the 1962 version of the original Lithuanian text (an earlier edition was published in 1945). Whitehorn's Windmill is much-loved in its home country and, thanks to its availability in English, I think it has the potential to become a cult classic elsewhere. Help me spread the word. The fact that I am going to mention it in the same breath as works by Gabriel García Márquez, Mikhail Bulgakov and Nikolai Gogol should indicate its calibre!

The story revolves around mysterious happenings in the fictional village of Paudruvė. I would describe Whitehorn's Windmill as magical realism in so far as surreal, impossible things happen as a matter of course in an otherwise realistic world. It is hard to provide an example without spoiling the plot, but given how soon he makes an appearance, it is not a big reveal to mention that one of the main characters is a devil named Pinčukas. In the translator's afterword, which is well worth a read, Elizabeth Novickas describes how Lithuania's pagan roots surface throughout the novel, and it is fascinating to see Boruta bring the novel's supernatural elements to the fore at the same time as maintaining the illusion that his fiction depicts real events.

Although I believe that magical realism is the best description of the novel's genre, I recognise that a caveat is in order. In canonical examples of magical realism, settings are recognisable to normal people residing in a normal world: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez (1967), for example, is set in the fictional Colombian town of Macondo and, although the events that transpire there are extraordinary, the streets themselves are not; Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita (also 1967) is set in Moscow and Jerusalem. Whitehorn's Windmill, on the other hand, is not set in the ordinary world. It is set in a fairytale landscape.

The natural world seems to be imbued with a living spirit of its own, and that spirit seems to have seeped into the buildings that stand on the land. I am not using seems to hedge my bets here, but because Boruta describes a world in which you cannot be certain what is real and what is not. The second sentence of the entire novel serves as a beautiful illustration: From time immemorial it [the windmill] had waved its huge wings as though it wanted to lift itself up and fly away from the precipice. Boruta depicts the windmill as a sentient being that can control its own parts but, thanks to as though, stops short of attributing a spirit or soul to it. Strangely enough, it is this make-believe, magical nature of the landscape that sets Whitehorn's Windmill apart from other works of magical realism.

I was hooked the moment that I read Boruta's opening description of the swamps and pine forests surrounding Paudruvė. Now that I have read the novel from start to finish, I can see that Boruta tried to warn me that something was amiss from the very start. Again, I do not want to give too much away, but I will note that by the end of the novel, a cheerful mood has been replaced by something altogether more frightening. It reminds me of Nikolai Gogol's short stories. Take Nevsky Prospekt (1835). The narrator sweeps the reader along with his breathless excitement and good humour in the opening description of Nevsky Prospekt (a central street in Saint Petersburg), but the story culminates in a bleak assessment of the menace underlying the street. It is one of my favourite passages in Russian literature, so I cannot resist quoting it: It lies at all times, this Nevsky Prospekt, but most of all when the night descends on it […] and none other than a demon lights the lamps for the sole purpose of showing everything in an untrue aspect [my own translation]. Chilling. The transition from comedy to tragedy is less abrupt in Whitehorn's Windmill, but the cold, empty feeling that remains once the laughter fades is there. If you like Gogol, you will like Boruta.

There is a further similarity between the two authors. A sort of madness drives characters' actions in many of Gogol's works. His narrators' and characters' disenchantment with Saint Petersburg often boils down to their realisation that the city's beautiful exterior masks a repulsive indifference to its inhabitants. His characters cannot cope with this mismatch and their struggle to persevere leads to a breakdown of reason or even a loss of a will to live. I do not think that the characters of Whitehorn's Windmill strain against the divide between the physical and the spiritual to the same extent; they too are part of the pagan landscape, after all, and they readily accept the magic around them. Nevertheless, I do see their determination to fight against fate as absurd in a Gogolian manner. They are small and insignificant in comparison to the supernatural beings and forces that rule nature, and their attempts to avoid their lot in life seem futile.

I should stress that I am in no way criticising Boruta when I suggest that his characters should have known better! If you read the novel as a fairytale for adults, it is only reasonable to expect the hero to wish to lift a curse or two star-crossed lovers to defy the odds and have their happy-ever-after ending. I for one did not see the ending coming, and I thought Boruta did a wonderful job subverting his readers' expectations regarding how fairytale characters should act. Jurga and Jurgis Girdvainis, “the lovers”, for instance, are almost too cool for school, and I spent a great deal of time anxious that their pride would put an end to their relationship before it had even begun. My point is more that, in retrospect, once you have read the story, there is a certain inevitability to the characters' lives, and their instinct to fight fate seems absurd.

One of my favourite characters was the narrator himself. He was in turns detached, involved, affectionate, sombre, droll, flippant, courteous, coarse… His wit is a major source of humour in the book. The neatest example that I can find of a turn of phrase that does not need context to be amusing is Even Tatergall's fleas dropped dead on hearing this, and I promise you that it is an even funnier observation in context. Whitehorn's Windmill must have been such an enjoyable book to translate, and I stand in awe of Elizabeth Novickas' skill at making jokes seem uncontrived in translation.

Given its quirky humour and surreal plot, I hope that Whitehorn's Windmill garners the international recognition that it deserves. I could not put it down, and I already want to read it again. I am sure that there will be jokes, references and hidden messages in the text that I missed the first time round and, having read the translator's afterword as well as articles on the book's composition online, I am sure that an appreciation of the historical context in which the book was written will only add to my enjoyment. I cannot praise Kazys Boruta as an author enough, and I am grateful to Elizabeth Novickas for making this masterpiece accessible to me. Whitehorn's Windmill does what literature in translation should do: open your eyes to new worlds and leave you wanting to visit them again.