Moominpappa at Sea (Moomins Fiction)

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As the story draws to a close, the once disjointed family slowly grow close again. Together they confront the sea and safe the lonely fisherman. When they find out his birthday is coming, they invite him to a party at the lighthouse, which he reluctantly attends, only to slowly realize he is the original lighthouse keeper and retaking his position.

The end is nigh! I've been on this Moomin saga a long time now, some years, occupying my small book, fourth slot on my rota. This is the penultimate book in the series. I'm not really sure they were at all what I was expecting when I started and often find myself not overly impressed about one thing or another. But they do usually turn out to be an acceptable read in the end. This one is no different. Over the next three years, two more Moomin books came out. Comet in Moominlandand Finn Family Moomintrollcaused a local stir; but, by the time the series drew to a close in 1970 with the publication of Moominvalley in November, Tove Jansson’s stories and characters had become a global phenomenon. Moomin. (2020b, February 20). Help the Moomins Save #OURSEA. Accessed March 15, 2021, from https://www.moomin.com/en/blog/help-the-moomins-save-oursea/#fcf05d05.In my opinion, Tove Jannson is the best children's author who ever lived and one of the ten greatest authors of the twentieth century. I have only read her Moomintroll work and not the work for adults, but I have read almost all of the Moomintroll books, picture books and comic strips. In this review I will focus on Moominpappa at Sea, but I will also try to give a sense of why I think that she deserves to be placed with the likes of Orwell, Nabakov, Hemingway and Selby, even though she wrote books about Finnish Hippo-like creatures. The Moomins, in case you didn’t know, are kind, philosophical creatures with velvety fur and smooth round snouts, who live in a tall blue house in a beautiful woodland valley beside the sea. Moomintroll explores the nearby woods and finds a meadow he eventually moves into. He's disappointed to find it already inhabited by ants, and asks Little My for help with getting them to move elsewhere. Little My solves the problem by exterminating the ants with petroleum, much to Moomintroll's dismay. The crystal ball was always cool. Its blue was deeper and clearer than the blue of the sea itself, and it changed the color of the whole world, so that it became cool and remote and strange. At the center of this glass world he saw himself, his own big nose, and around him he saw the reflection of a transformed, dreamlike landscape. The blue ground was deep, deep down inside, and there where he couldn't reach, Moominpappa began to search for his family. He only had to wait a while and they always came. They were always reflected in the crystal ball. Each of the other three becomes increasingly isolated, discontented and misunderstood: Moominmamma stripped of her traditional domestic function, Moomintroll undergoing a rite of passage that sees him contemplate love (of two fantastical seahorses) and death (the dread threat of the Groke).

Moomin. (2020a, January 14). The most important sea for Tove Jansson is now also the most polluted—The #OURSEA campaign, part 1. Accessed March 15, 2021, from https://www.moomin.com/en/blog/the-most-important-sea-for-tove-jansson-is-now-also-the-most-polluted-the-oursea-campaign-part-1/#fcf05d05.Moominpappa wants to become lighthouse keeper, but gives up when he can't figure out how to make the lights shine. He resorts to other projects like building a pier, fishing and research a small lake, only to fail again and again. The story circled around Moominpappa, who felt unnecessary, felt less-of-a-man, felt like his mission as the protector of the family, as a traditional dad, was somehow threatened and was thus filled with fierce need to tame. And he tried, he tamed, and his family fell a bit apart, and the sea was too powerful, and the trees on the island started to move and the island started to breathe during night, and Moominmamma physically disappeared into a painting. The melancholy and the fine pains every character in this book seemed to bear were exceptional, and the ever-lonely Groke was, at the same time, the happiest and the saddest of them all. This was my third Moomin-book, one I was left in awe after reading. Moominpappa at Sea was deliberately darker than other books on the series I've read this far, something I was not expecting. The story began dark, and it only got darker and more suffocating the longer it continued, a feeling of inevitable doom lingered around the lonely island and the huge lighthouse the Moomin family moved into. Moominpappa at Seaalso disrupts the comfortable extended family dynamic of the preceding books, distilling it down tothe nuclear gathering of father, mother and son, with the correcting counterpoint of Little My, who acts like a knowing Greek chorus, commenting on the action from the outside. Meanwhile, in Sculptor’s Daughter, her childhood memoir, Tove Jansson describes her father’s fear of Christmas candles starting a fire in a manner that recalls the imagined conflagration at the beginning of Moominpappa at Sea; and how he would calm his nerves with frequent ‘snorters’ of whisky during the festive season.

At night, Moomintroll looks for the seafillies whom he admires greatly. The fillies are selfish and mean to Moomintroll, but he does not care. As he tries to attract them by waving his lamp, he instead attracts the Groke. Every night, Moomintroll tries to call for the seafillies, but only ends up being accompanied by the Groke. Slowly, he starts to grow fond of her, and when the lamp ultimately runs out of kerosene, the Groke is no longer cold.

As the family and friends deal with a series of natural and supernatural threats – comets, volcanoes, floods and the chilling, spectral presence of the Groke – Moominpappa is usually peripheral to the main action, often shut away in his room to write memoirs recalling his adventurous youth. Although I was definitely looking rather forward to reading the Kingsley Hart translation of Tove Jansson’s 1965 Pappan och havet ( Moominpappa at Sea) I was also a bit worried regarding my potential reading pleasure, since for one, I have not generally ever really enjoyed any of the previous Moomin novels where Moominpappa plays a major and active role, where he acts as a central characters, and that for two, I have also more often than not really had trouble textually enjoying and accepting the narrative flow of the English language translations of the Moomin books I have read to date (having had more than a few issues with all of the Elizabeth Portch and most but fortunately not all of the Thomas Warburton translation texts). And with regard to my above mentioned trepidations, while with Moominpappa at Sea, I do happily find Kingsley Hart’s translation of Pappan och havet and especially his narrative flow delightfully readable and not ever in any manner textually aggravating and annoying (and as such most definitely stylistically vastly superior to in particular Elizabeth Portch, whose English language translations for Kometen kommer and Trollkarlens hatt really have rather majorly and negatively affected my reading joy), well, the consistent and constant presence of Moominpappa in Moominpappa at Sea, in Pappan och havet, and that he plays not only such a central and active Moominpappa said: "You've put an end to the summer. No lamps should be lit until summer is really over."

They were indescribably beautiful, and they seemed to be aware of it. They danced coquettishly, freely and openly, for themselves, for each other, for the island, for the sea – it seemed to be all the same to them. Moominpappa at Sea marks the definitive point where Tove Jansson stopped writing for children and more for adults. The book is dedicated to her father Viktor Jansson and serves as portrayal of his complicated and destructive nature, but also as a heartfelt farewell.Moominpappa decides he needs a huge life change, so he uproots the family to live on an abandoned lighthouse in the middle of the ocean. There's only one other person living on the island: a strange and lonely fisherman who may be the key to understanding this curious, melancholy place where they live now. There she came, scampering along like a busy white ball, farthest away among the bluest of blue shadows. And there was Moomintroll, aloof and keeping himself to himself. And there was Little My, slinking up the slope more like a movement than anything else, you could see so little of her. She was just a glimpse of something determined and independent—something so independent that it had no need to show itself. But their reflections made them all seem incredibly small, and the crystal ball made all their movements seem forlorn and aimless. These charming fantasies are propelled by a childlike curiosity and filled with quiet wisdom, appealing geniality, and a satisfying sense of self-discovery.” — School Library Journal.com