Vejen Til Lagoa Santa

by Henrik Stangerup

Romanbiografi om danskeren P.W. Lund, der i årene fra 1826 til sin død i 1880 udførte et banebrydende arbejde som botaniker, zoolog og geolog i Brasilien.

Genres: Denmark, Danish, Novels

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1981

About the author

Danish writer and journalist

Reviews

[GD · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was one odd book. It was on its way to a 2-star rating until about halfway through, when it suddenly dawned on me what the writer was doing, like I finally clicked down into his groove and saw everything the way it was supposed to be seen.

It's pretty confusing at first, it's told in present tense, and jumps around in time a lot, and a lot of what happens is only in the protagonist's head, so it's pretty fragmented and out there for the first half. Then when I finally figured out what was going on, it just started soaring with badassness and never let up. It just hauled dark/brooding ass and broke straight through the back cover.

The book is a novelization of the life of Peter Wilhelm Lund, who was a real person, a Danish naturalist who was working at the same time as Darwin, Kierkegaard (who are both mentioned in the book), etc., a really interesting time for western thought, and his discoveries in Brazilian caves of different kinds of giant animal fossils, and he creates this idea of two worlds, a first one that God didn't like, and he destroys it and creates the perfect one, this one. This is based on the fact that he didn't find any fossils of creatures that still existed. Then he found a rat that still existed, then a few other animals, and finally humans. Being a staunch creationist, he couldn't accept what was right in front of him, evidence of evolution, and this combined with nasty tropical diseases, frontier hardships, the effects of death on an already sensitive guy, his getting his academic thunder stolen from him while he's not in Copenhagen, basically the dude just collapses and goes batshit crazy, ultra-neurotic, like I always imagined Marcel Proust being for some reason.

This book is REALLY dark, and has some of the most amazing prose descriptions I've seen since Yukio Mishima; florid, baroque, and basically unhinged. The opening several pages of Part Three, which consists of a description of army ants and then segues into the horrors of eat or be eaten and survival of the fittest, are some of the finest I've ever come across in literature. I can understand this not being a popular book, but I don't know how I could have never even heard of it or the writer before the cover caught my eye in a bookstore. Is it still in print? I don't know, my copy was printed in 1984, and the pages were so brittle with acid I kept thinking it was going to crumble in my hands. I'm putting this book in a sealable plastic bag and PRESERVING this shit!

Spoiler here: I was SURE he was going to die in his 40s, he was just so sick and tortured, but the dude goes on to basically die of old age. Crazy.

[Marco Tamborrino · Rating 4 out of 5]

"La Morte ha il teschio bendato e vive a Lagoa Santa. La Morte viene dai paesi freddi, e ha portato con se strani strumenti dentro a cassette foderate di velluto viola: ha un piccone che può mandare in frantumi le rocce fino agli abissi dove vivono i mostri, un badile che può gettare la terra a cento "leguas" di distanza, e occhiali cerchiati d'oro con le lenti colorate, che porta quando leva le bende e si allontana a cavallo dalla sua casa vicino al lago. La Morte vede tutto, ma nessuno la vede, perchè ha sempre il viso rivolto altrove. Quando toglie gli occhiali, i suoi occhi si liquefano e cadono a terra come due macchie trasparenti che non evaporano mai. Per questo, guardando bene, si può sempre sapere dove la Morte è passata a cavallo. La Morte non è giovane e non è vecchia, e quando toglie gli occhiali e volge le sue orbite nere lontano, oltre il lago, e su verso la Serra da Piedade, il dolore assale le sue ossa, perchè guarda senza poter vedere, ascolta senza poter sentire. La Morte è stanca di essere la morte, ma finchè il sole illuminerà il giorno e la luna la notte, finchè la stagione secca seguirà quella delle piogge, per lei non vi potrà essere pace."

[Kristian Lindberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Man mærker akkurat at sproget har udviklet sig en tak i tidens tandhjul, siden Stangerup skrev Vejen til Lagoa Santa. Den konsekvente ironiske distance til sit subjekt spiller ikke på samme måde i dag hvor en større inderlighed og større indvendighed påkræves. Emnet og tidsbeskrivelsen er ikke uinteressant men den tørre gennemgang af alle fossiler Peter Wilhelm Lund finder i de brasilianske huler bliver noget repetitiv i første halvdel, siden kommer der mere febrilt blus på sproget efterhånden som den danske forsker går i et med junglen

[Sidsel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Jeg tror ikke at jeg fangede den rigtige rytme til at forstå pointen

[Juliet Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderful novel, following the struggles of Danish naturalist Dr P W Lund, in his attempts to make sense of the bones he is finding in caves in Brazil. It's the middle of the 19th century, a time when Darwin is working on his theories of evolution but when the general culture of religion means that most scientists (including Lund) struggle to interpret their findings in terms of creationism. The novel is wonderfully written (and translated beautifully too, by Barbara Bluestone) and is sharp and immediate, keeping the reader totally engrossed in the excitement of scientific discovery, the tribulations of scientific rivalry and the health difficulties that Lund faced. It is a book with a wonderful sense of place too, the Amazon rainforest, the endless plains, the claustraphobic caves, the endless lines of ants are all evoked very vividly.

[Sofus Krogh Larsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dejlig bog om P. W lunds spændende og atypiske liv. Jeg læste den tilbage i 2017 da jeg tog på en længere rejse ud i det ukendte Sydtyskland. Aftener på altanen med udsigt over Schwarzwald's bjerge forbinder jeg med denne bog. Jeg blev specielt bevæget af sekvensen i bogen der beskriver hans sidste timer på dødslejet - heri scenen hvor at han får et glimt af noget af det som kommer efter døden, hvor at han hvisker "kærlighed, kærlighed, kærlighed...". Det var meget smukt.

[Tanja (Litteraturhesten)]

Brasilien