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The Cathedral of Mist
First published in French in 1983, The Cathedral of Mist is a collection of stories from the last of the great Francophone Belgian fantasists: distilled tales of distant journeys, buried memories and impossible architecture. Described here are the emotionally disturbed architectural plan for a palace of emptiness; the experience of snowfall in a bed in the middle of a Finnish forest; the memory chambers that fuel the marvelous futility of the endeavor to write; the beautiful woodland church, built of warm air currents and fog, scattering in storms and taking renewed shape at dusk, that gives this book its title. The Cathedral of Mist offers the sort of ethereal narratives that might have come from the pen of a sorrowful, distinctly Belgian Italo Calvino. It is accompanied by two meditative essays on reading and writing that fall in the tradition of Marcel Proust and Julien Gracq.
Paul Willems (1912-97) published his first novel, Everything Here Is Real, in 1941. Three more novels and, toward the end of his life, two collections of short stories bracketed his career as a playwright.
Paul Willems (1912-97) published his first novel, Everything Here Is Real, in 1941. Three more novels and, toward the end of his life, two collections of short stories bracketed his career as a playwright.
99 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1983
8 people are currently reading
1442 people want to read
About the author
Paul Willems
25 books10 followersPaul Willems était un écrivain francophone Belge.
Paul Willems dans la Wikipédia française
Paul Willems was een Belgische franstalige schrijver.
Paul Willems in de Nederlandstalige Wikipedia
Paul Willems in de Digitale Bibliotheek voor de Nederlandse Letteren
Paul Willems was a french-speaking Belgian writer.
Paul Willems dans la Wikipédia française
Paul Willems was een Belgische franstalige schrijver.
Paul Willems in de Nederlandstalige Wikipedia
Paul Willems in de Digitale Bibliotheek voor de Nederlandse Letteren
Paul Willems was a french-speaking Belgian writer.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 45 reviews
June 23, 2017
Delicate, somber, ruminative, ephemeral, with both the enigmatic compression of poetry and a total clarity of image and vision that makes reading these a total pleasure. I'm experiencing these in parallel with stories of another Belgian playwright-turned-storyteller (Michel de Ghelderode's Spells, also recently issued by Wakefield), which brings out even moreso just how thematically and stylistically refined and singular these are. Willems has a special skill for distilling mythic moments from experience, and arranging them into fragile, perfect conceptual traceries, each humming with the metaphysical. This was later-career Willems, written in the 60s through 80s; what, I wonder, are his novels like? (answer: untranslated or prohibitively expensive)
The illustrations, also, are prefect: a finely ambiguous, almost abstract accompaniment and palette-cleanser.
The illustrations, also, are prefect: a finely ambiguous, almost abstract accompaniment and palette-cleanser.
April 6, 2018
Willems was called "A sorrowful, distinctly Belgian Italo Calvino". I don't take this lightly, as Calvino is one of my favorite authors of all time. So I went into this little volume reading with my emotional and intellectual guards up.
They didn't stay up for long. They couldn't. What my heart shielded me from, my mind let slip past. And when my thoughts were strong, I melted, emotionally. These works wove their way through me until I thought, by the end, that perhaps I was the titular Cathedral of Mist.
The opening story,"Requiem for Bread," is sorrowful and beautiful, a plaintive story of love, longing, and death. The title acts as a kind of magnifying glass to the tale itself, focusing one in on its disarming simplicity, while opening the reader to a shocking, yet touching, emotional state. It is a dream of a story; exquisite.
"An Archbishop's Flight" is a journey into northern decadence, as if Huysmans had gone to the arctic to die and kept a journal until the very end. A delightful dream-state vignette. There was no real plot to speak of, but that isn't the point of this type of story, is it?
"Cherepish" is agonizing tragedy distilled down to the last paragraph. What a gut-punch! The dreamlike imagery and slow, methodical pace caused me to let my emotional guard down even further, then "Pop!" - like an unexpected kick straight to the ghoulies! This story broke me. It left me on my knees, in agony, wondering what hit me.
"In the Horses Eye" is a beautiful and awe-full story narrated in a voice somewhere between Algernon Blackwood and Calvino. Gorgeous and dark, this story venerates the power of words and our potential intimacy with them.
"The Palace of Emptiness" is . . . "squicky" is the word that comes to mind. An abandonment of love for the soul-shattered void of co-dependence. There is no hope in this story. None at all. It is the most uncomfortable thing I've read in a while. Horror writers would do well to look, not at the subject matter here, but the emotional state generated by Willems' words. When your writing leaves the reader in the same state, you might just have something worth publishing there.
"The Cathedral of Mist" is compelling and smacks strongly of Borges. It isn't quite magic realism, nor is it truly "surreal" in the strictest sense. But it is weird, rife with things that should not be, but are. This isn't to say that it is a dark tale. Far from it. I found it rather light and airy, despite the ominous title and explicitly dark setting. But there is, because of this strange optimistic taint, a strong sense of loss, in the end. And, in fact, this story is, really, all about loss: The tangible evidence of a miracle can never be erased quickly enough. Miracles belong only to the moment, and live on only in memory.
After the six stories, two essays, one on reading, and one on writing, are included. Here, the intellectual echoes of Calvino are strongest, particularly Calvino's Six Memos for the Next Millenium. Willems' chapter on Reading is the most beautiful reflection on the act I have ever read, which sounds almost incestuous but is perfectly right in so many ways. It really is beautiful. For example, this paragraph:
Time's traces are everywhere in the libraries of old houses . . . libraries are dials of darkness and shadow whose hours I like to picture as blue or violet, slowly dyeing the pages of their books. Extraordinarily evocative remnants.
Willem's essay on writing is, like the very act itself, a burbling up of disparate thoughts that somehow form a coherent idea. But what that idea is, exactly, will differ from writer to writer and reader to reader.
I find myself closing this book as if waking from a dream. And like some mornings, I just want to crawl back into bed, close my eyes, and dream some more.
They didn't stay up for long. They couldn't. What my heart shielded me from, my mind let slip past. And when my thoughts were strong, I melted, emotionally. These works wove their way through me until I thought, by the end, that perhaps I was the titular Cathedral of Mist.
The opening story,"Requiem for Bread," is sorrowful and beautiful, a plaintive story of love, longing, and death. The title acts as a kind of magnifying glass to the tale itself, focusing one in on its disarming simplicity, while opening the reader to a shocking, yet touching, emotional state. It is a dream of a story; exquisite.
"An Archbishop's Flight" is a journey into northern decadence, as if Huysmans had gone to the arctic to die and kept a journal until the very end. A delightful dream-state vignette. There was no real plot to speak of, but that isn't the point of this type of story, is it?
"Cherepish" is agonizing tragedy distilled down to the last paragraph. What a gut-punch! The dreamlike imagery and slow, methodical pace caused me to let my emotional guard down even further, then "Pop!" - like an unexpected kick straight to the ghoulies! This story broke me. It left me on my knees, in agony, wondering what hit me.
"In the Horses Eye" is a beautiful and awe-full story narrated in a voice somewhere between Algernon Blackwood and Calvino. Gorgeous and dark, this story venerates the power of words and our potential intimacy with them.
"The Palace of Emptiness" is . . . "squicky" is the word that comes to mind. An abandonment of love for the soul-shattered void of co-dependence. There is no hope in this story. None at all. It is the most uncomfortable thing I've read in a while. Horror writers would do well to look, not at the subject matter here, but the emotional state generated by Willems' words. When your writing leaves the reader in the same state, you might just have something worth publishing there.
"The Cathedral of Mist" is compelling and smacks strongly of Borges. It isn't quite magic realism, nor is it truly "surreal" in the strictest sense. But it is weird, rife with things that should not be, but are. This isn't to say that it is a dark tale. Far from it. I found it rather light and airy, despite the ominous title and explicitly dark setting. But there is, because of this strange optimistic taint, a strong sense of loss, in the end. And, in fact, this story is, really, all about loss: The tangible evidence of a miracle can never be erased quickly enough. Miracles belong only to the moment, and live on only in memory.
After the six stories, two essays, one on reading, and one on writing, are included. Here, the intellectual echoes of Calvino are strongest, particularly Calvino's Six Memos for the Next Millenium. Willems' chapter on Reading is the most beautiful reflection on the act I have ever read, which sounds almost incestuous but is perfectly right in so many ways. It really is beautiful. For example, this paragraph:
Time's traces are everywhere in the libraries of old houses . . . libraries are dials of darkness and shadow whose hours I like to picture as blue or violet, slowly dyeing the pages of their books. Extraordinarily evocative remnants.
Willem's essay on writing is, like the very act itself, a burbling up of disparate thoughts that somehow form a coherent idea. But what that idea is, exactly, will differ from writer to writer and reader to reader.
I find myself closing this book as if waking from a dream. And like some mornings, I just want to crawl back into bed, close my eyes, and dream some more.
October 25, 2020
I liked every single one of the stories in The Cathedral of Mist. Do you know how rare that is? I can't remember the last time that I liked every short story in a collection. And of the two essays included in this work, one is excellent, and the other I found wanting mostly because it doesn't compare to one of my favorite books of all time. As such I'm giving this book a 5/5, and the only thing that at all tempers my recommendation for you to buy a copy right away is that it is very short, probably only 60 regular pages-worth of text. I'll always take quality over quantity, so that was fine for me, but I wanted to give fair warning in case your tastes differ.
Wakefield Press is right to compare Paul Willems' works to those of Italo Calvino, as the short stories in The Cathedral of Mist have that strange quality of being simultaneously fantastical and relatable that is found in so many of Calvino's works. These tales all take place in a world just a degree removed from our own, where nomads live in a sea of blood-red grass with their horses and black marble monuments, where a Count has a wondrous bed set up in the woods of Finland during the north of that country's months of night, where a brilliant architect later lost to war crafts a cathedral of mist filled with the music of raindrops. These places and people do not exist, but Willems makes them feel real.
All but one of the six short stories in this collection is about death, though each comes at the topic from a different angle. One story is about keeping the memory of the dead alive through the willpower of the living, another is about giving the dead peace through forgetting. In one story death is the inevitable threat lingering just under the surface despite the beautiful scenery of life, in another death is the tantalizing threat that draws in its victims (Thanatos and Eros, hand-in-hand as they so often are). It speaks well of Willems that, though he repeats the same topic numerous times in this slim volume, he makes every iteration interesting.
Besides the six stories The Cathedral of Mist also contains two essays, Reading and Writing. Writing is quite good, as Willems uses the topic as a springboard to tell us various vignettes while also giving a view into his writing process, ultimately delivering an ode to the artists that strive to capture that which can never truly be captured. Reading is fine but I wish that Willems had chosen to explore the subject through the lens of fiction instead of essay. That’s likely a flaw on my part, however, as Willems being so reminiscent of Calvino has made me compare Willems’ short essay to Calvino’s masterwork If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, and that’s just not fair to Willems.
All told, this work is excellent. I look forward to reading more Willems, though unfortunately it looks like he only has one other work translated into English. Better than nothing, but I’d be even happier if Wakefield Press published more translations of his work. They deserve a huge amount of credit for even publishing this one, and I’ll be keeping an eye on what other works they decide to put out.
Wakefield Press is right to compare Paul Willems' works to those of Italo Calvino, as the short stories in The Cathedral of Mist have that strange quality of being simultaneously fantastical and relatable that is found in so many of Calvino's works. These tales all take place in a world just a degree removed from our own, where nomads live in a sea of blood-red grass with their horses and black marble monuments, where a Count has a wondrous bed set up in the woods of Finland during the north of that country's months of night, where a brilliant architect later lost to war crafts a cathedral of mist filled with the music of raindrops. These places and people do not exist, but Willems makes them feel real.
All but one of the six short stories in this collection is about death, though each comes at the topic from a different angle. One story is about keeping the memory of the dead alive through the willpower of the living, another is about giving the dead peace through forgetting. In one story death is the inevitable threat lingering just under the surface despite the beautiful scenery of life, in another death is the tantalizing threat that draws in its victims (Thanatos and Eros, hand-in-hand as they so often are). It speaks well of Willems that, though he repeats the same topic numerous times in this slim volume, he makes every iteration interesting.
Besides the six stories The Cathedral of Mist also contains two essays, Reading and Writing. Writing is quite good, as Willems uses the topic as a springboard to tell us various vignettes while also giving a view into his writing process, ultimately delivering an ode to the artists that strive to capture that which can never truly be captured. Reading is fine but I wish that Willems had chosen to explore the subject through the lens of fiction instead of essay. That’s likely a flaw on my part, however, as Willems being so reminiscent of Calvino has made me compare Willems’ short essay to Calvino’s masterwork If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, and that’s just not fair to Willems.
All told, this work is excellent. I look forward to reading more Willems, though unfortunately it looks like he only has one other work translated into English. Better than nothing, but I’d be even happier if Wakefield Press published more translations of his work. They deserve a huge amount of credit for even publishing this one, and I’ll be keeping an eye on what other works they decide to put out.
September 18, 2024
Thought-dew on the page. Here and there a walk on along a chilly shoreline or through some unfamiliar city. A nice mood, for sure, even if a bit fleeting. I think I liked the essays on reading and writing towards the end best.
Sometimes all I want to read about is reading. The pleasure taken in reading. Its rituals. The knowing nods that pass between readers. The strange convictions a reader carries in to the non-reading world. I think I needed an essay like this right now because, despite reading some excellent books this year, I haven't connected with the act of reading much this year. I'd like to turn that around this fall.
Trains, planes, and my beloved library are my churches. As with any religion, there are sacred objects. Cigarettes, pipes, and coffee are the most common. Sometimes it's clothes, like an old dressing gown, or a chipped teacup for infusions, an armchair, a cushion, a certain lamp, or small squares of chocolate bitten into at strict intervals. All rituals are founded on repeated acts or readying oneself through a specific set of circumstances that must not be mistaken for habit. Repetition has always seemed to me the essential element of our most important actions; how could it be otherwise, when our entire lives are cadenced by the beating of our hearts? (p.70)
Sometimes all I want to read about is reading. The pleasure taken in reading. Its rituals. The knowing nods that pass between readers. The strange convictions a reader carries in to the non-reading world. I think I needed an essay like this right now because, despite reading some excellent books this year, I haven't connected with the act of reading much this year. I'd like to turn that around this fall.
November 24, 2016
Very nice short book of poetic, surrealist stories and essays translated from the French. The last two pieces are ruminations on reading and writing, respectively, while the others are fiction. The stories remind me a bit of Leonora Carrington's work, dreamlike and contemplative, though set more in the real world. Only one feels a bit dated in its attitudes (the book is from 1983 but the stories are from earlier). The title story is probably my favorite, a gorgeous piece about the creation of a cathedral of mist and its affect on visitors. Very nice little book.
December 16, 2017
A book made entirely of vapour. Like the best books, one that is as easy to grasp as a mirage.
November 30, 2022
Preciso aprimorar meu francês para ler mais obras desse autor.
April 14, 2018
The stories are dark, slippery nuggets of narrative, open-ended and attractive. I don't care much for the two essays though.
March 15, 2025
La cattedrale di nebbia di William James è una raccolta di racconti, nella quale l'elemento onirico e la prosa quasi poetica sono due elementi cardine.
William James tratteggia un mondo reale ma che ha i contorni sfumati e poco definiti, i quali si muovono nel tempo della narrazione breve e così il lettore si sente avvolto in quella magia che lascia diverse sensazioni e che, pagina dopo pagina, abbandona il materialismo, quello più convenzionale. Dall'etnologo, che si avvicina pian piano sempre più alla religione, fino all'elaborazione del lutto, Paul Williams intreccia la natura umana in modo delicato e, in qualche tratto, illusorio.
La cattedrale di nebbia ( titolo che riprende quello di un racconto) attraversa immagini di incanto e pura meraviglia, arrivando al confine del soprannaturale ma senza mai varcare quella soglia e, nel farlo, riesce a trasportare il lettore in mezzo a tutti quei simboli che rappresentano molto di più del loro significano letterale.
William James tratteggia un mondo reale ma che ha i contorni sfumati e poco definiti, i quali si muovono nel tempo della narrazione breve e così il lettore si sente avvolto in quella magia che lascia diverse sensazioni e che, pagina dopo pagina, abbandona il materialismo, quello più convenzionale. Dall'etnologo, che si avvicina pian piano sempre più alla religione, fino all'elaborazione del lutto, Paul Williams intreccia la natura umana in modo delicato e, in qualche tratto, illusorio.
La cattedrale di nebbia ( titolo che riprende quello di un racconto) attraversa immagini di incanto e pura meraviglia, arrivando al confine del soprannaturale ma senza mai varcare quella soglia e, nel farlo, riesce a trasportare il lettore in mezzo a tutti quei simboli che rappresentano molto di più del loro significano letterale.
August 19, 2016
I read the first book in this collection, "Requiem for Bread" on TIN HOUSE and it just made me need to buy the book immediately. So I did, and I really like this slim collection. Willems approach is similar throughout the book, this kind of almost fable-like accretion, where elements are introduced one at a time until they develop their own internal relations. Meanwhile, Willems language and syntax retains this perfect equipoise and sang froid, even if sometimes I had no idea what he was talking about. the effect is simultaneously ecstasy inducing and a little alienating. It's a weird feeling, and I'm convinced Willems is a strange writer, or at least his stories have a very specific quality that I don't think I've seen elsewhere. They are strange and lovely, probing philosophically, but not always the most emotionally engaging stories you'll find-- though that first story is still killer.
This collection is well-designed, and of a smaller than usual size-- maybe you'd call this cahier? It's a book you could fit in a reasonably sized pocket, at any rate, and it effectively disguises the fact that the book itself is only about 100 pages.
This collection is well-designed, and of a smaller than usual size-- maybe you'd call this cahier? It's a book you could fit in a reasonably sized pocket, at any rate, and it effectively disguises the fact that the book itself is only about 100 pages.
October 30, 2021
Episodic pieces of nostalgia wrapped in fantastic/surrealistic narratives filled with aphorisms on existence. Relatively easy to read, comprehend and enjoy compared to works of similar stature. Wakefield press with another amazing translation. I can't thank them enough for these works
June 10, 2018
Paul Willems (1912–1997) was a Belgian novelist and playwright. In this short volume, he uses magical realism, mirrors, and wordplay to explore the shaded side of life, death, memory, the evanescent and ephemeral. His ideas come softly aglow in each text:
For example, he found an imaginative solution to clichés. In the following excerpt the narrator is being told of a Horse-riding people called the Schwu and how they deal with well-worn words. Concretely, with the word horse.
His eponymous Cathedral is a an unforgettable feat of imaginary architectures.
The two final chapters of the book are about Willems's thoughts on reading and writing, the former being particularly sensitive to the reader and his or her pastime. I recommend looking it up, or, if you can't, here's a short cento that I have created for your benefit. (A cento draws excerpts from a text and rearranges them without alterations.)
In the cento below every new line signifies a new quoted segment. The three instances of ellipses indicate a phrase omitted from that paragraph. I have not added my own words, nor have I cut his, with the sole exception of so and but, which belong before the two bold letters below. I have not tried to manipulate the meaning, but rather transmit it, despite the partiality of the text, in such a way that it makes sense to someone who has not read the original.
I hope to have done Willems justice.
---
Cento: Reading as rapture, as vertigo.
(All excerpts from The Cathedral of Mist by Paul Willems, translated by Edward Gauvin.)
My attention honed, my soul alert, I open the book.
Reading is my rapture, my vertigo.
There are readers of all sorts. Whether pillar saint, forest dweller, seafarer, alpinist, night owl, early bird, shut-in, or airborne—every reader has a spot of choice and follows rituals surrendering to this admirable vice.
I like reading in trains.
Every morning, I slip a book into my briefcase. With this act, I can already feel the joy of reading rising inside me. When fog or a strike slows the train’s arrival, I pace the platform with a vexed step. As soon as the train stops, I rush for the first free seat and dive into my book without bothering to take off my raincoat.
I try not to make conversation with regulars on board. … For in my briefcase I have a book.
Others only read well in bed.
Silence in the bedroom, hushed well-wishers, whispers, the doctor with his cheery manner, herbal infusions, the thermometer snug in its little nickel-plated sheath—all potent adjuvants to a fine reading experience. But most of all, sickness itself (when not to discomfiting) creates a conducive atmosphere, cocooning me in a cottony, aching armor while my fever-honed mind dashes into the text.
Trains, planes, beds, the occasional café—I need an enclosed space. But of all the places to read, my favorite is the library at Missemboug. … The cat purrs to set the evening going, and the books slumber on the shelves.
Time’s traces are everywhere in the libraries of old houses. Sundials retain no traces of the summers whose golden hours they told. The grandfather clock’s naïve tick-tock takes wing and flies away. No sooner does my watch tell one hour than it tells another. But libraries are dials of darkness and shadow whose hours I like to picture as blue or violet, slowly dyeing the pages of their books.
Here, in the library, time has stood still for 108 years. Only the fine grey snow of dust commingled with moments gathers slowly on the edges of books in the almost geological strata by which time in libraries is measured. For these books measure time. Some have an embarrassed air from still being white along the edges. Others, in addition to the dust that makes them seem dressed in comfy old suits, retain traces of each reading, and commemorate its events.
Sometimes, when I turn a page, I find a pressed flower slipped in, so important did the moment it recalled seem. But no occasion is forgotten so quickly as one marked by a flower. I love chancing upon one while reading, and most of all, I love the yellow halo it leaves on the page, like a photograph of its soul.
Long ago, someone stopped reading this book at this very sentence and never picked it up again. … I can tell from the purplish stain. It took more than eighty tears for the bookmark to run, slightly, onto the page. One might say it touched the paper lightly with a brush as if to remind us that the wings of time brush us lightly with a white breath barely tinged with violet melancholy.
Reading demands an almost religious attitude from us, since with each reading we celebrate a work, which is to say, a creation, and since together, all the books in a library enact the creation of the world. The inner world. This is why it matters so much where we read, just as it matters where we enact a ritual.
Thought is form and form is thought.
It is not about intellectual knowledge, erudite remembrance, but a long association with that literature to which our personal libraries bear witness.
Thinking and writing are not two separate acts—there is but one. I believe style is a kind of meta-language whose secrets must be learned, which is made up not only of whatever text we are reading, but of the books we have been reading for years, whose outlines lie like watermarks beneath the lines of every new work we encounter.
These pages offer no conclusion. They are but the impression of an ignorant reader, since I have never read to learn but only to attempt to enter the secret gardens of poetry and thought. I read, I suppose, as one prays.
For example, he found an imaginative solution to clichés. In the following excerpt the narrator is being told of a Horse-riding people called the Schwu and how they deal with well-worn words. Concretely, with the word horse.
When a word in the Schwu tongue shows signs of wear, they carve it into this marble they raise on the plain, beneath the sky, in the wind. Men passing by give the word life again, recharge it with meaning. In this way, their language stays strong.
We have forests, but among the Schwus, it is words that come into leaf. I have seen it. A rider stops, reads the signifier graven on the stele, pronounces it loudly, slowly, solemnly:
‘Horse!’
Then he collects himself, gathers his strength, and flings out:
‘Horse! I give you the gallop in my soul!’
And in this way, each man gives words a bit of his strength, like watering a tree.
(From In the Horse’s Eye)
His eponymous Cathedral is a an unforgettable feat of imaginary architectures.
The architect V. renounced the use of stone. After years of meditation, he built a cathedral of mist.
The principle was simple. The walls and steeple were made of fog instead of rock. As fog could neither be shaped nor mortared, construction was difficult. But the architect V. knew that fog followed certain paths in the air as water follows a riverbed. And so, with the help of skilfully placed bellows, V. founded currents of warm air that rose up like hollow walls and columns. These walls of warm air met in the shape of an arch one hundred and fifteen feet above the floor. Steam from a power station hidden underground follows the paths traced for it in the air.
The two final chapters of the book are about Willems's thoughts on reading and writing, the former being particularly sensitive to the reader and his or her pastime. I recommend looking it up, or, if you can't, here's a short cento that I have created for your benefit. (A cento draws excerpts from a text and rearranges them without alterations.)
In the cento below every new line signifies a new quoted segment. The three instances of ellipses indicate a phrase omitted from that paragraph. I have not added my own words, nor have I cut his, with the sole exception of so and but, which belong before the two bold letters below. I have not tried to manipulate the meaning, but rather transmit it, despite the partiality of the text, in such a way that it makes sense to someone who has not read the original.
I hope to have done Willems justice.
---
Cento: Reading as rapture, as vertigo.
(All excerpts from The Cathedral of Mist by Paul Willems, translated by Edward Gauvin.)
My attention honed, my soul alert, I open the book.
Reading is my rapture, my vertigo.
There are readers of all sorts. Whether pillar saint, forest dweller, seafarer, alpinist, night owl, early bird, shut-in, or airborne—every reader has a spot of choice and follows rituals surrendering to this admirable vice.
I like reading in trains.
Every morning, I slip a book into my briefcase. With this act, I can already feel the joy of reading rising inside me. When fog or a strike slows the train’s arrival, I pace the platform with a vexed step. As soon as the train stops, I rush for the first free seat and dive into my book without bothering to take off my raincoat.
I try not to make conversation with regulars on board. … For in my briefcase I have a book.
Others only read well in bed.
Silence in the bedroom, hushed well-wishers, whispers, the doctor with his cheery manner, herbal infusions, the thermometer snug in its little nickel-plated sheath—all potent adjuvants to a fine reading experience. But most of all, sickness itself (when not to discomfiting) creates a conducive atmosphere, cocooning me in a cottony, aching armor while my fever-honed mind dashes into the text.
Trains, planes, beds, the occasional café—I need an enclosed space. But of all the places to read, my favorite is the library at Missemboug. … The cat purrs to set the evening going, and the books slumber on the shelves.
Time’s traces are everywhere in the libraries of old houses. Sundials retain no traces of the summers whose golden hours they told. The grandfather clock’s naïve tick-tock takes wing and flies away. No sooner does my watch tell one hour than it tells another. But libraries are dials of darkness and shadow whose hours I like to picture as blue or violet, slowly dyeing the pages of their books.
Here, in the library, time has stood still for 108 years. Only the fine grey snow of dust commingled with moments gathers slowly on the edges of books in the almost geological strata by which time in libraries is measured. For these books measure time. Some have an embarrassed air from still being white along the edges. Others, in addition to the dust that makes them seem dressed in comfy old suits, retain traces of each reading, and commemorate its events.
Sometimes, when I turn a page, I find a pressed flower slipped in, so important did the moment it recalled seem. But no occasion is forgotten so quickly as one marked by a flower. I love chancing upon one while reading, and most of all, I love the yellow halo it leaves on the page, like a photograph of its soul.
Long ago, someone stopped reading this book at this very sentence and never picked it up again. … I can tell from the purplish stain. It took more than eighty tears for the bookmark to run, slightly, onto the page. One might say it touched the paper lightly with a brush as if to remind us that the wings of time brush us lightly with a white breath barely tinged with violet melancholy.
Reading demands an almost religious attitude from us, since with each reading we celebrate a work, which is to say, a creation, and since together, all the books in a library enact the creation of the world. The inner world. This is why it matters so much where we read, just as it matters where we enact a ritual.
Thought is form and form is thought.
It is not about intellectual knowledge, erudite remembrance, but a long association with that literature to which our personal libraries bear witness.
Thinking and writing are not two separate acts—there is but one. I believe style is a kind of meta-language whose secrets must be learned, which is made up not only of whatever text we are reading, but of the books we have been reading for years, whose outlines lie like watermarks beneath the lines of every new work we encounter.
These pages offer no conclusion. They are but the impression of an ignorant reader, since I have never read to learn but only to attempt to enter the secret gardens of poetry and thought. I read, I suppose, as one prays.
May 6, 2024
«Ci sono due tipi di eroi» mi disse Hector. «Quelli della vita e quelli della morte. I più rari, i più grandi. E il più grande di tutti è Orfeo, che ci mostra il cammino per raggiungere le tenebre. […] Lo so bene io che sono già morto una volta».
Safarà ci porta per la prima volta in traduzione l’opera evanescente ed eterea di Paul Willems, romanziere e drammaturgo belga dalla forte carica cimiteriale ed ossianica. Sebbene non tutti i racconti facciano al caso mio, la prosa è talmente poetica che non può non rapire lə lettorə. I saggi posti in conclusione sulla lettura e la scrittura sono meravigliosi.
Safarà ci porta per la prima volta in traduzione l’opera evanescente ed eterea di Paul Willems, romanziere e drammaturgo belga dalla forte carica cimiteriale ed ossianica. Sebbene non tutti i racconti facciano al caso mio, la prosa è talmente poetica che non può non rapire lə lettorə. I saggi posti in conclusione sulla lettura e la scrittura sono meravigliosi.
January 23, 2023
A profound little collection; beautifully translated
“An Archbishop’s Flight” could be made into a ballad, vivid in its trancelike scenes.
Both “Cherepish” and titular “The Cathedral of Mist” give me nostalgia for the most life-altering of my dreams, although these stories contain dreamlike aspects of a magnitude I don’t think I’ve yet to grasp, and which I hope for if I get old.
Lastly, the “Reading” and “Writing” essays at the end ought to be required for all who love either
“An Archbishop’s Flight” could be made into a ballad, vivid in its trancelike scenes.
Both “Cherepish” and titular “The Cathedral of Mist” give me nostalgia for the most life-altering of my dreams, although these stories contain dreamlike aspects of a magnitude I don’t think I’ve yet to grasp, and which I hope for if I get old.
Lastly, the “Reading” and “Writing” essays at the end ought to be required for all who love either
April 29, 2022
The house inside me looks exactly like the house I live in. It is large and crumbling with many rooms, some happy, others sad or abandoned. Others still are locked. I've lost the keys, or rather, I pretend to have lost them. In the rooms where I wander are incredible mounds of smiles, looks, snowfalls, beloved voices, tears and laughter, aromas, shards of bottles, old tires, sweet nothings, three-legged chairs, encounters and farewells. In one chest are all the winds from the heavens and the clouds sorted by their Latin names. There is a chest for wounds and sorrows that I've inflicted. I don't like opening it up. There are suitcases full of regrets. There are boxes and boxes of objects found in deserted lots, which is to say the spaces of our everyday lives. Last but not least, there are windows through which messages arrive.
March 29, 2022
I came to read cathedral of the mist, but enjoyed his essays on reading and writing the best. Some of the other short pieces were a miss for me, but I sense there is wisdom to unlock with repeat readings.
January 19, 2025
Questi racconti sono fatti di nebbia e alla fine della lettura di ognuno di essi ti rimane la sensazione di esserti svegliato da un sogno molto intenso.
Che meraviglia.
Che meraviglia.
July 21, 2017
A short story collection translated from the original French, it's a handful of shorts that are in the New Weird vein while being a little more quiet. I don't know if it was the tone or the translation, but this largely failed to connect with me, and it just didn't work on a whole.
Your mileage may vary.
Your mileage may vary.
October 16, 2018
The ephemeral Cathedral of Mist was the perfect title story for this book. Paul Willems writes with both the sharp, fragile clarity of glass and evanescence of light fog dissolving in the early hours of morning.
January 7, 2016
9,5/10
February 6, 2017
★★★½ Heerlijke magisch-realistische verhalen van de voormalige directeur van het PSK in Brussel.
December 26, 2021
Not as good as the reviews make it out. Kinda boring honestly, felt like he was trying too hard and the prose was forced.
May 17, 2024
Nonostante la mia avversione per il genere racconto: belli.
January 7, 2023
Citaat : De nevelkathedraal was in rijp neergeslagen op de miljoenen twijgen van de reusachtige beuken en eiken die de open plek omringden. Daar, tot in alle details van zijn bouwwerk herkenbaar, fonkelde hij nu in de zon. Het was mij als zagen wij hem weerkaatst in een van die grote, legendarische spiegels waarin de winter zijn mooiste herinneringen voor altijd invriest.
Review : Het vijfde deel van Belgicareeks (die onder redactie van Dirk Leyman verschijnt bij uitgeverij Voetnoot) stelt ons Paul Willems' (1912-1997) De nevelkathedraal en andere verhalen (La cathédrale de brume, vertaald door Kiki Coumans en Hans van Pinxteren) voor. Vele jaren was Willems directeur van het Paleis voor Schone Kunsten in Brussel, en die job compenseerde hij door artistieke essays en verhalen te schrijven. Zijn werk baadt in magisch realistische sfeer en heeft ook een heel poëtische inslag. De film Il pleut dans ma maison uit 1968 is een bewerking van Willems’ boek uit 1958. Het meeste succes kende de auteur echter met zijn latere, korte verhalen, zoals Cathedrale de brume uit 1983.
De bijzondere verhalen die deze Franstalige Vlaamse schrijver in De nevelkathedraal vertelt, spelen zich af in geheimzinnige werelden waarin de ik-figuur telkens een personage is die het surrealistische als even vanzelfsprekend ervaart als de alledaagse werkelijkheid. Dit kleine boekje bevat vijf prachtige kortverhalen waarin de droom en werkelijkheid een harmonieus geheel vormen. Inhoudelijk zijn deze vijf kortverhalen zeer divers. Maar de unieke beeldtaal is wel in elk verhaal een nadrukkelijk weerkerend element. In Requiem voor het brood bijvoorbeeld wordt gesteld dat je brood beter kan breken want dat het schreeuwt indien je het snijdt met een mes. In De nevelkathedraal, het titelverhaal, vertaald door Hans van Pinxteren, vergast de auteur ons op prachtige lyriek die een kathedraal zonder zuilen opgericht zonder beton maar louter geconstrueerd uit nevel en visioen laat verrijzen. In het bos van Houthulst is enkel nevel en een visioen. In het verhaal Tzjiripizj filosoferen twee mensen op een unieke manier over leven en dood. In Het oog van het paard is de kracht van het woord ook weer zeer dominerend aanwezig. Dank zij de Belgicareeks kon ik kennismaken met een minder gekende schrijver die echter voortreffelijk werk levert.
Review : Het vijfde deel van Belgicareeks (die onder redactie van Dirk Leyman verschijnt bij uitgeverij Voetnoot) stelt ons Paul Willems' (1912-1997) De nevelkathedraal en andere verhalen (La cathédrale de brume, vertaald door Kiki Coumans en Hans van Pinxteren) voor. Vele jaren was Willems directeur van het Paleis voor Schone Kunsten in Brussel, en die job compenseerde hij door artistieke essays en verhalen te schrijven. Zijn werk baadt in magisch realistische sfeer en heeft ook een heel poëtische inslag. De film Il pleut dans ma maison uit 1968 is een bewerking van Willems’ boek uit 1958. Het meeste succes kende de auteur echter met zijn latere, korte verhalen, zoals Cathedrale de brume uit 1983.
De bijzondere verhalen die deze Franstalige Vlaamse schrijver in De nevelkathedraal vertelt, spelen zich af in geheimzinnige werelden waarin de ik-figuur telkens een personage is die het surrealistische als even vanzelfsprekend ervaart als de alledaagse werkelijkheid. Dit kleine boekje bevat vijf prachtige kortverhalen waarin de droom en werkelijkheid een harmonieus geheel vormen. Inhoudelijk zijn deze vijf kortverhalen zeer divers. Maar de unieke beeldtaal is wel in elk verhaal een nadrukkelijk weerkerend element. In Requiem voor het brood bijvoorbeeld wordt gesteld dat je brood beter kan breken want dat het schreeuwt indien je het snijdt met een mes. In De nevelkathedraal, het titelverhaal, vertaald door Hans van Pinxteren, vergast de auteur ons op prachtige lyriek die een kathedraal zonder zuilen opgericht zonder beton maar louter geconstrueerd uit nevel en visioen laat verrijzen. In het bos van Houthulst is enkel nevel en een visioen. In het verhaal Tzjiripizj filosoferen twee mensen op een unieke manier over leven en dood. In Het oog van het paard is de kracht van het woord ook weer zeer dominerend aanwezig. Dank zij de Belgicareeks kon ik kennismaken met een minder gekende schrijver die echter voortreffelijk werk levert.
December 1, 2024
Requiem for Bread
- Love, death, grief, remembrance, in that order. Poignant as a whisper. Fleet; a sea breeze.
Flight of the Archbishop
- Whimsy of happenstance, kept warm by kloopki and toasting stones. A story fit to be read under a fur under a fir within a flurry within a snowglobe.
Cherepish
- A pilgrimage to epiphany’s precipice — approaching but never obtaining, except for that subtle wisdom which is the modest treasure of the journey.
In the Horse’s Eye
- The healing power of words are healed themselves, nourished by the voice of the sayer. Shouting love at itself is a kindling deed.
The Palace of Emptiness
- Arrested development breeds fatal attraction in this story of brutality-cum-codependency. Violence becomes fetish as trauma escapes containment; like a solar flare, hate off-gases through chains of victims until it collapses back onto itself as a rumbling confusion of mutual addictions.
The Cathedral of Mist
- Man attempts to clasp God in his fist; what he finds upon relinquishing his grip is but the air between his fingers. There is a melancholy nobility about the pursuit of the sublime. In the end it may only alleviate — but never lessen — the unyielding yoke which burdens man until his last breath.
Reading
- The rituals of a reader, like a cat upon its cushion, play out as holy little habits. Predictable, comforting motions preparing the mind and the heart to be spirited away to far-off places which are neither here nor there, but somewhere cozily tucked in between the warmth of dream and page.
Writing
- Dreams like ghost whales; words like harpoons. Sentences the tying-lines cinching the fatty flesh of thrashing behemoth illusions. Writing, as such, is the act of poaching those deep dwelling dreams. Elusive symbols. And when we succeed, as we put pen to paper and meet our own gaze in that obsidian eye, quarry hanging by its tail slowly twisting before the mind on its taught rope line, bleeding what life it has left onto the desk beneath our fingers, greedy, ready, arched, twitching to begin typing a morsel of new text: it is as, Paul Willem’s says, intolerable.
- Love, death, grief, remembrance, in that order. Poignant as a whisper. Fleet; a sea breeze.
Flight of the Archbishop
- Whimsy of happenstance, kept warm by kloopki and toasting stones. A story fit to be read under a fur under a fir within a flurry within a snowglobe.
Cherepish
- A pilgrimage to epiphany’s precipice — approaching but never obtaining, except for that subtle wisdom which is the modest treasure of the journey.
In the Horse’s Eye
- The healing power of words are healed themselves, nourished by the voice of the sayer. Shouting love at itself is a kindling deed.
The Palace of Emptiness
- Arrested development breeds fatal attraction in this story of brutality-cum-codependency. Violence becomes fetish as trauma escapes containment; like a solar flare, hate off-gases through chains of victims until it collapses back onto itself as a rumbling confusion of mutual addictions.
The Cathedral of Mist
- Man attempts to clasp God in his fist; what he finds upon relinquishing his grip is but the air between his fingers. There is a melancholy nobility about the pursuit of the sublime. In the end it may only alleviate — but never lessen — the unyielding yoke which burdens man until his last breath.
Reading
- The rituals of a reader, like a cat upon its cushion, play out as holy little habits. Predictable, comforting motions preparing the mind and the heart to be spirited away to far-off places which are neither here nor there, but somewhere cozily tucked in between the warmth of dream and page.
Writing
- Dreams like ghost whales; words like harpoons. Sentences the tying-lines cinching the fatty flesh of thrashing behemoth illusions. Writing, as such, is the act of poaching those deep dwelling dreams. Elusive symbols. And when we succeed, as we put pen to paper and meet our own gaze in that obsidian eye, quarry hanging by its tail slowly twisting before the mind on its taught rope line, bleeding what life it has left onto the desk beneath our fingers, greedy, ready, arched, twitching to begin typing a morsel of new text: it is as, Paul Willem’s says, intolerable.
February 13, 2022
I'm still in awe. It is hard to put into words how perfect this collection of stories is.
It inspired me so much I ended up writing 8 short stories myself.
This collection is just breathtaking in its elegance. He manages to weave together threads from so many sources. Classic literature, life, art, film, mythology. And what you're left with at the end of each short piece is this sense of a world closing. I'd gladly step into any of the worlds he has written into being. Dark and crazy as they are. They are made up of fragments, sharp and beautiful.
Then again. I shared one of these stories with someone and they didn't understand it at all and it made me wonder if somehow the text on the page warps for each reader.
See, the thing about a collection like this is that it has weight. Every story is heavy with this yearning, haunting desire for truth. And I think that the guy I asked to read the story was just more of a fan of entertainment fiction. He finds the things that really touch his soul are songs. Which is fair. For me... It is literature.
We got into an argument about how I like the occasional pop song. He got just as passionate about it as I do about YA fiction. And we're both of the same heart really.... We want more from our art than your standard formula of rinse and repeat. We want to have tears in our eyes by the end of the experience. We want it to really carve our heart into a new shape and make life all the more sensory. As if life wasn't complete before we experienced this and, now that we have, we know it won't be complete until we have processed it.
It inspired me so much I ended up writing 8 short stories myself.
This collection is just breathtaking in its elegance. He manages to weave together threads from so many sources. Classic literature, life, art, film, mythology. And what you're left with at the end of each short piece is this sense of a world closing. I'd gladly step into any of the worlds he has written into being. Dark and crazy as they are. They are made up of fragments, sharp and beautiful.
Then again. I shared one of these stories with someone and they didn't understand it at all and it made me wonder if somehow the text on the page warps for each reader.
See, the thing about a collection like this is that it has weight. Every story is heavy with this yearning, haunting desire for truth. And I think that the guy I asked to read the story was just more of a fan of entertainment fiction. He finds the things that really touch his soul are songs. Which is fair. For me... It is literature.
We got into an argument about how I like the occasional pop song. He got just as passionate about it as I do about YA fiction. And we're both of the same heart really.... We want more from our art than your standard formula of rinse and repeat. We want to have tears in our eyes by the end of the experience. We want it to really carve our heart into a new shape and make life all the more sensory. As if life wasn't complete before we experienced this and, now that we have, we know it won't be complete until we have processed it.
Read
April 19, 2021I loved the title of this and blind bought it. Sometimes I'll read something just because of the title, or cover, or because it has some element that I want to experience - walking in a forest, or something set in a hamlet. These stories are wonderful fantasies, in the old, fairy-tale sense of the fantastic. Surreal and metaphysical, and written in crystalline and beautiful prose, and very economical, not a wasted word. It's short, so I read the whole thing in a day, in a beautiful trance. Sometimes I read really terrific prose like this and I'm like, why do I even bother reading anything else? I am craving more like this, but don't know exactly where to go to next. There are some NYRB titles that look like they might fit the bill, maybe some early weird fiction, but what I'm really looking for are short fantastical stories by prose stylists from Europe, before the "high fantasy" of Tolkien or the Disney-ification of fairy tales. Willems has almost nothing else translated; when interlibrary loan opens up I am going to get his only other translated work I could find, The Drowned Land. In the meantime, I'm going to read some other stuff I've found to tide me over--Wakefield Press titles, Calvino, and Bruno Schulz. If anyone else has any recommendations, let me know.
Read
January 18, 2018Some fascinating ideas on reading and writing that explore the metaphysics of literature. Willems is interested in intense moments, states of rapture where the body meets text, and the 'limit-experience.' Central to the six short stories (there are two essays on reading and writing) is a deep spirituality that brushes shoulders with Kierkegaard. Writing is like a 'leap of faith' that finds meaning in the act of its own creation. According to Willems thinking is writing and reading is a religious act that resembles prayer. Building impermanence through silence, the narratives are effaced by the ecstasy of reading.
August 18, 2020
And Sergei goes on speaking to me in Masha’s secret tongue. It is a language woven of tears and air, where the silences between words are a dark red veering toward black. And the wind that blows through Sergei’s story chimes little paper bells and sounds drums of silt. I understand all these words without understanding them. “Grass, night, blue rose, high scent from the uplands. Masha, give me a sign. Child, sing as you swim by the banks of the Altan. Ring all the bells in all the churches, speak to all the sails, run the golden lucalindies up to the rooftops, open all the trees. And then, sleep beside me, pressing your blue mouth to my warm mouth.” [41]
May 17, 2025
I'd give this 4 stars but the two essays at the end seem ill-placed. They're well-written and interesting, but they should be in a book of reflection pieces. That being said, there were parts of "Writing" that were really good; others, not so much.
My favorite stories were Palace of Emptiness and Cathedral of Mist. Those, to me, are 5-star stories. I didn't dislike any of the fiction.
I did enjoy the art selection, very wispy and apropos.
My favorite stories were Palace of Emptiness and Cathedral of Mist. Those, to me, are 5-star stories. I didn't dislike any of the fiction.
I did enjoy the art selection, very wispy and apropos.
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