Moominpappa at Sea (Moomins Fiction)

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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. Moominpappa felt a sleepy feeling in his paws. He shook himself and lit his pipe. The match went on burning in the ashtray, and he watched it, fascinated. Just before it went out, he tore up some bits of newspaper and put them on the flame. It was a pretty little fire, hardly visible in the sunshine, but it was burning nicely. He watched it carefully.

Except for a special, collectable edition of “The Invisible Child” paired with the short story “The Fir Tree” and reinforced with the cover slogan “Share the gift of the Moomins”, Oxfam has been selling a range of other Moomin-related products, including stationery, handkerchiefs, tote bags and kitchenware. Other partners, such as Fiskars and Finlayson from Finland or Macmillan Children’s Books, supported the campaign by contributing part of the revenue from their Moomin products. In June 2018, a new attraction was launched when a famous British actor, Bill Nighy, recorded his reading of the short story. Overall, the campaign has been very successful, since by 30 December 2020 Moomin Characters officially reported that their partnership with Oxfam had raised 1 million pounds for charity projects supporting women and girls around the world. This book contains more beauty than my words can describe. Its magical melancholy and nostalgia is something that only Northern writers manage to capture. So much is hidden in that text that it turns into a completely different magic each time you read it.This sense of ennui is merely hinted at in the early books, but comes into sharper focus in one of the short stories in the Tales from Moominvalleycollection. The Secret of the Hattifattenersrecalls Moominpappa’s voyage with the mysterious Hattifatteners – nondescript white creatures who are ceaselessly nomadic. It begins: Moominpappa is dissatisfied with his life in Moomin Valley, so he organises the family to set off on a journey to find a lighthouse in the sea. Once arriving there, they find it a desolate and lonely place, inhabited only by a very unfriendly fisherman. 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 In the beginning of the story, Moominpappa focuses on the most visible changes and practices in nature, comparing them to scientific research and even speaking of the sea in a slightly arrogant way. When he starts to notice that nature is not as predictable as he had assumed and that it cannot be controlled this way, he begins to find a more authentic understanding. ‘It’s an enemy worth fighting, anyway’, shouted Moominpappa through the noise of the breakers. It was almost dark now. Suddenly something different happened in the crystal ball: a light appeared. Moominmamma had lit a lamp on the verandah,

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. Yes, I thought it was about time we started having a lamp now that the evenings are drawing in. At least, I felt so this evening," said Moominmamma. De Saint-Exupéry, Antoine. (2017/1943). The Little Prince. Transl. Katherine Woods. London: Egmont. The respect shown towards the forces of nature is perhaps most visible in the second to last Moomin book, “Moominpappa at Sea”, released in 1965, where the Moomin family moves from the safe and familiar Moominvalley to a distant lighthouse island at the mercy of the sea, storms and the forces of nature. The trip is initiated by Moominpappa, who has lost touch with himself and has started to feel unnecessary. The story can be interpreted as Moominpappa’s attempt to find himself – his own nature. “The mystery and unfathomable vastness of the sea and sky”For Tove Jansson, who wrote and illustrated the Moomin stories, the freedom of choice in life and art was one of the most important values that guided her art and work—including her beloved Moomin stories. We, at Moomin Characters Oy Ltd, the company Jansson founded in the 1950s, do not accept the use of Moomin stories for political purposes (Wprost, 2020). Several scenes, particularly Moominpappa's initial encounters with the characters (such as the Joxter) are expanded. The encounter between Moominpappa and the hedgehog is notably longer: it ends with Moominpappa inviting the hedgehog to his newly constructed house, before realizing that the house has only been built in his thoughts. Moominpappa, originally ashamed of the incident, eventually concludes that it was an early indication of his powerful imagination. In his childhood, Moominpappa felt very misunderstood by the strict Hemulen headmistress at the orphanage, and, after falling down an ice-hole while admiring his own reflection, he decided to explore the world on his own and become a famous explorer. Jansson, Tove. (2019/1948). Finn Family Moomintroll. Transl. Elisabeth Portch. London: Puffin Books.