How does it feel to visit the home of someone you respect?

I got off the train 30 kilometers from the capital. As I crossed the platform, I was already thinking that speaking English was an anomaly and that my interaction with the locals should be limited to demeanor and cues. We decided to take a look at simple and easily recognizable words that are suitable for building bonds. I chose two of them. With a smile and sufficiently accurate instructions, I succeeded in pronouncing them.

I no longer remember where or how far I walked, guided by an arm raised and always pointing in the same direction.

After hearing these two words, the gas station operator became generous and friendly and talked the owner of the red car into giving me a ride.

From my seat in the car, the horizon outlined in the gray dots of dry snow began to assert its breadth and richness. it is Journey The silence was short, just watching. When we arrived, my companion stopped the car and pointed ahead with a slightly arched eyebrow. I went down. For a few seconds, I continued to focus on the receding red spot, which was almost insulting in its monochromatic intensity.

When I turned around, I saw the forest for the first time. I savored its discreet mystery and immovable time, the breath of earth and the hazy scent of resin. Then I walked, sinking my shoes into the snow.

It didn’t take long to find the house, which blended into the landscape with towering trees and a frozen lake.

I think I was paralyzed, probably afraid of not being up to par, of not being able to satisfy myself with rumors of tapiola and fresh water from the sea. 6th symphony And even that gloomy cacophony, quarter. As I melted into the silence, I repeated in my mind the two magic words that had brought me there. ”sibelius house“It no longer mattered that the house was closed for repairs, for I had swallowed the air. The low cloud-covered sky announced the approach of sunset, and it was time to go home.”

Today, 44 years after that lonely vertigo, my memory has erased the circumstances of my return to the station. Jarvenpää. But the brushstrokes of the Finnish landscape come alive under the snow still resonate when I hear its breath and heartbeat in my living room.

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Tapio is a forest spirit that appears in Finland’s national epic. Kalevalacherishes ancient poetry and popular songs. To this old man, distinguished by a coat of moss and a hat made of wild fruits, with a beard of lichen and lakes of infinite depth in his eyes, he dedicated: Jean Sibelius his symphonic poem Tapiola. The work was conceived according to a surprising organic logic, starting with an initial four-note motif that underwent dozens of transformations and expansions over a period of approximately 20 minutes.

I was always fascinated by its enigmatic, static happenings, deliberate harmonic ambiguity, dynamic jumps, and dense echoes of split strings that evoked a frozen stage. Did those characteristics change after I expanded to Jarvenpää? Of course not. But it is clear that something has changed since then, but it has happened on a subjective, affectionate and personal level. Every time I listened to this piece after that, it became more than just a musical. Because it places me on the surface of that frozen lake and in a forest of pines and birches illuminated by the pale sunset.

My pilgrimage is also an expression of my sincere respect for the genius of this composer. I’m sure many readers will find points of interest in that approach. The following data supports my hypothesis.

of Birthplace Shakespeare performances in Stratford-upon-Avon, for example, attract hundreds of thousands of visitors each year. During the same period, Cervantes of Alcalá de Henares received approximately $150,000. Elvis Presley’s mansion in Graceland and Frida Kahlo’s Blue House in Mexico City both receive more than 500,000 sales a year. A similar number of devotees visit Monet’s house in Giverny, attracted by the wonderful gardens and the lily pond, which became the main character of several of his paintings.

It’s also very busy Vienna Freud Museumthe home of the psychoanalyst’s father before the Nazi persecution, and the house in London where he lived in the last years of his life. one of Victor Hugo in Paris,of beethoven In Bonn, Marx In Trier, dickens that of London, that of JS Bach in Eisenach, that of Paul and John in Liverpool; einstein In Bern, mozart Goethe in Salzburg, Goethe in Frankfurt and Rome, Manuel de Falla in Alta Gracia, just 10 minutes from where Che lived in his youth, Sabato in Santos Lugares, Gardel in El Abasto, and many more.

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The outpouring of support confirms that my expedition to Finland was not very original. By fleetingly occupying the places we once referred to, an emotional and tangible connection to their intimacy is established, imaginatively connecting us with their joys, doubts, longings, and everyday lives.

Exploring his desk, his scores, his glasses, his pens, his palette and brushes, his piano, creates the illusion of an underlying presence, as if we could spy on him while he stirs wood in the fireplace, eats his lunch on dishes in a closet with carved doors, or, simply and miraculously, explores the environment through his windows in search of secret signs that trigger his inspiration.

If the visit lasts until 5 p.m., and we’re extra imaginative, our revered figure might join us, in a low voice, in a whisper, about how his latest work is being developed.