Trees & Souls
Trees have been much in the news lately, whether it be news of forest fires burning fiercely in every part of the world or, more recently, encouraging reports that eight south American countries have come together to discuss ways of protecting their precious rain forests from the rapacious incursions of industrial mining and illegal loggers.
On a quieter note has been the BBC’s call to listeners to send in personal stories about trees that have been significant to them one way or another. (Brief aside - I already did this way back in 2019 and have a small sheaf of wonderful accounts from many of my followers that is waiting on a back burner to be brought into the light of day before too long. Watch out for future news). Some of the accounts read out on the BBC have been truly heart-rending. One that particularly pulled at my heart strings told of an acorn planted with a young girl. The oak has grown, the child did not and so the tree endures as a poignant link with a lost daughter.
Yes, for many of us trees are much more than mere wind-breaks or carbon-captors, fruit-bearers or building materials. They are beings, symbols, repositories of memories and links to other worlds.
All this is what lies at the heart of our newly published book Trees & Souls/Bäume & Seelen.
It is a collection of short stories, each woven around one particular tree. At times the inspiration was a tree’s unique appearance, at others an actual experience with a tree, and sometimes just a flight of fancy.
The stories in this collaborative project were originally written in German by vintage motorcycling enthusiast Jochen Hipp, whose fascination with Greek mythology reaches back into his childhood. With a natural talent for telling lively, highly embellished anecdotes, he discovered, much to his own surprise, that trees could be a conduit to an astonishing creative imagination. In writing these short stories he has conjured up wonderful tales in which myth merges with reality and the boundaries between cultures blur.
The project itself has been an intriguing meshing of cultures that began to emerge as I started to translate the stories. Linguistic differences run deeper than the words we use; they infuse our very way of viewing the world. So too, do our perceptions as man or woman, not to mention the immense part that differences in background and life experiences play in the way a person thinks and sees the world. Add to this another layer, that of a German living in Cyprus who passionately embraces the culture of the land, and you have a a magical tapestry of many textures and colours.
Of course there were times when the author and the translator, the German and the English, the man and the woman had to find compromise. It is, I think, a project that is all the richer for all these fusions.
Each story is also illustrated with specifically created artwork and photographs. I do not think of myself as a natural illustrator, but being asked to do so I found myself able to rise to the challenge perhaps, as much as anything, because trees mean so much to me personally.
What is so gratifying is that the book is being so well received and that both the stories and the illustrations are delighting our readers - both German and English - who are buying it not just for themselves but also as gifts for others. Indeed, the owners of Can Beneit, the Agroturismo finca in Mallorca where we would meet to work on the project, were so enthused about it that they bought several copies to put in their rooms for their clients’ enjoyment and some to also sell in their shop.
With an accolade like that and spontaneous praise like this, ‘The stories are delightful and the artwork is beautiful. It’s a book that will become a family treasure,’ (posted on Facebook by one reader), we could not ask for better!
For anyone living in Mallorca, I have copies available to buy on the island. Email me here if this option works for you: oil_painter_at_large@marylynnestadler.com
For those who are further afield (including England) you can order it from Amazon here: https://amzn.eu/d/j3DAbmU
P.S. Coming soon: high quality art reproductions of the illustrations available to buy in a selection of sizes.
P.P.S. Copies of the book will be available to buy at my upcoming November exhibition at Can Beneit which is scheduled to take place when they are doing olive pressing in their oil press. Watch out for more details coming in September.
The olive oil press at Can Beneit
