Eyes on the horizon
Writer: Illustrator Miren Agur
Meabe: Ane Pikaza
Elkar, 2020

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Miren Agur Meabe has published several texts and books. He's worked with all the literary genres: children's and youth literature, self-fection, novel, stories, poetry -- and sometimes he's written books that are very difficult to classify, like on the Begi horizon that we're going to analyze today.

If I said that written poetry for children and young people is illustrated, it would be true, but at the same time, I think I would be short. On the one hand, because the book (among others) is made up of Haikue, the Kantek, the poems near the orality, the aphorisms, endowing the book with its own and profound personality. On the other hand, Ane Pikaza has not only perfectly captured the images and symbols of the texts, but has also been able to assimilate the thread of history and give more details about its lightness (a mural is added).

Meabe puts our eyes on the horizon from the beginning, for the reader will witness the journey that the protagonist will make towards the horizon: from smallness to greatness, from restlessness to internal security from darkness to clarity. In short, it's a kind of hero's journey.

This trip consists of four episodes, an introductory poem and a summary. The poem of the entrance (the message of the pink wind) brings us forward the four sections that we will find in the book. Take the first package and the inner world of the protagonist collects emotions (courage, joy, despair, etc. ). The protagonists are the external agents that make it difficult to travel in the mela section in the lights and shadows: the climbs of the journey (road, maze direction…) and those related to the climatology (snowy, wells…). In the third chapter, the protagonist will meet the interior island of Panpina, the house of the island. And the sky, which is the chalkboard of the soul, will give it the notion of contemplation (The skin of the sky, my galaxy, my grandmother of the moon). The fourth and final is the sailor Han-hemen, the open spaces and the presence of nature are some of the most remarkable aspects. In this chapter, the protagonist finds my house, my peace. Finally, the book is finished with a poem of synthesis.

The fact that it's a hard book to classify makes the book special; it's a complexion, a great gift. Rich and playful in language (lexicon and syntax), brilliant in literary resources, multiform, magical in illustration and magnificent. But I wonder if the difficulty of sorting hasn't left the material in limbo. That this is not the only literary criticism that is made of the book. That the book goes hand in hand.