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Audiobook Available
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About this book
Do you know how powerless a human seems in the face of wilderness? Meet two friends who decide to go down the Danube River in a canoe. Because of a storm approaching, they land on an island which seems to be deserted. Although there’s no one else here, they feel like they aren’t alone. Isolated from the rest of the world, they must face the danger, both in awe and terrified of nature. Horror author H.P. Lovecraft believed this short story to be the best supernatural tale in English literature. Blackwood’s prose is beautiful, it creates an eerie atmosphere where the uncanny becomes terrifying. So, if you’re not afraid of the dark, embark on this chilling journey, surrounded by the many willow trees.
Author
Algernon Blackwood
Read by
Digital Voice
Story
I.
The Willows
by Algernon Blackwood
I.
After leaving Vienna, and long before you come to Budapest, the Danube enters a region of singular loneliness and desolation, where its waters spread away on all sides regardless of a main channel, and the country becomes a swamp for miles upon miles, covered by a vast sea of low willow-bushes. On the big maps this deserted area is painted in a fluffy blue, growing fainter in color as it leaves the banks, and across it may be seen in large straggling letters the word Sümpfe, meaning marshes.
In high flood this great acreage of sand, shingle-beds, and willow-grown islands is almost topped by the water, but in normal seasons the bushes bend and rustle in the free winds, showing their silver leaves to the sunshine in an ever-moving plain of bewildering beauty. These willows never attain to the dignity of trees; they have no rigid trunks; they remain humble bushes, with rounded tops and soft outline, swaying on slender stems that answer to the least pressure of the wind; supple as grasses, and so continually shifting that they somehow give the impression that the entire plain is moving and alive. For the wind sends waves rising and falling over the whole surface, waves of leaves instead of waves of water, green swells like the sea, too, until the branches turn and lift, and then silvery white as their underside turns to the sun.
Happy to slip beyond the control of the stern banks, the Danube here wanders about at will among the intricate network of channels intersecting the islands everywhere with broad avenues down which the waters pour with a shouting sound; making whirlpools, eddies, and foaming rapids; tearing at the sandy banks; carrying away masses of shore and willow-clumps; and forming new islands innumerably which shift daily in size and shape and possess at best an impermanent life, since the flood-time obliterates their very existence.
Properly speaking, this fascinating part of the river’s life begins ...
Section 1 of 5 sections
🎧
Audiobook Available
Listen to The Willows in the app. It's free and ad-free.
About this book
Do you know how powerless a human seems in the face of wilderness? Meet two friends who decide to go down the Danube River in a canoe. Because of a storm approaching, they land on an island which seems to be deserted. Although there’s no one else here, they feel like they aren’t alone. Isolated from the rest of the world, they must face the danger, both in awe and terrified of nature. Horror author H.P. Lovecraft believed this short story to be the best supernatural tale in English literature. Blackwood’s prose is beautiful, it creates an eerie atmosphere where the uncanny becomes terrifying. So, if you’re not afraid of the dark, embark on this chilling journey, surrounded by the many willow trees.
Author
Algernon Blackwood
Read by
Digital Voice
Story
I.
The Willows
by Algernon Blackwood
I.
After leaving Vienna, and long before you come to Budapest, the Danube enters a region of singular loneliness and desolation, where its waters spread away on all sides regardless of a main channel, and the country becomes a swamp for miles upon miles, covered by a vast sea of low willow-bushes. On the big maps this deserted area is painted in a fluffy blue, growing fainter in color as it leaves the banks, and across it may be seen in large straggling letters the word Sümpfe, meaning marshes.
In high flood this great acreage of sand, shingle-beds, and willow-grown islands is almost topped by the water, but in normal seasons the bushes bend and rustle in the free winds, showing their silver leaves to the sunshine in an ever-moving plain of bewildering beauty. These willows never attain to the dignity of trees; they have no rigid trunks; they remain humble bushes, with rounded tops and soft outline, swaying on slender stems that answer to the least pressure of the wind; supple as grasses, and so continually shifting that they somehow give the impression that the entire plain is moving and alive. For the wind sends waves rising and falling over the whole surface, waves of leaves instead of waves of water, green swells like the sea, too, until the branches turn and lift, and then silvery white as their underside turns to the sun.
Happy to slip beyond the control of the stern banks, the Danube here wanders about at will among the intricate network of channels intersecting the islands everywhere with broad avenues down which the waters pour with a shouting sound; making whirlpools, eddies, and foaming rapids; tearing at the sandy banks; carrying away masses of shore and willow-clumps; and forming new islands innumerably which shift daily in size and shape and possess at best an impermanent life, since the flood-time obliterates their very existence.
Properly speaking, this fascinating part of the river’s life begins ...
Section 1 of 5 sections
