Q3

Text 3 — Memoir extract
Explain how Jansson celebrates the process of creativity.

Text 3 — Memoir extract
I love rock – sheer cliffs that drop straight into the ocean, unscalable mountain peaks, pebbles in my pocket. I love prising stones out of the ground, heaving them aside and letting the biggest ones roll down the granite slope into the water. As they rumble away, they leave behind an acrid[1] whiff of sulphur. Searching for building stones or just for pretty rocks to make mosaics, bulwarks[2], terraces, supports, smoke ovens, strange unusable structures made just for the sake of constructing, and for making piers which the sea will carry away next autumn and which I’ll rebuild better for the sea to carry away all over again. I am a sculptor’s daughter, but Tooti’s papa was a carpenter, so she loves wood, whether she’s working with beautiful, heavy lumber or playing with featherweight balsa. We searched for juniper in the woods. Along the shore we managed to find unfamiliar hardwoods with unknown names. From these, Tooti carved the kinds of tiny objects that take time and infinite patience – for example, the smallest salt spoon ever made. But, says Tooti, when you’re building big, that’s completely different. You need determination and total confidence in your ability to estimate and measure and get things right, down to the centimetre. No, to the millimetre. Sometimes we build things to be solid and lasting, and sometimes to be beautiful, sometimes both.

TOVE JANSSON Notes from an Island © Tove Jansson (1996), Moomin CharactersTM
[1] acrid unpleasantly bitter
[2] bulwarks defensive walls