Lögberg-Heimskringla - 28.01.1983, Qupperneq 5

WINNIPEG, FÖSTUDAGUR 28. JANÚAR 1983-5
Halldór Laxness at eighty
Continued from page 4
tion for himself and his family in a
distant land. For this dream he
sacrifices everything, including his
family, only to return, after much
suffering, to his point of departure,
having discovered that all his efforts
have been in vain.
In the end he accepts his predica-
ment, thereby proving that his ex-
perience has brought him maturity.
Laxness found the subject matter
for his novel in a remarkable
autobiography from the last century,
written by a farmer who went to
Copenhagen to visit the King of Den-
mark and Iceland, then journeyed to
Utah and became a Mormon.
But the author has refashioned the
material almost beyond recognition.
There are also tangential points of
contact with Voltaire's Candide,
which Laxness has translated into
Icelandic.
As always with this author, the
characterization is at once clear and
ambivalent: the characters are both
simple and inexplicable. This is
especially true of the protagonist,
who is an idealist and a truth-seeker
and yet ruthless enough to leave his
family without any protection or
means of subsistence while he pur-
sues his goal. Human nature in all its
complexities and contradictions is the
mystical clue to this picaresque
novel, but its most extraordinary
facet is the language, with its shifting
styles, its distant tone and its very
concrete and palpable images. This is
Laxness at his linguistically most
accomplished.
A Turn to the
Stage
Having reached the zenith of his
narrative mastery, Laxness seemed to
grow tired of his chosen literary form
and turned to the theatre for a new
mode of expression. During the next
few years he wrote three original
plays, which were staged in Reyk-
javík. Previously he had written two
rather indifferent plays, staged in
1934 and 1954, the latter of which
was also produced in Helsinki and
Moscow. All three of the later plays
testify to the growing preoccupation
of the author with those qualities in
human nature and social conduct
which make life meaningful and
rewarding. Here the Taoist ideal of
self-sufficiency reigns supreme. In
the last of the plays, the Pigeon Ban-
quet, staged in 1966, Laxness found
his own theatrical voice and succeed-
ed in dramatizing the main character,
a simple, almost inane, clothes
presser, who is anything but a
dramatic character; he admits having
been too stupid to learn the tailor’s
trade. The style of the play is at once
absurd, hilarious and strangely
realistic-sarcastic, rich in queer
episodes and cranky characters. The
presser has his counterparts both in
Laxness’s other plays and most of his
novels, especially the later ones. He
represents essentially one of two
poles in all his creative output: the
simple, innocent, self-sufficient in-
dividual, who is entirely independent
of his surroundings, society, fashion,
public opinion, money and all the
paraphernalia of the mundane world.
There is a strong romantic element in
the conception of this human type,
but the amazing fact remains that
Laxness has created many starkly
real and vivid individuals of this kind
— not at all "types" in the usual
sense — each of whom stands for a
clear and profound concept of the
human situation; they represent the
difficult art of living, of Being in the
true sense.
The other pole in Laxness’s writing
is the ''man of the the world," the
self-seeker, the practical en-
trepreneur and administrator, the
man of action. He is not always
depicted in dark colors; he
sometimes has in him a streak of
resigned pessimism, sometimes good-
humored altruism, but at the bottom
he is contemptible because he is
either insincere or morally blind; his
actions are not inner-directed; he
deludes himself, thinking he can gain
life by playing according to the rules
of a depraved world. In some in-
stances he comes to a realization of
his fallacy and "repents," but in most
cases he is beyond redemption.
Allegory and Myth
In his first novel after his
"theatrical interlude," Chrístianity at
Glacier (1968), Laxness presented the
two poles more vividly and succinct-
ly thaii in any other of his works. In
the characters of the Reverend Jón
Primus and the millionaire-
entrepreneur Godman Syngmann the
author has given us the most fully
developed incarnations of the two
kinds of human beings, the consruc-
tive and the destructive.
Essentially Christianity at Glacier
is a biblical allegory or existential
myth, with constant illusions to
Adam and Eve, Christ and Thomas
a Kempis, St. Theresa and St. John of
the Cross, to name a few of its many
and widely different references. It is
a very complex novel, with many
levels of meaning and a highly in-
tricate and intriguing structure. Its
main theme is the world in all its
ramifications versus stale and in-
hibiting ideologies, which limit and
impoverish human life. In its essence
the novel is a myth about "paradise
reclaimed," about the will to accept
reality as it is and to live and survive
in the face of threatened war and
destruction. It is a unique work in
contemporary Scandinavian
literature.
In A Country Chronicle (1970), a
description of the valley near Reyk-
javík where he grew up at a farm call-
ed Laxnes (hence the pen-name),
Laxnes produced a little gem of a
parable about man's fidelity to
himself and his kin. On one level it
is a humorous account of the reac-
tions of the queer and stubborn
representatives of traditional Icelan-
dic culture, when faced with new
and unfamiliar developments, such
as state authority and directives.
There is a rich gallery of memorable
eccentrics, but the basic theme is
loyalty to custom, family, proven
values.
In God's Good Gifts (1972) Laxness
uses a well-known entrepreneur as
model for an endearing character,
who has many excellent qualities but
is an incurable dilettante in his
private as well as his public life. The
description of this confused and con-
stantly active businessman, who has
a formidable ability to exploit people
and handle difficult situations with
his excellent common sense, is com-
bined with a scathingly satirical
depiction of Iceland between 1920
and 1970, in which politicians,
ideologues, labor unionists,
businessmen and bankers are
debunked and their daily world
established as one of shallowness,
stupidity and chance. Laxness
shrewdly employs different literary
styles to highlight his grotesque
human comedy. In 1975-80 Laxness
wrote four autobiographical novels
covering his first twenty years. They
give many vivid and informative
glimpses into his childhood and
youth. He has also written four col-
lections of short stories where his
narrative skill is everywhere in
evidence. His volumes of essays and
travel descriptions number nineteen
to date. In addition to his five original
plays, six of his major novels have
been dramatized and staged.
Beguiled by
GreatIdeas
During his career, Halldór Laxness
has been able to mix, to an amazing
extent, the contemplative life and
that of the activist. His ideal is clear-
ly the self-sufficient, inner-directed
individual, who is indifferent to the
world around him, but few
Icelanders have been more engaged
in the social and political struggles of
the past half-century. This interesting
paradox is part and parcel of the
phenomenon which is Laxness. His
strength has, in a sense, been his
weakness. He has led a dynamic stor-
my life and has been very impres-
sionable; beguiled by great ideas, he
has twice given himself to powerful
ideologies — Catholicism and Marx-
ism — and he has been a passionate
and influential fighter for social
justice. Although he has at once
wrestled with the problems both of
his art and his society, this battle on
two fronts seems not to have wasted
his energies but rather inspired and
strengthened him. His artistic fertili-
ty has been closely linked to his
openness and curiosity about the
world around him, his sensitivity to
social injustice and his very keen,
and often hurt, sense of beauty.
Somewhere, Laxness has said that
his writing was part of the struggle
for a just society, which eventually
would make writers like him
superfluous. Similarly, he has
delineated his human ideal in many
memorable characters, knowing that
they would probably not stand on his
side in his political struggles. Such is
the inconsistency of life and
literature, even though they are so
tightly intertwined, that one cannot
easily be distinguished from the other
in the lifework of Halldór Laxness.
Courtesy of Icelandic Review
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