Reykjavík Grapevine - 08.04.2011, Síða 24

24
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 4 — 2011
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the banking system (resulting in a 65 page
long poem); the latter is its own investiga-
tive report, of sorts, published before the
actual report—a long poem (over 200 pages)
divided into chapters for each year from the
founding of the republic (1944) until the sup-
posed bankruptcy of the republic (2009—a
few months after the collapse, when the gov-
ernment finally fell).
“The Poetic Republic” is as highly “cre-
ative” as “Arbitrage” is not. While “Arbitrage”
deals with and represents the banality (and
hilarity) of the language surrounding the
crisis, the politics and the market—as well
as dealing a blow to more traditional poetry,
“The Poetic Republic” is a flamboyant retell-
ing of Icelandic 20th century history in a tra-
ditional post-modern ironic tone. Its vision
or historical perspective is hardly new, nor
does it have to be. Its vision is probably cor-
rect (from a liberal, (moderate) leftist stand-
point), however common it may be.
“The Poetic Republic” doesn’t dwell on
any single event for more than a few lines,
and thus it starts casually but increases
in weight and speed until you feel you’re
drowning in knowledge, memories, history
and feeling; while “Arbitrage” reads like a
malfunctioning economic robot—like a Bur-
roughs adding machine for the 21st century—
and hardly needs to be read at all, being first
and foremost a conceptual work. One would
probably benefit more from looking at it like
one looks at a painting, rather than reading it
from A to Z like a (traditional) poem.
These two poetry books deal with the
crisis in an almost unthinkably dissimilar
manner; and yet they somehow belong to
each other, could be published in tête-bêche
format as brother and sister, hand in hand,
shoulder to shrugging shoulder; not having a
solution, but somehow trying hard enough to
get us an inch closer to “something”, what-
ever it is.
A ToTAl UnconTRollAble ShiT-
SToRm of meTAphoRiSinG
A literary reaction worth mentioning is the
constant metaphorising in public debate
surrounding the crisis. Common phrases
included “the financial thunderstorm”—the
word for thunderstorm being used is “gjörn-
ingaveður”, a weather of great “happen-
ings” (same noun as used for performance
art happenings); the national ship (a com-
mon euphemism for the economy of a fish-
ing nation) was shipwrecked; the leaders of
the country were the crew of a ship; the old
government (which refused to resign) were
arsonists in charge of putting out their own
fire; the crisis was rough seas or a game of
war (“hildarleikur”); the nation needed to
“arm itself” (“vígbúast”); Iceland was “in
flames”; a great “catastrophy” had hit the
international financial market—there were
earthquakes, tidal waves and the markets
were frozen; the infrastructure had collapsed
(like a building); the people were sheep; the
currency was in “free fall” (and subsequently
either getting “stronger” or “weaker”); the
wheels of the economic life (called “the job
life” in Icelandic) needed to be kept in mo-
tion; the plentiful years had been a raucous
orgy and the aftermath was the hangover,
and somebody had to clean up after the par-
ty; unemployment was an infectious disease
and so forth and so on2.
According to a media study conducted
by Álfhildur E. Þorsteinsdóttir, in the week
following the crash the most common cat-
egories of metaphor were “ocean and sail-
ing”, “militaristic”, “fire and catastrophy” and
“weather”—in this order. No one needs to be
surprised that on a volcanic rock in the mid-
dle of the Atlantic Ocean people would resort
to metaphors of fishing, fire or weather—but
military? In a country whose traditional role
in NATO is not having its own military but
nodding yes to the American agenda (they
had a base in Iceland until 2006). Iceland has
neither had conscription nor a professional
2 Many of these examples are taken from Álfhil-
dur E. Þorsteinsdóttir’s excellent analysis, Krep-
putal. Myndlíkingar í dagblöðum á krepputímum
(“Crisis-talk. Metaphors in Newspapers in Times
of Crisis”). http://skemman.is/handle/1946/3625
army, excluding the dozen or so “peace
keepers”—who are more like our former
foreign minister’s tin soldier collection than
anything else. Militaristic metaphors were
furthermore the second most common cat-
egory after ocean and sailing metaphors.
This is the popular poem—poem of the
people, for the people—the world democrati-
cally poesied; sometimes in extremely mun-
dane and predictable manners and at other
times divine, fresh like spring and/or mighty.
It’s always there and we hardly ever notice it.
But when an event occurs which sends the
minds of a certain community seeking in the
same direction, like the economic collapse in
Iceland, all of a sudden the visibility of this
collective metaphorical agenda increases
manyfold and we’re presented with a mas-
sive lingual project that cannot be fully un-
derstood or interpreted outside the poetic
dimension.
fiGhTinG oveR The pARAdiGm
I think it is safe to say that the literary re-
sponse to the crisis in Iceland has been both
swift and markedly honest, even if it seems
that the authors and poets don’t have any
particular answers to give. There is no new
moral centre, no serious deconstructive (or
reconstructive) tendency, no reckoning with
capitalism nor exacting analysis within the
‘belles lettres’ published as a reaction to the
collapse. You could even imagine many of
the authors mentioned here objecting to be-
ing construed as “reacting to the collapse”,
as indeed in some respect they hardly deal
with it at all (while simultaneously standing
knee-deep in it).
The non-fiction about the crisis has
mostly been fighting over the paradigm, con-
structing present-day history and bickering
about the interpretation of events, the focus
of discussion—ranging from confessions of
aged, right wing, cold-war newspaper editor
Styrmir Gunnarsson, to megalomaniac (and
disturbingly disassociated, in an ‘American
Psycho’ kind of way) accounts of financial
viking Ármann Þorvaldsson during the eco-
nomic boom, and the clear-cut anti-capitalist
and metaphorically raptured essays of Einar
Már Guðmundsson.
A heAlThy diSTRUST
One of the immediate responses of the
Icelandic critics—not to call it a “critical re-
sponse”, as it was mostly presented in the
form of commentary rather than an attempt
at succinct analysis—was to question, belittle
and even ridicule the attempts to portray or
comment upon the crisis in fiction or poetry.
This was of course not an across-the-board
response—there were many exceptions
amongst the critics, especially in more for-
mulated essays, reviews and articles, which
were by and large less irritable and more
generous than were stray comments. But
this one was, in my opinion, most obviously
felt as a response to the phenomenon in to-
tal, as opposed to more generous critical re-
sponses to individual books or projects.
The argument mostly went that it was
“too early” to write about the crisis; that
the authors and poets were lacking the
necessary “historical distance” to provide
understanding (an argument surprisingly
not present in the treatment of non-fiction
books about the crisis). This attitude may be
criticised for confusing the writing of history
with the writing of fictional accounts, which
are not subject to rules of “providing under-
standing” nor even historical accuracy, and
as propagating an elitist attitude towards
literature—i.e. that instead of literature be-
ing a massive democratic project to try and
approach (as opposed to provide) any un-
derstanding of our societies and “the human
condition”, an understanding inherently im-
possible in any perfect or even near perfect
sense, the author is (supposed to be) a demi-
godly figure who steps down from Olympus
to tell us what is what, in no uncertain terms
(and yet perfect bull’s eye metaphors). If
I may be so bold: This is of course nothing
short of the 20th century fascist idea of the
genius classes—the leaders of society.
But this is also evidence of an attitude
of displeasure and dissatisfaction which
has in general increased after the crisis —a
(healthy) distrust of the amazingly popu-
lous army of self-proclaimed prophets and
analysts who have bombarded the public
scene (newspapers, radio and TV as well as
the blogosphere, where they naturally enjoy
a free reign) with their ideas and thoughts,
sometimes perhaps provoking more con-
fusion than anything else—and often one
suspects that confusion (misinformation)
is in fact the point, with great political and
economic potential at stake. And this distrust
does of course not limit itself to the non-fic-
tion army of fiscal messiahs found online, but
reaches the poets and authors as well.
It is nonetheless my opinion that this
distrust would’ve been put to better use
against the non-fiction books, most of which
attempted to maintain (or re-attain) the
status quo; to explain Iceland post-crisis in
pre-crisis terms and thereby reinstating the
old paradigm. Whereas I’ve found the belles
lettres to be inspiring, thought-provoking
and, though less assertive and less self-
confident, better at providing new (and lim-
ber) views and senses of what happened in
Iceland in the first decade of the millennium.
Most of the non-fiction felt as if it were there
to provide a dead-end explanation—a final
stop for thought—while the novels felt like
serious attempts at seeing something—no
matter if they turned away, which also con-
stitutes seeing something (not to mention
saying something)—serious attempts to not
constrict understanding or meaning with ex-
ceedingly easy explanations; and the poetry
did what poetry does best, and approached
the weird, stupid, cerebral and divine about
the crisis—all at the same time.
A cAll foR immediAcy
One of the myths or clichés about Iceland-
ers goes that they are all kind of trawler-
sailors—“the sort of people” who like to work
like crazy and then lounge about sucking on
beers and scratching their asses, that they
are somehow simultaneously hard-working
and lazy, and that they are willing to do
a half-assed job if it means they get to go
home early. Their natural habitat is thus the
trawler-boat, where you fish for a month and
rest for a week or two, your pockets lined
with money.
Despite the exceedingly limited truth
found in these mythological self-explana-
tions, the Icelandic “outvasion” was in fact
deeply characterised by amateurism, lack of
experience and a sense that “it was all gonna
work itself out”—it was performed in the op-
timist spirit of the seasonal worker, the one
who’s resourceful enough, strong enough,
resilient enough, quick enough and daring
enough not to need years of experience or
time to mull things over. This may factor into
the aforementioned critics’ response to the
quick and sudden representation of the cri-
sis, collapse and kitchen utensil revolution in
Icelandic literature—seeing it as arriving in
the same spirit, being performed in less than
perfect tune, with a similar attitude of “any-
thing’s possible”, and thereby foreboding a
similar (aesthetic) collapse. But a thriving
literary society needs not only mulled-over
concise accounts of metaphorical precision
(if it needs those at all), but a sense of imme-
diacy, a sense of belonging to, and partaking
in, society as it is happening—lest it want to
be relegated to the dimension of history-
telling, fairytale-ism.
Notwithstanding the fact that it would be
horrible to keep repeating the same books
about the crisis (which is not unlikely, as lit-
erature has a tendency to reproduce in it’s
own image), and notwithstanding the rela-
tive excellence of the work produced thus
far, it would be a great tragedy, in my mind,
if this attempt to portray the crisis, collapse
and kitchen utensil revolution in poetry and
fiction were to end here, if it were to be
buried now with an inscription of a job well
done—as the job, the collective experiment,
is still very much in its infancy.
conTinUed fRom pAGe 13
Eiríkur Örn runs a blog over at www.norddahl.org.
Plenty of English language material there to read and ponder.