Jón Bjarnason Academy - 01.05.1936, Page 35

karns berattelser (The Stories of an Army Surgeon), not to
forget a vast number of shorter poems from the Scandinavian
and other European languages. Of these may be specially
mentioned his masterful rendition of Ibsen’s “Terje Viken”
and Runeberg’s “Fenrik Stals Sagner.”28 Jochumsson’s trans-
lations are not only memorable because of their great ex-
tensiveness and variety, but even more so because of their
general excellence; he emphasizes faithfulness to the thought
and the spirit of the originals rather than their letter, and for
that very reason he most often succeeds admirably.
And now a word about the remarkable man behind the
rich literary production which has here been briefly described
and his view of life. Bjornstjerne Bjornson once said: “The
relation of a poet to his works should be like that of a bank to
the currency it issues—there must be plenty of good securi-
ties in the vaults.” As in Bjornson’s own case this was true
of Jochumsson.29 That is the testimony of those who knew him
best,30 and as such he reveals himself in his works.
Beneath his poetry beats a warm and tender heart; his
poems always breathe a love of beauty, joy in living, and a
rejuvenating spirit of optimism. His faith in God and love of
his fellow man are the surging undercurrents of his poetry.
The mighty torrents of a great waterfall impress him less than
the tears of a child/ (cf. his poem “Dettifoss”). Icelandic to
the core, he was nevertheless a true cosmopolitan, who could
justly have said: “Nil humanum a me alienum puto.” He in-
terested himself in things pertaining to the material and the
spiritual progress of mankind. High and low, rich and poor
are of equal concern to him because it is their humanity that
matters. A man of deep faith, he possessed at the same time
in a rare degree an open mind, hospitable to new truths.
I had the privilege of knowing Jochumsson fairly intimately
the winter before his death; he was then eighty-four years of
age. I was greatly impressed with his mental alertness and his
youthful outlook upon life and, of course, overwhelmed by his
great genius and his strong personality.
I close with the following truthful and brilliant lines from a
tribute to Jochumsson by Sigurdur Nordal:
“I said I had been most impressed by Reverend Matthias
28 This was first published in a notable and popular volume of trans-
lations by Matthias Jochumsson and Steingrlmur Thorsteinsson > Svanhvit
(Reykjavik, 1877 and 1913).
29 About their relations see: Steingrlmur Matthiasson, “Bjornstjerne
Bjornson og faSir minn,” Timarit pjoSrwknisfelags lslendinga, Winnipeg,
1934.
39 See especially GuSmundur Hannesson, “SSra Matthias Jochumsson
heima a Akureyri,” Matthias Jochumsson, Reykjavik, 1905, pp. 55-77 and
Einar H. Kvaran, “RseSa,” Skirnir, 1921, pp. 5-13.
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