Árbók skálda - 01.12.1958, Blaðsíða 47

Matthías Johannessen:
Bréj til Arbókar
AÖ smíða úr ejni svo í stuðlum staiuli
ei stór er list, þó margur dáist að;
en skapa efni er öllu meiri vandi
og enginn nema skáldið getur það.
Þorskabítur
Ágætu vinir, Kristján og Ragnar.
Ég þakka bréf ykkar. Það er alltaf fallega gert að kasta bjarghring
til drukknandi manns. En þið miklið fyrir ykkur hættuna. Ég er ekki svo
ritfær að ég þori að ræða efni bréfs ykkar, þegar því hefur verið svarað af
öðrum eins snillingi og Nóbelsskáldinu T. S. Eliot. I grein sinni „The Social
Function of Poetry“ segir liann m. a.: „Tt matters little whether a poet
had a large audience in his own time. What matters is that there should
ahvays be at least a small audience for him in every generation. Yet what
I have just said suggests that his importance is for his own time, or that
dead poets cease to be of any nse to us unless we have living poets as
well. I would even press my first point and say that. if a poet gets a large
audience veru quikly, that is a rather suspicious circumstance: for it leads
us to fear that he is not really doing anything new, that he is only giving
people wliat they are already used to, and therefore what they have
already had from the poets of the previous generation. But that a poet
should have the right, small audience in his own time is important. There
shonkl always be a small vanguard of people, appreciative of poetry,
who are independent and somewhat in advance of their time or ready to
assimilate novelty more quickly. The development of culture does not
mean bringing everybody up to the front, whieh amounts to no more
than making everyone keep step: it means the maintenance of such an
élite, with the main, and more passive body of readers not lagging more
than a generation or so behind. The changes and developments of sensibility
which appear first in a few will work themselves into the language grad-
uallv, through their influence on other, and more readily popular authors;
and by the time they liave become well established, a new advance
will be called for.“ Hér er spurningunni í bréfi ykkar svarað og ég sé ekki
betur en við getum allir verið rólegir og ókvíðnir.
Ég geri ráð fyrir því að þið liafið sent mér bréf ykkar vegna þess að
ég hef skrifað nokkur kvæði. Það er rétt. Þó fæ ég sennilega aldrei að vita,
hvernig á því stendur. Stundum hefur mér dottið í hug að ég yrki ljóð
mín til að stríða gömlum skáldum sem halda að þau hafi sagt allt sem