Orð og tunga - 26.04.2018, Page 68

Kendra Willson: Splitting the atom 57
[Who will give the snowman clothes to cover his naked-
ness, so he need not shiver like a tubercular lamplight-
er while lighting his atom kett les? No one, replied the
moonlight and slid on ice-legs along the shadowed Feb-
ruary glow.]
References to atomic science and to nuclear proliferation appear in
the journal Birtingur in other contexts as well, from literal references
in a discussion of Albert Einstein (Magnús Magnússon 1956:40) to
metaphorical uses as in (6) (from a review of a biography of Albert
Schweitzer):
(6) Hann [Schweitzer] klýfur kjarneindir hvers við fangs-
efnis og skapar sögu, hvar sem hann ber niður. (Þórir
Þórð ar son 1956:42)
[He [Schweitzer] splits the core units of each subject and
creates history wherever he goes.]
The term atómskáld is also applied in Icelandic to modernist poets
from other countries, though some of them wrote pre-Hiroshima.
Steinn Steinarr writes:
(7) Hefurðu ekki kynnt þér ensku atómskáldin svokölluðu?
(Steinn Steinarr 1961 [1950]:11)
[Have you not acquainted yourself with the so-called
English atom poets?]
Many of the atóm- coinages are introduced (to print at least) self-
consciously in critical discourse in connection with the movement. A
number of the compounds are first attested in Eysteinn Þorvaldsson’s
book Atómskáldin (1980), which mentions this phenomenon expressly:
Höfundur orðanna „atómskáld“og „atómkvæði“ er Halldór
Laxness, og sáu þau dagsins ljós í skáldsögu hans Atómstöðinni.
Síðan eru þessi orð tekin til notkunar af öðrum, og fleirum af
svipuðu tagi aukið við með því að skeyta orðum við atómið,
s.s. atómljóð, atómkveðskapur. (Eysteinn Þorvaldsson 1980:103)
[The author of the words “atómskáld” and “atómkvæði” was
Halldór Laxness, and they saw the light of day in his novel
Atómstöðin. Then these words were taken into use by others,
and more of a similar type were added by attaching words to
atóm-, as in atómljóð, atómkveðskapur.]
Eysteinn Þorvaldsson also mentions the extension of atóm- to other
arts: “Nýjungaskáldin eru stundum kölluð „abstraktskáld“ og mynd-
tunga_20.indb 57 12.4.2018 11:50:37