Studia Islandica - 01.06.1970, Page 117

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American society and Ragnar’s descent into crime. In the account of his
search for work and his insecurity there are doubtless elements of
Kamban’s New York experiences, his disappointments and hardships;
though the novel goes much further. The horrifying account of Ragnar’s
imprisonment is mainly based on the above-mentioned book by Thomas
Mott Osborne, Within Prison Walls. Rut the most fruitful source of
material is to be found in Donald Lowrie’s My Life in Prison (New
York, 1912), in which the author describes his many years of imprison-
ment. Kamban uses this work so freely that on occasions he even trans-
lates passages from it, word for word - without acknowledgement. Rut
there is frequent evidence of his being somewhat hampered in his mat-
erial by lack of ideas; making repeated use in his works of the same
subject matter, and even the same phrases.
Ragnar Finnsson takes the form of a psychological novel, and hence
stands or falls by its presentation of a single character. Ragnar’s progress
is traced from earliest childhood to the day of his death. He is most con-
vincing in the earlier part of the story. In the later part the charac-
terisation is submerged by the satire and rapid succession of events. In
this work the ideas of Robert Relford of Marmor are shown in action.
Ragnar is not a born criminal, any more than Ernest Mclntyre of Vi
Moriere. In both cases society is to blame. Ragnar Finnsson was the last
work in which Kamban made crime and punishment his main theme,
though he often returns to the subject in his later writings, and perhaps
nowhere more memorably than in his interpretation of the character of
the bishop’s daughter in the cycle of novels Skálholt.
After the publication of Ragnar Finnsson there was a slight pause in
Kamban’s literary activities. From 1922 to 1924 he held the post of
theatrical director at the Folkcteatret in Copenhagen, before resigning
to devote himself to writing once more.
The fourth and last of his works to bear the mark of his American
visit was the play 0rkenens Stjerner. This deals with the eternal war
between flesh and spirit. Kamban probably found his subject matter in
the novel Thais, by Anatole France, and in Oscar Wilde’s story of a
hermit and a courtesan who try to convert each other, used by him in
a play called La sainte courtisane of which only fragments have sur-
vived. In Orkenens Stjerner Kamban attacks the prejudice and hypo-
crisy of a society that banishes the prostitute. Like Ragnar Finnsson,
Vivienne Montford is a martyr to that society. The play is melodramatic
and loosely constructed; possibly one of Kamban’s poorest efforts.
The last purely satirical work, described by him as the product of the
general post-war throes of westem “civilization”, was the play Sendi-
herrann frá Júpiter (1927). This sets the final seal on his gospel of a