Greinar (Vísindafélag Íslendinga) - 01.01.1943, Síða 166

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every day at home in the morning, when he had just
awaked or had just got out of bed, he wrote two, three
or four verses and then later amended and polished them
until he found them satisfactory.’
The Passion-Hymns consist of 817 verses. If three
verses are composed daily on the average, 272—273 days
would be required for their completion. It is therefore by
no means impossible or improbable, that Hallgrímur
finished the work in the course of two or three years. But
Hallgrímur Pétursson says himself that they were “put
together and written in 1659”. He therefore steadily
composed during the years 1657 and 1658, and completed
during those years — about 600 days — the greater part
of the Passion-Hymns. But in 1659 he “put them together”,
i. e. worked out the material, made additions, polished,
composed anew and rewrote everything. This is the most
plausible explanation of the genesis of the Passion-Hymns.
It has already been pointed out, that Hallgrímur made
use of the learned biblical commentary, “Harmonia evan-
gelica”, by the famous Lutheran theologians Martin Chem-
nitz, Polycarpus Lycerus and Johan Gerhardt, and more
especially “Soliloquium” by Martin Moller. This harmonizes
perfectly with what has been said here about a long time
of preparation, and that he originally intended the hymns
to be a sort of interpretation of the history of the Passion.
But the best test that the Passion Hymns originated in
the way now described, is a careful examination of the
hymns themselves. I have made a thorough examination
of them all, which cannot be gone into here, but it reveals
that most of the hymns clearly indicate that the bulk of
them is written in small sections, 1—5 verses at a time,
but later on these fragments are put together in a master-
ly fashion, insertions made, and everything arranged in
such a way as to combine the interpretation of the text
and the sublime poetry into a whole. Exceptions from
this, two or three hymns, only serve to confirm this rule,
and then there is a special explanation concerning two of
the hymns.