The Icelandic Canadian - 01.12.1963, Page 22

20
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
Winter 1963
pression years of the 1930’s when over
a five-year period Nikulas Ottenson’s
primitive little paperjbound book of
rfmur was the only item published;
but it is also true in a general way of
the whole pioneer generation. Public
subscription could assist, as with the
later volumes of Andvokur in Stephan
G.’s life-time, but my copies of the first
three volumes are still in loose sheets,
not even bound. It is typical of the
more prosperous 1940’s and 1950’s that
collected posthumous editions of K. N.,
Jonas A. SigurSsson, Bjami Thor-
steinsson fra Hofn, Kristjan S. Palsson
and Thorsteinn Th. Thorsteinsson
should be piously and even sumptuous-
ly brought out.. In the same period we
have the cumulative collected editions
of Guttormur J. Guttormsson and
Jakobina Johnson, in which the
amount of new poetry is comparatively
small. The great creative period has
been followed by one of accumulation,
selection and redaction.
Before I go on to generalize regard-
ing these poets as a whole, some indi-
vidual comments may be in order.
In the volumes by Stephan G. Steph-
ansson that met me in 1923, the most
powerful impact was made by a section
(Vol. V, pp. 111-200) entitled “Vig-
sl6Si” in which his indignation at the
waste and folly of war burned at a
white heat. At first his bitter pacifism
had lost him many friends, but basic
research by such historians as Sidney
B. Fay, J. S. Ewart, Harry Elmer
Barnes, and Francis Neilson presently
showed that wartime propaganda had
totally misled us as to the real turp-
itude of French, Russian and even cer-
tain English diplomats. The essential
sanity of Stephan G. in the face of the
mass emotions that had been whipped
up by the wartime press was one of
the most notable qualities of this man
of granite. One of his trenchant epi-
grams may be rendered thus:
In Europe’s reeking slaughter pen
They mince the flesh of murdered men,
While swinish merchants, snout in
trough,
Drink all the bloody profits off.
Integrity, of course, was only one
aspect of a many-sided and gifted na-
ture. This became manifest to me as 1
worked back through his earlier vol-
umes, through a judiciously selected
edition (tjrval) of his best poetry is-
sued in 1939 by SigurSur Nordal, with
an illuminating introduction, and
through the four massive volumes of
his Letters and Articles (Reykjavik,
1938-48). This man might be a “farmer
poet,” spiritual brother to many gen-
erations of rustic bards in his native
land, but he far outsoared them all
in his intellectual range and his power
over language. His boyhood schooling,
on a farm in Northern Iceland had
been of the slightest but he had
strenuously educated himself all
through life by wide and unwearied
reading. There is a peculiar fitness in
his case in the familiar lines of Long-
fellow:
The heights by great men reached
and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight
But they, while their companions slept.
Were toiling upward in the night.
The six volumes of his collected verse,
totalling some 1800 pages, were signif-
icantly entitled Andvokur (“Sleepless
Nights”), and for upwards of fifty
years he worked far into the night at
his studies and his writing. Through-
out the hours of daylight, he carried
on the heavy toil of a pioneer farmer,
but half the night went to the realm