The Icelandic Canadian - 01.09.1964, Blaðsíða 30

28
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
Autumn 1964
“It is indifferent to me, if I
Live in Ukraine or live there not at all,
Whether or not men let my
memory die;
Here in an alien land, mid snows
piled high,
It will not matter that such things
befall”.
He continues in the next poem en-
titled “The Sun is Setting”
“But I look wakeful around; my
spirit’s fiat
Sets me to fly to orchards of Ukraine;
On, on I flit, deep in the gulfs
of thought
And thus my heart can find relief
from pain”!
A parallel flight is to be found in
the poetry of Stephan G. Stephansson,
who was born in Iceland and composed
in the Icelandic language. He migrated
to America in 1873, then ten years old.
He lived in the United States until
1889 when he moved to Markerville
of Alberta, where he farmed until he
died in 1927.
He and his Iceland never separated.
In 1904, he gave an address at an
Icelandic Day Celebration in Win-
nipeg. A part of that address was a
poem of three verses, which to Iceland-
ers is what Lincoln’s Gettysburg Ad-
dress is to Americans. The central
thought is in the second half of the
first and last verses. Here is a weak at-
tempt to translate the first verse.
“Though in far-distance travels
Many lands you may roam,
Your thoughts and your feelings
Bear the stamp of your home.
The mountains, the geysers
The clear ocean blue
The falls and the valleys
Are all cousins to you.”
The second selection from Shev-
chenko is also from “It is Indifferent”.
There is a change of theme, an attack,
not an expression of sameness what-
ever the locale. 'Lite poet’s thoughts
turn to those who are unjust to his
beloved Ukraine. He cries:
“But while I live I cannot bear to see
A wicked people come with crafty
•threat,
To lull Ukraine yet strip her
ruthlessly
And waken her amid the flames
they set —
By God, these wrongs are not all
one to me”.**
This time a parallel thought is to be
found in the poetry of Hjalmar
Jonsson of Iceland. He cries:
“He who harms thee, false, unworthy,
May he, poisoned, rot and perish”.
Hjalmar Jonsson was born in the
north of Iceland. For a number of
years he eked out an existence on a
farmstead called “Bola”, and for that
reason was known as “Bolu-Hjalmar”.
Dr. Richard Beck in “Icelandic Lyrics”,
says: “His life was a continuous
struggle with poverty and adversity.”
If the inner “Bolu-Hjalmar” had not
lived on the high level given only to
men of vision, he might have cursed
the land in which he lived and the
people in it. On the occasion of Ice-
land obtaining a measure of self-gov-
ernment in 1874 Bolu-Hjalmar and
others composed poems.
To translate his poem of six verses
is impossible, at least to this writer.
** The latest translation is selected.