The Icelandic Canadian - 01.06.1967, Page 54

52
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
Summer 1967
Stephan G. Stephansson Memorial Cairn,
Markerville, Alberta
Society; he considered it a significant
factor in his own intellectual develop-
ment (cf. I, 7), and believed that it
had stimulated his poetic talent (cf.
Porkell Johannesson Nordaela 1956,
218). Finally, it is safe to say that when
our poet laid down the rules for the
Icelandic Cultural Society, he form-
ulated a principle which he himself
had resolved to follow, namely that of
attempting an “unimpeded assessment
of spiritual values.”
According to Stephansson’s own
testimony the Icelandic Cultural Soci-
ety in North Dakota was founded upon
the same principles as societies which
had formerly been founded in the
United States by Professor Felix Adler
(1851-1933).
borkell Johannesson and Oskar
Halldorsson have pointed out that
some of Stephansson’s works must
have been influenced by Adler’s book
of 1877 titled ‘Creed and Deed’ (Nor-
daela 1956, 218).
The following passages from that
book are among those selected for dis-
cussion by Oskar Halldorsson:
We do not therefore deny dogma, but prefer
to remit it to the sphere of individual con-
viction with which public association should
have no concern.
AAA
To broaden and deepen the ethical senti-
ment in ourselves and to hold up to the sad
realities of the times the mirror of the ideal
life is the object with which we have set out.
AAA
The dead are not dead, if we have loved
them truly. In our own lives we give them
immortality . . . All the good that was in
them lives in you, the germ and nucleus of
the better that shall be.
AAA
And now the new Ideal differs from Christi-
anity in this, that it seeks to approach the
goal of a Kingdom of Heaven upon earth,
not by the miraculous interference of the
Deity, but by the laborious exertion of men,
and the slow, but certain progress of succes-
sive generations.
AAA
But the condition of all progress is experi-
ence; we must go wrong thousand times before
we find the right.
(These references are from Studia
Islandica 19, 70-72)
Oskar Halldorsson has rightly drawn
attention to the resemblance between
the above passages on one hand and
some of Stephansson’s observations in
both his Introduction to the Consti-
tution of the Icelandic Cultural Society
and his poems and prose writings on
the other. Special attention is called
to the following lines:
“To think not in hours, but in ages,
At eve not to claim all our wages,”
(Transl. by Paul Bjarnason, Odes and
Echoes, 118).