The Icelandic Canadian - 01.11.2007, Síða 17

Vol. 61 #2
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
59
lier, Hannes Hafstein—probably on good
authority—believed it to be a product of
Jonas’ last winter. The surviving manu-
script points in the same direction, since it
dates (probably) from early January 1845
(see KJH314). There is plainly a close
connection between "Journey's End" and
Jonas's poem "Quatrains" ("Stokur"),
and since "Quatrains" can be dated pre-
cisely (21 December 1844), it is likely that
"Journey's End" was written around the
turn of the year 1844-5. Matthias
F6rc3arson's argument that it was com-
posed at Steinsstadir in 1828, immediately
after Jonas and Fora had parted, can no
longer be given much weight (see Kfl61-
86). Matthias took the combination of
present-tense verbs with precise topo-
graphical allusions, in strophes 1-3 and
10, to imply that these parts of the poem
must actually have been composed in the
surroundings they describe, whereas a
glance at Jonas's late cycle of topographi-
cal poems, with their intricate interweav-
ing of topography with past and present
time, ought to have pointed him in a dif-
ferent direction. Indeed, much of the con-
troversy about the dating of "Journey's
End" has occurred because of Jonas's
deliberate blurring of the boundary
between past and present. In the surviv-
ing manuscript we actually catch a
glimpse of him engaged in this chrono-
logical prestidigitation. The second half
of strophe 9 originally read (before he
altered it):
eye stars flashed,
flower lips smiled,
cheeks turned ruby red -
which is obviously much more true
to the real "time-facts." (Similarly, in the
fourth line of strophe 8, Jonas first wrote
"could," then altered this in the manu-
script to "can," then reverted in the pub-
lished version to "could"!) The deliberate
confounding of past and present,
throughout the poem, serves to suggest
that love triumphs over time, just as it tri-
umphs over space (as is asserted in the
final strophe).
After taking leave of Fora in 1828,
Jonas went on to have relationships with
several other women, so the poignant,
reawakened memories in "Journey's End" are
more likely to be a symptom of his generally
depressed mood, in the last winter of his life,
than of any obdurate lifelong obsession.
In light of the oral traditions about the
poem's origins, which seem as authentic and
well-authenticated as such things can be, it
would be perverse to deny the presence of a
strong autobiographical element in "Journey's
End." On the other hand, in a poem that was
probably written about the same time as the
topographical poems mentioned above and that
deals (like them) with memories of travel in
Iceland, it is not at all likely that what we have
is an attempt at reportage or reconstruction of
actual facts, but rather extremely probable that
there is an imaginative (and even imaginary)
dimension to the experiences recounted in the
poem.
Revisions in the surviving manuscript show
that at first Jonas gave it the title "My Love"
("Astin min"). This phrase is ambiguous and
can be taken as answering either the question
"Who is she?" or the question "What is its
nature?" - or indeed both questions at once (see
Kfl72). Jonas subsequently altered the title to
"An Old Story" ("Gomul saga"), which may
have had ironic overtones. Finally he settled on
"Journey's End" ("FerSalok"), the magnificent-
ly suggestive title under which the poem was
published in the eighth issue of Fjolnir several
weeks before the accident that caused his death.