I Think It's Really Sad That When I Google This Man, Less Comes Up Than for Your Average American Twenty-Year Old Poet

Steinn Steinarr

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The noble author(s) obviously are struggling with English, and address his poetry in a very limited way, but I salute them for at least getting this much down...


Aðalsteinn Kristmundsson (October 13, 1908 - May 25, 1958) who wrote as Steinn Steinarr, was an Icelandic poet. He is sometimes considered the first important Icelandic modernist poet but he also had a good command of traditional Icelandic poetics and even wrote one poem in rímur style, which he named Hlíðar-Jóns rímur (a fragment). They are only thirty-five stanzas in all, distributed over eight "fragments" with no discernible story. In fact, all of them seem like they belong to a mansöngur. Steinn probably wrote it to show those criticizing him for breaking the rules, that he could compose like that, if he cared to. Here is one well known stanza (VI 1):

Lífs um angurs víðan vang
víst ég ganginn herði,
eikin spanga, í þitt fang
oft mig langa gerði.

Across life's broad plain of grief
I surely quickened my pace;
oh lady, in your embrace
often I did long to be.

This is not only a perfect imitation of the style of the rímur, with the sometimes inherent repetitiveness of syntax and kenningar (heiti happen to be absent here), but it has just that little bit of its author's own to make it art in its own right too.

Another stanza actually makes the whole point clear (I 4):

Þó ég meini þetta og hitt,
þér ég reyna vil að segja:
þú ert eina yndið mitt
unz ég seinast fer að deyja.

Although I mean this and that,
I want to try to tell you:
you alone are my darling
until at last I die.

Here are no poetical circumlocutions, just ice-cold irony.

His best known work is Time and the Water, of which the following is the first part.

Tíminn er eins og vatnið,
og vatnið er kalt og djúpt
eins og vitund mín sjálfs.
Og tíminn er eins og mynd,
sem er máluð af vatninu
og mér til hálfs.
Og tíminn og vatnið
renna veglaust til þurrðar
inn í vitund mín sjálfs.

(Quoted from ljod.is)

Time is like the water,
and the water is cold and deep
like my own consciousness.

And time is like a picture,
which is painted of water,
half of it by me.

And time and the water
flow trackless to extinction
into my own consciousness.

(Translation by Marshall Brement)

Steinn satirized anything and everything, and spared nobody, as can be seen from Ein sorgleg vísa um Sósíalistaflokkinn og mig (One Tragic Poem about the Socialist Party and Me - Steinn was a Socialist). A very famous poem is Passíusálmur No. 51. The title is a reference to the Passíusálmar of Hallgrímur Pétursson. Hallgrímur wrote 50 psalms, and Steinn added this:

Á Valhúsahæðinni
er verið að krossfesta mann.
Og fólkið kaupir sér far
með strætisvagninum
til þess að horfa á hann.
Það er sólskin og hiti,
og sjórinn er sléttur og blár.
Þetta er laglegur maður
með mikið enni
og mógult hár.
Og stúlka með sægræn augu
segir við mig:
Skyldi manninum ekki leiðast
að láta krossfesta sig?

There's a man being crucified
on Valhúsahæðin hill.

And people buy themselves a ride
on the bus
to watch him.

There's sunshine and warmth,
and the sea is calm and blue.

This is a fine looking man
with a high forehead
and golden brown hair.

And a girl with sea-green eyes
says to me:

Won't the man get bored
of being crucified?

Here the crucifixion is shown in an Icelandic setting, probably as the little girl imagines it when she asks whether it isn't dull for the man to be crucified. The metre is new, but not without such traditional devices as rhyme and alliteration, making this a poem to be appreciated read aloud.

* * *

This article is a noble attempt, but a woefully inadequate one, to capture the playful, forgetive and experimental nature of Steinnarr's poetry. I remember reading other translations in anthologies of years past where he was pretty much writing Richard Brautigan style poems, and New York School type poems. Note that the author died in 1958.

Here are two more Brement translations of somewhat conventional but memorable poems. Both of these capture somewhat the quirkiness and friendliness of the best Steinarr poems. These poems are often friendly! It's a rare poem I find actually friendly. Ted Berrigan would be another example which comes to mind where I find the poems darn friendly! I found these in Three Modern Icelandic Poets, which is rather hard to find these days, but worth the effort.

A Flower

I slept, I slept
and nobody knew.

And the fever of the day
buzzed of the delirium
of soundless poems
over my leaves.

Then it became dark,
then it became silent.

And a strange hand
touched me
and whispered:
Hi!
You shall die.


A Child

I was a small child
and I played on the beach.
Two men in dark clothes
walked past
and said:
Good morning, little child,
Good morning!

I was a small child
and I played at the beach.
Two blonde girls
walked past
and whispered:
Come along, young man,
come along!

I was a small child
and I played at the beach.
Two laughing children
walked past
and called:
Good evening, old man,
good evening!