{"id":4139,"date":"2014-07-23T00:10:22","date_gmt":"2014-07-23T00:10:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=4139"},"modified":"2016-01-23T16:35:55","modified_gmt":"2016-01-23T15:35:55","slug":"ian-pople-on-new-icelandic-poetry-from-arc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=4139","title":{"rendered":"New Collections from Ger\u00f0ur Kristn\u1ef3 and Sigur\u00f0ur P\u00e1lsson, reviewed by Ian Pople"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ger\u00f0ur Kristn\u1ef3 Bloodhoof<\/em>, trans. Rory McTurk (Arc Publications) \u00a39.99
\nSigur\u00f0ur P\u00e1lsson Inside Voices, Outside Light<\/em> trans. Martin S. Regal (Arc Publications) \u00a310.99<\/p>\n

If Icelandic literature means much to the sometimes translation resisting readership in the UK, it means the Sagas. More recently, however, Icelandic writers have contributed to the vogue of Scandi-Noir in the novels of Arnaldur Indri\u00f0ason, or Yrsa Sigur\u00f0ard\u00f3ttir. The Sagas used to be part of English literature courses of many British universities, but that is no longer so common, although Saga scholarship is alive and well (and, no, that\u2019s not a reference to the University of the Third Age!). Ger\u00f0ur Kristn\u1ef3\u2019s Bloodhoof is, actually, a version of the story of Freyr and Ger\u00f0ur as told in one of those sagas, Sk\u00ednism\u00e1l. This recounts the wooing of the Giant maiden Ger\u00f0ur by the god Freyr, through the go-between Freyr\u2019s servant, Sk\u00ednir. The original accounts of the wooing leave open the question of whether the two meet, although another poem by the author of the Sk\u00ednism\u00e1l, Snorri Sturluson, suggests that they meet, marry and produce a future king of Sweden. The first thing to note about this Arc publication is that it is a beautiful looking object from the cover with its bold colouring and illustrations of entwined horse and dragon, and \u2018celtic\u2019 knotting. The text is beautifully laid out with the poem itself in short tanka-like verses placed one-to-a-page in both the Icelandic and the English. This means that the pace of the reading is slowed to a meditative pace and the lovely detailing of the writing rises to the fore.<\/p>\n

In his introduction, the translator, Rory McTurk writes that he has not produced \u2018a literal [translation]\u2019 which \u2018does not reflect on a one-to-one basis the stylistic features of the original\u2019. At the same time, he encourages the reader to read the original out loud and gives a pronunciation guide to help that process. If McTurk has taken liberties with Kristn\u1ef3\u2019s original then that has not created a text with anything other than a real sense of stylistic unity. And, having heard Kristn\u1ef3 read from this book when it was launched, and having spoken to her then, I can aver that her English is more than good enough to have, I\u2019m sure, have made her feelings on that translation known. Kristn\u1ef3\u2019s poem is both powerful and delicate. It\u2019s brief paragraphs refract both the Icelandic summer light and also that hunkered-down winter withdrawal.<\/p>\n

The poem itself is written from the point of view of the maiden Ger\u00f0ur, who looks back on the wooing, the marriage night and the aftermath of that, as she holds in her arms the son born to the union. And the account of the marriage does not make for happy reading. Ger\u00f0ur expects difficulty in the moment she accepts the proposal, \u2018I said yes, I would come\/\/ and I saw my face,\/dead, reflected\/in the envoy\u2019s sword\/. One view of the Sagas is that they report a form of dark ages brutality, and act as the originals for the \u2018sword and sorcery\u2019 story-telling that culminates in the kind of rather masculine, Game of Thrones world which is around today. Certainly one of the most famous of those sagas, Nj\u00e1l\u2019s saga, is sparked by the beardlessness of the protagonist, Nj\u00e1l. Kristn\u1ef3\u2019s account of Ger\u00f0ur\u2019s vision does not lack darkness and brutality, and this results in very robust but deeply beautiful writing, even in those tanka-like forms.<\/p>\n

Sigur\u00f0ur P\u00e1lsson\u2019s Inside Voices, Outside Light is a very different, but equally exciting book. P\u00e1lsson travelled to Paris at the age of eighteen to study drama at the Sorbonne, has translated a range of French authors from Feydeau, via Camus, to Prevert and Eluard, and has since been awarded honours in France. That sense of French experiment runs through many of these poems. But it is an experimentalism which P\u00e1lsson has very much made his own. This book is a selection from P\u00e1lsson\u2019s books from 1980 to 2012. Each one of those books has a title beginning with the word lj\u00f3\u00f0, a word which means both \u2018poem\u2019 singular, and \u2018poems\u2019 plural and, so translator Martin S. Regal tells us, is derived from the Old Norse hlj\u00f3\u00f0 meaning both \u2018sound\u2019 and \u2018silence\u2019. Thus P\u00e1lsson\u2019s first book is called Lj\u00f3\u00f0 Vega Menn \u2018Poem Way Men\u2019 and his latest book is called Lj\u00f3\u00f0orkulind \u2018Poem Energy Source\u2019. Regal\u2019s introduction also comments on the way numbers and numerology has affected the construction of both forms and books in P\u00e1lsson\u2019s work. All that might sound rather tricksy, even pretentious, but P\u00e1lsson is a poet who pays close attention to the human condition, and its situation in a world which is observed just as attentively. From that first book is \u2018Nocturne for Saturn\u2019, which I quote in full.<\/p>\n

The lamp cries
\nblond tears
\nThe cards on the table
\nthe tongue immobilized
\nThe smoke still in the air
\n(always a half-open door)
\nPanes in windows darkness
\na car passes
\nthen silence once more
\nThe lamp cries no more
\nSilence
\nno smoke
\nno explanation.<\/p>\n

P\u00e1lsson creates an oblique narrative in which the characters have absconded and left behind the remnants, even debris of a moment. There is a blush of surrealism in the personification of the lamp. And the modernist epiphany creates that narrative. But P\u00e1lsson\u2019s observation of the moment is such that we become part of the drama which the lyric enacts. Elsewhere, P\u00e1lsson is equally at home with the prose poem in which the \u2018I\u2019 sits centre stage. One such is \u2018Plywood\u2019 which begins with a typically sardonic gesture \u2018The first woodwork project I chose to do that autumn was to saw a map of Iceland out of plywood\u2019. The year goes on and eventually, his project reaches its culmination. \u2018The sun shone on the moorlands, lambing had begun and the school year was coming to a close as I sawed my way into the harbour at Reykjavik\u2019. P\u00e1lsson also tackles mythology, and towards the end of this book in the sequence \u2018By River and Ocean\u2019, we find, \u2018A bright strong blast\/ ripples the face of the sea\/just off Syracuse\/\/ ripples the mind\/ where Aeschyus\/ my friend\/ smiles from afar\/\/ Wind and ocean\/ neither old nor young\/\/ Eternal drama\/ with mask\/ of wind and ocean\/\/ A mask that thinks\/ of Aeschylus\/ smiling in the distance\u2019. At this point, P\u00e1lsson\u2019s sardonic irony moves into a vision of doubleness whereby the mask of drama becomes the mind of the dramatist thinking itself\/himself into existence.<\/p>\n

These two collections suggest that Icelandic poetry has a charge and dynamism which is the equal of their best fiction and should be just as well known.
\n 
\nIan Pople<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ger\u00f0ur Kristn\u1ef3 Bloodhoof, trans. Rory McTurk (Arc Publications) \u00a39.99 Sigur\u00f0ur P\u00e1lsson Inside Voices, Outside Light trans. Martin S. Regal (Arc Publications) \u00a310.99 If Icelandic literature means much to the sometimes translation resisting readership in the UK, it means the Sagas. More recently, however, Icelandic writers have contributed to the vogue of Scandi-Noir in the novels […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[13,283],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nNew Collections from Ger\u00f0ur Kristn\u1ef3 and Sigur\u00f0ur P\u00e1lsson, reviewed by Ian Pople - The Manchester Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=4139\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"New Collections from Ger\u00f0ur Kristn\u1ef3 and Sigur\u00f0ur P\u00e1lsson, reviewed by Ian Pople - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Ger\u00f0ur Kristn\u1ef3 Bloodhoof, trans. 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