Steinn Steinarr

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Steinn Steinarr, painting by Einar Hákonarson.

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 35 stanzas in all, distributed over 8 "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.

[edit] References

Steinn Steinarr (1964). Kvæðasafn og greinar. Helgafell.
Steinn Steinarr Biography in Icelandic
Brement, Marshall (1985). Three Modern Icelandic Poets. Reykjavík: Iceland Review.