Steinn Steinarr

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Aðalsteinn Kristmundsson (October 13, 1908 - May 25, 1958) was born at Laugaland in Nordur-Isafjardarsysla. He 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.

This is not only a perfect imitation of the style of the rímur, with the sometimes inherent repetiteveness 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, independently, as well.

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.

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. One example would be Ein sorgleg vísa um Sósíalistaflokkinn og mig (One Tragic Poem about the Socialist Party and Me - Steinn was a Socialist) just to show he spared nobody, but a very famous poem is Passíusálmur No. 51. It is a reference to the Passíusálmar of Hallgrímur Pétursson whose psalms were 50, 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?

Here's the crucifixion in an Icelandic environment, probably as it occurred as when the little girl asks, whether it isn't dull for the man to be crucified, wrought in a new metre, but neither without rhyme nor alliteration - this is one of the poems one has to 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.