Inside Voices, Outside Light E-Book

Sigudur Palsson

• Herausgeber: Arc Publications
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Serie: Arc Translations
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 97

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

The latest in Arc's Translation Series brings poems from Sigurður Pálsson's ten collections written between 1980 and 2008 to a UK audience. Swirling with imagery, they reveal a poet committed to unearthing the joy of living and its connections to the natural world. This is a thrilling sweep across Pálsson's work: chronologies are upset, ideas run amok, views out onto the world close and open. Also available in limited-edition hardback: ISBN 9781906570590 (£12.99) This book is also available as a eBook. Buy it from Amazon here. Sigurður Pálsson was born in 1948 in Skinnastadur, Iceland. A writer, translator, professor and film producer, he won the Icelandic Literary Award in 2007, the same year he was made a Chevalier de l'Ordre National du Mérite by the President of France. Martin Regal lives in Reykjavik and teaches at the University of Iceland. His translation of Gisli Sursson's Saga and the Saga of the People of Eyri was published by Penguin Classics in 2003 (ISBN 9780140447729).

Leseprobe

INSIDE VOICES OUTSIDE LIGHT

Published by Arc Publications,

Nanholme Mill, Shaw Wood Road

Todmorden OL14 6DA, UK

Original poems copyright © Sigurđur Pálsson 2014

Translation copyright © Martin S. Regal 2014

Introduction copyright © Martin S. Regal 2014

Copyright in the present edition © Arc Publications 2014

978 1906570 58 3 (pbk)

978 1906570 59 0 (hbk)

978 1908376 50 3 (ebk)

Design by Tony Ward ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The present volume contains poems selected from eleven of the fifteen books of Sigurđur Palsson’s poetry that were published between 1980 and 2012. Cover photograph by Páll Stefánsson This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part of this book may take place without the written permission of Arc Publications. This book has been translated with a financial support of

‘Arc Translations’

Series Editor: Jean Boase-Beier

SIGURÐUR

PÁLSSON

INSIDE

VOICES

OUTSIDE

LIGHT

Translated & introduced by

Martin S. Regal

2014

CONTENTS

Introduction

ur / from

LJÓÐ VEGA MENN / POEM WAY MEN (1980)

Nocturne handa Merkúr

•

Nocturne for Mercury

Nocturne handa Venus

•

Nocturne for Venus

Nocturne handa fullu tungli

•

Nocturne for a Full Moon

Nocturne handa þreifandi fullu tungli

•

Nocturne for a Brimful Moon

Nocturne handa Mars

•

Nocturne for Mars

Nocturne handa Júpiter

•

Nocturne for Jupiter

Nocturne handa Satúrnus

•

Nocturne for Saturn

Nocturne handa Úranus

•

Nocturne for Uranus

ur / from

LJÓÐ NÁMU LAND / POEM MINE LAND (1985)

Ljóðnámuland

•

Land Possessed by Poems

Miðbærinn í Reykjavíkurborg

•

Downtown in Reykjavik City

úr / from

LJÓÐ NÁMU VÖLD / POEM MINE POWER (1990)

Nokkrar verklegar æfingar í atburðaskáldskap

•

A Few Practical Exercises in Event Poetry

Húsið mitt

•

My House

úr / from

LJÓÐLÍNUDANS / POEM LINE DANCE (1993)

Beckett á Closerie des Lilas

•

Beckett at the Closerie des Lilas

Krossviður

•

Plywood

úr / from

LJÓÐLÍNUSKIP / POEM LINE SHIP (1995)

Akasíutré

•

The Acacia Tree

Miklatún

•

Miklatún Park

úr / from

LJÓÐTÍMASKYN / POEM TIME SENSE (1999)

Leit

•

Search

Hið svarta land

•

The Black Land

úr / from

LJÓÐTÍMALEIT / POEM TIME SEARCH (2001)

Lærdómar

•

Knowledge

Ljósaskipti

•

Twilight

Stjörnuform í grasi

•

Star in the Grass

úr / from

LJÓÐTÍMAVAGN / POEM TIME WAGON (2003)

Ljóðlistin

•

The Art of Poetry

Hótelsalur

•

Hotel Lounge

Rúður

•

Windows

Ljósmynd af látnu barni

•

Photograph of a Dead Child

Sitjum áfram

•

Keep on Sitting Here

Hroki

•

Arrogance

úr / from

LJÓÐORKUSVIÐ / POEM ENERGY FIELD (2006)

Miðnætti

•

Midnight

Í þakskegginu

•

In the Eaves

Festingin

•

The Firmament

Ekkert

•

Nothing

Myrkrið

•

The Dark

Eilífi morgunn

•

Eternal Morning

Brotasýn

•

Fragmented View

Andartak

•

Each Breath

Ljósið

•

Light

Skugginn

•

The Shadow

Frelsið er spurn

•

Freedom is a Question

Vængjað ljón

•

Winged Lion

Stofn

•

Bole

Óður

•

Ode

Gamla höfnin

•

The Old Harbour

úr / from

LJÓÐORKUÞÖRF / POEM ENERGY NEED (2009)

Ljóðorkuþörf

•

Poem-energy-need

Við fljót og strönd

•

By River and Ocean

úr / from

LJÓÐORKULIND / POEM ENERGY SOURCE (2012)

Tilkynning frá heimsþingi demantanna

•

Announcement from the International Assembly of Diamonds

Biographical Notes

Bibliography

INTRODUCTION

Jón Yngvi Jóhannsson: Were you constantly composing when you were a child, Sigurður?

Sigurður Pálsson: No, I didn’t compose a thing. On the other hand, I was always writing. [1]

The above is taken from a public interview with Sigurður Pálsson. In his typically humble fashion, but spiced with a dash of humour, Pálsson tells his audience that as a child he had thoughts of becoming a goldsmith, a painter and a writer – clearly distinguishing the verb að skrifa [to write] from að yrkja [to compose], the latter of which is only used for composing poetry. As it turned out, he opted for the last, becoming a writer in the broadest sense of the word, winning numerous nominations and awards for poems, his prose works, his plays and his translations, both in Iceland and in France. However, he is not very well known in the English-speaking world. This book hopes to go some way towards redressing that imbalance and thereby give much greater access to his poetry than has hitherto been possible. That is its primary aim.

Hopefully, the idea that any poetry worth the name requires no contextualization died out with New Criticism, that brand of literary “analysis” that notoriously ignored time, place and circumstance in an attempt to place literary studies on a more scientific basis. The truth is that while good literature, and especially good poetry, tends to rise above its immediate cultural context and (translators dare to hope) above its source language, some basic explanation can help accelerate the process. Aside from my glancing treatment of the poem ‘Plywood’, a little later on in this introduction, there is no attempt here to explicate the poems themselves, or indeed even to justify why I chose one English word or phrase over another – that is left entirely to the reader. However, I feel that Pálsson’s poems do require some kind of contextualization, regarding both the milieu out of which they emerged and, just as importantly, their overall structure as perceived by the poet in the process of writing.

Arc Publications recently brought out Bloodhoof, a single volume of poems by the Icelandic writer Gerður Kristný Guðjónsdóttir, a narrative sequence inspired by the Poetic Edda. Both the volume itself and the English translation are considerable achievements, and not least because Gerður Kristný is not only a poet but also the author of a number of best-selling novels for young readers, a writer of short stories and novels for adults and, most recently, an adapter of her own work to the musical stage. I expect she would also describe herself as a writer with similar humility. Justifiably proud of (and still influenced by) ancient traditions, Icelanders regard themselves not only inheritors of the land of the sagas and of Eddic poetry, but also as a highly technologically advanced and ultra modern society, in which book and computer literacy are amongst the highest in the world. It still surprises me that the best sales’ period for books is Christmas. This is because Icelanders have a long tradition of buying each other books as Christmas gifts. Icelanders are avid readers, both through those long, dark winter nights and those endless summer days. As representatives of the tourist industry never tire of reminding us, Iceland is a country of striking contrasts. Geologically speaking, it is a relatively new land mass, having been pushed up out of the sea during the Miocene Period some twenty million years ago. As a direct result of its comparatively late appearance, very little fauna evolved on the island aside from birds. Indeed, its only indigenous land mammal is the arctic fox, which is believed to have walked to it across the frozen wastes of the north at the end of the last Ice Age. All other mammals – mice, rats, cats, dogs and livestock, even reindeer – were introduced by man. Its range of flora is similarly limited, though more varied than one might imagine. For most of its history, what is now called Iceland remained untouched by anything but the elements. Then, in the ninth century AD, and for reasons that no one has successfully explained, the first wave of settlers began to arrive – and everything changed.

Having made their way in boats (principally from Norway), the first “Icelanders” faced no native population to negotiate with, overcome or displace. The only residents on the vast island were a scattering of Irish monks, known in Icelandic as papar, who lived here as hermits and therefore in isolation even from one another. Their number can only be guessed at. But whatever presence they may have had, it appears not to have had any measurable impact on later Icelandic culture. Like the Polynesians who first settled New Zealand, the Icelanders had that rare opportunity to form a new nation with its own natural boundaries. Indeed, they were in many ways more fortunate than their Maori counterparts because when their country was later colonized by a succession of foreign powers, their new masters were mostly content to rule and extract taxes from a distance and leave the natives very much to their own devices. In the few centuries after the settlement (874 AD), Icelanders enjoyed intermittent freedom from the machinations of various Norwegian kings and established an independent democracy. But it was short-lived. By the thirteenth century, that political independence was lost and it took them almost a millennium to reclaim it.

However, although much of the subject matter of ancient Norse poetry was common to all the people who spoke its variant dialects, only the Icelanders managed to develop a new form of literature, the sagas, and only the Icelanders managed to preserve a literary tradition that reached back across the centuries. Like so many other early democracies (Athens, Sparta, Republican Rome), Iceland was governed by chieftains and readily availed itself of slaves, many of whom were Celts, both from Ireland and what are now called the British Isles. Indeed, it has often been suggested that the substantial literary achievements of the Icelanders derived from the Celtic elements of their culture. Certainly, the fact that no comparable store of literary treasures can be found among the other Nordic nations during the early medieval period, has led to the conjecture that they inherited more from the Celts than is usually acknowledged. Whatever the explanation for the appearance of the Icelandic sagas, they have served both to inspire later generations of poets and writers and, miraculously, to help preserve the Icelandic tongue to the extent that all Icelanders can still negotiate their way through those sagas successfully without any special knowledge or tuition. I use the word “miraculously” advisedly because Icelandic has survived through hundreds of years of Danish rule and nearly a century of English.

This is not intended as a potted history of Iceland or of the hardships Icelanders have had to endure over the twelve centuries that have passed since the first settlers arrived there. Rather, it is an attempt to provide a context for this particular writer. Located at what Icelanders sometimes call á hjara veraldar