World Light

Rating:
Summary: Sheer poetry form Iceland
Review: I read this book during the dark days of December and it fitted so well. I especially loved the discriptions of the relationships between the hero, Olafur Karasson, and the various women; the refined, exact ways of describing emotions like love, suffering and fear. They bring about an impressive poetic strength. I also learned al lot about the landscape and the history of Iceland, but most of all I found its plea for poetry as the hope for mankind impressive and convincing.
Compliments for the translator as well!
For all those who love to read beautiful language.

Rating:
Summary: Cosmic Fecklessness
Review: Of all the Nobel prizewinners in literature, the one who most elicits an uncomprehending reaction is the late Halldór Laxness, Iceland's greatest writer of the modern era. In my reading, I have always attempted at times to cross the mainstream and see what lies beyond. Iceland is as far from the mainstream as you can get and still be part of Western Culture. What we sometimes forget is that almost a thousand years ago, Iceland was a literary giant; and some of the sagas that came from that island are among the greatest works of literature ever written.

Laxness is therefore the recipient of a great tradition. Sadly, Iceland -- after discovering Greenland and North America and giving them up as a bad lot -- became a colony of Norway, and later of Denmark. The loss of hegemony coupled with the horrendous disasters of a mini ice age and catastrophic volcanic explosions led to a grinding poverty that drained the mind and spirit.

WORLD LIGHT is at one and the same time the greatest Laxness novel I have read and also the most difficult. Its hero, the poet Olaf Karason of Ljosavik, is born into poverty and spends his youth as a foster child in a home utterly lacking in love. After being kicked out, he moves to Svidinskvik, where he becomes a ward of the parish. He writes poems in support of local Danish bigwig, Peter Palsson, whose grandiloquent "Rehabilitation Company" is behind a series of mostly abortive moves to improve the town's economy and morale. The young poet is so feckless that it is difficult to identify with him, but as the story progressed, I began to see his flaws writ large over the entire landscape.

The cigar-chomping Danes go around either claiming "I'm no Icelander, s'help me!" or attempting to prove themselves the most patriotic Icelanders of all. We see Olaf's attempts at finding himself with an incredible array of characters, including Juel Juel Juel of Grim Hairycheek Ltd, Eternity-Dave (who only has three expressions: "Jesus" ... "My Brother!" ... "Heave up!"), a succession of women who share his bed and drive him to distraction, and a supporting cast large and odd enough to populate a Dickens novel.

I did say earlier that I found this Laxness's most difficult novel. It is difficult to know where the author is headed, though at the same time I kept getting drawn into the complex plot with its thick undergrowth of transitory characters. In the end, I saw Olaf's fecklessness being mirrored in the fecklessness of the Danish colonial administration, and the fecklessness of a pre-Independence Iceland that felt lost, and indeed of all human beings cast adrift upon the waters into a cruel world that mocks the life of the spirit and ends all too soon in disorder and early sorrow.

The translator of this edition, Magnus Magnusson, writes a beautiful clear English (that also comes across in his Icelandic saga translations). British readers may remember him as the TV host of "Whose Line Is It Anyway?"

You will not be disappointed with WORLD LIGHT if you just persevere. Poverty of life and spirit never makes for easy reading, but Laxness rewards the reader who stays with him.

Rating:
Summary: Cosmic Fecklessness
Review: Of all the Nobel prizewinners in literature, the one who most elicits an uncomprehending reaction is the late Halldór Laxness, Iceland's greatest writer of the modern era. In my reading, I have always attempted at times to cross the mainstream and see what lies beyond. Iceland is as far from the mainstream as you can get and still be part of Western Culture. What we sometimes forget is that almost a thousand years ago, Iceland was a literary giant; and some of the sagas that came from that island are among the greatest works of literature ever written.

Laxness is therefore the recipient of a great tradition. Sadly, Iceland -- after discovering Greenland and North America and giving them up as a bad lot -- became a colony of Norway, and later of Denmark. The loss of hegemony coupled with the horrendous disasters of a mini ice age and catastrophic volcanic explosions led to a grinding poverty that drained the mind and spirit.

WORLD LIGHT is at one and the same time the greatest Laxness novel I have read and also the most difficult. Its hero, the poet Olaf Karason of Ljosavik, is born into poverty and spends his youth as a foster child in a home utterly lacking in love. After being kicked out, he moves to Svidinskvik, where he becomes a ward of the parish. He writes poems in support of local Danish bigwig, Peter Palsson, whose grandiloquent "Rehabilitation Company" is behind a series of mostly abortive moves to improve the town's economy and morale. The young poet is so feckless that it is difficult to identify with him, but as the story progressed, I began to see his flaws writ large over the entire landscape.

The cigar-chomping Danes go around either claiming "I'm no Icelander, s'help me!" or attempting to prove themselves the most patriotic Icelanders of all. We see Olaf's attempts at finding himself with an incredible array of characters, including Juel Juel Juel of Grim Hairycheek Ltd, Eternity-Dave (who only has three expressions: "Jesus" ... "My Brother!" ... "Heave up!"), a succession of women who share his bed and drive him to distraction, and a supporting cast large and odd enough to populate a Dickens novel.

I did say earlier that I found this Laxness's most difficult novel. It is difficult to know where the author is headed, though at the same time I kept getting drawn into the complex plot with its thick undergrowth of transitory characters. In the end, I saw Olaf's fecklessness being mirrored in the fecklessness of the Danish colonial administration, and the fecklessness of a pre-Independence Iceland that felt lost, and indeed of all human beings cast adrift upon the waters into a cruel world that mocks the life of the spirit and ends all too soon in disorder and early sorrow.

The translator of this edition, Magnus Magnusson, writes a beautiful clear English (that also comes across in his Icelandic saga translations). British readers may remember him as the TV host of "Whose Line Is It Anyway?"

You will not be disappointed with WORLD LIGHT if you just persevere. Poverty of life and spirit never makes for easy reading, but Laxness rewards the reader who stays with him.