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World Light (Vintage International) - Softcover

Laxness, Halldor

 
9780375727573: World Light (Vintage International)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0375727574 ISBN 13: 9780375727573
Verlag: Vintage, 2002

Inhaltsangabe

A magnificently humane novel from the acclaimed Icelandic Nobel Prize winner: as an unloved foster child on a farm in rural Iceland, Olaf Karason has only one consolation, the belief that one day he will be a great poet.

The indifference and contempt of most of the people around him only reinforces his sense of destiny, for in Iceland poets are as likely to be scorned as they are to be revered. Over the ensuing years, Olaf comes to lead the paradigmatic poet’s life of poverty, loneliness, ruinous love affairs and sexual scandal. But he will never attain anything like greatness.

As imagined by Nobel Prize winner Halldor Laxness in this extraordinary novel, what might be cruel farce achieves pathos and genuine exaltation. For as Olaf’s ambition drives him onward—and into the orbits of an unstable spiritualist, a shady entrepreneur, and several susceptible women—World Light demonstrates how the creative spirit can survive in even the most crushing environment and even the most unpromising human vessel.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Halladór Laxness was born near Reykjavík, Iceland, in 1902. His first novel was published when he wsa seventeen. The undisputed master of contemporary Icelandic fiction, and one of the outstanding novelists of the century, he has written more than sixty books, including novels, short stories, essays, poems, plays, and memoirs. In 1955 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. He died in 1998.

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As an unloved foster child on a farm in rural Iceland, Olaf Karason has only one consolation: the belief that one day he will be a great poet. The indifference and contempt of most of the people around him only reinforces his sense of destiny, for in Iceland poets are as likely to be scorned as they are to be revered. Over the ensuing years, Olaf comes to lead the paradigmatic poet's life of poverty, loneliness, ruinous love affairs and sexual scandal. But he will never attain anything like greatness.
As imagined by Nobel Prize winner Halldor Laxness in this magnificently humane novel, what might be cruel farce achieves pathos and genuine exaltation. For as Olaf's ambition drives him onward-and into the orbits of an unstable spiritualist, a shady entrepreneur, and several susceptible women-World Light demonstrates how the creative spirit can survive in even the most crushing environment and even the most unpromising human vessel.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Book One

The Revelation

of the Deity

He was standing on the foreshore below the farm with the oyster catchers and purple sandpipers, watching the waves soughing in and out. He was probably shirking. He was a foster child, and therefore the life in his heart was a separate life, a different blood, without relationship to the others. He was not part of anything, he was on the outside, and there was often an emptiness around him. And long ago he had begun to yearn for some indefinable solace. This narrow bay with its small blue shells and the waves gently rippling in over the sand, with the cliffs on one side and a green headland on the other--this was his friend. It was called Ljósavík.

Did he have no one, then? Was no one kind to him except this little bay? No, no one was kind to him. But on the other hand, no one was downright unkind to him, not so that he had to fear for his life. That did not come until later. When he was teased, the teasing was mostly in fun; the difficulty was in knowing how to take it. When he was thrashed, the thrashing arose from necessity; it was Justice. But there were many things which did not concern him, thank goodness. For instance the elder brother, Jónas, who owned several sheep and a share in a fishing boat, once threw a basin of water over his mother, Kamarilla, as she was going down the stairs one evening. That was nothing to be concerned about. But when the younger brother, Júst, who was also a sheep-farmer and boat-owner, amused himself by picking him up by the ears because it was such fun finding out how much pain the dear little chap could stand, that did concern him, unfortunately.

In springtime the brothers dug holes through the overhanging banks of the river farther up the valley and guddled for trout; then they threw the living fish at the boy toddling unsuspectingly nearby and shouted, "It bites!" That made him frightened, and the brothers found that great fun. In the evening they put one of these fiendish trout in an old wooden bucket right beside his bed. He thought the devil himself was in that pail. That night when he tried to sneak downstairs in mortal terror to take refuge with his foster mother, they cried, "The trout will jump out of the pail and bite you!"

"They're just making it up," said the housekeeper, Karítas, the mother of the farm girl, Kristjána.

Then the boy did not know whom to believe. You see, he could not be sure about anything these two women told him. They had very protruding eyes. Once he forgot himself when he had been sent to fetch a pony; he had been thinking about God and watching two birds paddling around on the foreshore. Needless to say he was thrashed for shirking. But while his foster mother was bringing out the birch from under her pillow, the widow Karítas felt constrained to say, "Serves him right, the lazy little so-and-so!" And young Kristjána added, "Yes, he's always shirking!"

But when he was thrashed he was never smacked very hard, only just a little because God's justice is inescapable: God punishes all those who shirk. When the thrashing was over, he pulled up his trousers and wiped away his tears and sniffed. His foster mother went downstairs to see to the evening meal. Then the widow Karítas came over and patted his cheek and said, "Pooh, God doesn't care at all, you poor wretch--as if He had time to bother about that!" Young Kristjána groped inside her bodice and brought out a warm piece of half-melted brown-sugar candy she had pilfered from the larder that morning: "Crunch it up quickly and swallow it down at once, and I'll kill you if you tell anyone!" That was how kind and good and affectionate they could be because they had seen him being thrashed; and when they were kind to him, he did not think their eyes protruded much after all. They were never very unkind to him when there was no one else present.

Magnína, the daughter of the house, taught him to read from a tattered old spelling book they had there. She loomed over him like a mound and pointed at the letters with a knitting needle. She cuffed him on the ear if he got the same letter wrong thrice, but never hard and never in anger, almost absentmindedly, and it did not worry him. She was stout and solid and blue in the face, and the dog sneezed whenever he sniffed at her. She wore two pairs of enormously thick stockings because her feet were always cold; the outer stockings were always hanging down and the inner stockings were sometimes hanging down, too. She never teased him for fun and never told lies about him to get him into trouble; she never picked on him when she was in a bad temper, and she never wished him down into the bad place. But she never came to his rescue when he was being teased or when he was being beaten without just cause; she never took his side when lies were told about him, and she was never cheerful.

On the other hand there were times when she would do him a kindness quite without thinking. There was boiled salt fish for the midday meal, and in the evening there was hash and pickled tripe with pieces of sheep's lung thrown in; sometimes the evening meal was only pickled tripe and milk. But the days were very long and the sea and the sky were gray and dull, and it was snowing on the mountain on the other side of the fjord, and she would be alone in the loft with the boy, and it seemed as if life would never end and never get any better. Then she would slip down to the larder and find herself a slice of rolled tripe or a piece of pickled brisket or some pickled lamb fries. The boy slavered on to the spelling book and she cuffed him on the ear and told him to stop spitting on the book. Then she would give him a piece of the brisket, right out of the blue, without any show of affection, as if nothing could be more natural. And his mouth and his throat and his whole body would feel wonderful for a while.

When he was eight years old he had read the book of Icelandic Folktales, and Bishop Peter's Short Stories, and St. Luke's Gospel, which made him cry because Jesus was so alone in the world. On the other hand he could never get used to thinking of Vídalín's Book of Sermons* as a book at all. He had a great longing to read more but there were no other books there except one, The Felsenburg Stories,* which Magnína had inherited from her father. No one else was allowed to read that book; it was a secret book. He had a great longing to read The Felsenburg Stories and all the books in the world--except the Book of Sermons.

"If you mention The Felsenburg Stories once again, I'll thrash you!" said Magnína.

Early on, he had come to suspect that in books in general, but especially in The Felsenburg Stories, was to be found that indefinable solace he yearned for but could not name. Magnína wrote out the alphabet for him, but only once; she had no time for more because it took her so long to form each letter. In any case there was no paper, and even when there was, no one was allowed to waste it. He would furtively scratch letters with a stick on bare patches of earth or in the snow, but he was forbidden to do that and was told he was writing himself to the devil. So he had to write on his soul.

Kamarilla, the housewife, was the implacable enemy of literature. When it became apparent that the boy had an unnatural desire to pore over letters, she told him the cautionary story of G. Grímsson of Grunnavík.* He did not call himself "Gudmundur Grímsson" as other people would; he used only an initial and added a place-name, to imitate the gentry. It was a dreadful story. G. Grímsson of Grunnavík was a...

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Verlag
Vintage
Erscheinungsdatum
2002
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0375727574
ISBN 13 
9780375727573
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
624
Kontakt zum Hersteller
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Verantwortliche Person
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