TREASURES OF ICELANDIC

Jóhann Hjálmarsson was born in Reykjavik on July 2, 1939. From 1956 to 1959 he studied printing at the Technical College of Reykjavik; and in 1959, and again in 1965, he studied Spanish at the University of Barcelona. From 1967 to 2006, Jóhann worked as critic of both literature and theatre for the newspaper Morgunblaðið. Since 1990, he has also supervised literary broadcastings for the National Radio. Through the years Jóhann has been active in committees of the literary community, including serving on the Nordic Council Minister´s Committee from 1981-1990, acting as its chairman from 1987-1989. Jóhann has written numerous poetry collections and his first book, Aungull í tímann, was published in 1956. His works have been translated into many languages and published in collections throughout the world. He has, in turn, translated poems and collections into Icelandic. Poems in Treasures of Icelandic Verse Two of Jóhann’s poems – Birta (Light) and On Landscape (Um Landslag) – were published in Treasures of Icelandic Verse, an anthology compiled by Árni Sigurjónsson. Translation Sigurður A. Magnússon.

Light

Again light strikes
a bare landscape,
again evening falls,
night arrives
And you stand at the side of the smallest shadow
as before.
You don't feel anxiety,
are as quiet
as the stones, the withered grass:
this that was given you
of earth
of life.

....(rorem photo)

GARCIA LORCA

John Singer Sargent (January 12, 1856 – April 14, 1925) . The passion . . . El Jaleo 1882 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston Oil on canvas 237 x 352 cm (93 3/8 x 138 1/2 in.)


Federic Garcia Lorca born in Fuente Vaqueros, Granada,Spain June 5, 1898 he died near Granada, August 1936 . Murdered by the Nationalist at the start of the Spanish Civil War.Poet and dramatist. was a talented artist and a member of the 'Generation of 1927', a group of writers who advocated avant-gardism in literature. He read law at the University of Granada.García Lorca read law at the University of Granada.He studied music collaborating in the 1920s with Manuel de Falla, he plays piano and guitar. In Madrid he entered the Residence de Estudiantes, a modern college and the intellectual center of the town. Friend of Juan Ramón Jiménez and Pablo Neruda. With Salvador Dali and Louis Bunuel he did different productions. When the two made their notorious Un Chien Andalou (1928), García Lorca was offended: he thought that the film was about him. García Lorca became known even 'Libro De Poemas' (1921), a collection of fablelike poems. In 1923 García Lorca earned a degree in law, but the turning point in his literary career was folk music festival Fiesta de Cante Jondo in 1922, where he found inspiration for his work from the traditions of folk and gypsy music. In 1927 García Lorca gained fame with his romantic historical play arina Pineda where the scenery was constructed by Salavador Dali and the distinguished actress Margarita Xirgu played the heroine. By 1928, with the publication of RIMER ROMANCERO GITANO he was the best-known of all Spanish poets, and leading member of the 'Generation of 27', which included Luis Cernuda, Jorge Guillen, Pedro Salinas, Rafael Alberti and others. In 1929-30 García Lorca lived in the city of New York, on the campus of Columbia University. suffered a deep culture shock. His suicidal mood was recorded in posthumously published POETA EN NUEVA YORK(1940, Poet in New York), in which he praised Walt Whitman. , He escapes to Havana to experience the harmony of a more primitive life. After visitCuba García Lorca was back in Spain by 1931, and continued with theatre productions. He became the head the traveling theatrical company, La Barraca, which brought classical plays and other dramas to the provinces. After the death of his friend, a bullfighter, García Lorca wrote ament for the Death of a Bullfighter(1935), which has been regarded by most critics as his greatest poem. . The figure of one man facing death in the bullring, exemplified by his friend Ignacio Sánchez Mejías, expressed the author's tragic sense of death. Mejías himself had written a play and he was well-known in the literary circles. Lorca's The Spanish Civil War began in 1936 and García Lorca was seen by the right-wing forces as an enemy. The author hid from the soldiers but he was soon found, dragged from a friend's house, and shot in Granada on August 19/20 of 1936 without trial by the Nationalists. The circumstances of his death are still shrouded in mystery.


















F.G.L.

Gacela of Unforseen Love

No one understood the perfume
of the dark magnolia of your womb.
Nobody knew that you tormented
a humming bird of love between your teeth.



A thousand Persian little horses fell asleep
in the plaza with moon of your forehead,
while through four nights I embraced
your waist, enemy of the snow.



Between plaster and jasmins, your glance
was a pale branch of seeds.
I sought in my heart to give you
the ivory letters that say "siempre",


"siempre", "siempre" : garden of my agony,
your body elusive always,
that blood of your veins in my mouth,
your mouth already lightless for my death.

RABÉARIVELO

A Surrealist influence in

Cactus,( lines 13-20)

Here
,when the flanks of the city were made as green
as moonbeams glancing through the forests,
when still they cooled the hillsides of Iarive
crouched like bulls after food,
upon these rocks, too steep for goats,
they drew apart to guard their springs.
Lepers in finery of flowers.

Romantcism (France, 19th Cent.) influenc

Pomegranate, (lines 9-13) perhapS Keats??????

Its taste will be sweeter,
because it was pregnant with desire
And with fearful love and scented blossoms -
Pregnant by the love sun.


Three day breaks, Part III,( lines 1-10 (of III parts))

All the stars are melted together
in the crucible of time,
then cooled in the sea
and turned into a many-faceted stone-block.
A dying lapidist, the Night, setting to work with all her heart
and all her grief to see her millscrumbling, crumbling,
like ashes in the wind,
cuts with what living care the prism.


A Reflection on Merina (Ethnic Group) Culture


Two Old Merina Songs, excerpt from Part II (of II parts)

... my cousin, I have scarcely any lovers for my lovers
areno more than seven; the first is the lover that cuts my
nails; the second is the lover who takes the place of the one
withus in the house, when I am away from home; the third
takes her place in an emergency; the fourth is the lover
who
follows me with her eyes when I go away; the fifth is the
lover who comes to meet me when I return; the sixth is
the lover sustains my life like rice; the seventh is the
lover who does not mix with the crowd andeven when she
happens to be amongst them always knows how to
make
herself distinguished.

And you witness of his daily suffering
and of his endless task;
you atch his thunder-riddled
agony until the battlements of the East re-echo
the conches of the sea -
but you pity him no more
and do not even
remember that his sufferings begin
again
each time the sun capsizes.


(from Traduit de la nuit, 1935 )

JEAN-JOSEPH RABÉARIVELO


















Passionate and restless, drifted from on job to another, and suffered from drug addiction and depression. Rabearivelo took his own life at the age of 36; on June 22, 1937 by poisoning himself . Various reasons have been given for his suicide, including the colonial administration's decision to send a group of basket-weavers instead of him to France to represent the colony. One of Africa's most important French-language poets, a prominent figure in the literary revival known as the Mitady ny Very which swept Madagascar in the 1930s. Rabearivelo wrote both in Malagasy and in his own unique version of imperfect French.
Born in Antananarivo (Tananarive), capital of Madagascar. His mother, who married a tailor, was an aristocrat, related to the royalty of the largest Malagasy ethnic group, the Merina people. In 1895 Malagasy armed forces had been defeated by the French, and the new administration led to the pauperization of most of the Merina royalty. .
Rabearivelo was educated by his uncle, ( sent to the Ecole des Freres des Ecoles Chretiennes - Andohalo, and after to the Collrge Saint-Michel in Amparibe. Left schooling at the thirteen continued to read widely the classics western. He was secretary and interpreter of the head of the Canton of Ambatolampy, and then returned to Tananarive. Rabearivelo worked in odd jobs, but ended as a proof-reader at the printing press in Imerina until his death. Razafitrimo, and have five children .A terrible blow for him was the death of his youngest daughter blow for In Un conte de la nuit, a short story, he recounts the family tragedy.
Rabearivelo's mother encouraged him to write at the age of 20 he published his first poems . In 1923 the international revue Anthropos accepted an article of him on the poetry of Madagascar. He contribute to journals in his own country, in the neighboring Mauritius, and in Europe. Rabearivelo's early poems were influenced by French Symbolist poets. In 1930s he lauched his own journal, Capricorne, in 1931 he was accepted into the Academie Malgachethe .Rab*arivelo never got a higher-paying job from the administration which he always hoped.
. In the 1910s several nationally prominent writers had been imprisoned, Malagasy- language writing was restricted, but memories of independence were still fresh under the colonial rule. In his early collections Rabearivelo's recurring theme was exile, the journey away from the native land, referring to the loss of independence. When all text written in French were considered to belong to French literature, Rabearivelo supported bilingual works and proposed that 'Malagasy literature' would recognize French-language texts composed by the Malagasy.
Like Baudelaire Rabearivelo was too much of an aesthetician to join the cadres of militant poets. He created his own world,-strange and mythical-,which was shadowed by visions of suffering and death, teeth marks of colonized civilization. Cosmos was for Rabearivelo full of sad beauty, wandering tribes, and bodies in perpetual mutation. His plays, Imaitsoanala, Fille d'oiseau (1935) and Aux portes de la ville (1936), focused on rituals and folklore and carefully avoided any reference to politically inflammable issues. On the other hand, none of his critical works were published in his lifetime.

I know a child, a prince in God's kingdom
Who would continue the tale:

'Fate too pity on the lepers
And told them to plant their flowers
And guard their springs afar from man's cruelty.'

(from Presque-songes, 1934)

TANEDA AND HÖSAI

Taneda Santöka Free style haiku, Santōka is often ranked along side Ozaki Hösai, a fellow student of Seisensui. They both suffered from the ill effects of their drinking habits and were similar in their reliance on Seisensui and other patrons of the arts for aid and support. The literary tone of their poems, however, differs .
Haiku excerpts from Hiroaki Sato’s translation of Santōka’s Grass and Tree Cairn

I go in still blue mountains
Wakeitte mo wakeitte mo aoi yama

Fluttering drunk leaves
horohoro yöte ki no ha chiru


Westerners like to conquer mountains;

Orientals like to contemplate them.


As for me, I like to taste the mountains.





Taneda Santooka 種田山頭火(1882-1940)a haiku nonconformist who cast aside all the rules including the 5-7-5 syllable structure, is also associated with Matsuyama. Santoka, an ordained Zen priest, after spending most of his life wandering all over the country as a begging monk, chose to settle in Matsuyama only to die 10 months later. The humble cottage where he dwelt -- Isso-an (A Blade of Grass Hermitage) is preserved north of Ehime University.His books and documents are also preserved in Shiki Memorial Museum.



Hōsai (尾崎 放哉) Ozaki Hoosai, Ozaki Hosai 20 January 1885 - 7 April 1926An alcoholic, Ozaki witnessed the birth of the modern free verse haiku movement. His verses are permeated with loneliness, most likely a result of the isolation, poverty and poor health of his final years.


I go in still blue mountains


Wakeitte mo wakeitte mo aoi yama




Fluttering drunk leaves



Horohoro yōte ki no ha chiru Haiku excerpts from Burton Watson’s translation For All My Walking


there
where the fire was
something blooming
yake-ato nani yara saite iru

feel of the needle
when at last
you get the thread through it
yatto ito ga tōtta hari no kanshoku




snow stopped
in the voices of children
the sun shines—

TORQUATO TASSO

Io, ch'altre volte fui nelle amorose
insidie colto,or ben le riconosco,
e le discopro, o giovinetti, a voi.
(from 'Quel labbro che le rose han colorito')

GERUSALEMME DELIVERÁ



.
O heavenly Muse, that not with fading bays Deckest thy brow by the Heliconian spring, But sittest crowned with stars' immortal rays In Heaven, where legions of bright angels sing; Inspire life in my wit, my thoughts upraise, My verse ennoble, and forgive the thing,If fictions light I mix with truth divine, And fill these lines with other praise than thine. (from Jerusalem Delivered)


SORRENTO DA MARE

Torquato play by German dramatist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe sixteenth-century Italian poet, Torquato Tasso. The play was first conceived in Weimar in 1780 but most of it was written during his two years in Italy, beabout the tween 1786 and 1788. From Torquato Tasso (play). For the opera by Donizetti, see Torquato Tasso (opera).