Symbolism
This kind of poetry is inaugurated in Icelandic by Einar Benediktsson around 1890. In the last decade of the 19th century he only wrote a few poems of this kind, traditional national romanticism was more prominent in his work then. Another poet joins him at the turn of the century, and then rapidly more and more came to. The following eleven poets are the objects of this study, generally, their first two books:
Einar Benediktsson (1864-1941),
Sigurjón Friðónsson (1867-1950),.
Sigurður Sigurðsson (1879-1939),
Jóhann Gunnar Sigurðsson (1882-1906).
Hulda (Unnur Benediktsdóttir (188M946),
Jónas Guðlaugsson (1887-1916),
Jóhann Sigurjónsson (1880-1919),
Jakob Jóhannesson Smári (1889-1972),
Stefan Sigurðsson frá Hvítadal (1887-1933),
Davíð Stefánsson frá Fagraskógi (1895-1964),
Tómas Guðmundsson (1901-1983)
In 1895, this new current is also proclaimed in articles. It should be a rebuttal of naturalism, which had been too tied to the low and ordinary. But it should not be in the skies, like the old romanticism tended to be. On the countrary, it should show true pictures of life of Icelandic common people. One should try to grasp the fleeting moment in natural contemporary language.
The
reception of these poems was divided. In fact, only the poets themselves could
see something new in each others poems. Other reviewers are generally positive,
but do not talk of anything new, if they criticize, it is for lack of originality.
Probably they were focussed on choice of material, and thought nature-lyrics
were just a continuation
of Romanticism. Indeed there is a continuation, for example in the use of
words for gold and silver, and other precious things, as well as the frequence
of laudatory terms, Two of our poets however, have much fewer such words,
the first, Einar, and one who came forth a quarter of a century later, Davíð. They may be said to adhere to the ideal put forward by T.
S. Eliot, that poetry should show the objective
correlate of feelings, instead of talking about them. Einar does this by strong
imagery
in describing nature, Davíð by expressing the state of mind of various
persons. And indeed many Symbolists showed a state of mind through descriptions
of nature. The archaic poetic
words were a marked characteristic of Romanticism. Our first two symbolists
have the same frequency of those words as some Romantic poets, but this steadily
decreases during the two decades around the turn of the century, and has
completely disappeared during the first world
war. The first period of Romanticism was also characterized by the creation
of words with strong imagery, This greatly decreased during the last decades
of the 19th century, but some of the the Symbolists adopt this method, and
develop it, among other things to combine opposites, thus denoting something with exactitude in the meeting of
those different things. Our first five poets follow the Romantics in the predominance
of spring, idyl, fellowship and amorous bliss, while with the following five autumn, sorrow of unrequited
love and a longing to depart predominate. Also, god reappears more and more,, whereas in
the 19th century he was on the wane. Also, there is more
use of symbols. So these later poets fit what is often said about symbolism. A likely explanation
seems to be that their forebears, nationally and internationally, had liberated
them from the Romantic tradition and gradually entrenched the Symbolist one.
The main novelties are a great interest in folklore and folkpoetry, formerly only seen in the works of Grímur Thomsen. Also, the symbolists adopt various kinds of metre, known from folk poetry, and sonnets become much more common. This was in line with the Symbolists great admiration for Jónas (who inaugurated/sonnets) and for Steingímur.
The
Symbolists mostly use colors like the Romantics, few, clear colors taken from
Icelandic nature. But others vary and blend the colors, especially Jakob Smári,
who has more than double
the usual 1%, whereas Einar, Sigurður, Jóhann Gunnar
and Stefán have much less than the Romantics. It
is striking how much the Symbolists reuse metaphors, their own and from one
another. But that is through no lack of originality, on the contrary, they
show great astuteness in reworking and varying these metaphors. Sigurjón and
Hulda set themselves apart by having three times more personifications than
other metaphors; phenomena of nature, such as heaven, sun and day become close
human acquaintances. Furthermore, the Symbolists fall into two groups by their
choice of metaphors. Some follow the Romantics in using familiar metaphors.
Hulda, Stefán, Davíð and Tómas use them in particular about abstracts,
and sometimes the metaphors are mixed, or go from one target to another. The
others use metaphors more about nature and go for originality.
But this is mixed; it would be more exact to talk about two poles, than about
two groups. It is striking that the targets often are the same kind of phenomena that the archaic
words refer to. Those
phenomena have been considered particularly poetic.
In spite of individual differences, this clearly is a common poetic method which indeed continued long after our period of 1890-1933. It is obviously a variant of impressionism, as known from prose works, music and painting in the last decades of the 19th century, to seize a moment and coordinate various components in a whole, to express a state of mind, a feeling or an impression.