Jónas Þorbjarnarson

On the Poetry Books of Jónas Þorbjarnarson

Jónas Þorbjarnarson (1960) was born in Akureyri, where he grew up. He finished his grade 6 exams in classical guitar playing from Nýi Tónlistarskólinn (The New Music School) in 1982, a BS-degree in physical therapy from the University of Iceland in 1985 and studied philosophy at the University of Iceland 1988 – 1990. He has worked as a national park ranger, journalist, waiter and a physical therapist and has since 1989 received a writer’s salary from the Icelandic government, devoting himself almost exclusively to writing. Jónas won his first award in a large poetry contest organized by the Icelandic newspaper Morgunblaðið, to mark its anniversary in 1988; he also won first place in a competition for a national holiday poem to celebrate the year 2000. Poems by him have been translated into English and Chinese, and a French translation is expected soon. In addition, the writer of this article has translated and published poems by Jónas in Gaelic.

Jónas is the perfect opposite of wordy authors who chatter endlessly, shooting up fireworks of complicated imagery. He is a poet of the countryside, quietness and melancholy, of a play with simple words, of clarity and magic. In some ways he fits into the same category as Gyrðir Elíasson, and like him he has rediscovered the experience of the countryside in Icelandic poetry. His subject matter is man in the city and man in the countryside, the individual against nature, an individual alienated from nature. The city and the country form the basic contrast of his book, Vasadiskó (Walkman) from 1999, Jónas’s second latest book; he has published six books altogether when this is written. He is hardly canonical in Icelandic poetry but ought to be well known, for example he has been nominated for the Cultural Prize of the Icelandic newspaper DV (in 1993 for the book Andartak á jörðu (A Moment on Earth)). Simplicity – in the positive sense of the word – is his hallmark. This simplicity, however, is not one-sided, all is not what it seems:

Eins og að breytast í tré

Enn eitt haust
leggst að síðum mér
sveipar mig kulhjúpi

sem ég finn þó vart fyrir
get vel hreyft mig
fer út að ganga
öll kvöld eins og í fyrra

en samt:
þetta hristir enginn af sér
næsta haust verð ég ögn stirðari -
vafinn enn einum árhring

[Like Changing into a Tree

Another autumn
falls by my sides
covers me in a cloak of chill

yet I can hardly feel it
well capable of moving around
I go out for a walk
every night like last year

but still:
no one can shake this off
next autumn I will be a tiny bit stiffer -
encircled in one more annual ring]

(Vasadiskó, 1999)

Who is speaking in the poem? Whose melancholy is being expressed? In this poem, which at first sight seems simple, there are three voices on closer inspection. A proximate first person voice speaks from the first line to the line “next autumn I will be a tiny bit stiffer –”. An impersonal or distant first person voice then takes over in the last line, “wrapped in one more annual ring"; it is now no longer the same “I” talking as before, it is the “I” of a tree. Human beings do not get encircled in annual rings. And the tree has obviously not been speaking the whole time, because the first “I” “goes out for a walk/every night like last year”, which cannot apply to a tree. The personal, lyrical “I” which has been speaking until the last line changes into a tree. It is this metamorphosis that the third voice of the poem is speaking about, the voice of the title: “Like Changing Into a Tree”. The title is a meditation on the movement of the poem from an actual self to one, which identifies with nature and will therefore not be equalled to the author’s biographical “I”. The author’s biography would therefore not be of any help to us as we read the poem, since the voice changes indicate that the poem is fictional. In fact it describes a metamorphosis, the complete correspondence of man to the melancholy of nature. The melancholy of a man in autumn when he is faced with the onslaught of time is the same that a tree feels, as the annual rings keep collecting around it.

Let’s look at another poem from Jónas’s second latest book.

Með staf

Bankar örmagna
á síðustu dyrnar: 
er einhver þarna? 
Það er enginn
samt er opnað

[With a Cane

Knocking exhausted
on the last door:
is anyone there?
There is no one
yet it opens]

(Vasadiskó, bls. 25)

This is an open and uncanny text. Who has a cane? Who is knocking exhausted on the last door of what doors; why does it open if no one is there and who is speaking in the poem? “With a Cane” (“Með staf”) may not be the most typical poem in Vasadiskó; it comes before a few poems about travelling (“Fyrirferð” (“Bulk”), “Þorp í Gvatemala” (“Village in Guatemala”), “Spilabox” (“Music Box”)) at the end of the second part of the collection. Such travel poems have been a stable of Jónas’s poetry books. Perhaps there is a religious thread in the poem – surely death is not far away, and it remains one of Jónas’s main themes.

Jónas’s poems are generally short, if a bit longer than “With a Cane”, and revolve around one or more sharp images, sometimes contrasting ones, and often there is some kind of a final twist, sometimes with a morale attached at the end. The subject matter is nature that is however defined by urban areas, by modernity, like in the poem “Mörk” (“Borderlands”), where the trees in the Elliðaár Valley “keep artificiality at bay:/roads, cars, houses” (9). In fact Elliðaár Valley also appears in other poems by Jónas.

There are many images of childhood and the country, for instance of sheep who “stock up on scenery for the winter” as in the poem “Ljós” (“Light”), a poem which perhaps contains one of the fundamental binary opposites in Jónas’s works: memory and the present, the annual rings which encircle the poetic voice against stocked-up scenery, if one can say so, city and the passing present against childhood and the countryside.

Nonetheless, the poetic I is usually predominant in Jónas’s poems, a hiker, loner, nature lover – it is helpful to know that Jónas is from the north country, as the landscape up north appears frequently in his poems. His first book, Í jaðri bæjarins (At the Edge of Town), came out in 1989, its title setting the tone for Jónas’s works as a whole. The poetic I stands humble against a world in which it searches for a meaning:

Ég styðst við merkingu

held í þráðinn af því ég veit
í hinn endann
heldur enginn

held mig í teygjanlegri grennd
við þéttan vef
merkingar
þar sem syndirnar eru syndir
ekki
fyrirgefnar

spinn úr kulda og hita
sannindi
sem ég trúi að vild

[I Lean on Meaning

holding the thread because I know
no one is holding
the other end

stay in flexible proximity
to a tight web
of meaning
where sins are sins
not
forgiven

spin from cold and heat
truth
that I believe at will]

(Í jaðri bæjarins, p. 29)

Í jaðri bæjarins was considered unusually strong as a first poetry book and it does not look like a beginner’s work. Jónas’s second book, Andartak á jörðu, came out in 1992 and with this book he was said to have placed himself in the premier league of Icelandic poets. In fact, Jónas improves with every new book, becomes increasingly polished, unpretentious, concise, simple. Andartak á jörðu begins with the poem “Yndi” (“Pleasure”):

Ég er lagður af stað
niður þurran farveg árinnar
ég er lækur

hef farið skammt
það er gaman að seytla um hrjóstrin
og hjala við vorið

gera steinunum hverft við
steinum sem fyrir mér verða
eflaust að hugsa
um ána sem var

landið er stórt
og ræður för en ég uni mér
við að seytla áfram
og yndið eykur mér fjör
ég verð – að skoppa

nei ósköp glápir sólin
á skallan á jöklinum þarna
sem horfir
á eftir mér skoppa

[I Have Set Off
down the dry bed of the river
I am a creek

I have not gone far
it is fun to trickle around the coarse rocks
and burble with springtime

cause the stones to jump
the stones I run into
no doubt thinking
of the river that was

the land is big
and sets the course but I am happy
to trickle on
and the pleasure invigorates me
I must – bounce

But goodness how the sun stares
at the bald head of the glacier there
who watches
as I bounce away.]

(Andartak á jörðu, p. 7)

We see that also here the poetic voice is a part of nature, this time a creek. The tone is light-hearted and humorous – Jónas’s images of nature are never uptight.

Á bersvæði (In the Open) came out in 1994, his first book to feature poems about travels in Mexico. The following travel poem also contains the themes of present and past, memory and nostalgia that are Jónas’s hallmarks as a poet.

Árin líða í Guadalajara

Og svo var það Jaime
sem rak litla hótelið Posada de la Plata
og kærastan hans ensk og falleg:
Sara, miklu yngri
og var þarna við spænskunám
já mjög glæsileg hún Sara

en skyldu þau vera saman enn
hann tekinn að reskjast
en hún í mesta lagi þrjátíu og fimm;
og kannski enn í Posada de la Plata
sem hlýtur að vera alltaf jafn vinsælt
hvað sem öðru líður og gaman

Í eldhúsinu á kvöldin þegar
allra þjóða kvikindi eru að
ræða málin yfir pottum og
pönnum; svo mikið er víst að ég
ætla að dvelja þar einhverntíma aftur –
einhverntíma aftur í lífinu

já þótt seint verði
og þá auðvitað harla ólíklegt
ég hitti þau þar fyrir enn
Jaime og Söru
að minnsta kosti ekki bæði –
eins og tíminn stæði kyrr; og ástin

en kannski Jaime greyið einan
og það væri jú nógu gaman
fyndist mér og næstum eins og
ekkert hefði breyst

[The Years Go By in Guadalajara

And then it was Jaime
who ran the little hotel in Posada de la Plata
and his girlfriend English and beautiful:
Sara, much younger
and she was there studying Spanish
oh yes, very pretty Sara was

but I wonder it they are together still
he was getting old
but she thirty-five at most
and maybe still in Posada de la Plata
which must be as popular as ever
regardless of everything and good times

In the kitchen in the evenings when
people from all over the world
discuss things over pots and
pans; this much is certain that I
am going to stay there sometime again–
sometime again in life

yes even though it will be late
and then of course fairly unlikely
I will find them there still
Jaime and Sara
at least not both of them –
like time had stood still; and love

but maybe poor Jaime alone
well that would sure be fun enough
I would think and almost as if
nothing had changed]

(Á bersvæði, p. 30-31)

Jónas’s next book was called Villiland (Wild Land) and came out in 1996. Nothing newsworthy has taken place in between Jónas’s books, no jumps, or things like that. Villiland is a natural progression from his previous books, but tighter in style. In the poem “Átt” (“Direction”) we see a frequent theme of Jónas’s , the poetic voice as a painter of nature.

Hvít
en dofnandi pensilför
yfir fjarlægu landslagi:

tvær álftir
hófu sig til flugs

gott málverk eða vont –
það er ekki eftir mig
ég styggði ekki einu sinni álftirnar

[White
but fading brushstrokes
over distant landscape:

two swans
took flight
a good painting or a bad one–
it is not by me
I didn’t even startle the swans]

(Villiland, p. 22)

Jónas’s latest book, Hliðargötur (Side Streets),  is probably his most “consistently fine book of poetry” as one critic described it. There is less solitude in it and the tone is a bit more philosophical:

Umbrot

Við erum síkvik jörð

alla tíð í mótun
ný kort villandi jafnharðan
nýjar hræringar

ég var einhver en svo hitti ég þig…

fólk breytir hvert öðru
veldur jafnvel gosi hvert í öðru

því undirniðri kynda okkur, ráða okkur
allslags kvikutengsl

og ástarfjall rís –

lyftir landslagi ævinnar
við erum síkvik jörð

[Eruptions

We are an ever-shifting ground

forever being formed
new maps misleading already
fresh quakes

I was someone but then I met you…

people change each other
even set off an eruption in each other

because deep down we are heated by, controlled by
all sorts of magmatic connections

and a love mountain rises –

elevates the landscape of one’s life
we are an ever-shifting ground]
 
(Hliðargötur, p. 7)

But this is still the same poet: travel poems, nature images infected with the reality of the city (the book contains a fine group of poems about Grímsnes), childhood, the countryside. As before, the deceptively effortless simplicity is what makes Jónas Þorbjarnarson one of the most noteworthy poets of today.

© Hermann Stefánsson, 2002.

Translated by Vera Júlíusdóttir.

Articles

Neijmann, Daisy L., ed. A History of Icelandic Literature 
University of Nebraska Press, 2007, pp. 498, 500

On individual works

Hliðargötur

Isaacson, Lanae Hjortsvang: "Hliðargötur" (review)
World literature today 2002, vol. 76, pp. 208

2002 - Reykjavík City Artists' Salary

2000 - First prize in the Þjóðhátíðarnefnd Poetry Competition

1988 - First prize in the Morgunblaðið Poetry Competition

Nominations

1993 - The DV Cultural Prize for Literature: Andartak á jörðu