Poetry
Time and Water
Tíminn og vatnið
Steinn Steinarr · 1948
Synopsis
Twenty-one numbered sections, often in free tercets, open on an image: time is like water, and water is cold and deep like the poet's conscience. The cycle advances by superimposed images rather than by narrative; solitude, doubt and death recur in it, and the words, often with double meanings, leave several readings open. There is a recording of the first section read by the poet.
Context
The cycle, first conceived for a ballet, a project that was abandoned, appeared in 1948 without meeting any critical response; it is the last book published in its author's lifetime, in the year of his marriage. Its reputation then grew among the public and among the writers of the sixties. It owes a debt to English and American modernisms and to the Swedish poets of the forties, while drawing on ancient forms. It has been translated into Danish, into French as early as 1984 by Régis Boyer, and into English by Christopher Burawa and Cynthia Hogue.
Who it is for
A short cycle, to be reread; the meaning does not yield on a first reading, and Régis Boyer's translation gives a French version of it.
Prizes and reception
Ignored by critics when it appeared, it is now regarded as one of the most influential and best-loved Icelandic poems.
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