Poets are a peculiar bunch and there are not many among them who are willing not only to welcome occasional visitors but also to sit with them, listening patiently to their incessant chattering and posing without forgetting to smile through the ordeal of their photo taking. Reykjavík’s very own Tómas Guðmundsson is one of those rare specimens.
Tómas Guðmundsson was born in Efri-Brú in Grímsnes in 1901. Still in his youth, he moved to Iceland’s capital, where he graduated and got acquainted with several Icelandic authors of his generation. Although he traveled around a lot in the course of his life, Tómas Guðmundsson mostly resided in Reykjavík, where he died in 1983. Some of his best known works are Við sundin blá (1924), Fagra veröld (1933) and Stjörnor vorsins (1940). For his vivid and nostalgic depiction of Iceland’s capital, Tómas Guðmundsson is also known as Reykjavíkurskáldið (“the poet of Reykjavík”). In recent times a bronze statue by Halla Gunnarsdóttir was placed in the poet’s honor in the park surrounding the Tjörnin. The effigy represents the poet in a serene and pensive stance, sitting on a bench, like lost in contemplation. The statue is in fact so lifelike that it’s easy to mistake it for an actual person (it was even involved a while back in a curious incident with the police). If you sit on the same bench with him during one of these melancholic overcast afternoons, bronze Tómas will not turn you down. You could read poetry and then observe in silence ripples forming in the pond’s surface together.
Although his city of adoption remembers him fondly and in Iceland there is even an established literary prize bearing his name, Reykjavík’s poet’s works are not receiving the best of treatments: available editions of his poetry are for the most part outdated. Even if translations of Tómas Guðmundsson’s works do exist (German and Scadinavian languages, mainly), getting hold of any of them is indeed quite hard, thus the poet is almost unknown to foreign audiences. Translating poetry is not the easiest task and in many cases translations are so mediocre that perhaps it would be better to leave the originals alone. It must be said though that contemporary Icelandic poets are a specially neglected category. Icelandic poetry’s territory extends far beyond epic tales but the world has yet to discover its richness and beauty. As memory is not only made of posthumous effigies but also of words the artist leaves behind, we hope Tómas Guðmundsson will get in the days to come a better literary treatment and will not be left all alone and alien to everybody on the bench of the park, day after day and night after night. If you happen to be in Reykjavík, go pay him a visit.
The problem with contemporary Icelandic poetry is common to all the Icelandic literature in Spain and in the Mediterranean countries: few readers, few translators ( in Spain,five or six )working in the translation of all the Icelandic literature, from Sagas and Eddas to Gudbergur Bergsson, Thor Vilhjalmsson, Sjon , Einar Mar Gudmundson,Jon Kalman Stefansson,Audur Ava Olafsdottir….and the authors of thrillers ( Indridason,Sigurdardottir,Thorarinsson,…),and the lack of interest from the nordic cultures. I only know four books of Icelandic poetry in Spanish translation : an anthology of Icelandic poetry from the Atomic poets to Gyrdir Eliasson ,two anthologies ( Johann Hjalmarsson, Sigurdur Palsson ), and a little book by Ingibjorg Haraldsdottir. Better dont talk about other genres, like the theatre of the essay….You said :”Translating poetry is not the easiest task and in many cases translations are so mediocre that perhaps it would be better to leave the originals alone”. I disagree with you. First of all, what is exactly a ” mediocre translation “? Even a bad translation is better than the silence , to be a fan of Icelandic literature and have to wait for years to find new books to read or to read in another idioms with a best bibliography in the subject, in french ,p.e. .
A translation isn’t something that will expire in a few days like a carton of milk. You translate it now and the same translation will be usable/acceptable for the years to come. In Italy we still rely heavily on translations from the XIX century of ancient greek epic poems, just to make an example. The fact there are only a handful of translators for Icelandic is also absurd, as there isn’t shortage of foreign students that come to Iceland to learn Icelandic and hope to work as translators in the future. There are not hundreds of them, but enough to grant better treatment to Icelandic poetry. The fact is, like you say, there are not enough (immediate?) readers. But this is an investment for the years to come. As a publisher, you don’t really expect to make money out of poetry these days (and I am not talking about Icelandic poetry, but of poetry in general), do you? Today distribution is easier than in the past, you don’t even have to print actual copies to reach your audience. Printing costs were one of the hugest factors that in the past determined if a book was eligible for publishing or not.
As for bad vs good translation, I do think that silence is better than misplaced word, and one of our problems these days is that we feel forced to produce words all the time, without enough ponderation. Poets choose words very carefully, sometimes there is a huge research involved for a single line of text. A lot of translators just give a too literal interpretation, which not only ruins the flow of the text, but in many cases also changes the subtle meaning of a poem. Prose and poetry require different skills and as a translator you cannot apply the same techniques you use for prose in poetry. This is just my opinion, of course, and I see your point when you affirm you disagree.