Halldor Laxness Matters: Posting No. 1

Halldor Laxness

Halldor Laxness, Nobel prize winning author of Independent People (1946).

I've been reading Laxness' Independent People for the past few weeks and I must say the language in this book is startling.  This post is the first of a few that will highlight why I think he is a well-deserved Nobel laureate, and why his writing still matters, at least to me anyway.


Excerpts from INDEPENDENT PEOPLE--

[Conversation between little Nonni and his mother.]
"When anyone grows very old he becomes like a little baby again."
"And dies?" asked the boy.

Mother horse and son

It was a string in his breast that snapped, one of those delicate childhood strings which break before one has had time to realize that they are capable of sounding; and these strings sound no more; henceforth they are only a memory of incredible days."

[the relationship between little Nonni and his father's prize ram]
This was a most unpleasant prospect, for no animal scared him half as much as the Reverend Gudmundur.  This ram, which hated the sight of human beings, had a nasty trick of chasing the boy all the way into his dreams and through his dreams, and the boy would run as hard as he could, from one dream into another, fleeing in terror from this monster, which in spite of his father's faith in its pedigree was as preternatural in its hideousness as the Christmas cake and the meat soup in their splendour.  Thus there may also be an element of danger in a person's dreams.




   But as morning came nearer, his father's snores gradually lost their resonance, the resounding chest-notes dissolved on a slowly ascending scale, moved by degrees into the throat, from the throat into the nose and mouth, on to the lips with a whistle, sometimes only with a restless puff--the destination was near, the horses prancing with the joy of traversing scatheless the sounding wastes of infinity.  The homeland lay spread before the eyes.
   The breathing of the others lacked altogether the range and the magnificence of his father's snores, and was, moreover, heedless of time.

[Nonni and his mother]
There must have been something on his conscience to make him so attentive to her tonight: he had held her hand, a thing he had never been seen to do before, and then he had rushed off somewhere in the middle of the night, as if he were afraid.
   Few things are so inconstant, so unstable, as a loving heart, and yet it is the only place in the world where one can find sympathy.  Sleep is stronger than the noblest instinct of a loving heart.  In the middle of his mother's agony the night began to grow dim.  ...the drowsiness of midnight, so sweet, so heavy, began again to flow through his limbs; and little by little, like a hundred grains of sand, his consciousness filtered down into the abyss of his sleep-world until oblivion had once more filled it full.




Laxness, Halldor.  Independent People: An Epic,  New York: Vintage International, 1997.