Haustið 1955 sótti bandaríski rithöfundurinn og Nóbelsverðlaunahafinn William Faulkner Íslendinga heim. Kalda stríðið var í algleymingi og íslenska þjóðin klofin í afstöðu sinni til herstöðvarinnar á Keflavíkurflugvelli. Faulkner var eindreginn talsmaður stórveldisins í vestri en fangaði hugi og hjörtu Íslendinga þvert á flokkslínur, sósíalistar lýstu honum sem fulltrúa þess besta í bandarískri menningu.
En hver var þessi Faulkner? Og hvernig stóð á vinsældum hans?
Í bókinni er fjallað um landnám módernismans í íslenskum bókmenntum og bandarísku bylgjuna sem reið yfir bókmenntaheiminn á fjórða áratug 20. aldar. Brugðið er nýju og óvæntu ljósi á þátttöku íslenskra hægrimanna í alþjóðlegu menningarstarfi í kalda stríðinu en á bak við tjöldin hélt bandaríska leyniþjónustan um þræði. Við sögu koma Hollywood-kvikmyndir byggðar á verkum Faulkners, erindrekar Bandaríkjastjórnar á Íslandi, aftökur án dóms og laga í Suðurríkjum Bandaríkjanna og íslenskur rithöfundur sem skrifaði skáldsagnaþríleik, innblásinn af Faulkner.
Hér er á ferðinni nýstárleg rannsókn sem byggir á fjölbreyttum heimildum, þar á meðal gögnum af innlendum og erlendum skjalasöfnum. Bókin á erindi til alls áhugafólks um bókmenntir og sögu.
Hver er þessi Faulkner?
Heimsbókmenntir og kalt stríð
Orðspor Williams Faulkners
Spor höfundarins
Heimsbókmenntir á Ísafirði
Nýlendan Ísland
Bandarískar bókmenntir og íslensk bókmenntasaga
Kalda stríðið og bandarísk bókmenntaumræða
Kaldastríðsmódernismi
Fyrri hluti: Norðurlönd sem milliliður
1 KVIKMYNDIR
Maðurinn með maískólfinn
The Story of Temple Drake – Aðfaranótt 13. ágúst
Há- og lágmenning / bók og kvikmynd
Hrollvekjur og glæponamyndir
Kvikmyndaeftirlit, áfengisbann og skattheimta
2 BÓKASÖFN
Bókasöfn heimsbókmennta: Frakkland og Bandaríkin
Bókasöfn heimsbókmennta: Bretland og Noregur
Bókasöfn og bakjarlar
Fagmaður og bókmenntaráðunautur
„Þekking er nútíðarmönnum nauðsynleg …“
3 NÆRVERA HÖFUNDARINS
Faulkner í Skandinavíu 1932–1946
Faulkner á Íslandi
Meistarinn og lærlingurinn
4 ÚR SUÐRI TIL NORÐURS
Byggingarlag, sögusvið og fjölröddun
Tveir bastarðar
Eldur: Nýlendan Ísland
Sandur: Nútíminn nemur land
Landið handan landsins: Myndflétta óra og veruleika
Landið handan landsins: Sveppavarir
Saga um sögu
5 NÚTÍMI
Talsmenn og andstæðingar „nýja tímans“
Bolafljót
Seinni hluti: Bein snerting
6 HEIMSSTYRJÖLDIN SÍÐARI
Tveir hermenn
Herseta Bandaríkjamanna
Upplýsinga- og kynningarstarf
Stríðsupplýsingaskrifstofa
Listfræðingurinn
Bækur í stríði
Gagnvegir yfir Atlantshaf
7 MEÐ FAULKNER Í FARTESKINU
The Portable Faulkner
Nýrýni
Frá Akureyri til New York
Dvöl 1933–1948
8 SÚ AFTANSÓL
„That Evening Sun“
Þrútnar og safalausar drúfur
Nanna: surtur eða surtla?
Hvað um börnin?
9 ÍMYNDIR HÖFUNDARINS
Metsöluhöfundur
Glæpasagnahöfundur
Faulkner fyrir konur
Faulkner fyrir sanna karlmenn
10 KALT MENNINGARSTRÍÐ
Nóbelsverðlaunahöfundur á atómöld
Opinbert menningarstarf: Upplýsingaþjónusta Bandaríkjanna
Óopinbert menningarstarf: Congress for Cultural Freedom
Alþjóðleg tímaritaútgáfa
Andkommúnískir frumkvöðlar
Víglínur skýrast
Stofnun Almenna bókafélagsins
11 MENNINGARSENDIHERRA
Umhverfis jörðina
Taflmenn í köldu stríði
Af blaðamannafundi
Í Hátíðasal Háskóla Íslands
Faulkner og „ungu skáldin“
12 BAKJARLAR
Erlendur bakjarl
Innlendur bakjarl
Óháð menningarstarfsemi
Faulkner og „nýtt skeið í sögu skáldsögunnar“
Lýðræði og frelsi
Haukur Ingvarsson fæddist í Kaupmannahöfn árið 1979. Hann varð
stúdent frá Menntaskólanum í Reykjavík og lauk BA-prófi í íslensku
og meistaraprófi í íslenskum bókmenntum frá Háskóla Íslands. Í
ágúst 2020 varði hann doktorsritgerð við Íslensku- og menningardeild
sama skóla og nefnist hún Orðspor Williams Faulkners á Íslandi
1930–1960.
Haukur er bókmenntafræðingur og rithöfundur. Eftir hann
liggja ljóðabækurnar Niðurfall og þættir af hinum dularfulla Manga
(2004), Vistarverur (2018) og Menn sem elska menn (2021), skáldsagan
Nóvember 1976 (2011) og fræðibókin Andlitsdrættir samtíðarinnar:
Síðustu skáldsögur Halldórs Laxness (2009). Haukur starfaði um árabil
sem dagskrárgerðarmaður hjá Ríkisútvarpinu og er nú annar af
ritstjórum Skírnis.
Representing the Best in American Culture
William Faulkner’s Reputation in Iceland 1930–1960
This monograph investigates how William Faulkner’s reputation as
an author emerged and evolved within the Icelandic cultural arena,
from his first mention in an Icelandic newspaper in 1933 until the
publication of Kristján Karlsson’s seventh and final translation of a
Faulkner short story in 1960. More broadly, the research examines
the interplay of the Icelandic literary system and foreign literary
systems at a turbulent time in Icelandic history, when the country’s
position in relation to the rest of the world underwent dramatic
changes. During the period of this study, Iceland became a republic
after severing its remaining constitutional ties with Denmark. Its
status as an isolated, unarmed country was transformed by the
British occupation and US military presence during the Second
World War, and it formally abandoned its neutrality policy in favour
of Western alignment in the post-war period, reflecting its strategic
location and subsequent military importance during the Cold War.
The book is divided into two parts, both of which explore
contacts between the Icelandic literary system and the outside
world. Part One, entitled “The Scandinavian Countries as an
Intermediary”, investigates the ways in which the Scandinavian
countries were the Icelanders’ most important cultural window to
the outside world from 1933 to 1945. During this period, Faulkner’s
novels reached Iceland through Scandinavian translations, along
with writings about the author by Scandinavian intellectuals. Part
Two focuses on the period from 7 July 1941 – when the Americans
took over the occupation of Iceland from the British – to the end
of the 1950s. Icelandic translations of Faulkner’s works started to
appear in print during this time, and the author’s name assumed
an important status in the Icelandic literary system. The US government
began to contribute extensively to cultural activities in
Iceland – for example, by operating libraries in Reykjavik and in
Akureyri that carried American books, newspapers and magazines.
Another element of these government-sponsored cultural activities
was the mutual exchange of Icelandic and American artists and
scholars between the two countries. These activities, along with
Faulkner’s visit to Iceland in 1955, explain the title of Part Two,
“Direct Contact”.
This research contributes to the extensive body of criticism
devoted to Faulkner and his works worldwide. It is also the first
extensive attempt to highlight the function of Faulkner’s name and
the reception of his works in Iceland. While Icelandic and foreign
scholars have written about his visit to Iceland in the context of
the Cultural Cold War, those studies have been limited to a narrow
timeframe and scope of political influence, and they do not shed
light on the way his writing and image initially reached Iceland and
how their reception evolved.
The book is structured chronologically, and each individual
chapter is dedicated to a specific theme which Faulkner scholars
have studied, e.g., biographical aspects, works, image, reception and
publishing history. This conceptual framework highlights certain
elements or turning points in the history of Faulkner’s reception
in Iceland, reflected in chapter titles: Part One includes “Movies”,
“Libraries”, “The Author’s Presence” and “Modernity”, and Part
Two includes “The Second World War”, “The Portable Faulkner”,
“Images of the Author”, “The Cultural Cold War” and “Patronage”.
Both parts of the book contain close textual analyses representing
particular turning points in the advancement of Faulkner
and his works in Iceland. The first chapter focuses on Guðmundur
G. Hagalín’s essay “Um nútíðarbókmentir Bandaríkjamanna” (“On
American Modern Literature”, 1934) and novelist Guðmundur
Daníelsson’s trilogy Af jörðu ertu kominn (From Dust Thou Art,
1941–1944) and investigates the extent of Faulkner’s influence on the
latter, acknowledged by Daníelsson himself. The trilogy is discussed
in the context of recent scholarly studies exploring why Faulkner’s
works have particularly appealed to authors from regions that were
struggling economically and culturally, either due to domestic affairs
or in the face of a foreign power.
An analysis of the writings of Hagalín and Daníelsson illustrates
the function and relevance of foreign language literature in the Icelandic
literary system in the 1930s and the early 1940s. This function
has been largely overlooked in research on Icelandic literary history.
The library catalogues examined as a part of this study show that
Icelanders were quite up to date on new publications in Denmark,
Norway and Sweden. Norwegian translations of the works of William
Faulkner accounted for his presence in Iceland. The Icelandic
literary system was in close contact with those of the Scandinavian
countries in the 1930s, and many books and magazines that reached
Iceland had been published previously in Scandinavia. Icelandic
libraries held an extensive selection of contemporary literature in
the Scandinavian languages, including American literature, which
played an important role in the development of the Icelandic literary
system.
Part Two of the book focuses on the writings of Kristján Karlsson,
who was among the Icelanders receiving their university edu-
cation in the United States during and after the Second World War.
He graduated with a BA in English Literature from the University of
California, Berkeley in 1945 and an MA in Comparative Literature
from Columbia University in New York in 1947. While Karlsson
was in New York, New Criticism and the New York Intellectuals
had begun to revolutionise American literary life. Among other
things, the two groups heralded a revision of US literary history
which involved a break with the emphasis on the social fiction of
the 1920s and 1930s. Instead, new emphasis was placed on close
reading of texts and analysis of formal elements, usually without
considering the lives of the authors themselves or their historical
and social backgrounds. Karlsson brought the ideas championed
by the New Critics and the New York Intellectuals to Iceland and
introduced them in his essay “Amerískar nýbókmenntir” (“New
American Literature”, 1948). His translation of Faulkner’s short story
“That Evening Sun” (“Sú aftansól”, 1948) must also be considered
in this context, and is analysed accordingly. This analysis ties in
with the chapter on Daníelsson’s trilogy, which maps the different
power positions of the characters in the short story based on their
age, race, class, gender and place of residence. Other Icelandic
translations of Faulkner’s short stories are also considered in order
to demonstrate the many different functions of Faulkner’s name
and status as an author in the Icelandic literary system in the 1950s.
In the period of 1948–1955, six additional Icelandic translations
of short stories by Faulkner were published in magazines. Their
paratexts show that the Icelandic authors Thor Vilhjálmsson and
Guðmundur G. Hagalín both wanted to take credit for having introduced
Faulkner in Iceland, which says something about Faulkner’s
importance as an author. However, the connection of Faulkner’s
name to his texts is not always strong. This is due in part to the
complexity of his image as an author of film scripts, crime stories,
pulp fiction and modernist works.
Alongside a discussion of translations of Faulkner’s short
stories, the second part of the book explores Icelandic literary
discourse and cultural activities as part of Icelandic right-wing
politics, as well as within the context of the official and unofficial
American cultural activities in Iceland and elsewhere in Europe.
Previous scholarship has paid scant attention to the participation
of Icelandic intellectuals in the international work that was often
clandestinely organised by the CIA in particular and the US government
in general. Faulkner’s visit to Iceland in 1955 almost coincided
with a broad-based alliance of Icelandic right-wing intellectuals to
establish the publishing company Almenna bókmenntafélagið, or
AB. The operation of AB was modelled on the international activities
of the anti-communist organisation Congress of Cultural Freedom,
which promoted modernism as a response to the social realism of
the Soviet Union. Faulkner was AB’s flagship of sorts during its first
years of operation, and in 1956, the company published a book of six
short stories by Faulkner, translated by Kristján Karlsson, with an
introduction by the translator. AB and magazines including Félagsbréf
AB and Stefnir are examined in the context of the discourse of
Cold War modernism. The study of the US cultural activities in
Iceland is mostly based on previously unexplored primary sources
from the National Archives in Maryland and the International Association
for Cultural Freedom Records 1941–1978 in the University
of Chicago Library.
