Jóhann Jónsson

Jóhann Jónsson (born September 12, 1896 in Staðastaður on Snæfellsnes , † September 1, 1932 in Leipzig ) was an Icelandic poet and writer. His poem Söknuður made him a pioneer of modern Icelandic poetry.

Life

His parents were Jón Þorsteinsson and the thirty years younger maid Steinunn Kristjánsdóttir (1869-1944), who had married the father in a second marriage after he had become a widower. She suffered greatly from her husband's alcohol abuse, which soon became a need for care. A few years after Jóhann's birth, the family moved to the village of Ólafsvík , where he grew up in poor conditions. As a child he contracted bone tuberculosis and later suffered from a clubfoot .

From the summer of 1915 - already 19 years old - he attended Menntaskólinn í Reykjavík , the oldest grammar school in Reykjavík , where he graduated from high school in the spring of 1920. It was during this time that his first poems appeared in print, which made such an impression on Halldór Laxness , who was five years his junior , that he learned some of them by heart. His role models included the German poets in particular, including Ludwig Uhland and Heinrich Heine .

In 1921 he married Nikkolina Árnadóttir. With her he boarded a ship on October 5, 1921 that took him to Leipzig. He never returned to Iceland. One of the main reasons for moving to Germany was the feeling of intellectual stagnation in his home country, whereas he expected more stimuli and opportunities for development from abroad. After arriving in Leipzig, he began studying philosophy and German at the University of Leipzig , but apparently only as a guest student . His name is not listed in the university's matriculation registers.

In the winter of 1924-25 he was diagnosed with lung cancer, the disease that eventually led to his early death.

One of the few poems that was published during his lifetime is called Söknuður . The title means something like sadness, longing, nostalgia. It was probably created in 1926 on the island of Sylt , and it appeared in print in 1928 in the magazine Vaka, tímarit handa íslendingum (Vaka, magazine for Icelandic people).

During these years he separated from his wife and found a new partner in the actress, director and translator Elisabeth Göhlsdorf. He moved in with her in her apartment at 14 Körnerstrasse.

In 1930 he translated two works by his compatriot Gunnar Gunnarsson (1889–1975) from Danish into German for the Leipziger Insel-Verlag , the story The King's Son and the novel Jon Arason . As his disease progressed, he had to dictate the texts to his girlfriend while lying in bed, and at the end he could only whisper. Both translations appeared in 1932.

Shortly before his death, Halldór Laxness visited him several times in 1931 and 1932, and he published haunting memories of these encounters.

After his death, Elisabeth Göhlsdorf brought the poet's urn - at his last request - to Ólafsvík, where his mother still lived. He was buried there in the village church, where his mother later found her final resting place.

His friend Halldór Laxness collected his poems and essays and published them in a book in 1952.

meaning

The poems Söknuður by Jóhann Jónsson and Sorg ("Sorge") by Jóhann Sigurjónsson (1880–1919) mark the beginning of modern Icelandic poetry. The beginning of Söknuður reads:

Icelandic

Hvar hafa dagar lífs þíns lit sínum glatað?
Og ljóðin, er þutu 'um þitt blóð frá draumi til draums,
hvar urðu þau veðrinu að bráð, ó barn, er þig hugðir
borið með undursamleikans
eigin þrotlausan brunn þér í brjósti!
Hvar ...?

Við svofelld annarleg orð,
sem einhver rödd lætur falla
á in front veg - eða að því er virðist,
vindurinn blæs Gegnum strætin,
dettur oss, svefngöngum vanans, often drykklanga stund
dofinn úr stirðnuðum limum.
Og spunahljóð tómleikans lætur í eyrum before lægra.
Og leiðindin virðast í úrvinda hug vorum sefast.
Og eitthvað, er svefnrofum líkist, á augnlok before andar,
vér áttum oss snöggvast til hálfs, og skilningi lostin,
hrópar í allsgáðri vitund
before sál:
Hvar!

Translation into German

Where have the days of your life lost their color?
And the poems that rushed through your blood from dream to dream,
where were they the prey of the winds, O child who believed himself to be born
with the miracle eternal well
in his breast!
Where…?

At such strange words that
a voice
drops on our way - or, it seems,
the wind blows through the streets
, we, sleepwalkers of the habit, often take a breath of
numbness from our frozen limbs.
And the spinning wheel of the void sounds quieter to our ears.
And boredom falls asleep in our tired hearts.
And something breathes on our eyes, as it were half asleep,
we straighten up in a hurry, and struck by knowledge
our soul calls out
in full consciousness:
Where!

Works (selection)

• Söknuður , in: Vaka , Jg. 2, 3 (1928), p. 257 f. ( Digitized version )
• Kvaedi og ritgerdir (poems and essays), Reykjavík: Heimskringla, 1952
• Ljóđ og ritgerđir (light and writing), Reykjavík: Bókaútgáfa Menningarsjóđs 1986
• Undisclosed he líf mitt !: bréf Jóhanns Jónssonar skálds til Friðriks A. Friðrikssonar (My life is strange! Letters from the poet Jóhann Jónsson to Friðrik A. Fridriksson, 1912–1925), ed. by Ingi Bogi Bogason, Reykjavík: Vaka-Helgafell, 1992
• Nótt í Riesental (prose fragment)

Literature (selection)

• An Anthology of Icelandic Poetry , ed. By Eiríkur Benedikz , Reykjavík 1969, pp. 120f. (English translation by Söknuður by Magnús Á. Árnason )
• Gert Kreutzer , Jóhann Jónsson - an Icelandic poet in Germany , in: Folia Skandinavica Posnaniensia , Vol. 6, Poznań 2000, pp. 5–23 ( PDF )

Web links

Wikisource: Jóhann Jónsson  - Sources and full texts (Icelandic)

• Biography in the Icelandic Encyclopedia (Icelandic)
• Short biography with portrait (Icelandic)
• Söknuður (text)

Note: Icelanders are referred to by their first name or first and last name, but not just their surname. Further information can be found under Icelandic personal name .