Mother of Pearl: Agnes Walsh and Halldór Laxness, Excerpt #1 from an essay by Stan Dragland

The following is the first in a series of excerpts from an essay by Stan Dragland (and conversation between Stan (SD) and Agnes Walsh (AW)) published in Brick 68 (Fall 2001).

Mother of Pearl: Agnes Walsh and Halldór Laxness

Asked to speak to the Masters of Philosophy class at Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN), I thought of two kinds of piece I'd written on Agnes Walsh: a composition based on a conversation we had about the Icelandic novelist Halldór Laxness and an article on Agnes's poetry that peaks in a discussion of her wonderful prose poem, "When I Married Halldór Laxness." There was enough of Agnes quoted in both pieces that I thought we were already some way towards a possible collaboration for the students. I wondered what would emerge if, beyond that, we both reflected on the fact that her writing and my criticism meet in our friendship. I could see both advantages and drawbacks. What would Agnes see?

All that’s omitted from the presentation on February 19, 2001, is the introduction of Stan Dragland by the student assigned to that detail and my outline of what Agnes and I intended to do. Unlike Agnes’s sections, mine were spoken. They changed when I wrote them down. At the end, I’ve added some thoughts arising from comments made by one of the students and a couple of the teachers of this team-taught interdisciplinary programme.

SD:

Agnes Walsh was raised in Placentia, on the west of Newfoundland’s Avalon Peninsula. She now divides her time between St. John's and Patrick’s Cove, around the Cape Shore from Placentia not far from the gannet sanctuary at Cape St. Mary's. She has published poetry in several magazines and anthologies and, recently, on the buses of St. John's. Her first book of poems is In the Old Country of My Heart (1996). Time Before Thought, her autobiographical collaboration with Mercedes Barry and Andy Jones, appears in Stars in the sky morning: Collective Plays of Newfoundland and Labrador. During the time she was part of Sheila's Brush, a continuing theatre collective, she performed the role of cat/princess in Jack Meets the Cat, a terrific modern stage adaptation of a traditional Jack tale, and in an audio version that was available until recently. For the past three years Agnes has been gathering stories and songs about the Cape Shore for plays about the area: Answer Me Home (with Paul Rowe, 1999), To the City of Point Lance (2000) and, for summer 2001, a play about Paddy Judge, the Cape Shore singer and storyteller. A sort of war bride herself (she married a serviceman stationed at the American base near Placentia), Agnes is the right narrator for the documentary film, Seven Brides for Uncle Sam. Another work-in-progress is a stage adaptation of Halldór Laxness's novel, The Atom Station.

None of this work, not even the intimate lyric poetry of In the Old Country of My Heart, is mere self-expression. It’s all about restoring to the culture of Agnes’ own rich and distinctive region of Newfoundland the dignity it deserves. It has been too easy, even for natives, to dismiss Newfoundland as some sort of quaint edge of nowhere. A lot of Newfoundlanders resent what they see as E. Annie Proulx’s reinforcement of that impression in The Shipping News.

Much might be said about why my family and I were drawn here when we could have moved anywhere in Canada, but I'll settle for pointing to Agnes Walsh, her person and her poetry, neither of which I knew before sojourning here in 1997. Now that summer icebergs drifting by St. John's are visible from the upper floors of our Bond St. house, there´s new life in an old metaphor: the Walsh in what follows is a mere tip of the berg, itself the tip of a vast berg of Newfoundland orature and literature strong enough, and ignored enough, that an old underdogger like me was bound to be drawn to it -- drawn in through Agnes's poem, “Percy Janes Boarding the Bus,” about speaking a revered name -- Percy Janes -- to hold a St. John’s bus while the owner of the name hustles up. But Percy Janes is nobody to the bus driver. He waits out of politeness, not recognition.

As the bus rumbled on
I continued under my breath:
“Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Percy Janes,
Newfoundland writer, poet,
just boarded the number something-or-other.”

If this was Portugal,
a plaque would be placed
over the seat where he sat.

As it is, you have me
mumbling in the street
like a tourist in my own country.

Less of a tourist now than I was, I understand that “my country” is Newfoundland, not Canada, and that Percy Janes’s House of Hate was the novel that moved Newfoundland writing into the twentieth century. I now see Agnes Walsh's poem as a backhanded manifesto. She wants the defining writers of her country known and valued by its citizens, like José Saramago in Portugal or Halldór Laxness in Iceland.

AW:

Halldór Laxness was born in Reykjavík, Iceland on April 23, 1902. His father was a road construction foreman who decided to take his family to the country just north of the capital to farm. In 1919, following his father’s death, Laxness began the series of wanderings that were to characterize his later life. After travelling through the Scandinavian countries and writing his first book of short stories, he moved to Germany in 1921, where he lived for a year.

He became a fervent Catholic after spending a year (1923) in a monastery in Luxembourg. It was there that he wrote Under the Holy Mountain, a novel reflecting his religious experiences. After a pilgrimage to Lourdes and a short stay in an English monastery, he returned to Iceland in 1924.

One year later he left for Italy and, and 1925, began The Great Weaver from Kashmir, a thinly disguised autobiographical novel which described his farewell to the Church and showed the development of his strong leftist sympathies. When this book was published in Iceland in 1927 it caused something of a sensation, but Laxness was abroad again, living first in Manitoba for a short while, where there were a large number of Icelanders settled. Then he moved on to southern California where he lived for two years. There he became friends with the writer Upton Sinclair and learned of the many levels of social life in America. He drew criticism for writing articles in the left wing press and returned to Iceland under threat of deportation in 1930. It was in America that he grew to an intense awareness of himself as an Icelander, and came to see Iceland, its people and native cultural tradition in a new perspective.

Laxness achieved international fame after Gunnar Gunnarsson translated the two parts of his novel Salka Valka into Danish in 1934 and it became the talk of Copenhagen, following which it was published in the U.S. and Great Britain. In all, Laxness wrote more than 60 books which have been translated into 47 languages. These include novels, short stories, poems, essays, and plays. Among those better known in the English language are: The Happy Warriors, and Independent People. The Atom Station (which Stan and I are turning into a play), was first published in Iceland in 1948 and appeared in England in 1961.

His later travels included trips to Russia and the U.S. In 1955 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature “for his vividly descriptive epic works, which have given new life to the great Icelandic art of storytelling,” to quote from reasons given by the Swedish Academy for its choice.

Laxness broke with the older literary traditions of his country both in philosophy and style. Although his novels are reminiscent of the old Norse epics in scope, his method and manner are quite different. He blends lyricism with realism and often takes a satirical attitude towards the society he depicts. His political radicalism makes him critical of existing institutions and of the people who allow them to exist. At the same time he is trying to find urban values that can replace the old agrarian way of life.

(to be continued)