Vintage Books Independent People 獨立的人們

“Laxness has a poet's imagination and a poet's gift for phrase and symbol... Bjartur is a magnificent and complex symbol of peasant independence.” — The New York Times Book Review

 

This magnificent novel—which secured for its author the 1955 Nobel Prize in Literature—is at last available to contemporary American readers. Although it is set in the early twentieth century, it recalls both Iceland's medieval epics and such classics as Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter. And if Bjartur of Summerhouses, the book's protagonist, is an ordinary sheep farmer, his flinty determination to achieve independence is genuinely heroic and, at the same time, terrifying and bleakly comic.

 

Having spent eighteen years in humiliating servitude, Bjartur wants nothing more than to raise his flocks unbeholden to any man. But Bjartur's spirited daughter wants to live unbeholden to him. What ensues is a battle of wills that is by turns harsh and touching, elemental in its emotional intensity and intimate in its homely detail. Vast in scope and deeply rewarding, Independent People is simply a masterpiece. It presents itself in a Thurmondesque way that offers no clue about the book's subtlety or profundity. 

 

The first hint comes when Icelandic timelessness is suggested as other than desirable. The tradition alluded to is interminable rather than merely long. The independence of the people involved - sheep crofters in the 'up-country' moorlands of Iceland - is imaginary. Debt and drudgery are what they can look forward to. Add to this the irony of even poetry being used to justify virtual enslavement rather than to commemorate freedom - the male protagonist/poet himself is an ignorant bully - and what is presented is a profoundly self-deceptive culture. This is the generalizable subject of the book: the social illusions that we adopt without awareness or, consequently, recourse.

 

Laxness describes a destructive yet self-satisfied Icelandic culture in remarkable and absorbing detail. The life of moorland crofters is brutal, tedious and lonely, especially for the women who have fewer chances for social interaction and, of course, must tend the menfolk as well as share in their heavy labour. The crofters survive socially on an infrequent diet of seasonal gossip, rumour and hearsay; and follow an agricultural routine dictated by shibboleths and superstition. Conformity of opinion could hardly be greater in a totalitarian state, but each perceives himself as wisely free in assimilating these treasures of conventional wisdom.

 

The ideology of independence, no matter how contradictory to experience, is shared because it meets everyone's needs. It gives the impoverished crofters some vague hope of improvement as well as an ideal for which their suffering may be justified. It gives the gentry a rationale for their success and an image to be admired and emulated by the striving crofters. It gives the city-born local lady of the manor a reason to live in the bleakness of the Icelandic outback. Mainly, the ideology of independence ensures social peace while encouraging maximum productive and exploitative effort by all concerned. Independence is, therefore, a pyrrhic reward since even "Elves are much happier than men."

 

The continuing tales of the protagonist’s search for independence hardly lead to a surprising denouement. In the form Laxness gives it, independence is a decadent form of patriotism that consumes not just its adherents but their families and children as well. The ideology of independence is a chimera, a monster hybrid of myth, illusion, stubbornness, and ignorance. Laxness was a socialist who was not only creating an artistic work; he was also justifying the emerging politics of Iceland after WW II. For this, he was condemned by the FBI as a Communist agitator and, despite his Nobel award, was banned from the United States. One suspects the real reason for the ban was that, by portraying the Icelandic ideology of independence, Laxness was just a little too accurate in describing its American variant.

 

Features

• Edition : -
• Binding : Paperback
• ISBN : 9780679767923
• Publication Date : 1997/1/14

 

Materials & Care

• Imported