"Letters from Iceland is a first-class VIP travel book written by two poets;
it provides not only the usual armchair transport but also a vicarious
voyage into the past.
The period is 1936, and those who read this minor masterpiece for the first
time will be given a lively sense of what it was like to be young in that
year and possessed of an eloquent dread of what the near future held. Its
two gifted and high-spirited young authors-Wystan Hugh Auden and Louis
MacNeice-have, in fact, put time on ice.
The two poets, cruising the dormant volcanic cones of Iceland on ponies...
Out of their few weeks spent getting saddle sores on bad-tempered Icelandic
ponies or in rattletrap buses on boulder-paved roads, eating terrible meals
of smoked mutton in smokier hovels, Auden and MacNeice re-created an odd and
magical journey compounded of poems (satirical, epistolatory and familiar),
letters, guidebook information, parodies, private jokes and public protest."
Excerpts from Letter to Lord Byron, in Letters from Iceland, 1937,
W.H.Auden:
The thought of writing carne to me today
(I like to give these facts of time and space);
The bus was in the desert on its way
From Mothrudalur to some other place:
The tears were streaming down my burning face;
I'd caught a heavy cold in Akureyri,
And lunch was late and life looked very dreary.
In certain quarters I had heard a rumour
(For all I know the rumour's only silly)
That Icelanders have little sense of humour.
I knew the country was extremely hilly,
The climate unreliable and chilly;
So looking round for something light and easy
I pounced on you as warm and civilisé.
I've learnt to ride, at least to ride a pony,
Taken a lot of healthy exercise,
On barren mountains and in valleys stony,
I've tasted a hot spring (a taste was wise),
And foods a man remembers till he dies.
All things considered, I consider Iceland,
Apart from Reykjavik, a very nice land.
_______________________________________
Judy
http://icehorses.net
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