the voice of a country
by Douglas Messerli
Halldór Laxness Brekkukotsannáll, translated from the Icelandic by Magnus Magnusson
as The Fish Can Sing (London: The
Harvill Press, 2000)
The Fish Can Sing works within
this structure, presenting the story of a young boy, Álfgrímur, left behind by
his mother in her journey to America at Brekkukot, a turf-and-stone cottage
located at the edge of late 19th and early 20th century Reykjavík,
later to become the capitol of the then Danish-controlled Iceland. Brekkukot is
owned by Björn, who, along with the woman who feeds and cares for him (a
sister, it turns out, of the woman he once loved), become the boy’s loving
grandparents, and who through example, sayings and proverbs, oral recountings
of Icelandic ballads, and demands that he perform various jobs such as tending
to the cow and lumpfishing, raise the child in an exemplary fashion.
Brekkukot is not only a home, however, but a sort of boarding house
where various figures come to stay, some in illness, others who have no other
place to go. Sleeping in the same mid-loft with Álfgrímur are Jón Hákonarson
(Captain Hogensen), a former ship pilot, raised by the Danish government to the
position of naval commander, who shares the boy’s bed; Jón of Skagi, the
shipyard superintendent who, it is later revealed, is a man of some wealth and
stature; and Runólfur Jónsson, a former manure-spreader captivated by the new
cesspools created by the Icelandic Agricultural Association, who, four times a
year, is transformed into an incorrigible drunk. These figures, as well as a
woman from Landbrot, who comes to Brekkukot to die before being shipped home in
her coffin, and a man and wife involved with spiritual concepts revealed in the
Secret Doctrine, help in the
education—moral, practical and sexual—of Álfgrímur. Laxness enchants the reader
in his revelations of this stolid yet eccentric world with his wry sense of
humor and irony, and through a narrative engagement with his reader that
harkens back to the 18th and 19th century conventions of
interrupting the flow of events with impatient authorial intrusions that make
us feel that the voice of the young storyteller and the author are one and the
same:
I am
not actually going to describe all the New Year’s Day
expeditions I made to the authorities with Captain Hogensen
in my
childhood days, but only to touch lightly upon the first
one we
made….
It
would make one mad to try to tell about all the visitors who ever
came to
Brekkukot, and indeed such a book would burst all the
printing-presses in Iceland; I intend to describe only a few of
them
here, not more than I can count on my fingers, and in
particular those who concern my own story to some extent.
Had Laxness’s book concerned itself with nothing else save Álfgrímur’s
life at Brekkukot, it would still have to be described as an enduring work of
fiction. But the world outside of Brekkukot, represented in the figure of the
world-renowned vocal artist Garþar Hólm, draws the young hero into far more
mysterious human relationships. Although Hólm, whose picture graces the walls
of Brekkukot, and whose mother Kristín is cousin to Álfgrímur’s grandmother, is
mentioned nearly every day in the local Ísafold
newspaper, at home there is an obvious refusal to speak of him. When Álfgrímur
brings up his name, a silence overcomes Brekkukot’s inhabitants, the
grandfather and grandmother bemoaning the fact that such a lovely child has
left them on his seemingly interminable travels—travel being seen by this
household as the fate of the doomed.
As the young narrator gradually discovers that he himself has some
musical talent, singing for funerals at the nearby church and studying music at
his grammar school, the silence of his “grandparents” and Kristín surrounding
Garþar Hólm becomes increasingly odd. According to the newspaper Hólm is
traveling throughout the world, giving concerts in the capitols of Europe,
Australia, and Japan, and, upon special command, before the great Mohammed ben
Ali and the Pope!
Upon Hólm’s fist return to Iceland, Álfgrímur accidently meets the great
singer, who, after discovering that the boy lives in Brekkukot—the scene of
many of Hólm’s own childhood memories—sees Álfgrímur as almost a mirror image
of himself. A strange friendship develops between them which includes the
daughter of the local merchant Gúþmúsen.
Hólm’s return has been celebrated in the news and by word of mouth, but
he disappears before his pre-announced concert, adding to the mystery
surrounding him. By the time of his much-touted second visit, Álfgrímur has
grown older, and somewhat wiser: he is not surprised when the great singer does
not show up. But Hólm, in fact, is in
Iceland, hiding in the nearby cemetery and barn outside of his mother’s hut.
Why is he sleeping in the hay, and how is the young Gúþmúsen girl, who has
evidently stolen a photograph of Hólm and another woman from his pocket,
involved? What is clear is tha the great singer—representative of Icelandic
culture to the world, proof that “the fish can sing”—is living, at least upon
this visit, in poverty instead of residing in the grand Hotel d’Islande which
he has told the boy is his address.
By the time of the singer’s third return home, he has been raised to
such mythical stature that we realize Laxness can never reveal the entire story
behind his legendary character. But gradually we perceive, through Hólm’s
enigmatic questioning of Álfgrímur as the two sit upon the archangel Gabriel’s
tomb, that this great performer is certainly an artist, but not a musician
perhaps. His artistry has consisted of an extraordinary swindle of the
Icelandic folk. Beginning as an employee at Gúþmúsen’s market, he was fired
only to be sent off to Copenhagen by the merchant to work in a slaughtering
house. His loud singing voice, heard among the workers, brought him to the
attention of others, who—with Gúþmúsen’s money—oversaw his musical education.
Apparently, however, his loud “pure” voice was a source of laughter when he
appeared in concert with a traveling chorus, and his singing career was
short-lived. But his letters home describing his great success, and the support
of his wife(?) along with government stipends and the continued gifts of the
Reykjavík merchant, result in his legendary status. Trapped in a myth of their
own creating, how can anyone involved reveal the truth?
Álfgrímur gets a
glimpse of his abilities first at a party at the Gúþmúsen home when
Suddenly it was as if from out of the singer’s dark enigmatic
grin there stepped an old spinster, dressed up to the nines, who
began to whine in ghastly falsetto a nonsensical verse to the
same melody from Don Giovanni.
…For all I know, the
people there were thinking that this very sound, this old woman’s
whine, was the famous world-singing that had so charmed the Pope.
The very next day Garþar Hólm
arranges for a private concert for his near-deaf mother in the local church
near Brekkukot. Once more, the sounds coming from Garþar Hólm’s mouth cannot be
completely described:
I
want to repeat once again what I have often implied already in
these pages, that I am not the right person to describe properly
Garþar Hólm’s accomplishments.
…People have kept on asking me: did he sing well? I reply, the
world is a song, but we do not know whether it is a good song
because we have nothing to compare it with. Some people think
that the art of singing has its origins in the whirring of the solar
system as the planets hurtle through space; others say it comes
from the soughing of the wind in that ash-tree called Yggdrasil,
in
the words of the old poem: “the ancient tree sighs.” Perhaps
Garþar Hólm was closer to that unfathomable ocean of unborn
song than most other singers have been.
...It may well be that this was the only time in my whole life
that I ever really heard singing, because this singing was so true
that it made all other singing sound artificial and affected by
comparison and turned other singers into frauds.
When Hólm—as expected—does not show
up to his announced recital, Álfgrímur is convinced by Gúþmúsen’s daughter—who,
apparently, is in love with the singer despite what she knows of his fraudulent
behavior—to bravely perform his self-taught rendition of Schubert’s “Der
Erlkönig.” His recital is dutifully applauded, but soon after he is cornered by
Gúþmúsen who chastises him for covering up before, relenting, he offers the boy
money to study music in Denmark, like Hólm,. Hólm, it appears, has killed
himself; and as Álfgrímur sings over the coffin (which he is convinced does not
contain Hólm’s body), he recognizes that his singing is not as brilliant as it
is—again like his beloved mentor’s—confident and loud, and that to accept the
merchant’s offer would be to follow Hólm’s fate, to become a voice of the
people instead of a voice speaking (or singing) one’s own song. Suddenly we
comprehend the reasons behind the shroud of silence at Brekkukot.
Indeed, Álfgrímur’s “grandparents” sell their beloved Brekkukot in order
to save the boy they have cared for from that “bondage,” hoping that he may
pursue his own talents—wherever they lead him—without his needing to fulfill
any cultural expectations of patron or country. In this all-encompassing
desire, finally, they stand naively hand-in-hand, like children, innocents who
believe in the potentiality of the one pure song of each individual life.
Los Angeles, August 28, 2003
Reprinted from The
Green Integer Review, No. 6 (December 2006).
