Halldór Laxness, the Mormons and the Promised Land
1978; University of Illinois Press; Volume: 11; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/45224657
ISSN1554-9631
Autores Tópico(s)American and British Literature Analysis
ResumoWHEN THE ALL-SEEING eye on the facade of Zion's Mercantile winked at him, beckoning him with its self-assured commingling of matter and spirit to write a novel about the Promised Land, Halldór Laxness had already received the Nobel Prize for Literature.The Icelander's own quest for a Promised Land -a notion that had tugged persistently at his sleeve since early in his career -had led him from country to country, from Catholicism to socialism and finally to renunciation.1As a young convert to Catholicism, he had entered a Benedictine monastery in Luxemburg where for five years he wrestled to reconcile enormous spiritual and intellectual tensions -a struggle that characterizes his first major novel, The Great Weaver from Kashmir (1927). 2 Shortly after this flamboyant "Catholic" novel appeared, Laxness traveled to the United States where he became an ardent socialist, saved from deportation only through the intervention of his friend Upton Sinclair.After an enthusiastic visit to the Soviet Union, he returned to Iceland, profoundly committed to social causes and with fresh appreciation for his native literary heritage.Whereas in Luxemburg he had rejected the Icelandic sagas ("Heu mihi, I have nothing to learn from them"),3 he now imitated, assimilated and revitalized their laconic prose, transforming it with his prolific pen into a weapon against social injustice.His stark masterpieces Salka Valka (1931-32), Independent People (1934) and World Light (1937-40) depict the plight of defenseless and abject people struggling indomitably against indifferent nature and predatory exploitation.Much to the sorrow of leftists who had claimed him as a hero, Laxness' social radicalism mellowed after he received the Nobel Prize in 1955 at the age of fifty-three and became a kind of cultural ambassador.In the years
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