Vestnik Pravoslavnogo Svâto-Tihonovskogo Gumanitarnogo Universiteta: Seriâ III. Filologiâ (Dec 2021)
William Heinesen: from the book “Hymns and songs of indignation” (1961)
Abstract
This publication contains selected translations from Hymne og harmsang (Hymns and Songs of Indignation), the sixth book of poems by the prominent Danish-Faroese writer William Heinesen (1900–1991). It was published after a 25-year-long pause in publishing poetry (however, it was during this time that he wrote his most signifi cant novels). Compared to his earlier books of poetry, in Hymns and Songs of Indignation the form of poems has changed: most of them are in verse libre. At the level of the themes, there is an opposition between the harmonious Eternity and the modern civilised society with its negative tendences. The theme of death is frequent in the book; this can be death as an aspect of Eternity or a man-made Apocalypse created by the modern civilisation. However, death can be overcome, probably on some other existential level, not least by means of art and human feelings. In contrast to the earlier poetry of Heinesen and his prose works of the 1950–1960s, in Hymns and Songs of Indignation the Faroese realities are almost never mentioned. This book follows the tendencies of the Faroese modernist poetry of the 1960s (though the book has never been examined in this context), and also those of the Danish modernist poetry; however, certain important aspects of the worldview refl ected in this book are highly specifi c.
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