SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

Skaldic Poetry and Modern Painting 131
Now compare with this what Einar 61. Sveinsson has
to say about the nature of the Old Norse kennings:
The mark of their art is not nature, for all things in them are
different from what they pretend to be. 'Yoke-bear' is not
a bear but an ox, the 'spirit acorn' not a fruit but a man's heart.
The 'land of the swans' is the opposite to land, sea. These
poets do not want to give reality but turn it into its opposite,
phantasy. This is a dream, put together in the world of
dreams. The thing is there and still not there. And beneath
the surface there is a meaning different from what it seemed to
be at first sight. The poem has to be solved like a dream ora
riddle. But solution is possible because firm rule and logic
reign in this dream world."
According to this it may be that the chief difference
between skaldic poetry and surrealist painting is that the
poetry is easier to read or solve than the painting, although
we are told that the key to the latter's phantastic images
is usually to be found in the Freudian sex-world. But it is
interesting to note that one of Salvador Dali's paintings,
the woman with vanity-chest drawers in her breast, would
have parallels not far to seek in skaldic poetry. Snorri
teaches us that a woman could be called a tree of feminine
gender and characterized by all her belongings, rings,
bracelets, headdress and thus without any doubt by the
contents of her vanity case. Thus we actually find her
called a "ring-willow", "bracelet-maple", and the "oak of
the serpent-town"; "serpent-town" would, of course, be
a kenning for the lair or the bed of the serpent: gold.
Some of the modern poets preferred a stricter form than
the eruptive stream-of-consciousness style. This is true
of S. Mallarme (1842-1898), whose verses were smooth
though adorned with ideological pitfalls of a personal
nature as well as his burning desire for the unspeakable
Absolute. It is probably also true in the main of
T. S. Eliot (born 1888) and Ezra Pound (born 1885). In
his ABC of reading (1960) Pound gives a final piece of
advice on Dichten - Condensare which appears to be due
to his misunderstanding of the German language.
• 'Drottkvaoa pattur', Skirnir CXXI (1947), 19; or reprinted in Via
uppspretturnar (1956), 34.