SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

Skaldic Poetry and Modern Painting 133
Nobel-prize-winner, H. K. Laxness, did in 'Digtningens
problematik i var tid', a lecture given in the Norwegian
Student Society, Oslo, on 8 May 1954. 7 To call Picasso's
surrealistic art realistic seems to me a contradictio in adjecto
and it must be said that Laxness succeeded in this feat of
paradox onlyafter changing the sense of his words or rather
his premises. He did this by claiming that all art is realistic,
if it acts on contemporary reality, because it sprang from
contemporary reality. In this way Laxness claims that
the Icelandic sagas are realistic, because their heroes
became patterns not only to the frail and erring generation
which created them but for all Icelanders to come. The
so-called social realism of Russia is also, according to
Laxness, realistic and for the same reason. Having thus
changed his definition of the word realistic, the whole
medieval art of the Church would, according to Laxness,
become realistic, martyrologies, legends, exempla and
allegorical stories, for they all most certainly sprang from
the need of their times and had their great effect on
posterity. But in his extremely interesting 'Minnisgreinir
urn fornsogur'" Laxness contrasts very effectively the
realism of the Icelandic sagas with the allegorical point of
view of Western Christianity.
Laxness mentions here the pattern of heroes in Icelandic
and Russian literature. But I suppose one would have
to search a long time for heroic figures painted by modern
artists, figures which other artists would like to imitate,
as classicists would imitate the Greek statues and
Christians would idealize their Madonnas. The human
figure in modern art would look as if it had been distorted
by a thousand medieval devils or crushed and compressed
by the steamroller of the modern machine age. But
Picasso and his companions helped to create a form of
painting which became a great pattern to other painters,
hardly less admired than the most famous Madonnas of
7 Printed in Dagur i senn. (1955).
8 Printed in SjtiljsagOir hlutir (1946).