{"id":2081,"date":"2008-10-14T20:18:52","date_gmt":"2008-10-15T00:18:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=2081"},"modified":"2008-10-14T20:18:52","modified_gmt":"2008-10-15T00:18:52","slug":"the-wish-by-johan-sigurjonsson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=2081","title":{"rendered":"“The Wish,” by Johann Sigurjonsson"},"content":{"rendered":"

While I was at Dale Nelson\u2019s house<\/strong> on Sunday, he lent me an English translation of an Icelandic play, \u201cThe Wish,\u201d by J\u00f3hann Sigurj\u00f3nsson, and asked for my reaction. Here\u2019s a link<\/a> to the text, in the same Einar Haugen translation I\u2019ve got.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a strange play, with considerable numinous power, even in this somewhat clumsy translation (Haugen wrote the textbook from which I learned Norwegian, but he\u2019s no English stylist). It\u2019s a sort of Icelandic Faust story, about a young man obsessed with obtaining knowledge\u2014not for the sake of wisdom, but for the sake of power. He believes that if he obtains access to a certain \u201cRed Book,\u201d which a long-dead bishop took with him to his grave, he\u2019ll obtain total power, not only on earth but in the spiritual realm. <\/p>\n

There are echoes of Nietzsche here, whom Sigurj\u00f3nsson had studied, but he doesn\u2019t seem to have taken Nietzsche\u2019s side. The play is essentially, I think, a Christian one (though I\u2019m not entirely certain I understand it, even after two readings).<\/p>\n

One thing I struggled with in reading the play was, I think, that I was looking for the wrong things. I wanted a clearer lesson than the playwright intended. This isn\u2019t a morality play. It\u2019s a tragedy in the classical sense. Loftur, the main character, is already doomed at the beginning. He has shaped his own downfall. He has been having an affair with a lowborn girl of whom his father disapproves. In the course of the play, he meets another girl, Disa, the bishop\u2019s daughter, with whom he finds (apparently) true love. But nothing can come of this. His past sins make his happiness impossible, whatever choice he makes. He still has the option of saving his soul and his life, but he\u2019ll never be happy.<\/p>\n

It all ends in a gloomy and evocative scene in the cathedral which would certainly be a stage designer\u2019s and a lighting engineer\u2019s dream. It must have immense power when staged.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m still not sure what to make of the last line, though.<\/p>\n

Worth reading.
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While I was at Dale Nelson\u2019s house on Sunday, he lent me an English translation of an Icelandic play, \u201cThe Wish,\u201d by J\u00f3hann Sigurj\u00f3nsson, and asked for my reaction. Here\u2019s a link to the text, in the same Einar Haugen translation I\u2019ve got. It\u2019s a strange play, with considerable numinous power, even in this somewhat … Continue reading “The Wish,” by Johann Sigurjonsson<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2081\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}