New-Canadian Letters

490 Tf!E UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY expressed knowledge of French Canada with an iron resolution to justify anything and everything that any French Canadian has done, said or thought anywhere at any time. Even Baptiste's best friends must fail to recognize him so thickly coated with whitewash from head to foot. VI. NEW-CANADIAN LETTERS WATSON KIRKCONN'ELL Probably the most significant event of the year 1938 in NewCanadian letters is the appearance of the first instalment of the Icelandic Leiters and Essays of the late Stephan G. Stephansson (d. 1927). Published in Reykjavik, and edited with scholarly care by his literary executor, Dr Rognvaldur Petursson, they throw a fascinating light 'on the mind of the greatest of Icelandic-Canadian writers. This first of several projected volumes comprises only selected correspondence from June, 1889, to Easter, 1909; and of the 109 lengthy letters in the collection, 75 are written to three of his friends, J6nas HaU, Eggert J6hannsson, and J6hann Magnus Bjarnason . It is with the last-named, a veteran novelist now living at Elfros, that he discusses his literary interests most fuUy. The authors whom he lists as his current enthusiasms in 1899 are Tolstoy and Turgeniev among the Russians; Kielland and Bjornstierne among the Norwegians; Sudermann in Germany; Hugo and Zola in France; and Dickens, George Eliot, Hardy, Kipling, Stevenson, Haggard, Sylvanus Cobb, Ian Maclaren, and Hall Caine in English. The list, with one or two strange lapses) suggests an active and virile mind. It is to be hoped that the remaining volumes of these Leiters and Essays will not be unduly delayed; for it is obvious that no serious biography of Stephansson can be attempted until all of this material has been made accessible. Professor Richard Beck has continued his valuable studies of Icelandic-Canadian poets with a full-length essay on J6n Run6lfsson in the Timarit of the National League and with a slighter sketch, in Heimskring/a of the poetry of J6hann Magnus Bjarnason; while O. T. Lone and others have contributed to Norrona a symposium on the future of the Norse language in Canada. The Rev. Gudmundur Arnason of Lundar and the Rev. Dr Rognvaldur Petursson of Winnipeg have both contributed to the Timar;t valuable notes on the background of Icelandic life in Canada; but the chier recent historian of this nation;tl group is Th. Th. Thorsteinsson, with two LETTERS IN CANADA: 1938 491 stout volumes: Vcstmenn, dealing with the record of the Icelanders in North America, and ./Efintyridjra Islandi til Brasiliu, tracing in detail the development of an important Icelandic colony in Brazil as the result of migrations in 186.3 and 1873. Mr Thorsteinsson bids fair to become the official historian of the Icelandic Diaspora. In poetry, the best work of the year is Kertaljos ("Candle-light"), a charming volume of selected poems by Jakobfna Johnson, covering the two decades, 1918-38. Mrs Johnson is notable among IcelandicCanadian poets for the quality of warm, womanly feeling that she infuses into her verse. Her subjects are usually taken from the simple range of everyday experience, but her genuine poetic gifts kindle these into permanent human significance. The title-poem of . the present volume is written in the old alliterative measure of the Germanic peoples, although t~e hemistichs are printed as two lines, instead ofone as in Old English. The poem may be translated thus: CANDLE-LIGHT All I loved yesterday in youth's fair morning is dear to me today, though dim remembered: the rosy dawning, the rainbow in the sky, the verdure of the springtime, the violet in the hollow. :Now faU the autumn shadows, come frosty tempests, and evening lamplight is lit for story-rellding. Soon comes our Christmas, a climax of rapture! On (he table is kindled the candle-light! Though electric lamps now lighten the darkness of half the world on the Holy Night, yet dearest to me are the dreaming ca.ndles of hallowed remembra.nce. -Happy Christmas! More extensive in bulk but less authentically poetic is Omar ("Chimes") by J6hannes H. Hunfjord. More than half of the 492 THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY poems in this large collection have been written for...