Receive Letters From Iceland Edited By W.H. Auden Offered As Audio Books

premise: on the eve of WWII, the young WH Auden and one of his poet friends spend an idyllic summer traveling around Iceland and sending witty letters and poems home.


The product isn't as interesting as the premise sounds partly due to my extremely low tolerance for socalled "funny" poetry, I'm sure.
Auden's letters, however, made the read worthwhile and made me want to start up a correspondence ideally multiple, It's hard to buy a copy in print in the US, but if you get it at the library I would flip past the verse to the travelwriting sections.
Letters from Iceland offers tourism of the unknown, but also tourism of the pasta trip through a western Europe that doesn't exist anymore.


Selected excerpt: "I wish I could describe things well, for a whale is the most beautiful animal I have ever seen.
It combines the fascination of something alive, enormous, and gentle, with the functional beauties of modern machinery, A seventyton one was lying on the slipway like a large and very dignified duchess being got ready for the ball by beetles.
To see it torn to pieces with steam winches and cranes is enough to make one a vegetarian for life,

In the lounge the wireless was playing 'I want to be bad' and 'Eat an apple every day, ' Downstairs the steward's canary chirped incessantly, The sun was out in the bay, surrounded by buoys and gulls, were the semisubmerged bodies of five dead whales: and down the slipway ran a constant stream of blood, staining the water a deep red for a distance of fifty yards.
Someone whistled a tune. A bell suddeny clanged and everyone stuck their spades in the carcase and went off for lunch, The body remained alone in the sun, the flesh still steaming a little, It gave one an extraordinary vision of the cold controlled ferocity of the human species" p, An enjoyable and occasionally very witty read, It's a shame Auden didn't really seem to have a lot of fun, or to like Iceland all that well, Since it was his love of Norse literature in part that drew him to Iceland, it would have been nice if he'd given some idea of how it felt to be in the land where the events took place, whether it was disappointment or whether there was some satisfaction in the pilgrimage.
I think overall from inference Iceland was a disappointment to Auden, Journey to Iceland the poem expresses a longing for the isolation and 'nonEuropeanness' of Iceland, and a deeper understanding of Grettir, Egil Skallagrímsson, Guðrún Osvifsdóttir et al.
He either fails to find these things, or does find them and wishes he hadn't, Most of his bits are him complaining about the soup which, in fairness, does sound a bit odd hot marzipan flavour, Beautiful, fresh and funny. An interesting little volume. Who knew Auden had as many judgments as insights but then again what is poetry and the essay but judgment of a certain form A fun find on the many stacks lining the walls of my Air BnB in Reykjavik.
What a gift. I am rather split brained about Letters From Iceland by W, H. Auden and Louis MacNeice. There were pieces of it that had me roaring with laughter and other pieces where I just had to skip out of boredom or disinterest.


Letters From Iceland is a collection of writings inspire by a trip to Iceland, It was published inand has been reprinted a number of times, W. H. Auden provided about twothirds of the pieces including a lengthy and rather dull epic poem called a "Letter to Lord Byron, " Louis MacNeice provided the remaining third of the text,

My favorite parts of the book were the notes for tourists which includes practical advice on what to pack an who to dress, warnings about the food an transportation.
The descriptions of the Icelandic traditions taken from a British point of view made for a

humorous comparison with the dwarves in Pratchett's discworld novels I was constantly reminded of Carrot.


My all time favorite piece of the book was a satiric letter "Hetty to Nancy" by MacNeice, It is an account of a disastrous group camping trip, Hetty recounts the problems of sleeping facing down hill, with sleeping on rocks and with tents in the rain when the tents haven't been properly pitched.

I thought Hetty's letters to Nancy were very funny,

Bits I liked:

"Every exciting letter has enclosures,"

"The old woman confessing: 'He that I loved the
Best, to him I was the worst.
'"

"The songs of jazz have told us of a moon country
And we like to dream of a heat which is never sultry,
Melons to eat, champagne to drink, and a lazy
Music hour by hour depetalling the daisy.
"

"The Borg is called a firstclass hotel but is not the kind of thing you like if you like that kind of thing: still it is the only place where you can get a drink.
"

"There is a phrasebook for those who find that kind of thing any use, and for the conscientious there is Zoega's EnglishIcelandic Dictionary expensive and full of nonexistent English words"

"In the larger hotels in Reykjavik you will of course get ordinary European food, but in the farms you will only get what there is, which is on the whole rather peculiar.
"

"Soups: Many of these are sweet and very unfortunate, I remember three with particular horror, one of sweet milk and hard macaroni, one tasting of hot marzipan, and one of scented hair oil.
"

"Meat: This is practically confined to mutton in various forms, The Danes have influenced Icelandic cooking, and to no advantage, Meat is liable to be served up in glutinous and halfcold lumps, covered with tasteless gravy, At the poorer farms you will only get Hangikyrl, i, e. smoked mutton. This is comparatively harmless when cold as it only tastes like soot, but it would take a very hungry man indeed to eat it hot.
"

"beware of the browned potatoes, as they are coated in sugar, another Danish barbarism, "

"Those who like tea or cocoa should bring it with them and supervise the making of it themselves, "

"The King of Denmark has paid a visit and I watched him come out of the prime minister's house accompanied by distinguished citizens.
I know tophats and frock coats don't make people look their best, but on appearance alone I wouldn't have trusted one of them with the spoons.
"

"How embarrassing it is to get into an already crowded bus when the passengers have got to know each other.
We felt like the Germans invading Belgium, "

"and we sat and listened to the wireless, . . Someone apparently has tried to assessinate King Edward VIII, Nobody looked very interested. "

"and I had run out of cigarettes so just sulked into my waistcoat, "

Hetty to Nancy:
"I couldn't see that it was very funny and Maisie is supposed to be witty, but then it is different in London, where people have always been drinking sherry before you say anyhing to them.
"

"Anyhow it is a very fine waterfall as waterfalls go but, as Maisie says, they don't go far, "

One letter opens: "Darling, darling, DARLING,"

"Well, on and on we rode through the stinging rain it was so nasty it was really rather enjoyable.
And we all felt rather heroic, I think, "

"The Icelanders are rather proud of it as a showpiece of scenery and no doubt on a clear day it may be quite beautiful if one drives through it quickly in a car.
"

"We came across the ancient wreck of a very primitive touring car more desolate than the bones of a camel in a film about the foreign legion.
"

"but the really bad feature of the day was that the guides produced another cave they ought to be psychoanalysed.
".