https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5043-8199
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ABSTRACT
This comparative article seeks to define the extent to which Simon Armitage and Glyn Maxwell’s Moon Country (1996), whose subtitle claims to be “further reports from Iceland”, can be examined as a footsteps travel narrative to Louis MacNeice and W. H. Auden’s Letters from Iceland (1937). By focusing on the issues of literary heritage, authorship, authenticity, and photography, it analyses mainly formal affinities between the two underappreciated travelogues, which share a tendency towards fragmentation and identity games, but exhibit quite different approaches to the theme of their travel. The article also seeks to restore some balance to the biased perception of their co-authorship, emphasising the achievement of Armitage and MacNeice in these particular Icelandic expeditions.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Later in the same Routledge Companion, Thompson specifies the limitations of this academic scrutiny and investigation. Writing about the subjectivization and aestheticization of travel writing, he concludes that “the lack of analytical and methodological rigour strongly associated with the form largely disqualifies it from serious consideration by academic professionals in most disciplines” (Citation2016, 199).
2 My use of the verb “challenge” here expresses the belief that all potential footstep writings of a successful original resemble an act of new translation. For a list of imitators of the most famous section of Letters, i.e. Auden’s “Letter to Lord Byron”, see e.g. Sansom Citation1997.
3 Obviously, allusion, cross-generic implications and other manifestations of intertextuality perform different functions in all these contexts, for instance, reflecting chaotic reality or imposing a certain formal order on it (Modernism), playing with conventions and deconstructing the form (Postmodernism), serving political and social allusion (1930s), and finally, constituting formal superstructures (modern poetry) confirming that “there is no parthenogenesis in art” (Seferis [Citation1966] Citation1992, 175). One should also look at Marjorie Perloff’s argument (21st-Century Modernism: The “New” Poetics) that the turn-of-the-centuries poetics, which in our context embraces Moon Country, can be read as a return to Modernism.
4 Auden’s Preface works as an Acknowledgements of sorts, but the publisher/sponsor (Faber) is mentioned in his “Letter to Lord Byron” rather than in the Preface (Auden and MacNeice Citation1985, 20–21).
5 MacNeice’s writing is also best known for journalistic style, propelling, for instance, his memorable Autumn Journal composed a year later (1938).
6 Such as: diary (Auden’s “W. H. A. to E. M. A.” and MacNeice’s “Hetty to Nancy”; Armitage’s diary and Maxwell’s logbook); semi-documentary material (Letters: guide “For Tourists”, 52 photographs; Moon Country: inventory “Kit Bag”, 14 photographs); travel/historical documentation (Letters: a map, an extract from a parish register, graphs; Moon Country: a tachographic, a BBC letter, extracts from interviews).
7 Ástráður Eysteinsson and Sveinn Yngvi Egilsson, pers. comm. April 29, 2020. Press notes on the event (Rawlings and Robertson Citation2019; “Three World Famous Poets” Citation2019) provide only two brief quotes from the Armitage interview.
8 See e.g. David Roessel’s In Byron’s Shadow: Modern Greece in the English and American Imagination (OUP, 2002).
9 The photographs in Moon Country form a non-paginated annex inserted between pp. 88 and 89.
10 In the next edition of Letters, all texts are marked with initials at the end of each chapter. After MacNeice’s death, Auden stripped the reprint of Letters of his own lyrics, as well as statistical graphs, and importantly, photos. Given the significance of photography in Letters and Moon Country, this was a huge loss.
11 Armitage worked as a probation officer himself.
12 While Moon Country just touches upon tourism, it is worth looking at Armitage’s 1998 trip as a one-day tourist excursion in Iceland (“Mum’s Gone to Iceland” in Armitage 1998).
13 Bryant starts this analysis with a quote from Auden: “As you see, no crisis, no continuity. / Only heroic cutting could save it” (Auden and MacNeice Citation1985, 220), referring to Auden’s experience with the G.P.O. Film Unit.
14 In 1936, Auden arrived in Iceland a few months before MacNeice.
15 This ecological approach is also evident in the documentation of Armitage’s 2019 trip to Iceland, where the poets are hugging a grassy mound in one of the photographs (Rawlings and Robertson Citation2019). Armitage’s work in general displays a protective sensibility towards the Earth.
16 Compare Jeffrey Hart on Letters: “before the reader opens the book, he might imagine that Iceland is a synecdoche for something, but it isn’t. It’s just Iceland” (Citation1997, 59–60).
17 It can lend, however, a point of reference for other poets of the 1990s, for instance for Seamus Heaney’s “eclogues in extremis” such as the travel sequence of “Sonnets from Hellas” (Electric Light 2001).
18 Compare MacNeice’s disenchanted vision of islands, including prison islands, for instance in Ten Burnt Offerings.
19 Armitage’s reaction to his writing block fits to an extent the footsteps framework: Auden attempted a similar thing in Letters, but went to the extremes, writing about “himself, Europe, literature, anything he can think of. Crucially, the letter he writes will … have little to do with Iceland” (Youngs Citation2005, 74).
20 Gates about Letters: “Both authors are rather sheepish about their presence in Iceland when Europe wants such careful attention … Is it possible, horrid thought, that these poets are becoming escapists?” (Citation1937).