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Malcolm Lowry - In Memoriam
Nov. 29th, 2013 05:35 pmIn Memoriam
INGVALD BJORNDAL AND HIS COMRADE
(Translation of a letter written somewhere in the North Atlantic and sent to the Government of Canada by Inspector Ovide Hubert of Cap-aux-Meules, Magdalen Islands. The letter was written in Norwegian and had been found in a bottle by the sea near l'Etang du Nord by Hubert Duclos, a fisherman, on 25 November 1940. The letter was addressed to Lovise Stigen, Kalandeendet [?] Fana)
While we sail and laugh, joke and fight, comes death
And it is the end. A man toils on board;
His life drifts away like a puff of breath;
Who will know his dreams now when the sea roared?
I loved you, my dear, but now I am dead,
So take somebody else and forget me.
My brothers, I was foolish, as you said:
So are most who place their fate in the sea.
Many tears have you shed for me in vain.
Take my pay, Mother, Father, I have come
A long way to die in the blood and rain.
Buy me some earth in the graveyard at home.
Goodbye. Please remember me with these words
To the green meadows and the blue fjords.
It seems as if the letter was real, but Lowry never handled it - some diligent archival work on the part of blogger Keeping Soul Alive suggests that he drew most of the material from a newspaper article, and rendered it in poetic form. Said blogger has also dug up records of a likely Norwegian shipwreck, and of the survival of one Ingvald Bjorndal.
INGVALD BJORNDAL AND HIS COMRADE
(Translation of a letter written somewhere in the North Atlantic and sent to the Government of Canada by Inspector Ovide Hubert of Cap-aux-Meules, Magdalen Islands. The letter was written in Norwegian and had been found in a bottle by the sea near l'Etang du Nord by Hubert Duclos, a fisherman, on 25 November 1940. The letter was addressed to Lovise Stigen, Kalandeendet [?] Fana)
While we sail and laugh, joke and fight, comes death
And it is the end. A man toils on board;
His life drifts away like a puff of breath;
Who will know his dreams now when the sea roared?
I loved you, my dear, but now I am dead,
So take somebody else and forget me.
My brothers, I was foolish, as you said:
So are most who place their fate in the sea.
Many tears have you shed for me in vain.
Take my pay, Mother, Father, I have come
A long way to die in the blood and rain.
Buy me some earth in the graveyard at home.
Goodbye. Please remember me with these words
To the green meadows and the blue fjords.
It seems as if the letter was real, but Lowry never handled it - some diligent archival work on the part of blogger Keeping Soul Alive suggests that he drew most of the material from a newspaper article, and rendered it in poetic form. Said blogger has also dug up records of a likely Norwegian shipwreck, and of the survival of one Ingvald Bjorndal.