Árni Jóhannsson Bergmann (born 22 August 1935) is an Icelandic writer, newspaper editor, literary critic, and translator of

Russian Russian(s) may refer to: *Russians (), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *A citizen of Russia *Russian language, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages *''The Russians'', a b ...

literary works.

Career

Bergmann studied Russian at

Moscow State University Moscow State University (MSU), officially M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University,. is a public university, public research university in Moscow, Russia. The university includes 15 research institutes, 43 faculties, more than 300 departments, a ...

and received his

Master of Arts A Master of Arts ( or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA or AM) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. Those admitted to the degree have ...

from the institution in 1962. Shortly thereafter, he joined the staff of the

Socialist Socialism is an economic ideology, economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse Economic system, economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. It describes ...

-leaning Icelandic newspaper ''

Þjóðviljinn :''Þjóðviljinn (1887-1915), Þjóðviljinn was also the name of a magazine published by Skúli Thoroddsen between 1887 and 1915.'' ''Þjóðviljinn'' () was an Icelandic daily newspaper founded on 31 October 1936. It had close ties with the Com ...

'' as a journalist and columnist. He became the paper’s foremost literary critic and served as editor-in-chief during 1978 to 1992. In addition to his work with ''Þjóðviljinn'', Bergmann taught classes in literature, literary history, and various topics in

Russian literature Russian literature refers to the literature of Russia, its Russian diaspora, émigrés, and to Russian language, Russian-language literature. Major contributors to Russian literature, as well as English for instance, are authors of different e ...

and language at the

University of Iceland The University of Iceland ( ) is a public research university in Reykjavík, Iceland, and the country's oldest and largest institution of higher education. Founded in 1911, it has grown steadily from a small civil servants' school to a modern co ...

from 1973 until 2004. He is best known for his third novel, ''Þorvaldur víðförli: Skáldsaga'' ('Thorvald Widely-Travelled: A Novel'), a fictionalized account of the life of tenth century Icelandic skald and missionary '' Þorvaldur víðförli'', which was published in 1994''.'' The novel earned him nomination for the

Icelandic Literary Prize The Icelandic Literary Prize ( Icelandic: ''Íslensku bókmenntaverðlaunin''), or Icelandic Literary Award, is an award which is given to three books each year by the Icelandic Publishers Association. The prize was founded on the association's cen ...

in 1994 and the

Nordic Council Literature Prize The Nordic Council Literature Prize is awarded for a work of literature written in one of the languages of the Nordic countries, that meets "high literary and artistic standards". Established in 1962, the prize is awarded every year, and is worth ...

in 1998. In 2015, he published a Russian translation of ''Þorvaldur víðförli'' One of Iceland’s most prolific literary translators, he has translated a broad variety of works from Russian to Icelandic. Most of his translations are focused on works from the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century and include, for example, novels by

Nina Berberova Nina Nikolayevna Berberova (; 26 July 1901 – 26 September 1993) was a Russian writer who chronicled the lives of anti-communist Russian refugees in Paris in her short stories and novels. She visited post-Soviet Russia. Her 1965 revision of ...

and

Valentin Katayev Valentin Petrovich Kataev (; also spelled Katayev or Kataiev; – 12 April 1986) was a Soviet writer and editor who managed to create penetrating works discussing post-revolutionary social conditions without running afoul of the demands of ...

; short stories by

Anton Chekhov Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (; ; 29 January 1860 – 15 July 1904) was a Russian playwright and short-story writer, widely considered to be one of the greatest writers of all time. His career as a playwright produced four classics, and his b ...

Nikolai Gogol Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol; ; (; () was a Russian novelist, short story writer, and playwright of Ukrainian origin. Gogol used the Grotesque#In literature, grotesque in his writings, for example, in his works "The Nose (Gogol short story), ...

Daniil Kharms Daniil Ivanovich Kharms (; – 2 February 1942) was a Russian avant-gardist and absurdist poet, writer and dramatist in the early Soviet era. Early years Kharms was born as Daniil Yuvachev in Saint Petersburg, then the capital of the Ru ...

, and

Mikhail Sholokhov Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov ( rus, Михаил Александрович Шолохов, p=ˈʂoləxəf; – 21 February 1984) was a Russian novelist and winner of the 1965 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is known for writing about life ...

; poems by

Osip Mandelstam Osip Emilyevich Mandelstam (, ; – 27 December 1938) was a Russian and Soviet poet. He was one of the foremost members of the Acmeist school. Osip Mandelstam was arrested during the repressions of the 1930s and sent into internal exile wi ...

Vladimir Mayakovsky Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky ( – 14 April 1930) was a Russian poet, playwright, artist, and actor. During his early, Russian Revolution, pre-Revolution period leading into 1917, Mayakovsky became renowned as a prominent figure of the Ru ...

, and

Boris Pasternak Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (30 May 1960) was a Russian and Soviet poet, novelist, composer, and literary translator. Composed in 1917, Pasternak's first book of poems, ''My Sister, Life'', was published in Berlin in 1922 and soon became an imp ...

; and essays by

Ilya Ehrenburg Ilya Grigoryevich Ehrenburg (, ; – August 31, 1967) was a Soviet writer, revolutionary, journalist and historian. Ehrenburg was among the most prolific and notable authors of the Soviet Union; he published around one hundred titles. He becam ...

and

Viktor Shklovsky Viktor Borisovich Shklovsky ( rus, Ви́ктор Бори́сович Шкло́вский, p=ˈʂklofskʲɪj; – 6 December 1984) was a Russian and Soviet literary theorist, critic, writer, and pamphleteer. He is one of the major figures asso ...

, among many others.

Personal life

Bergmann was born in

Keflavík Keflavík (pronounced , meaning ''Driftwood Bay'') is a town in the Reykjanes region in southwest Iceland. It is included in the municipality of Reykjanesbær whose population as of 2016 is 15,129. In 1995, Keflavík merged with nearby Njar ...

, an Icelandic town southwest of

Reykjavík Reykjavík is the Capital city, capital and largest city in Iceland. It is located in southwestern Iceland on the southern shore of Faxaflói, the Faxaflói Bay. With a latitude of 64°08′ N, the city is List of northernmost items, the worl ...

, on 22 August 1935 to Jóhann Stefánsson Bergmann (1906–1996), a fisherman and driver, and Halldóra Árnadóttir (1914–2006), a housewife. He is the second eldest of four brothers, the others being Hörður, born in 1933; Stefán, born in 1942; and Jóhann, born in 1946. His wife was Lena Bergmann (1935–2008), born Elena Rytsjardovna Túvína in

Ryazan Ryazan (, ; also Riazan) is the largest types of inhabited localities in Russia, city and administrative center of Ryazan Oblast, Russia. The city is located on the banks of the Oka River in Central Russia, southeast of Moscow. As of the 2010 C ...

Russian SFSR The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (Russian SFSR or RSFSR), previously known as the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and the Russian Soviet Republic, and unofficially as Soviet Russia,Declaration of Rights of the labo ...

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

, the eldest child of Soffía (), a dentist, and Ryszard Tuwim, an engineer. Lena and Árni met while both were studying Russian at the Moscow State University and were married in the fall of 1958. Their first child, Snorri, was born in 1961, when they were still living in Moscow. The young family moved to Iceland in 1962. Their second child, Olga Soffía, was born in 1967. Together, Árni and Lena wrote ''Blátt og rautt: bernska og unglingsár í tveim heimum'' ('Blue and Red: Childhood and Adolescence in Two Worlds'), contrasting their experiences growing up in Iceland and the Soviet Union, respectively. Bergmann has never taken a drivers test and bicycling has been his primary means of transportation since returning to Iceland form Russia in 1962.

Bibliography

This list of works written and/or translated by Árni Jóhannsson Bergmann is incomplete.

Fiction

Bergman has written four novels and two children’s books.

Novels

* ''Geirfuglarnir'' ('The Great Auks') – 1982 * ''Með kveðju frá Dublin'' ('With Greetings from Dublin') – 1984 * ''Þorvaldur víðförli'' ('Thorvald the Widely-Travelled') – 1994 * ''Sægreifi deyr'' ('Death of a Sea-Baron') – 1999

Children’s books

* ''Stelpan sem var hrædd við dýr'' ('The Girl Who Was Afraid of Animals') – 1994, with illustrations by Olga Bergmann * ''Óskastundir: saga handa börnum'' ('Wishing Hours: A Tale for Children') – 1997, with illustrations by Margrét Laxness

Non-fiction

* ('Acting Seriously: The Biography of Gunnar Eyjólfsson') – 2010

Memoirs

* ''Miðvikudagar í Moskvu'' ('Wednesdays in Moscow') – 1979 * ''Blátt og rautt: bernska og unglingsár í tveim heimum'' ('Blue and Red: Childhood and Adolescence in Two Worlds') – 1986, with Lena Bergmann * * ('I Still Have One Thing: Memories') – 2015

Scholarly works

* ''Listin að lesa'' ('The Art of Reading') – 2005 *''Glíman við Guð'' ('Wresting with God') – 2008

Translations to Icelandic

Novels

* (1990) – ''The Accompanist'' by

* (1991) – ''The Black Malady'' by Nina Berberova * (1998) – ''Time, Forward!'' by

* (2001) – ''

The State Counsellor ''The State Counsellor'' (, State Councillor (Russia), the 5th civil grade in the Table of Ranks of Imperial Russia) is the sixth novel in the Erast Fandorin Historical mystery, historical detective series by Russian writer Boris Akunin. It is su ...

'' by

Boris Akunin Grigori Chkhartishvili (; ka, გრიგორი ჩხარტიშვილი), better known by his pen name Boris Akunin (, born 20 May 1956), is a Georgian and Russian writer residing in the United Kingdom. He is best known as a write ...

* (2003) – ''Coronation, or the last of the Romanovs'' by Boris Akunin * – ''The Winter Queen, or Fandorin's First Case'' by Boris Akunin * (2005) – '' Murder on the Leviathan'' by Boris Akunin

Plays

* (1996) – '' The Suicide'' by

Nikolai Erdmann Nikolai Robertovich Erdman ( rus, Николай Робертович Эрдман, p=nʲɪkɐˈlaj ˈrobʲɪrtəvʲɪtɕ ˈɛrdmən, a=Nikolay Robyertovich Erdman.ru.vorb.oga; , Moscow – 10 August 1970) was a Soviet dramatist and screenwriter ...

* (1999) – ''Stars in the Morning Sky'' by Alexander Galin * (1989) – ''

Summerfolk ''Summerfolk'' () is a play by Maxim Gorky written in 1904 and first published in 1905 by Znaniye (''1904 Znaniye Anthology'', book Three), in Saint Petersburg.

'' by

Maxim Gorky Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (; – 18 June 1936), popularly known as Maxim Gorky (; ), was a Russian and Soviet writer and proponent of socialism. He was nominated five times for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Before his success as an aut ...

Short stories

* (1987) – "Shibalok's Seed" from ''Tales from the Don'' by

* ('Poems Heard in the 20th Century') (1987) – by

Andrei Bitov Andrei Georgiyevich Bitov (, 27 May 1937 – 3 December 2018) was a prominent Russian writer of Circassian ancestry. Biography Bitov was born in Leningrad. His father was an architect and his mother was a lawyer. He completed his secondary edu ...

* (1994) – " About Love" by Anton Chekhov * (1994) – "The Lottery Ticket” by Anton Chekhov * (1998) – "

The Lady with the Dog "The Lady with the Dog" () is a short story by Anton Chekhov. First published in 1899, it describes an adulterous affair between an unhappily married Moscow banker and a young married woman that begins while both are vacationing alone in Yalta. I ...

" and other short stories by

* ('Daniil Kharms: Smell of Burnt Feathers') (2000) – selected short stories by

, published as a special edition () of the literary journal ''Bjartur og frú Emilía'' * ''Mírgorod'' (2006) by

, translated by Árni Bergmann, Áslaug Agnarsdóttir, and Þórarinn Kristjánsson

Other

* * (1957) – essay by

* ('Café Rotonde: Chapters from the first book of memoirs') (1961) – selections from the memoirs of Ilya Ehrenburg * (1961) – selected passages from ''People, Years, Life'' by Ilya Ehrenburg * ('Letters') (1987) – selected works by

Isaac Babel Isaac Emmanuilovich Babel ( – 27 January 1940) was a Soviet writer, journalist, playwright, and literary translator. He is best known as the author of ''Red Cavalry'' and ''Odessa Stories'', and has been acclaimed as "the greatest prose write ...

* (1987) – by

* (1987) – poem by

Yevgeny Yevtushenko Yevgeny Aleksandrovich Yevtushenko (; 18 July 1933 – 1 April 2017) was a Soviet and Russian poet, novelist, essayist, dramatist, screenwriter, publisher, actor, editor, university professor, and director of several films. Biography Early lif ...

* (' ntitled) (1987) – poem by

* ('Russia and Iceland: The Relationship Between Orthodoxy and Lutheranism through History') (1988) – essay by Ágústin Niktin, published in , the magazine of the

Church of Iceland The Church of Iceland (), officially the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Iceland (), is the State religion, national church of Iceland. The church is Christian and professes the Lutheranism, Lutheran faith. It is a member of the Lutheran World ...

* (1991) – essay 'Art as Device' by

, published in ('Steps in 20th Century Literature'), a collection of ten translated essays from various landmark writers of the late 19th and early 20th century * (1994) – by

* (1997) – translation of the epic poem ''

The Tale of Igor's Campaign ''The Tale of Igor's Campaign'' or ''The Tale of Ihor's Campaign'' () is an anonymous epic poem written in the Old East Slavic language. The title is occasionally translated as ''The Tale of the Campaign of Igor'', ''The Song of Igor's Campaign'' ...

'' from

Old East Slavic Old East Slavic (traditionally also Old Russian) was a language (or a group of dialects) used by the East Slavs from the 7th or 8th century to the 13th or 14th century, until it diverged into the Russian language, Russian and Ruthenian language ...

and accompanying text drawing parallels between 'Russian epic poetry and Icelandic ancient literature' * ('Russian Futurism') (2001) – collected manifestos of

Russian Futurists Russian Futurism is the broad term for a movement of Russian poets and artists who adopted the principles of Filippo Marinetti's "Manifesto of Futurism", which espoused the rejection of the past, and a celebration of speed, machinery, violence, ...

* * * ('Russian Stories') (2009) – selected passages from the Chronicle of Bygone Years and other Old Russian letopises

References

External links

Icelandic literature siteIceland authors
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bergmann, Arni Living people 1935 births Arni Bergmann Arni Bergmann Translators to Icelandic Translators from Russian Translators of Boris Pasternak Translators to Russian Recipients of the Order of the Falcon Russian literary historians Soviet literary historians Arni Bergmann

Career

Personal life

Bibliography

Fiction

Novels

Children’s books

Non-fiction

Memoirs

Scholarly works

Translations to Icelandic

Novels

Plays

Short stories

Other

See also

References

External links