Poem from Vinje, Telemark

All reminds me, it reminds, and it reminds,

Till the sun down in the sea has faded out

And in my last sleep I one more desire

The old remembrance and old shadows.

The above poem was written in Norwegian by the poet A.O. Vinje of his native land in Telemark, Norway.  I hope to use this poem in my 12-page paper about S.A. Olsness which I just finished putting into rough draft form.  Paring down from the current 14 pages will be difficult but the two graphs I have on Dark Northern wheat prices can go into the appendix.  That means cutting another page out, but what?  At a talk on writing that I went to recently, I heard a journalist say that we must be willing to “kill the little darlings” in order to keep with brevity.  Difficult to do when everything about S.A. Olsness’ life seems so important.  His involvement with writing newspaper articles to promote his political cause or his writing down North Dakota weather and all its variables or even the grain prices in the 1930s are all fascinating to me.  The above poem I hope to keep in the conclusion because it sums up his life of remembering.  He wove the poem into a short autobiography for the Telesoga that was published in 1915.  S.A. wrote about Vinje’s poem: “A literal translation, but beautiful in Norsk.”  I’d like to put a disclaimer on my 12 page paper when I submit the final version to the history conference moderators, “A rough translation of a farmer’s life in the 1930s, but beautiful in American history.”