(Translated from the original Lappish by Mr. Punch's own Hyperborean Enthusiast.)
Introductory Note.
IT affords me no ordinary gratification to be the humble instrument in rendering these exquisitely obscure prose-poems—reeking as they are with the self-consciousness of so magnificently triumphant an Ego—into the English tongue, though I am fully aware of the difficulty of preserving all the mystical unintelligibility of the original.
Dunno Währiar is perhaps the most remarkable personality that his native Lapland has yet produced. He first saw the light on April 1, 1879, at Kandalax, so that he may still be called comparatively young. His impressionable, sensitive soul broke out in early revolt against the train-oil and tallow which formed the traditionary nutriment of his family circle, and in 1883 we find him casting off the shackles of conventionality and escaping to Sweden in his sledge-perambulator. There he has lived ever since, and has already secured a foremost place among the greatest physiological psychologists of Scandinavia. As a morbid pathologist, he surpasses Strindberg; while in neurotic sensitivism, he has hustled Hansson into a back seat; easily beaten Björnson in diagnosis of the elusive emotions; and taken the indigestible cake of slack-baked symbolism from the master hand of Ibsen himself! Small wonder, then, that the commonest penwiper containing issues from his pen is eagerly sought after by admirers of such effusions.
He belongs ('tis true) to the Literary Upper Crust, and is for the few rather than the many; while so absolute has been his fidelity to the principles of his art, that he has published every one of his works at a considerable pecuniary loss.
Need I say more to ensure for him that respectful admiration which the public is ever ready to lavish upon anything they fail to understand?
Let me rather efface myself and leave Dunno Währiar—or "Young Garnaway," as is his self-adopted pseudonym—to unfold the rhythmic charm of his own inimitable incomprehensibility.
BLIND ALLEY-GORY THE FIRST.
THE LOST BACKBONE.