Commentary:       Jónas's poem is an adaptation of the first three stanzas of Caput XIII (Chapter 13) of Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen (Germany. A Winter's Tale), published in September 1844 as part of Heine's Neue Gedichte (New Poems); see HHi59-61. Heine's stanzas read as follows:

Sisyphus was a legendary king of Corinth, condemned in Hades to eternally push a huge boulder up to the top of a hill. When it reached the summit it rolled back down again. The Danaids were the fifty daughters of King Danaus of Argos, all but one of whom murdered their husbands on their wedding night. For this they were condemned in Hades to forever pour water into a jar with holes in the bottom.¹

Jónas's poem is much more astronomically sophisticated than Heine's — as is only to be expected (see HHi61). It is also much more elevated in tone — and much more somber — than Heine's original, partly as a result of Jónas's decision to use fornyrðislag (always a solemn meter in his hands), but also because he has turned a piece of playful ironic wit into a grim, semi-mythic statement. Heine's emphasis is on foolishness and folly, Jónas's on the weariness and futile drudgery involved in trying to bring light into the world — and perhaps also on the world's eternal foolishness in preferring night to day (see his fable, "The Girl in the Tower"). But the ease with which Heine's stanzas could be tailored to make a serious statement about one of Jónas's favorite themes (light vs. darkness) may not have been his only reason for choosing to adapt them: perhaps it struck him that the eternal, futile labors of Sisyphus and the Danaids were symbolic of his own frustrating and even futile struggle with the "Description of Iceland." Hannes Hafstein described his difficulties with this project during the last year of his life:

The winter deepened. He was struggling with the "Description of Iceland" but making only slow progress. He would start working on one chapter, then another, abandoning them in midstream and starting over again somewhere else. It is clear from this that he was getting sick and tired of being obliged to work in this fashion and forced to read a multitude of books on a single narrow subject. His mind started straying to other things. (BXXXVII-XXXVIII)