Nukuin vasta aamuyöstä. Olavi Paavolainen 1903–1964

In the 1920s and 1930s the author and journalist Olavi Paavolainen was a prominent cultural figure among young writers and artists. Published after the Second World War, his controversial war diary, Synkkä yksinpuhelu (‘Sombre monologue’, 1946), remains his best-known literary work. This book, by Professor of Literature H.K.Riikonen, focuses on Paavolainen’s literary activities and his oeuvre; it complements and deepens another biography of Paavolainen published in 2014, Tulisoihtu pimeään (‘A torch into the darkness’) by Panu Rajala. Riikonen thoroughly examines Paavolainen’s works as well as his post-war career as a director at the Finnish Broadcasting Company. At times Riikonen’s views, based on careful research, differ from Rajala’s interpretations. Riikonen also features the cultural life and eminent contemporary figures of Paavolainen’s era. At times the text, with its precise references and culture-historical details, meanders somewhat. The book includes plenty of quotes from Paavolainen’s works as well as interesting fact boxes related to the circumstances of his life.

Aatos Erkko (1932–2012) was a prominent newspaper publisher and principal owner of the Sanoma group; the company’s largest and most prestigious paper is Helsingin Sanomat. Reticent by nature and possessed of a difficult personality, Erkko nonetheless tried to act in accordance with his ideals. Rarely seen in the public eye, during his lifetime he was considered one of Finland’s most influential forces behind the scenes. Even though he was not keen on taking over the reins of the paper from his father Eljas (son of the original founder) whose wish it was, Aatos Erkko took the role seriously, developing Helsingin Sanomat into the Nordic region’s largest newspaper. Journalist and writer Leena Liukkonen’s small-scale, warm-hearted portrait is based mostly on Erkko’s later years, making use of discussions and correspondence, as well as interviews recorded by a Swedish colleague. Known as Finland’s richest man, Erkko talks frankly about his difficult relationship with his parents, and the disappointments of his life. The book leaves the impression of a friendship portrayed in terms that are open and honest.

Translated by David McDuff

Self-portrait: Tove Jansson with her creations. Picture: @Moomin Characters

A new Finnish biography of Tove Jansson (1914–2001) was published in 2013; the artist and creator of the Moomins has been celebrated in 2014 in her centenary year. Tove Jansson. Tee tytötä ja rakasta by Tuula Karjalainen was published in English this autumn, translated by David McDuff, under the title Tove Jansson: Work and Love (Penguin Global, Particular Books).

The book was reviewed by The Economist newspaper on 22 November. Unsurprisingly, according to the review, Jansson was more interesting as a writer than as a painter:

’Jansson always saw herself first as a serious painter. She exhibited frequently in Finland, and won awards and commissions for large public murals. Her reputation there as a writer lagged far behind the rest of the world. Ms Karjalainen is a historian of Finnish art, and although she covers Jansson’s writing, it is the paintings that really interest her. This is a pity. Jansson was a more interesting writer than a painter, and her life sheds much light on her particular quality as a storyteller.’

Whereas Karjalainen concentrates on Jansson’s painting, another biography of Jansson, by the Swedish literary scholar Boel Westin (reviewed here) focuses on Jansson as a writer. Here, you can find a selection of Tove Jansson’s art.

A quotation from The Economist‘s review: ‘Her use of Moomins to defy the war is characteristic. Everywhere in her fiction there is the same sense of deflection and indirection. She hated ideologies, messages, answers. And it somehow fits that she fell in love with both men and women. Ambivalence was a kind of comfort to her. As one of her characters says, “Everything is very uncertain, and that is what makes me calm.’

Tove Jansson’s versatile brilliance as an artist, we think, is at its best in the way she combined illustration and text in her Moomin stories. Their (great) visual and philosophical value lies in the praise of freedom and independence of the mind: for everyone, young or old.

Tulisoihtu pimeään. Olavi Paavolaisen elämä

In the 1920s Olavi Paavolainen (1903–1964) became the charismatic figurehead of the influential Tulenkantajat (‘Firebearers’) movement, which placed emphasis on internationalism and modernism. After the movement broke up Paavolainen worked as a prominent cultural leader and critic who knew how to provoke and to arouse admiration. The original travel book he wrote about Nazi Germany in peacetime is still read, as is his book Synkkä yksinpuhelu (‘A sombre monologue’, 1946), based on the diaries he kept during the Second World War. The criticism the book received (and doubts about its author’s ‘wisdom of hindsight’) contributed to Paavolainen’s silence as a writer. Although in the 1950s and 1960s as a director he brought about a flourishing of radio drama at the Finnish Broadcasting Company, he became an alcoholic. Much has been written about Paavolainen, but author and researcher Panu Rajala’s popular biography has managed to find new perspectives and gives a vivid portrayal of Paavolainen’s personality, the writers he knew, the colourful story of his complex relationships with women, and his travels. There is less analysis of his literary production, though the content and reception of his books are discussed.

Translated by David McDuff

Early days: Tove Jansson went to Stockholm to study art when she was just 16. A letter to her friend Elisabeth Wolff, from November 1932

Artist and author Tove Jansson (1914–2001) is known abroad for her Moomin books for children and fiction for adults. A large selection of her letters – to family, friends and lovers – was published for the first time in September. In these extracts she writes to her best friend Eva Konikoff who moved to the US in 1941, to her lover, Atos Wirtanen, journalist and politician, and to her life companion of 45 years, artist Tuulikki Pietilä.
Brev från Tove Jansson (selected and commented by Boel Westin and Helen Svensson; Schildts & Söderströms, 2014; illustrations from the book) introduced by Pia Ingström

7.10.44. H:fors. [Helsinki]

exp. Tove Jansson. Ulrikaborgg. A Tornet. Helsingfors. Finland. Written in swedish.
to: Miss Eva Konikoff. Mr. Saletan. 70 Fifty Aveny. New York City. U.S.A.

Dearest Eva!

Now I can’t help writing to you again – the war [Finnish Continuation War, from 1941 to 19 September 1944] is over, and perhaps gradually it will be possible to send letters to America. Next year, maybe. But this letter will have to wait until then – even so, it will show that I was thinking of you. Curiously enough, Konikova, all these years you have been more alive for me than any of my other friends. I have talked to you, often. And your smiling Polyfoto has cheered me up and comforted me and has also taken part in the fortunate and wonderful things that have happened. I remembered your warmth, your vitality and your friendship and felt happy! At first I wrote frequently, every week – but after about a year most of it was returned to me. I wrote more after that, but the letters were often so gloomy that I didn’t feel like saving them. Now there are so absurdly many things I have to talk to you about that I don’t know where to begin. Koni, if only I’d had you here in my grand new studio and could have hugged you. After these recent years there is no human being I have longed for more than you.

It’s magnificent here [Jansson’s studio in Helsinki, now preserved as the artist’s home], is it not? A turret room, with a high ceiling like a church, nearly eight metres square with six arched windows and above them little rectangular windows like eyebrows on top under the ceiling. Cracks here and there, and piles of masonry, because the repairs to the bomb damage aren’t finished yet, and in the midst of the rubble an easel. A colossal, ornate Art Nouveau stove, and a funny old door with green and red glass windows.

A studio one could spend one’s whole life beautifying if one wanted to. And next to it an asymmetrical whitewashed room – where I can keep all my feminine odds and ends, all my gentle, playful, ostentatious and personal stuff – with two windows under the ceiling. Ulrikasborgsgatan Street 1. The Turret. Hageli’s old studio [Hageli: the artist Hjalmar Hagelstam who died in the war 1941]. Some of his cheerful, adventurous spirit is still here, I think. A bit melancholy. – I am happy and grateful that my great Studio Utopia has come true. And I have the urge to paint again. I wake up in the mornings and remember – first, that the boys [her two brothers] are alive – and then that I have the studio. (and then Atos!) [Wirtanen, her lover and friend]
….

16.12.47 [Helsingfors]

Dearest Eva,

… Except for last week, when I devoted myself to family parcels, tidying and Christmas presents in Lallukka [the artists’ home in Helsinki where TJ:s parents lived], I have been trying to rustle up paintings in the studio. The early part of the autumn was simply hopeless: I did things that were far inferior to the canvases of a year ago, and I had neither the desire nor the ability to concentrate. At the end of November things started to ‘gel’. A blotch here and there that looked like painting. I now have one or two items that might have a future, but somehow can’t manage to assess their quality – it’s rather as if my will had got out of control. Sometimes I think they are worse than ever, sometimes that I’m working in a completely new way, didn’t notice when I crossed the old latitude, and just voyaged on. The worst of it has been that absolute lack of desire for anything. I suppose it’s a result of spending the whole spring playing the part of someone I am not in order to win another human being. Swallowing it down and lying and pretending to be teasing and carefree. Then pretending to be happy for the family’s sake and the Swedish guest, and systematically trying to kill my feelings for the very person I was fighting for. It’s hard to remain suspended in the air between woman and man, and when one finally realises that one must be honest, and nothing but that – one no longer knows what is real.

It has all gradually turned into something that has no connection with either ‘happiness’ or ‘love’ – oh, all those words – but only with work and calm. When Vivica [Bandler: theatre director with whom TJ had fallen in love] returned from France and phoned me I was immensely happy.

Now we have only met each other once or twice, and her arrival was a long time ago. Nothing has happened, nothing is settled. Sometimes there is small talk or a flare-up of the old bitter misunderstandings, a prelude to a conversation, an attempt at warmth. I was ready for anything, to carry on, to let it become a friendship, only meet occasionally to talk and laugh. But I had to have someone to help me shape it all into something other than tormented brokenness and uncertainty.

She said, I don’t know. I don’t feel up to it. I have no desire to do anything. So I understood that there isn’t and never will be anyone to help one. And no matter how much I want to help her in her coldness, her vulnerability and distrust, her unproductiveness, I can’t help her, any more than she can me. We have become a sort of ‘relationship people’ to each other, but we don’t even have the energy to try to make a mutual impression – or care about each other. It all breathes nothing but deadly dullness, though violent reactions are liable to break out at any time. For example, I mentioned that I was drawing a Moomin comic strip for the children’s corner of Atos’s newspaper. She was furious at the betrayal and accused me violently. I shouldn’t have defended myself, but I did – and the result was an endless quarrel of vast proportions that ended in tears on both sides. You see, that is the unsustainable, unnatural side of a lesbian relationship. Not morality, not the anatomical problem, not the social problem. But the fact that a controversy, a trust, a joint venture, yes, all the things one tries to shape together, can never be capable of maintaining the balance. In, for example, an agreement between a [following line of text illegible] her gentleness, perhaps due to his calm. Between two women the complements are lacking; in their reactions they float out into the same excesses. I suppose it’s the same for two men. A hellish depression and helplessness afterwards. It’s like building a house of cards: when it collapses for the nineteenth time one has an urge to throw the pack out of the window.

Now I have done something about which (like everything else) I’m uncertain and don’t know whether it is brave or, on the contrary, exceptionally cowardly. I wrote to Atos and asked if he thought it was a good idea for us to marry. If he didn’t want to we could just talk about other things when he came home. He will get the letter in Stockholm on his way back.

After I sent it something very pleasant happened. The dialogue with Vivica I’d had in my head since early spring ceased. That terrible grinding of all that was said, could have been said, should have been said, had not been said. Stored up and chewed over night and day. Now she was here I hoped to be able to tell her everything that was weighing me down, and so become free from it. But she would not let me say anything. It served me right for being so self-absorbed, but I thought it the only thing that could save me. That I would understand something important, and that then we could truly be friends.

I think I am hoping that Atos wants to marry me. We would go on living as we are now, and not change our way of life in any respect. Probably not even his attitude to me would change – unless perhaps he lost his vague sense of guilt [following line of text illegible] But I imagine that the ‘symbol’ would mean a lot to me. Why – I don’t know. Really know less and less. But perhaps I would calm down and be able to work. And no longer yearn to be over on ‘la rive gauche’.

So much for that. Could tell you about the monkey and bits of trivia from Lallukka – no. I’ve written about all that in a lot of ‘Merry Christmas letters’. But when I write Happy New Year to you, I mean it with all my heart, and it is my dearest wish. Say hello to Ramon!

Tove

21.06.48 St Pierre [France]

[to Atos Wirtanen]

Paradise: Tove Jansson and Atos Wirtanen planned to set up an artists’ colony in Morocco: in this illustration, Jansson has placed Wirtanen in the hanging garden on top of the tower, her studio is on the left. The dream never came true

Kenavo! which is Breton, and means: hello, sof.
[TJ occasionally called Wirtanen ‘solofif’, ‘sofen’ or ‘sof’: ‘filosof’ in Swedish means ‘philosopher’]

Right now your still faithful Tofsla is sitting in Bar de l’Océan near the fishing harbour and drinking absinthe, reflecting that midsummer and pandemonium are coming, and around me seamen and fishermen are running riot in blue and pink pants with this hilarious, half-Gallic-Celtic language; now and then they ask me if I’ve taken any photographies today and why on earth don’t the Finns like the Russians. It’s a seriously communist part of the world, this, as I discovered at the lobster festival in Le Guilvinec. The main attraction was trying to knock the hat off a gentleman by the use of cloth balls – and it was a Stars and Stripes hat, too. After that one could amuse oneself by running ten laps round a pole and balancing over a rope to reach for a packet of cigarettes which of course one never reached, or by drinking red wine in green tents packed like tins of sardines – then there was a bit of propaganda, and then there was dancing in the youth centre, and I missed the bus and walked eight kilometres over the salt flats all the way to my friendly lighthouse. The sky full, full of stars and the breakers ever closer, and the enormous cross of light sweeping over, towards one, then past and far out to sea.

There is something immensely peaceful about this flat, treeless landscape, the huddled row of   houses by the sea, the long beach at low tide with glints of blue in the distance. A landscape of horizontal lines, sparse in colour, but highly nuanced. A wonderful cadmium-yellow moss on the low stone walls, seaweed of every hue between blackish purple and honey-yellow, grey-white sand, the sun-bleached grass – and constant wind. The waves of the whole Atlantic that stop right here, on this very low beach – but there are sharks and whales further out – here Tofslan and others go gathering seashells in the safe low tidewater.

Talk of shells and shore-winds must seem very distant from what you are working on, which occupies all your time and all your thoughts. But those things are on the island too, the one where we stay. The seaweed and the horizon, all of it. Perhaps some time at the end of the summer you will be tired of talk and people and will feel like going out there. So I send words of enticement from this coast where the days go by without much talk or the sight of many people. Right now lilies are blooming in the potato patches inside the walls. Wind-tossed shrubs with glossy leaves, and two low apple trees in front of the gate.

At the fishing harbour and the pier the boats lie red and blue on the seabed at low tide amidst screaming clouds of seagulls, the vessels jut out in the inlet and heavy brown nets are spread in the sand. The women sit in decent black, crocheting in the shadows of the walls. And in all this I wander around – the most ‘genuine’ landscape I have found in all my travels, and the one that bestows the most calm. If one were not at peace with oneself the monotonous desolation might drive one crazy – but as it is it merely cancels all the expectations of desire, and one lets the days pass as quietly as the falling rain.

Unfortunately the banknotes wander too, so some time in July I shall have to pad off home to my home turf. Eva [Wichman, the writer and artist who was using the studio as her study] will stay quietly in the studio, as I’m only going to give myself the time to get some work materials, cement and food together, and then I can go out to the Island and stay there until the winter storms begin. If you have a spare week you are welcome to visit – I am sure you will need to blow away all the nonsense you have had to listen to, from bourgeois folk and others.

Spread greetings to the old kolkhoz system, and be greeted yourself, through this Whale by

Tove.

28 Feb 1952 [Helsinki]

Dearest Eva,

Self-portrait of an artist? Tove Jansson’s Moomintroll

….These last few years have, from an emotional point of view, been very unsteady and uncertain. Constant preambles to infatuation, a great deal of invented feeling or disappointment, casual relationships, the re- establishing of old ones – and all the time I have had an unpleasant feeling of being suspended in the air, seeking where nothing is to be found.

Now I think I finally know what I want, and since my friendship with you is very important to me and is largely founded on sincerity, I want to talk about it with you. I have not decided, but I am convinced that the most real and the happiest thing for me is to go over to the ghost side. It would be foolish of you to be sad about it. I myself am very cheerful and feel a strong sense of liberation and peace. – During these last weeks I have almost exclusively been with the one whom I only found, alas, shortly before her trip to France. We are both equally happy. At the same time I am working like a lunatic – among other things, on a few portraits and nudes of her. She is not coming back here any more, but I decided that this time I would not bury myself in any grieving.

One fine day it will no doubt be possible to start looking for someone else of whom I can be fond. It will not be easy. And slightly ridiculous, I’m afraid. Can you imagine me carefully interrogating all those tie-wearing ladies, or inserting pathetic adverts in Hufvudstadsbladet? ‘Who will lead me to Lesbos’ distant shores?’ There’s a risk they will think it’s Esbo one is talking about… [Esbo, Espoo in Finnish, is the neighbouring city of Helsingfors/Helsinki]

But that will be later. The main thing is that one is at peace with oneself and knows what one wants.

All spring I am going to paint my walls. In a few days’ time the two five and a half metre canvases will be dry and ready for painting. I had two youngsters from Ateneum [art museum in Helsinki] here, and they prepared them and stretched them for me in return for an hourly wage. (‘Old naturalist exploits poor young geniuses for labour of Mammon…’) The 1:1 drawing is ready. And the sketch for the wall in Kotka delivered.

With regard to the Daily Mail I am still in correspondence with them about a Moomin strip. Would be a good thing for the publicity of my books. Bobbs-Merrill writes about the possibility of toys, perhaps solid, perhaps balloons, based on my Moomins. But it is no more than an idea, I believe.

The picture book from the summer is going to press now, and [Thomas] Warburton is taking forever with the translation of the Moomin memoirs. And tomorrow I deliver a collection of 6-7 oils to the Konsthall [Kunsthalle Helsinki] public exhibition. It’s a lot to have going at the same time. But it’s fun to be working – at last, after so many hellish years of failure or improductivity. Now I’m going to do a bit of cooking. So long until tomorrow!
….

26.6.56 [Bredskär]

[To Tuulikki Pietilä]

Beloved,

I miss you so dreadfully. Not in despair or melancholy, for I know that we shall soon be with each other again, I am simply taken aback, and cannot absorb the fact that you are not around any more.

This morning, half awake, I groped around for you, then remembered you were gone, and got up quickly to escape the emptiness. And worked all day….

Yesterday I woke the social conscience of the whole of the Bay and wrote an application to the chief of police for seven penitent people without a fishing permit. Then I went to Odden and admired all Anna-Lisa’s plant arrangements and cement rings and other peculiar contraptions and received a whole basket full of small plants which I’ve planted here and there on the Island.

The Island looked very grave without you when I arrived here at sunset. It had closed itself up in itself, and I almost felt like a stranger.

Not until I came up to the cabin did it grow friendly and alive again. The wagtails were screaming at the top of their voices with indignation, complaining horribly because the copper pot with our midsummer leaves had fallen down and probably frightened the wits out of their children. Very possibly they got a shower as well. Now the idyll is restored and the mother so tame that she stays on the top of the flagpole when I go in and out of the cabin. For the swallows I brought clay from Anna-Lisa’s bay – but they continue with their secretive visits and are reluctant to take family life seriously.

Late at night I brewed kilju [moonshine] in the ‘best’ water bucket and augmented the recipe with all our raisins.

It was a wonderful night, calm and breathless, and I still could not believe you were gone, I kept constantly half turning round to see what you were doing, to say something to you.

Today a strong south-westerly is blowing, and we would have found it hard to get into the Bay. You are probably far better off deep in the city’s universal hub and rushing about in heat and irritation to get everything organised before you set off.

That first day in town is usually such a nasty contrast to the island life out here. Everything that has been lying in wait comes crashing down on one like a shock, and in the evening one misses the sound of the sea and feels quite disoriented.

Wherever I go on the island you are with me like a reassurance and a stimulus, your joy and vitality remain everywhere. And I if I went away from here you would come with me. You see, I love you simultaneously enchanted and with great calm, and I am not afraid of anything that may be in store for us. This evening I filled the tub with water from the big vat and tried to pick out that dreadful Sea Eagle Waltz on the accordion. You will hear! Now I’m going to read Karin Boye and then go to sleep – goodnight, beloved.

27th.
Today I swept and washed the vat since it was empty and sprinkled sand in it as you told me to.

And wrote Svenska Dagbladet’s dreadful article about ‘what it’s like to write for children’, that has been making me uneasy for a long time. I tried to spice it up with the children’s own refreshing sense of the macabre, the obvious and the impetuous in the healthy meanings of the words, and to write as little as possible about me and my blessed old troll….

I am so unused to being happy that I have not yet really grasped what it means. One has simply received an armful of new opportunities, new calm, new expectations. I feel like a garden that has finally got water so that my flowers have the energy to bloom….

Translated by David McDuff

Brev från Tove Jansson

Nothing could be more mistaken than to describe Tove Jansson as ‘Moominmamma’. In her statements she was both cutting and complex – conflict-ridden and full of paradoxes. And she was nobody’s mamma.

Tove Jansson (1914–2001) became world famous (especially ‘big’ in Japan) with her Moomins – the characters of her illustrated books for children (1945–1970) – and her books for adults are a part of her work that is at least as interesting. Her training, ambition and artistic passion were, however, focused on painting.

Anyone who has read Boel Westin’s excellent biography –  now available in English, Tove Jansson: Life, Art, Words – ‘knows’ all this, but to experience it through Jansson’s own letters, in an alternating process of reflection and recreation, brings the problems close to the reader in quite a different way: one that is shocking, but also deeply human.

This comprehensive edition of Tove Jansson’s letters to her friends, lovers and relatives is the nicest way I can imagine to celebrate her centenary. Jansson describes her work, her many travels, her loves and her stays on her beloved summer islands Bredskär and Klovharun, on the south coast of Finland. Jansson’s parents were both artists: Viktor Jansson, a sculptor, and Signe Hammarsten (‘Ham’) Jansson, a graphic artist. Her brother Lars (1926–2000) illustrated her Moomin comics for many years, and Per-Olov (born 1920) is a photographer and writer.

Jansson writes early on of her attempts to be free of her ‘terribly misguided consideration for everyone and everything.’ On growing acquainted with her erotic life, infatuation with a succession of self-centred men one realises that in this she was not particularly successful. During his spells of leave in wartime the artist Tapio Tapiovaara wants Tove, but also ‘that husky painted blonde from Roobertinkatu Street’. The left-wing parliamentarian and journalist Atos Wirtanen takes shelter behind a philosophical indifference to ‘conventions’ – such as marriage – which makes him an emotional monster, but a cheerful and good-natured one. He is believed to have been the model for Snufkin of the Moomin world, the vagabond with commitment issues.

Through the dead war years of fear, depression and cold Jansson fights bravely and independently, and conquers the world for herself. After the war she at times feels ‘a strong desire for those dark, dangerous years’ – with the ambivalent attitude to formative experiences, both idyllic and horrific, I imagine to be part of her great artistry.

As a piece of Finnish LGBT history Jansson’s descriptions of the ‘ghost side’ – homosexuality, criminalised in Finland until 1971 –- have a unique value. The forbidden love was also found in artistic circles: dangerous, secret and unspoken, but familiar to many. Sometimes, because of necessity the circles had to be kept relatively small, it bore a hysterical, hothouse-like character in a network where there was ‘mymbling’– the Janssonian word for having sex – in all directions.

When the painter Tuulikki Pietilä (1917–2009) finally makes her entrance it comes to the reader as a great relief – here is a woman who knows what she wants, without devouring her partner. Jansson remains who she is, with her at times difficult family as part of the deal, but the deal works. The two women live together for forty-five years.

The letters to Tove’s (heterosexual) girlfriends Eva Konikoff (who moved to America) and Maya Vanni are marked by soul-searching introspection and brusque humour, as in the case of the inevitable ‘Ham friction’ that occurs when, on a small islet, love for mother must coexist with love for Pietilä.

The editors, Boel Westin and Helen Svensson (Jansson’s former literary editor), deserve credit for an extremely well-produced work. The arrangement of the letters is dynamic, the notes and clarifications exact and illuminating in their dry succinctness.

Throughout the whole book, alongside the passions and disappointments, the bread-and-butter jobs and the material hardship, there is a strong current of grim joy in work.

Tove Jansson writes about travel, painting, love, war, friendship, family, comic strip, theatre, money, and house-building. About her own writing, however, there is very little – as if being an author were as natural as breathing and the beating of one’s heart, nothing worth discussing at all. Could she have regarded it as a compensatory sideline, a substitute for her painting, the great, exalted art that never really came to be? Or was it a refuge, and a deeply private joy?

Translated by David McDuff

Kaarlo Sarkia (1902–1945). Photo: Ivar Helander (The Literary Archives/Finnish Literature Society)

Joie de vivre, dream, death, love: Kaarlo Sarkia’s rhymed poetry made him one of the Finnish classics, even if he only had time to publish four collections. Like several unfortunate poets of the first half of the 20th century – among them Edith Södergran, Saima Harmaja, Katri Vala, Uuno Kailas – he died of tuberculosis. Poems from Unen kaivo (‘The well of dreams’, WSOY, 1936)

From the point of view of both form and content, Kaarlo Sarkia’s poem ‘Älä elämää pelkää’ (‘Don’t be afraid of life’, 1936) is among the best examples of Finnish poetry. It crystallises several typical themes and features of his work: a declamatory absoluteness and existential courage, a faith in beauty, and the presence of death.

Don’t be afraid of life,
don’t shut out its beauty.
Invite it to sit by your fire,
or should your hearth expire,
to meet it outside is your duty.
– – –

Älä elämää pelkää,
älä sen kauneutta kiellä.
Suo sen tupaasi tulla
tai jos liettä ei sulla,
sitä vastaan käy tiellä,
älä käännä sille selkää.
– – –

Sarkia (1902–1945) is a Romantic. For him ‘beauty grows from under weights of pain’: the awareness of death gives rise to an ecstatic love for life and the flowers of a garden glow most intensely just before the autumn frosts. Art is sacred, and the longing for the unattainable produces a mysterious happiness: ‘the unattainable remains / the only thing that is your own’.

In Sarkia’s poetry the emotions spring from the dream and from death. The titles of his four collections of four names reflect the core of his work: Kahlittu (‘Chained’ ,1929) , Velka elämälle (‘Debt to life’, 1931), Unen kaivo (‘The well of dreams’, 1936) and Kohtalon vaaka (‘The scales of fate’, 1943). Powerful contrasts dominate the cosmos of the poems: darkness and brightness, ecstasy and pain, hope and despair. Recurring motifs are the road, the window and subjects drawn from nature, especially flowers. The ‘I’ of the poems is fully conscious of its fate, which is often associated with the experience of strangeness and alienation. One of the reasons for this – observed by later research – was Sarkia’s homosexuality. In ‘Kuvastimesta’ (‘In the mirror’) the speaker is a stranger even to himself, and the poem can be read as a portrayal of the divided ego: Strange and truly wondrous / in the mirror you look at me. / All I really know is / that you I cannot be.

In the spirit of the Romantic tradition, love is fateful and usually hapless. The lovers have been forced to part for reasons that are not disclosed, and tragedy intertwines with memories of happiness, creating a ‘a beauteous / sorrow’. Some of these poems, like ‘Erottua’ (‘Separated’) have lived on as classics of Finnish love poetry. The poem ‘Paennut’ (‘The one who fled’) refers to the riddle that separates the lovers: Did I love you? / That I do not know. / In my soul I trembled / when you turned to go.

Kaarlo Sarkia has remained in the history of Finnish poetry as a composer of words: his poems are masterful in their euphony and rhythm. In their metrical structure they not only employ end-rhymes but also chains of assonances and rhythmic repetitions that cross the verse lines and create the impression of musical echoes and patterns. It is not surprising that many of Sarkia’s poems have been set to music – by, for example, the composers Erik Bergman and Kaj Chydenius – and neither is the fact that they have remained almost untranslated. When modernism conquered Finnish poetry in the 1950s, metrical verse became unfashionable; on one occasion Sarkia’s formal virtuosity became the target of parody by the eminent modernist poet Eeva-Liisa Manner.

Some of Sarkia’s poems imitate the rhythm of the actions that they portray. For example, ‘Rukkilaulu’ (‘Spinning song’) uses the rhythm of the spinner’s foot kicking the wheel to make it rotate and carry the yarn. The poem presents two images at once: on the one hand an idyllic childhood memory of the poet’s mother treading the wheel, and on the other a view of human destiny as a spinning wheel, of life at the mercy of a kind of wheel of fortune.

A skilled translator, Sarkia focused in particular on Finnish versions of French and Italian poetry. Among the poets he translated were François Villon, Victor Hugo, Charles Baudelaire, Gabriele D’Annunzio; his translation of Arthur Rimbaud’s ‘Le Bateau Ivre’ is considered brilliant. The Swedish Romantic E.J. Stagnelius and the French poet Alfred de Musset were among his kindred spirits.

Although to the modern reader Sarkia’s language sounds old-fashioned and his burning idealism may seem unfamiliar, many of his poems are still fresh and thought-provoking. A good example is ‘Älä elämää pelkää’, whose ethos (or aesthetic pathos) of living in the moment and fearlessly confronting life is ageless.
– – –
Do not ever say:
this is mine alone.
Drink from life’s cup
and once again give its pain up.
If you never beg to own,
the world’s riches are yours today.
Be bold, stake all on one card:
ahead you will always see death’s gate unbarred.

Älä koskaan sano:
‘Tämä on iäti minun.’
Elon maljasta juovu,
taas siitä, jos tarpeen, kivutta luovu.
On maailman rikkaus sinun,
kun mitään et omakses ano.
Elä pelotta varassa yhden kortin:
näet aina avoinna kuoleman portin.

Translated by David McDuff

Sanottu. Tehty. Matti Kuusen elämä 1914–1998

The folklorist Matti Kuusi vied for the status of the world’s leading researcher of proverbs with the Californian scholar Archer Taylor, his work extending from the shores of the Baltic Sea to Namibia’s Ovamboland. Proverbs revealed to him the deep structures of the human mind and showed that the nations of the world possessed a basis for mutual understanding. As a young man Kuusi read Spengler and predicted the destruction of the Western world. According to his ‘Kalevalan imperialism’, the Nordic region was to be the new world power. The war brought him to his senses: he understood that patriotism was mainly a matter of bland resilience. Professor Kuusi was a rigorous scholar, but also a provocative man of ideas who showed that pop music was today’s folk poetry. That idea received a mixed reception, but nowadays his department studies both rap music and ancient folk song. This biography by Tellervo Krogerus creates a rich portrait of a complex personality.

Translated by David McDuff

Minna at 50. The Finnish flag is flown on her birthday: 19 March has been named the Day of Equality. Canth also flies on the tail of one of the aircrafts of the Nordic airline Norwegian: the fleet carries portraits of ‘heroes’ and ‘heroines’ of four Nordic countries (the other Finn is the 19th-century poet J.L. Runeberg). Original photo: Viktor Barsokevich / Kuopio Museum of Cultural History

Herkkä, hellä, hehkuvainen – Minna Canth
[Sensitive, gentle, radiant – Minna Canth]
Helsinki: Otava, 2014. 429 pp., ill.
ISBN 978-951-1-23656-6
€40.20, hardback

There are two sure methods of preserving the freshness of the works of a classical author in a reading culture that is increasingly losing its vigour.

The first is to give a high profile to new interpretations of them, either in the form of scholarly lectures or of artistic re-workings, such as dramatisations, librettos or film scripts. Another unbeatable way to keep them alive as a subject of discussion is an updated biography, through which the author is seen with new eyes.

Minna Canth (1844–1897) is now celebrating her 170th anniversary, and she is fortunate in both respects. Having begun her literary career in the late nineteenth century, she still continues to be Finland’s most significant female writer.

Her influence on the role of women in society and, in particular, her promotion of girls’ education, is the cornerstone of Finland’s social equality. In the twenty-first century Canth’s plays are still receiving new interpretations, and they have also been made into operas and musicals. (Read her short story, ‘The nursemaid’, here.)

One play often performed is Anna Liisa (1895), the tragedy of a young girl who kills her newly born child. Its Dostoevskian, guilt-focused ending has remained open to interpretation to this very day. Another long-time favourite is Työmiehen vaimo (‘The workman’s wife’, 1885), a didactic play that portrays the radical urban working class and the struggle for women’s rights. The play brought about a change in the law when in 1899 women in Finland ceased to be regarded as their husbands’ property. Recent performances of it have included a version by Helsinki’s Avoimet Ovet (‘Open Doors’) company in the spring of 2014.

The vitality of her fiction lies in its modern characterisation, the centre of which is usually a girl or woman on the threshold of a new era. The principal themes of her work are class distinction, poverty that drives people to madness, repressed sexuality and double standards.

Engaged: Minna and Ferdinand in 1865. Original photo: Kuopio Museum of Cultural History

One topic of discussion in the anniversary year is Minna Maijala’s (born 1975) new biography Herkkä, hellä, hehkuvainen – Minna Canth (‘Sensitive, gentle, radiant – Minna Canth’). It is critical of the earlier biographies of Canth, especially the book by Lucina Hagman, who in the years 1901–1906 wrote the earliest extensive work on Canth’s life. It canonised an image of her that has lasted to this day, of a writer as a female victim who fought her way to the centre of literary culture.

In Hagman’s biography Minna Canth’s husband, and the father of her seven children, is demonised as a tyrant. Their marriage is portrayed as a young woman’s prison, in much the same way as Canth herself portrayed the fate of the women in her fiction, which early commentators viewed as being autobiographical.

The image of Minna Canth as a wife and mother fighting her way up from her subordinate status fitted the requirements of Lucina Hagman in her role as pioneer of the Finnish women’s movement better than it did the Minna Canth – equal, supported by men – who is documented in Maija Maijala’s book. This new study shows that in fact Ferdinand Canth provided continuous support for his wife’s work for women’s emancipation and published her earliest articles on the subject in the newspapers he edited in Kuopio, a town in north-eastern Finland, where the family lived. He also quickly made his wife his working partner in the newspaper of the Young Finnish Party [the liberal Fennomane movement].

Earlier portrayals of Minna Canth have seen her as a woman released from family hell when her husband died suddenly, after fourteen years of marriage. Not until then did the 35 year-old single mother of seven children become a controversial author who was also a successful cloth merchant, when she began to take care of her parents’ family firm.

A view from the steeple: Minna was given the key to the tower of the Kuopio Cathedral as she liked to excercise by going up and down the stairs. Her home is at bottom left. Original photo: Kuopio Museum of Cultural History

The new biography portrays Canth’s loss of her husband as a major crisis in her life. When she became a widow she was expecting her seventh child, and she became seriously ill in childbed – almost to the point of psychosis. Minna Maijala provides some interesting commentary on the attitude taken by earlier biographers to Canth’s mental collapse. According to them, she overcame her anxiety by sheer will power because she was an Amazon with fighting spirit. Maijala, on the other hand, highlights the author’s sensitive nature, and points out that she had difficulty in achieving mental balance throughout her adult life. She suffered from hypochondria, nervousness, and a variety of psychosomatic disorders.

Maijala’s book is the story of the writer behind the martyr legend, and it gives an excellent account of Minna Canth’s religious thought. She had adopted a scientific world view, and was known as a critical social thinker and polemicist. At the same time, however, she was also a professing Christian for whom the New Testament doctrine of love was the most important value. While for a naturalistic author it was a rare combination, it is also aptly illustrates the borderland between old and new that Minna Canth inhabited.

Translated by David McDuff

Mannerheim – viimeinen kortti? Ylipäällikkö-presidentti

In his book Professor Juhani Suomi – well-known as the biographer of President Urho Kekkonen – focuses on the life and actions of Marshal Gustaf Mannerheim (1867–1951) during the final phase of the Continuation War between Finland and the Soviet Union beginning in1943 and, in particular, during his term as Finnish President from 1944 to 1946. Mannerheim was elected President by exceptional procedure, and his difficult task was to lead Finland from war to peace, which he succeeded in doing. Suomi seeks to reply specifically to the question of whether Mannerheim lived up to the myth that was created about him, and of whether he was Finland’s last chance as the guarantor of the country’s independence during those fateful years, as he is often presented. On the basis of a number of sources, the author draws a critical portrait of an aristocrat: this was a man who was cold and vain, who at every turn thought mainly of his own posthumous reputation and who as an elderly leader was slow and fickle in his decisions – though the reader will not necessarily agree with all of Suomi’s conclusions. Well-written, occasionally a bit too detailed, his book vividly describes a dramatic period in Finland’s recent history.

Translated by David McDuff

One sunny April day, walking through the atmospheric old Hietaniemi cemetery by the sea in Helsinki, a charming little bronze statue on top of a narrow granite column caught my eye.

Family grave: sculpture by Victor Jansson

It was a small child balancing on a ball, waving its arms and legs joyously in the air. On a closer look, there was something white attached to the statue: it was a tiny white plastic Moomin.

On the Janssons’ family grave the first little blue flowers had just risen to the surface to bask in the early spring sun. Tove’s father was the sculptor Victor Jansson, her mother was the cartoonist and artist Signe Hammarsten Jansson.

Perhaps one of Tove’s fans had chosen this way of paying homage to the creator of the unique Moomin universe.

Mahdoton menestys. Kasvun paikkana Nokia

One of the most fascinating stories in Finland’s recent history is the rapid rise of Nokia, thanks to the establishment of its mobile phones as a global brand in the 1990s, the decline in the company’s success in the 2000s, and its eventual abandonment of mobile phones. The boom was personified by the company’s talented CEO Jorma Ollila. His interesting memoirs are readily accessible to a non-specialist readership. When Ollila began work at the Nokia conglomerate in 1985 he had already shown an aptitude for business. He served first as the company’s director of finance, then as leader of the mobile phone unit, became managing director, and finally CEO from 1999 until 2006. Ollila decided to weed out the operations that were in difficulty and to focus on mobile phones and networks. With the support of a good management team, Ollila proved to be an energetic leader who knew how to share responsibility and also inspire and create trust. In his memoirs he analyses both the company’s successes and its mistakes and losses in the period up to 2010. Ollila stepped down from the post of chairman in 2012.

Translated by David McDuff

The only thing unequivocally separating the Swedish minority in Finland from the Finnish majority is language. Therefore the word – be it written, spoken, sung – has always occupied a privileged position amongst Finland-Swedes. This has resulted in a richness of literature and mass media, which is surprising for a minority that today numbers fewer than 300,000 people, or just over five per cent of the population. For Swedish language literature in Finland – the topic of Tuva Korsström’s book Från Lexå till Glitterscenen. Finlandssvenska tidsbilder, läsningar, författarporträtt 1960–2013 – the period following the Second World War has been a success history.

The strength and force of this literature has manifested itself in many ways: through an increasing professionalisation of the writing community, through a steady stream of new writing talent, and through increased diversification, both in terms of regions and genres. In competition for major national and Nordic prizes, such as the Finlandia Prize for Fiction, the Runeberg Prize, and the Nordic Council Literature Prize, Finland-Swedish books have been strong contenders, and authors [see the list] such as Tove Jansson, Märta Tikkanen, Bo Carpelan, Kjell Westö, and Monika Fagerholm have gained large audiences, both nationally and internationally.

Despite this, Swedish literature in Finland has been limited by external linguistic and social factors, requiring authors to be resourceful. In Finland during the 20th century, Swedish increasingly became a language for domestic use, with relatively few workplaces and parts of society where it plays a major role. When out and about in the community, Swedish is seen and heard increasingly rarely – instead Finnish, the dominant language, is interspersed more and more with English or new immigrant languages, such as Russian, Estonian and Arabic. Adverts are in Finnish, and the language used by Swedish youth is heavily mixed with Finnish. Moreover, Swedish is spoken only in specific areas of southern and western Finland, whilst the inland area is monolingually Finnish.

This means that those who write in Swedish in Finland often lack obvious language for essential areas of life. This language must be created, invented, and enticed, and the history of Finland-Swedish literature draws heavily on finding ways to circumvent this problem.For a long time this meant that realistic storytelling in novel form was of low priority, whilst poetry and short prose flourished. This was one of the differences between Finnish and Finland-Swedish literature; the biggest strength of the former was often realistic novels with rural backgrounds, whereas the latter was urban and laconic. The growing professionalisation of writing in Finland, helped significantly by a well-functioning grants system, has also given Finland-Swedish authors the time and chance to work on the problems of the novel.

When looking at this minority literature over the last three decades, it is clear to see that the novel genre is blooming anew. This is what the title of Tuva Korsström’s book refers to; Lexå is the town in which Christer Kihlman’s novel Se upp Salige! (‘Watch out Salige!’) is set; released in 1960, it was a pioneer within its genre, an early realistic, polemical, and debate focused novel, typical of the sixties. Whilst the Glitter Scene is the playground of the young women in Monika Fagerholm’s comprehensive novels from the first decade of the new millennium, which won readers across the world.

In this book Korsström does not focus primarily on these sociolinguistic background factors; she takes the development of Finland-Swedish literature as a given, and instead concentrates on the fruits it has borne. Från Lexå till Glitterscenen comprises extensive and highly informative chapters devoted to individual authors, whilst the genre lies between literary history, essay, and commentary, interspersed with interviews with authors. The book is an unrivalled source of knowledge about the authors it covers, and it is precisely because she has insisted that everything be included, both excellent works and less good, well-known and unknown, that Korsström has often managed to provide a new and stimulating picture of the works she writes about. Her approach is most often thematic, and the primary focus of attention is not the formal aspects of the pieces. What is also clear is that it is the realistic novel that lies closest to Korsström’s heart.

Korsström devotes a significant amount of attention to feminism; it is in this area that Finland-Swedish authors have, thanks to their Scandinavian contacts, the played role of introducer in Finland. She also dedicates a large amount of space to literature written outside the capital. Whilst Finland-Swedish literature was for a long time an urban, middle class literature, Korsström shows towards the end of the 20th century, diversification did take place. Authors from rural areas, above all from Österbotten, made a clear and unmissable entry. Their class backgrounds were varied, and working class portrayals became a new important element of the literature.

Korsström’s selection of authors is comprehensive, but towards the end certain exclusions are made, with discussion of the most recent poetry, for example, lacking in depth. In that way, the book is a part of that change that has occurred within Finland-Swedish literature over the first decade of this millennium: the old leading genre, poetry, attracts much less talent, whilst the novel flourishes. Korsström, long serving culture editor at Helsinki newspaper Hufvudstadsbladet, writes with the flow and brilliance of an experienced journalist. This makes the book, despite its impressively wide scope, an appealing reading experience.

Translated by Claire Dickenson

Wahlroos: epävirallinen elämäkerta

Björn Wahlroos (born 1952) is a business and banking executive who is now chairman of Nordea, the Nordic region’s largest bank. The journalist Tuomo Pietiläinen, working in collaboration with 25 students, has produced a biography of Wahlroos as part of a course in investigative journalism, without the involvement of the subject himself. Wahlroos is a firm believer in the hard market economy. Based on careful background research, this biography charts Wahlroos’s progress from boy scout to radical left-wing student, his conversion to capitalism and his rapid rise to become a popular professor of economics. In the 1980s Wahlroos moved to the banking sector and climbed to the top of Finland’s business elite. Outspoken, both admired and hated, he is also the owner of an estate with cultural and historical significance, where he works as a part-time farmer. His hunting partners include the King of Sweden. This account of Wahlroos’s colourful career is written clearly and informatively enough to be understood even by those who don’t know anything about business.

Translated by David McDuff

Aale Tynni. Hymyily, kyynel, laulu

The poet, author and translator Aale Tynni (1913–1997), an Ingrian Finn who came to Finland as a refugee after the First World War in 1919, published 15 collections of poetry between 1938 and 1987. Among her translations are works by Ibsen, Shakespeare, Yeats and Racine. This extensive biography, compiled and written by Tynni’s daughter Riitta Seppälä and her grandson, historian Mikko-Olavi Seppälä, is an in-depth, lively portrait of a poet who, in her time, was both admired and criticised for her choices of form and content. Tynni felt that classical metrical tradition was closest to her, and patriotism was one of her themes; however, in the postwar years the freedom of rhythm of Finnish modernism began to flourish, and politics also gained strength in the literary world. In 1948 Tynni won the gold medal for literature in the – rather bizarre and short-lived – art competitions at the Summer Olympics in London with her poem ‘Laurel of Hellas’. Tynni experienced dramatic turns in her personal life; she underwent a prolonged divorce from her first husband who bitterly fought it. Two of her three children committed suicide in adulthood. She was finally free to marry the widowed poet Martti Haavio (aka P. Mustapää) in 1960, a marriage of soulmates that lasted until Haavio’s death in 1973.