Eero ja Saimi Järnefeltin kirjeenvaihtoa ja päiväkirjamerkintöjä 1889–1914

The actress Saimi Swan (1867–1944) and painter Eero Järnefelt (1863–1937) were both born into prominent Finnish families united by similar creative and cultural ideals. The book consists mainly of correspondence between the couple, beginning with their engagement in 1890, and their diary entries up to 1914. Eero Järnefelt’s letters from Paris and Rome provide fascinating glimpses into personal relationships, discussions on artistic practices and aims, and political movements from the golden era of Finnish art. Saimi Järnefelt’s letters illuminate the conflict she experienced between her career and family life. She had to keep her engagement secret in order to safeguard her career; once married, Saimi Järnefelt left the theatre. In letters written to her sister-in-law Aino Sibelius – the wife of composer Jean Sibelius – Saimi Järnefelt often described the cycle of the seasons in her garden: gardening was a hobby the two women shared, in which their need for self-expression could find an outlet.

Forests – in the form of paper, pulp and the timber industry – have played a huge part in building Finland’s national economy ever since the industrial revolution. Now, the economic recession has shut down factories all over the country. What will Finland export in the future?

And what is Finnish forestry known for abroad? For its methods of clear-cutting, not for its environmental consciousness, for example. Risto Isomäki, author, science journalist and environmentalist, takes a look at a new book by Sanni Seppo and Ritva Kovalainen, Metsänhoidollisia toimenpiteitä (‘Silvicultural operations’, Hiilinielu, 2009). In this book pictures speak volumes: when trees have to make money, the effects, to people who live among them, is devastating.

Check-up by a district nurse: from the exhibition ‘Everyday life in Finland’ (Muonio, 1970)

Photographs from Caj Bremer. Valokuvaaja / Photographer / Fotograf (Musta Taide, 2010; graphic design by Jorma Hinkka)

The period after the Second World War and before the age of television was the golden age of photojournals such as Life, Look and Paris Match. The big Finnish illustrated periodical was Viikkosanomat (‘The weekly news’); its early star, Caj Bremer, was one of the first Finnish press photographers to wander among people and record life as it was

‘Every photograph is the sum of aesthetic choices, and each one has a relationship with reality both when it is taken and in the time frame in which the viewer encounters it’, writes news editor and curator Riitta Raatikainen in her introduction to Caj Bremer. Valokuvaaja / Photographer / Fotograf.

Caj Bremer (born 1929) worked for years as a press photographer, most intensively between 1950 and 1970. A retrospective exhibition of his work over six decades opened at Helsinki’s Ateneum Art Museum in February (until 16 May).

Bremer’s photojournalistic scale is large; he has witnessed war and its victims, strikes and devastation, but he also has a sharp eye for important moments in ordinary people’s ordinary lives.

‘In post-war France, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Doisneau and Willy Ronis became leading names in humanist photography. While philosophers withdrew to consider the issues of existentialism, photographers set out amidst the bustle of of life,’ writes Raatikainen. It was an idea whose time had come. The New York Museum of Modern Art’s 1955 exhibition, The Family of Man, in which worldwide photographs were grouped around common human themes such as love, children and death, is perhaps the most emblematic and well-known example of the approach. Meanwhile, in faraway Finland, Bremer’s project and exhibition entitled Everyday life in Finland (1972) recorded life that he knew was to disappear, in small villages yet untouched by modernisation.

Life ceased publication in 1972, Viikkosanomat in 1975. Reportage did not die, though. Caj Bremer has been influential in many ways in Finnish photography since, but perhaps his monochromatic view of the world of the 1950s is what lives on most vividly.

Self-evidently, the photographer likes people – he has a delicious sense of humour, too. In pictures taken at funerals or weddings, of fashion models, artists, presidents or children, in Finland or abroad, it’s the people that matter most.

The time frame in which we now view the faces Bremer has captured makes us marvel at how they, silently, speak volumes.

Curious crowds: a Roma family wedding, of Kalle Hagert and Tuula Saarto, at Helsinki Cathedral, 1959

Last rites: the funeral of 15 young people who died in a boating accident in Juuka, northern Karelia, 1959

Posing: street sweeper and model, fashion photography for Salon Ika (1958); opera singer Martti Talvela (1935–1989) enjoying a sauna in Anttola on Lake Saimaa (1985)

Country cavalcade: Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson of the United States in northern Finland, 1957

Bear and bare: President Urho Kekkonen inspects the guard of honour on a visit to Great Britain, 1961

Kirves

This book by Juha Maasola, a forestry protection officer, provides an economic, cultural and social history of the axe from prehistoric times to the present day. The axe was the sole implement used for felling trees in Finland up until the turn of the 20th century. Most Finnish men still know how to chop their own wood for the sauna, while one axe model produced by Fiskars has won awards for outstanding product design. This impressively illustrated work also explains the techniques and history of forestry and logging. In the 1940s, wartime ‘woodcutting bees’ united the Finnish nation, with women picking up their axes and joining in. Buildings have traditionally been constructed from wood, and builders had to be handy with a hatchet. This skill gave carpenters their name in Finnish: kirvesmies – literally, ‘axeman’. A list of over 300 Finnish-language terms meaning ‘axe’, gleaned from the archives of the Research Institute for the Languages of Finland, is included. The book concludes with a look at portrayals of the use of axes in Finnish literature, film and art.

Minä, Mauri Kunnas

Mauri Kunnas (born 1950) is a cartoonist and graphic artist. His children’s books have been translated into 28 languages; the translations have sold approximately 2,5 million copies. His anthropomorphic canine characters from Koiramäki, Doghill, are well known for their adventures in historical milieus; researching these settings is one of Kunnas’ passions. His reinterpretations of Finnish literary classics are also popular: The Canine Kalevala and Seven Dog Brothers offer affectionately humorous homages to the Kalevala, the Finnish folk epic, and the classic novel by Aleksis Kivi. Joulupukki (1981), published in English as Santa Claus, is arguably the world’s best-known Finnish children’s book. In this book, Kunnas gives a lively account of his childhood and youth, as well as his influences and the different phases of his career as an illustrator. The text is complemented by photos from Kunnas’ family album and his own archives, from adventure stories he illustrated as a boy to a pair of hippy bell-bottomed jeans adorned with doodles.

A little night music: Teemu Kupiainen playing in Baddi, India, as the sun sets. Photo: Stefan Bremer (2009)

It was viola player Teemu Kupiainen’s desire to play Bach on the streets that took him to Dharamsala, Paris, Chengdu, Tetouan and Lourdes. Bach makes him feel he is in the right place at the right time – and playing Bach can be appreciated equally by educated westerners, goatherds, monkeys and street children, he claims. In these extracts from his book Viulun-soittaja kadulla (‘Fiddler on the route’, Teos, 2010; photographs by Stefan Bremer) he describes his trip to northern India in 2004.

In 2002 I was awarded a state artist’s grant lasting two years. My plan was to perform Bach’s music on the streets in a variety of different cultural settings. My grant awoke amusement in musical circles around the world: ‘So, you really do have the Ministry of Silly Walks in Finland?’ a lot of people asked me, in reference to Monty Python.

In 2002 the first trip during my grant period took me to France, Spain and Portugal, where I performed in small villages in the mountains. When, on the outskirts of a small French village, I plucked up the courage to perform all of Bach’s violin sonatas and partitas from memory for the first time, my one and only listener was clearly enthralled. This I deduced from the way in which it kept jangling the bell tied around its neck throughout the duration of my two-hour performance. As soon as I began to play, this lonely cow came up to me and did not walk off at any point. I thought of this as a good omen.

In autumn 2003 I travelled to China, and from there I continued to India, then Morocco. Finally, I made a less adventurous trip to Lourdes in France. Of course, there were plenty of shorter trips in between these, but on those trips I didn’t keep a diary.

For me, playing on the streets is not about background music; these are concerts – in fact, they are almost more than concerts. I often play for a single listener or just a handful of listeners at a time. As an experience, this is far more intimate than a normal concert, more challenging, and with that comes a greater sense of responsibility. Often, particularly at the beginning of my trips, I can be very nervous as I step out into the street, and sometimes, as the first people stop to listen, I have had some sort of blackout and been unable to remember how the music continues. Such a thing hasn’t happened to me in a concert hall for years. For this reason, I practice a lot on these trips, at least as much as I would when preparing for a ‘normal’ concert.

In addition to playing on the streets, these trips involved another one of my passions: Johann Sebastian Bach and his suites for violoncello and his sonatas and partitas for violin. All of these works can be played on the viola. Only a viola player can set himself the challenge of playing every one of Bach’s suites, sonatas and partitas from memory in a single concert. Only a megalomaniacal viola player, that is….

January 19, 2004, Shimla, India

No matter how badly you sleep in a dingy, mouldy hotel room, waking up as the sun rises and seeing the summit of the Himalayas from your window more than compensates. Three hours’ morning practice on the violin sonatas. Yoga. Then out on to the street.

The centre of the old town is built on a steep ridge. On top of The Ridge there is a street, at the end of which is a market square with a church at one side. Bach and a church! I set up nearby. I feel nervous – not about my own ability, but because of the potential indifference.

An hour’s set turns into a two-hour set. Throughout there are a couple of dozen people standing around, listening intently. Between every movement someone always wants to chat. ‘Where are you from? What is your good name, Sir?’

I have to start playing the movements very attacca, without a break. Four reporters turn up, each with their own photographers. One national newspaper and three local ones, who all claim to be the largest in the region.

And the questions! ‘Shimla is the gateway to God. How do you feel this when you are playing? How does your music explain the mysteries of the universe? What is your aim in life and can you achieve it by playing? How does your music affect you as an individual? What about society as a whole?’

The most challenging exam of my life. Puzzling. People get straight to the point here; they don’t feel the need to warm up with empty chitchat. These questions make me think hard. Will this trip provide me with answers?

During the Sixth Suite a young man with a mouth organ sits down next to me and starts playing along with Bach’s harmonic progressions: G major, D major. When I finish, he begins to play some local melodies. I accompany him: C major, G major.

Lunch. I have decided to become a vegetarian for the rest of the trip. This is the easiest solution all round, and besides, vegetarian food here is very good. During my students years in Cologne I think I was a vegetarian for two years, because vegetarian food there was cheap. I could do it in Finland too, if finding good vegetarian food were as easy as it is here.

After lunch I go for a walk. I continue up The Ridge. A warm hillside. I see four eagles; one of them is circling barely 50 metres from where I stand. The city of the temple of the monkey god is full of monkeys. The eagles presumably fly up here from further across the mountains for a meal of roast monkey. I sit down to watch the flight of the eagles and start playing. I try to play in a way that mirrors the contours of the eagles’ flight: long lines, allowing the music to carry my thoughts, just as the eagle rests on the mass of warm, buoyant air.

There are never many listeners at any one time. Having said that, almost every other passer-by stops to listen for a moment, some for rather longer. During the Fifth Suite the sun goes behind a cloud; it turns cold and even the eagles disappear. Still, I manage to get to the end of the Sixth Suite without going into a tailspin, though I can’t help getting the sense that this is something of a forced landing….

A careful approach: Hanuman temple, Shimla. Photo: Stefan Bremer (2009)

January 22, Dharamsala

Slept for twelve hours! Three hours of practice, then yoga. I go to visit another masseur. In fact, I tried to reach this Tibetan-Chinese acupuncture masseur yesterday, but he wasn’t in. This time I go to make an appointment and am shown straight on to the massage table. Thumbs start kneading my buttocks.

‘Does this hurt?’ Yes, it hurts.

‘And here? What, it doesn’t hurt? What about here?’ Yes, it hurts.

The doctor convinces me to let him use one small needle. I manage not to faint. I try to think of it as a mosquito – after all, I let them bite me and eat in peace. After the procedure I feel much better, but maybe I’m just happy at overcoming my fear of needles and surviving the jab.

Later that afternoon I go back to the church. A young Irish couple is sitting outside. We chat for a while. All of a sudden the girl starts to laugh: ‘You must be the Finnish musician!’

The couple has already been in the village for a month taking part in a reiki healing course. That morning the girl opened a newspaper for the first time in a month, the national English-language newspaper The Times. It featured a photograph taken in Shimla showing me playing to street children. A short article said that I was travelling through the mountains. The girl said she’d thought that it would be nice to meet me. And now here she stands, giggling, and says that life is like a Kieślowski film.

Living in the local area there are four Christian families and a priest. An elderly gentleman standing outside gives me permission to play in the church. He says that the priest will be arriving soon. I play for half an hour for the Irish couple and the odd tourist.

The priest arrives. He quizzes me about what happened the day before. ‘Between four and five o’clock? Oh, so the door was open? You didn’t see anyone?’ Long pauses between each question.

Then: ‘Listen. Someone broke in here yesterday: our collection box was stolen. The window was smashed in. The big chain on the door was broken and that’s where they got away with the collection box. Don’t tell anyone you were here yesterday or you’ll be talking to the police for goodness knows how long.’

Okay! Got the point.

Then we agree that I will play in the church every day between three and five. Everyone is welcome to come and listen.

A little more playing followed by a yoga course for beginners – disappointing. Even the preliminary positions are so complicated that it will take years of practice for me to get into them.

Tibetan food.

Apparently the Dalai Lama arrived here this morning. Every now and then he gives public lectures in English. Suddenly the lights go out. My Tikka head lamp – what a marvellous purchase! These mountain storms are strange. The temperature is hovering around zero but there’s still plenty of thunder. The curtains billow in the gusts of wind, though the windows are shut. We won’t run out of air. It feels good to be here.

January 23,  Dharamsala

It’s early afternoon; I’m shivering beneath the blankets. The electricity comes on and off. Outside it’s sleeting. Still I managed to get in three and a half hours’ practice this morning. As I was practicing, I realised that in my imaginary practice session early that morning I had been playing some wrong notes. My pitching was a bit sketchy.

After practicing I do some yoga to warm up. Instead of doing the two-hour walk I have planned, I crawl back to bed. If only it would clear up. The kilometre-and-a-half walk to the church really doesn’t appeal.

It brightens up just before three o’clock! Clothes on then straight to the church. The snowline is 50 metres up the hill from where I am staying. 200 metres before the church it starts raining hailstones. I run to the church. Ten minutes’ warm-up. Eventually my hands are warm enough that I dare to start playing. Of course, there is no heating inside the church and the doors are always wide open.

My playing is almost going well. My audience consists of the priest, who is busy sweeping the yard, and a woman washing the floor. During the last piece, at the most difficult part of the fugue in the Third Sonata, the first outside listener arrives. Almost immediately I lose my concentration, so much so that I can’t get to the end of the fugue. After about ten attempts and a lot of fumbling around, I finally finish the movement on the wrong chord. Deeply embarrassing. Thankfully the final two movements seem to go smoothly enough. When you’re that ashamed, at least you don’t feel the cold. Before playing tomorrow, practice the fugues ten times!

I get a gig – as a photographer. The priest asks me to come back to the church the next morning to take photographs of a visiting bishop.

That evening I take my viola with me to dinner. There are people at two other tables in the restaurant. They ask me to play. We chat. At one table is an Indian reporter with Reuters, at the other the Tibetan reporter for an American company. In only a few days in India I’ve met more reporters than in the last ten years in Finland! The Tibetan wants to do an interview. I ask to see the questions in advance, because I know we’ll end up talking about politics. Now isn’t the time for silly jokes.

The next day I will see a student. A 17-year-old local boy had heard someone playing the violin and had liked it so much he had got himself a violin. To his disappointment, he so far hasn’t been able to get a note out of it. He may be even more disappointed once he does get a note out of it.

January 24, Dharamsala

The boy isn’t disappointed at all. The violin is terrible. It takes me half an hour just to put the strings in the right place across the bridge and the nut. Then I show him how to lift his hands, how to use the weight; how to hold the instrument and the bow. I try to explain what it should feel like.

Ten minutes later the boy can play a two-octave G major scale in tune, then A major; easy nursery rhymes; half an hour later even Frère Jacques. Soon our lesson is over.

By far the most talented beginner I’ve ever met. He says he has played the guitar, but even so! I could have taken photographs of the position of his hands and used them as teaching material. Tomorrow the boy and his friends are going to play me some local Tibetan music….

Bach makes kids wild: schoolchildren in Delhi. Photo: Stefan Bremer (2009)

January 25, Dharamsala

This morning I walk up as far as the snowline; it’s now at an altitude of about a couple of kilometres. The sun is just rising. Utterly still. From the other side of the valley I can hear the sounds of a religious mass. I find a sunny opening in the hillside forest and start to play. Three pine martens and four long-tailed parrots come to watch. The sun warms me and the air is fresh. Two such glorious mornings in a row!

About two hundred metres beneath me there is a road, about a hundred or so passers-by every hour. Almost all of them stop and turn their heads in bewilderment. Where is that music coming from? This instrument certainly has a very powerful sound; all you need is a decent concert hall.

More treatment for my sciatic nerve. The Tibetan acupuncture masseur I visited before gives me five needles in the buttocks and one in the neck. It’s ridiculous to be so scared of it, but I’m scared nonetheless.

I give an interview to the Tibetan reporter. As I suspected, every question has a political edge to it. He promises to send a draft of the article to my email so I can check it through.

Then more street playing in the same spot as yesterday. An old monk listens to almost the entire set, using his cane to shoo away curious people stopping in cars or on their motorbikes. Another person to stop is a Canadian convert. He moved here six months earlier after selling all of his possessions, including a large collection of Bach recordings. He knows all the Suites. He almost starts to cry with joy upon hearing his favourite music for the first time in months. He thanks my teachers. I join him in thanks.

That evening, back at the hostel in the cultural institute, my student who has just got his hands on a violin plays at least five different instruments – that must explain why he is such a quick learner. The hostel is home to 35 artists, all of whom can sing and act and play several instruments. On top of all that, my student still wants to learn to play the violin!

Tomorrow is Indian Independence Day. The festivities have already begun. In the distance I can hear the pounding of a bass.

January 26, Dharamsala

This morning I pack my things and pay my hotel bill: 19 euros for five days including hot water, heating and laundry. Then it’s out into the streets.

With the exception of my first day in Shimla, I’ve been playing with my viola case closed. There are plenty of people who need money here – far more, in fact, than in the poorest areas of China that I’ve ever visited. But this time I decide to play next to the beggars with my case open. I have made myself a little sign: For milk powder and rice. Thank you.

I play two of the Suites. Only one person stops to listen. Then some traders come out and shoo me off their patch. Is it because of my sign, or is it just one of those days?

I go back to make corrections to the interview by the Tibetan reporter. Sitting at the computer time flies past, and I forget that I have an appointment to keep. I have promised an earnest-looking shoeshine boy that today, the day I was to leave, I will meet him at twelve o’clock and buy some milk powder and rice for him and his younger sister.

I arrive sixteen minutes late. The boy is nowhere to be seen. Every day he has looked me up and asked: ‘Promise?’ I always reply: ‘Promise.’ And after all that, I don’t turn up.

I wait for the boy until one o’clock. He doesn’t show up. I give three beggar women the money I have reserved for milk powder and rice. What a mistake! I should have waited until I was about to get on the bus. Groups of beggars run up to me as though they have some kind of telepathic connection, pulling at my clothes and hanging from my limbs. And the women, to whom I gave the money, think it was not nearly enough: one of them tries to snatch all of the money from my wallet.

I dash into a nearby restaurant and don’t come out until the alley looks empty. But the beggars are still waiting. The flock gathers again in under a minute. I escape outside the village. Only once I reach the temple do the most determined of them finally give up.

I walk up to the clearing I found before. Again I see an eagle soaring overhead. I sit down to warm myself in the sunshine. I am reminded of someone I was at school with for twelve years. After she died she appeared in my dreams and introduced me to an eagle. ‘The eagle is your friend now; it will show you the way.’

Then there is the shoeshine boy. I gave him a solemn promise to show up. This ten-year-old boy, who has double-checked this important matter with me many times over, only waited a minute or so at our meeting place. He was clearly unable to take the disappointment of being let down by the rich tourist. And now he’s gone… I feel awful.

There are lots of elderly Tibetans on the path. Almost all of them give me an encouraging smile. Some mime playing the violin. When one of them finally asks me to play, I simply have to start. I feel drained. No Bach this time. Finnish classics, popular songs. Then some film themes. Modern Times, The Sound of Music and such like. I only play whenever I see people walking towards me along the path. Gradually I start to feel better.

After a while, my Canadian music-lover friend appears and says he has been looking for me all over. I’ve promised to play somewhere that afternoon. I play the Preludes from the First, Fourth and Sixth Suites. He says he prefers them played on the viola as opposed to on the cello. My emotional barometer rises immediately. I ask if I can have that comment that in writing.

I then play the Chaconne, which my listener doesn’t know. Before beginning, I encourage him to sit down in a comfortable position; the piece lasts around fifteen minutes. Once I have finished, he says: ‘It couldn’t have been that long. You only just started.’

After that I play Itsy Bitsy Spider to two children, who run off giggling. I’ve been playing for two hours. As I close my case, two eagles fly past, one behind the other, barely twenty metres from where I am standing. Perhaps one of them is the eagle my school friend showed me.

The sun is setting. I sit down in the bushes, by the side of a dusty path. I don’t dare go back to the village before dark. It is 5.45 in the evening. My bus leaves at seven. I start to pack up my things. In an hour, not a single person has walked past me.

I am just about to set off down the path towards the village, when the shoeshine boy appears at the bottom of the hillside with two of his friends. He walks up to me and looks at me gravely. I look back. Neither of us says a word. I dig a bundle of notes from my pocket and give them to him. The boy doesn’t look to see how much is there, but puts the money in his pocket and thanks me.

We walk back to the village together. As we part, the boy looks me in the eyes and says: ‘If you back, many small shoes.’ I look back at him and say: ‘Promise.’

Kieślowski or Kaurismäki?

My bus is leaving soon.

Translated by David Hackston

It’s healthy to eat an apple a day, and a banana, for the calcium, and an orange, for the vitamin C, and you need to drink a cup of green tea to reduce your cholesterol. You should also drink two litres of water (and wee the same amount, which doubles the amount of time you spend in the bathroom). And don’t forget the two decilitres of yogurt that you should eat to keep the bacterial flora of your stomach healthy. No one really knows what these bacteria are, but you MUST have at least a million of them, or you won’t be well! You must also drink a glass of red wine a day so you don’t have a heart attack, and a glass of white wine to protect your nervous system! And a glass of beer (I can’t quite remember why), but if you drink them all at the same time you may have a stroke. That won’t matter, though, as you won’t notice it. Everyone should also eat nuts and beans/peas every day. You should eat 4-6 times a day, light meals, but don’t forget that each mouthful should be chewed at least 36 times. That will take up 5 hours of your day!

You should brush your teeth after every meal, so do it after you’ve eaten your yoghurt, your banana, your nuts/beans. You can do this so long as you have teeth, and don’t forget to floss, use mouthwash, or massage your gums. You may as well clean the bathroom at the same time. It’s worth installing a CD player or television in the bathroom, because in view of the liquids you’re drinking and the number of times you’ll be cleaning your teeth, you’ll probably be spending a lot of time there.

You also need to sleep 8 hours a day, and spend another 8 at work, and then there are the 5 hours you spend eating, 21 hours in total. So there are 3 hours left. According to statistics, people watch television for about 3 hours a day. But that doesn’t work, as you also need to walk for at least 1 hour a day. You also need time to met your friends; they’re like plants, and need daily care and attention.

In addition to all this you ought to be aware. You need to read at least two newspapers a day and a couple of evening papers in order to have a sufficiently broad view of the world, to stay critical. You also need to give time to your family, mop the floors, wash the dishes, do the laundry, as well as all the other chores you will need to carry out if you have children or pets. When you add them all up, the total is 29 hours.

The only solution is to multitask! For example, to take a shower with your mouth open, to help you drink your two litres of water. At the same time as brushing your teeth, you can read the newspaper, watch TV and interact with your family. When you mop the floor, do it with one hand and use the other to telephone your friends, drink your wine and beer, as you need it. Use your imagination!

If you have a spare 2 minutes, send this message to your friends as you eat your apple and your banana. I have to stop now, as, after my yoghurt and my first litre of water and my third meal I can’t remember what I have to do next. I do know that I have to go to the bathroom NOW! I may save a minute or two if I brush my teeth at the same time!

In Finland, sarjakuva (lit. serial picture) will celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2011. The first Finnish picture story, Professori Itikaisen tutkimusretki (‘Professor Itikainen’s expedition’, WSOY), by Ilmari Vainio, was published in 1911.

Ilmari Vainio (1892–1955) was a customs official who later also published two fairy tales and two handbooks for boy scouts. Professor Itikainen is a scientist who sets out on the sea and then finds himself, together with two brave seamen, facing various dangers in Africa, China and on the North Pole. A happy ending ensues in the form of safe arrival back in Helsinki on page 48.

In February Suomen Sarjakuvaseura (the Finnish Comics Society), Sarjakuvantekijät (Comics Artists of Finland) and other organisations founded a joint Information Centre with the aim of co-ordinating exhibitions, publications and festivals during the anniversary year, which will open with a special exhibition at the National Library of Finland.

Amorous dances: the latest picture book, Lemmentanssit, by Tiina Pystynen

Now showing (until 1 April) at the National Library is an exhibition of work by writer and graphic artist Tiina Pystynen, the winner of the 2010 Puupäähattu Award for Finnish comics artists.

The landscape of words is in constant motion, like a runner speeding through a sweep of countryside or an eye scaling the hills of Andalucia.

The proportions of the panorama start to shift so that sharp-edged leaves suddenly form small lakeside scenes; a harbour dissolves into a sheet of white paper or another era entirely. Holes and different layers of events begin to appear in the poems. Within each image, another image is already taking shape; sensory experiences develop into concepts, and the text progresses in a series of metamorphoses.

This kind of landscape is one of the primary tools in the poetry of Olli Sinivaara (born 1980): he allows sensual experiences to flood his text, while imagination simultaneously shapes, conceptualises and moulds the verbal landscape. The reader is moving through a baroque, labyrinthine world of images within images, through a sensory landscape that is constantly being born and reborn. In Sinivaara’s poetry, images are only in the process of coming into existence and reality is not yet complete.

Spindrift is flinging far out over the breakwater.
Glistening-horned oxen of multi-metrical waves
flood the streets of the palace precincts. The sun’s polished gold glitters
and spreads, turquoise’s myriad hoof-tints paw the sand.
The sky’s incredibly bright and gleaming, silver-blue.
The bellowing of those foaming ridges travels far,
sounding down to the depths of the veins,
carrying over the sickening deathly silence of millennia.
When the palace’s last remains have been trampled away,
my rainforest-footed oxen depart and settle down within
the walls of the building-site hut that’ll take the palace’s place.

As a reader, I experienced the illusion of stepping into Sinivaara’s consciousness and walking alongside him through this verbal landscape – almost like watching a film entitled Being Olli Sinivaara. I had no idea that things could be so fascinating inside someone else’s head! It’s a place where things are in constant motion, and that’s why it is best to read Sinivaara’s Valonhetki (‘A moment of light’, Teos) collection slowly; one poem a day is enough.

Exploring borders

The birth of reality is approached from a rather different perspective in the work of Aki Salmela. Salmela (born 1976) is acutely aware of the ways in which metaphors can lead us astray and how traditional turns of phrase smuggle into our minds the sort of values and presuppositions that should be taken with a pinch of salt. His collection Yhtä ja samaa (‘One and the same’, Tammi) retains this healthy sense of scepticism, but does not settle for mere irony. Salmela has a far more ambitious goal: to maintain a deconstructive hold on the text while, for instance, talking earnestly about love. Like a tightrope walker, the work is delicately balanced between irony and moments of the utmost seriousness. I say this even at the risk of finding that there is in fact no rope beneath the tightrope walker’s feet.

That said, Salmela makes constant use of metaphors – sometimes in jest, sometimes in all seriousness, for homo sapiens has no other means of approaching the unknown. Salmela questions his own metaphors. At the risk of sounding nihilistic, he pulls a new metaphor from his pack of cards and thus the motion continues, because ‘reality doesn’t consist of ideas; it consists of events, which are adept at giving rise to ideas in the minds of those caught up among them’. In Salmela’s prose poems, reality is unfinished and open; it is built from piles of useless junk upon old ruins. The project is condemned to failure, yet the work carries on regardless.

Love, like a hundred little hearts floating snowlike amidst the winter darkness. Love like a snowman in a happy family’s yard. Love like a soft knife against a hard heart. How could a poem go on indefinitely without some love-metaphors, however groundless. How could a way of speaking, how could a style of phrase. How could life, in this phase of life. And let’s assume a cloud shaped like a beautiful face floating in front of a heart-shaped moon, and glowing. And let’s assume. Love, like a carelessly kept promise, like a frail-looking seal fixed to the rest of one’s life, this little postal parcel, being carried by eternity.

Both Aki Salmela and Olli Sinivaara are products of the experimental poetry magazine Tuli & Savu (‘Fire & Smoke’); they both edited the magazine during the early 2000s. As poets, however, their paths have diverged: Salmela is interested in the classical avant garde, the American tradition of ‘language’ poetry and other post-modern trends, while Sinivaara has provocatively come out as a defiant exponent of modernism.

Where Salmela demonstrates the deceitfulness of language – the ways in which language guides and confines our thought processes – Sinivaara writes dazzlingly beautiful poetry, overflowing with images, poetry whose sheer baroque abundance makes any attempt to control it utterly futile. At first glance, it would appear that these two chaps’ aesthetic worlds have nothing in common. However, both of them write texts that exist on the boundary between language and reality – if, indeed, such a boundary is even discernible, given that we all live within the confines of language and cannot escape. It seems, however, that this is precisely what both these poets are trying to do.

Technology sometimes comes between the human body and our sense of reality in such a way that technology itself becomes our reality. Satu Manninen’s second collection of poetry, Sydänfilmi (‘Heartscan’, Gummerus), also exists in a borderland. Manninen (born 1978) has studied at the media art department of the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts, and I believe that the influence of her studies can be seen in her work.

Manninen examines humans’ relationship with technology; her poems feature all manner of gadgetry – photocopiers, hospital equipment, monitors, screens and electric cables that in a variety of ways connect humans and their senses to machines. Our view of the world becomes fragmentary, as does our view of the body as time and space become increasingly non-linear. Images and sensory experiences collect, one on top of the other, or separate away from one another, and suddenly the human body no longer exists in a unified world.

The body is full of new extremities and probes that shape our experience of our surroundings: ‘On a dark road the mind goes into overdrive, / the link between the left and right lanes is broken. / I drift on to the white area of your ironed shirt, / I open the buttons and read the map of liver spots.’ There is an intimate feel to Satu Manninen’s collection, yet it deals with the kind of all-encompassing change that, unnoticed, affects our very existence with every passing moment.

How would it be to find oneself in a painting of the Fall of Man. I try to cover up the traces, paint a messier and messier dilapidated garden over it, but a garden hose twists in my belly. For so long hope swayed in the wind, and now they’re building a golf course on it, a board game loaded with hotels. The eye of a surveillance-camera eye tracks the bistros being carted along the corridors, hearts beat on the plates.

Pictures of time

In the past few years, the Finnish poetry scene has seen a great deal of so-called ‘search-engine poetry’, which makes use of our collective language hovering in the ethers of the internet. In his debut collection, Hajoamisen syyt (‘Reasons for decomposing’, ntamo), Markku Aalto (born 1970) extracts a portrait of our times from linguistic material he has found on Google; he collides different ways of speaking with one another and lets them reflect ironically upon themselves: this is the linguistic world in which we live today. Aalto  works with his material in a skilful yet cynical way.

Just love

It’s always nice to get to know new people, both possible future friends and sex mates. Free love’s on offer, love crossing class and language barriers, hopeless love and so forth. In the latest phase nervous people go weak at the knees when they’re shut up in a dark cell.

Pottering about with the course of one’s life it’s possible to produce an outline of the journey of life; typically the summer of adult life is spent in a whirl of romance. In it mature adults work for a good cause, until the woman’s on the front page of every tabloid, and then, having had a taste of the limelight, she’ll fling off her clothes as well and appear stark naked for the gaping eyes of the public. Thus death and heaven, too, will assume their appropriate places in the chronological continuum.

A mere feeling of love won’t reach further than the bridal bedside. The world falls apart – and changes, actually the very next morning. Folk sit round a candle and reminisce about people, animals etc. that have passed away. They might say aloud, in turn, that ‘I long for you – sign here – and I’d like to say to you… for example, that you’re important to me etc.’ Then they can compose themselves for prayer.

Tabloid past

Forty years ago, everything was still in a state of fermentation: traditional gender roles were breaking down; the world was changing; conservative society was confronted with a belief in progressive values. Henrika Ringbom charts the collective language of the era in her collection of prose poems entitled Händelser (Ur Nya Pressen 1968–1974) (‘Happenings. [From Nya Pressen 1968–1974])’, Söderströms). She has come up with a fascinating working method: in preparation for this collection she has reread old editions of the Swedish-language Nya Pressen, a newspaper that, in her childhood, was an important source of information for her.

A woman in space

Why not send a woman into space? Why not send her on a really long space flight? She would be forced to function. She would have to function as a functioning member of the crew. She would not be taken along as a guest. Already here on earth woman has shown that there are tasks for which she is better suited than a man. She can go from one home to the next, cut up meat, bread fish, fry fillets and freeze the dainty bits. At the wheel of the car she is best naked! The woman and the corset are a lethal combination! Unmarried mothers have more difficult childbirths. Unmarried and mother are a lethal combination! But the housewife has a dream. Her dream begins with the perfect contraceptive pill. And her dream ends. Her dream ends with the perfect water-jug. Why not send her into space? Why not send her on a really long space flight?

Ringbom explores subjects such as the ennui of many a housewife, free sex, the Vietnam War; she follows the moon landings, terrorism, hippies and the growth of affluence just as they were depicted in the pages of Nya Pressen. Ringbom’s method is brilliant: Nya Pressen’s tabloid language takes readers back to the age of innocence that existed forty years ago, but Ringbom’s winks from our contemporary perspective lend the collection an exciting cross-lighting. Rarely have I experienced moments of such clarity as while reading Ringbom’s collection.

Archetypal choices

Jarkko Tontti (born 1979) also delves into the annals of history, though not through a use of historical language but through his protagonist in Jacasser (Otava), a chattering (jacasser, Fr.) oaf (jackass, Eng.) called Jacasser. Is Jacasser the poet’s ironic alter ego, a middle-aged, sceptical, lonely man, who secretly dreams of acts of heroic bravery, though he sees the history that results from them as nothing but a trail of mindlessness? Jacasser is more of an archetype, a kindred spirit of Henri Michaux’s M. Plume, a man who wanders through history at times as the Greek teacher of Emperor Domitian, at other times as a merciless bishop in 17th-century Tartu, his relation to power remaining throughout one of both faithful servant and silent critic.

When Jacasser was old he cast his skin and renewed it like a viper, wrapped himself up as a delicate parchment, a white sheet embroidered with lace. Under his new skin Jacasser was strong and alone. In the evenings he recalled restless African states he didn’t have the courage to visit, houses whose doorbells he’d avoided in fear of an electric shock. Now he’d have time for it all, he’d and he’d. Old and in his skin Jacasser often returned to the water’s edge, sorrowed over the disappearance of the water plants and clear lake water. In the old days it would have been unheard of, the turbidity of an algae lake is the farmer’s gift to future generations. Jacasser also thought about the bottom, the new skin would keep the moisture out, all through that journey.

Tontti tells the story of his trickster protagonist in the third person. With Jacasser’s help, he compares different eras and, in an almost tragicomic light, makes his readers assess the significance of an individual life against the historical backdrop: our relationship to our fathers, to friends, love, to dreams and the seasons. The collection reaches its climax towards the end through a dramatic turn of events; all masks are removed as Jacasser exits the stage. The final poem in the collection is narrated in the first person, as close to the reader as it can possibly be: ‘I remained alone, between people.’ It doesn’t matter whether the speaker is Jacasser, Jarkko Tontti himself, or someone else. What is most important is that he is speaking.

Rules of life

In Stendhal’s classic novel The Red and the Black, the protagonist is caught between two paths: should he follow the Christian path or should he live the life of a soldier? Sinikka Vuola’s poems seem to exist in a limbo between God and our instincts; we are caught between two evils. In her collection Musta ja punainen (‘Black and red’, Tammi), Vuola (born 1972) makes extensive use of archetypes, but takes a further step into the unknown, a mythical wonderland beyond historical time.

Colours have other meanings too, which everyone who has ever gambled will surely know: only red and black can win. In Vuola’s collection, the game is a metaphor for life governed by a strict set of rules. However, those rules are of little use when our destinies are guided by coincidence, leaving us powerless to prevent death, cruelty and violence. The King and Queen of the card game fulfil their archetypal roles; they dutifully uphold the rules of the game, rules that change without our noticing. They step across a chequered stone floor, unable to escape the chessboard.

The troops are iron and steel, their weapons gold and silver
   the general, the aide-de-camp, the vehicles, the cannon, the cavalryman, the foot-soldier,
the rook, the king’s bishop and the knight,
   The king moves with dignity, a square at a time,
he cannot hurry
   and the walking stick is patched up in three places,
The castle, designed and built
    In the grandest rooms the floor
with squares too regular
   for me to feel good,
He looks at death, death at him with its bottle-green eyes: the enemy
   follows my moves but
                     illness and death don’t,
   they move wherever they want             Like the Queen
the rest are counters: hardened gold, silver and steel,

So, reality is uncontrollable: ‘the enemy / follows my moves but / illness and death don’t, / they move wherever they want’…. The theme of control is also apparent in the form of these poems. Vuola paces her texts with great precision, creating a finite whole, but lets go of the reins at top speed and allows the lines to flow, so much so that it’s frightening: as if someone suffering from insomnia had stopped obsessively organising their pills and fallen into a deep sleep.

Translated by David Hackston

Poems translated by Herbert Lomas, with the exception of A woman in space, which is translated by David McDuff

Pohjolan prinsessat. Viikinkineidoista renessanssiruhtinattariin

This book, a side project to Anu Lahtinen’s doctoral dissertation, tells of the women of the Nordic royal families from the 7th to the 17th centuries. The term ‘princesses’ is used here to refer to female members of ruling families who did not hold positions of power themselves. With its brief biographies of people who have long remained hidden in the historical shadow of great men, this book sheds light on a little-researched subject. Many princesses of the medieval Swedish, Danish and Norwegian realms grew up into significant political figures; they needed cunning, a good command of languages and even fighting skills in order to survive the tumults of that age. The rollicking parties and romantic escapades of Cecilia, one of the five daughters of King Gustav Vasa of Sweden, are reminiscent of the ‘party princesses’ of our own time. A Viking-era princess, Alfhild, became a pirate captain; according to medieval tales, she disguised herself as a man and managed to lead a crew of female pirates in a number of raids along the shores of the Baltic.