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The light itself
Issue 1/2008 | Archives online, Essays, On writing and not writing
What should you do when writer’s block strikes? Lie down and wait for inspiration to return, Petri Tamminen suggests
All autobiographical depictions of writer’s block are fundamentally flawed and false. If you happen to be suffering from writer’s block, these accounts make for painful reading.
The wittier, more carefully crafted and closely observed an account the writer gives of his affliction, the more gut-wrenching it feels. It’s like treading water and preparing to drown and having to listen to someone in dry clothes standing on the deck of a ship recalling a close call he had back in the seventies.
On the other hand, when you’re suffering from writer’s block everything annoys you. Good books seem overwhelmingly good, so much so that you realise you can never achieve that level of greatness. Similarly, bad books seem so overwhelmingly bad that you wonder why anyone bothers reading books and realise that it’s pointless trying to write one. More…
Mothers and sons
Issue 1/2008 | Archives online, Fiction, Prose
Extracts from Helvi Hämäläinen’s novel Raakileet (‘Unripe’, 1950. WSOY, 2007)
In front of the house grew a large old elm and a maple. The crown of the elm had been destroyed in the bombing and there was a large split in the trunk, revealing the grey, rotting wood. But every spring strong, verdant foliage sprouted from the thick trunk and branches; the tree lived its own powerful life. Its roots penetrated under the cement of the grey pavement and found rich soil; they wound their way under the pavement like strong, dark brown forearms. Cars rumbled over them, people walked, children played. On the cement of the pavement the brightly coloured litter of sweet papers, cigarette stubs and apple cores played; in the gutter or even in the street a pale rubber prophylactic might flourish, thrown from some window or dropped by some careless passer-by.
The sky arched blue over the six-and seven-storey buildings; in the evenings a glimmer could be seen at its edges, the reflection of the lights of the city. A group of large stone buildings, streets filled with vehicles, a small area filled with four hundred thousand people, an area in which they were born, died, owned something, earned their daily bread: the city – it lived, breathed….
Six springs had passed since the war…. Ilmari’s eyes gleamed yellow as a snake’s back, he took a dance step or two and bent over Kauko, pretending to stab him with a knife. More…
No place to go
Issue 1/2008 | Archives online, Fiction, Prose
Extracts from the novel Lakanasiivet (‘Linen wings’, Otava, 2007)
The clothesline swayed in the wind. Helvi closed her eyes and felt herself flutter into the air with the laundry. She flapped her white linen wings, straining higher, now seeing below the whole small peninsula city, its damp rooftops glittering in the morning sun, the blue sighs of the chimneys, the steamboats toiling on the lake and the trains chugging on their tracks. The whole of heaven was clear and blue; only far off in the east were there white pillars roiling – whether smoke or clouds, Helvi could not tell.
She flew north on her linen wings and saw the great bridges leading to the city, on whose flanks the hidden anti-aircraft batteries gasped the fumes of gun oil and iron, and continued her journey over the land, following the straight lines of the telephone wires. She flew over wooded hills and deep green fields, finally arriving on the slope of the great hill where her daughter now lived, in hiding from the war. More…
The search goes on
Issue 4/2007 | Archives online, Essays, On writing and not writing
The Finlandia Prize-winning author Kjell Westö recalls his literary adolescence, and the moment – of a dark January night – when he stopped worrying about writer’s block and began to write
When I was in my twenties, my urge to write was very strong. I was driven, almost consumed, by this ever-present zeal, which tore me apart nearly as inexorably and effectively as love did. But I wrote precious little. Now, some twenty years later, I have a general idea about the traps I so unknowingly walked into. More…
It takes a life to say
Issue 4/2007 | Archives online, Fiction, poetry
Poems, published in You go the words (Action Books, Scandinavian Series, Indiana, 2007). Introduction by Trygve Söderling
|
We go and search it is not words * You go the * And spread out To only * The song * One time I have a name * a longing * A morning’s * Words are words But word’s image Alas stay not * Fly out, my day
fly, fly day to meet
fly, fly, you the wretched's
their, everyone's
in all times
peace and day
on ground's floor
floor ground
o you
in man's name
* Suneveningspring * Dog bolts happy * And to not speak more it takes a life to say but – as the everyday moment O no beauty But your light – a smile what and to know * And allthesame The white day * |
Vi går och söker det är ej ord * Du går de * Och bredd ut Att endast * Sången * En gång Jag har ett namn * en längtan * En morgons * Ord är ord Men ords bild Ack stanna ej * Flyg ut, min dag
flyg, flyg dag till möte
flyg, flyg, du de armas
deras, allas
i alla tider
lugn och dag
på marks golv
golv mark
o du
i människans namn
* Solaftonvår * Hund skenar glad * Och att ej tala mer det tar ett liv att säga men – som vardagens stund O ingen skönhet Men ditt ljus – ett leende vad och att veta * Och alltjämt Den vita dag * |
Translated by Fredrik Hertzberg
Hearth, home – and writing
Issue 4/2007 | Archives online, Extracts, Non-fiction
Extracts from Fredrika Runeberg’s Min pennas saga, (‘The story of my pen’, ca. 1869–1877). Introduction by Merete Mazzarella
The joy and happiness I experience at being able to see into [her husband] Runeberg’s soul, at living with him in his heart and his thoughts, belong far too firmly to the mysteries of my soul that I should wish to attempt to express them in words. But of the life that existed around us I should like to try and give an impression of sorts.
We moved to Borgå in 1837. I was unfamiliar with the town and knew only a little old lady, weak with age, and found myself very lonely indeed, accustomed as I was to living with relatives and a genial circle of friends. I did, however, still have my two eldest sons at home to keep me happy and occupied. More…
A womanly pursuit
Issue 4/2007 | Archives online, Authors, Reviews
Fredrika Runeberg. Photo: Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland
The wife of the national poet was not herself expected to write – quite the reverse, in fact. But, says Merete Mazzarella, Fredrika Runeberg (1804–1877) did
She was married to the national poet.
What is a national poet? Someone who is hugely admired in his own time, who helps to forge a national identity, who appears to bear the responsibility for the future of his people on his shoulders. Young nations like Finland – before 1809 a part of Sweden, from 1809 to 1917 an autonomous Grand Duchy under the Russian tsar – need national poets; old nations – like Sweden or Denmark – do not. A national poet is a father figure, thus almost inevitably a man.
Johan Ludvig Runeberg (1804–1877) was to become the national poet of Finland; a journalist, teacher and writer. The first poem from his collection of epic poems, Fänrik Ståls sägner (‘The tales of Ensign Stål’, 1848–60), became the national anthem. Since he was Swedish-speaking – as was the whole of the educated class at that time – we have an interesting paradox: his concept of the Finnish national character was actually created in Swedish. More…
One and twenty
Issue 3/2007 | Archives online, Fiction, poetry
(Extracts from the epic poem Kaksikymmentä ja yksi, Otava, 1974)
[Canto I]
Twenty-one and a sail, days and nights.
Nights, they sleep. Days, they row, days and days up the Nevá,
they row, stop at night, pull the vessel with ten pairs of oars
across the bare water,
from the Nevá to the Roiling Waves, from the Roiling Waves
up to Novgorod, from Novgorod to the headwaters,
and from there across the isthmus,
over round logs, running the last log up to the prow, they pull,
they row, they descend, they pull, they sail toward Pohja,
the Southland.
Twenty-one and a sail, days and nights,
nights, they sleep, they row, day and night, up the Nevá.
The rower turns into arms, the arms turn into palms,
the palms turn into oars, the oars turn into the river, the river runs.
Night changes to day, day changes to autumn, autumn to wind,
the wind turns into a sail,
as one single bird ten pairs of oars pairs of wings fly upriver,
across the isthmus, all night without stopping
they pull, they float the vessel, they keep going
toward the Southland.
And South is the name of a slave.
…
They stand in the Southland's yard.
Bent, Bent, Nightbird, Big Toe, Crow's Son, Cuckoo's Son,
Väinö's Son, Dead Man’s Son, Whitefish, Black Dick
Man’s Wood, Broom, Lover Boy, Pumpkin,
Water Cloak, Fishless, Stocking Foot, Fist, Mast and Fishery.
Bent and Bent are twins, their father is also a Bent,
Bent the Guardian of the Spears.
More…
Brainstorm
Issue 3/2007 | Archives online, Essays, On writing and not writing
The poet Jouni Inkala finds the words-to-be of his slowly forming poems unbribable
My little fingertip, the size of a crocodile brain, and a turpentine-taste on my palate monitor this moment on the unoxygenated planet of weariness.
One will be baptised – spray paint suddenly swishing its message in my brains – as often in my life, with something darker than water freezing in the font, and I'll recall it's actually a donkey's-years-old message from my own stanzas. More...
Indebted to the centuries
Issue 3/2007 | Archives online, Fiction, poetry
Poems from Jouni Inkala’s Minuutin ja sen puolikkaan laajenevassa universumissa. Valitut runot 1992–2007 (‘In a minute and its half’s expanding universe’, WSOY, 2007)
Tail references
Mice don’t know that in the case of a human being
the death of a dear one may paralyse
a person’s capacity for years and years.
But in two things they’re more experienced than we.
They understand they’re in constant mortal danger.
That the trap is swift and silent.
That poison is a tear of awareness rising from the heart.
They also realise that in a cat’s claws they fly
like jackknives in the hands of a knife thrower.
And that when the audience finally gets round
to wakening up their hand~ in a rising storm of applause,
they won’t be distinguishable from the arena spotlights
or the ringmaster’s tails.
After their full term of service the mice pass out
from this time to the other side, and there see a miracle:
the sun’s heart beating six hundred times a minute.
In Helsinki, recalling
the Pinder Circus
Telling the tale
Issue 2/2007 | Archives online, Essays, On writing and not writing
Half of the art of writing lies in not telling the reader everything, writes Kaari Utrio, historian and writer of historical fiction
Fantasy is a curse to science but the lifeblood of literature. The combination of these two opposing factors lies at the core of my work. In the expression, ‘historical novel’, the emphasis is on the word ‘novel’. To me a novel is a story, and I am a storyteller. This is an important basic definition for the genre of literature I write. More…