Search results for "2010/02/2009/09/what-god-said"
Letter to the wind
30 September 2002 | Archives online, Fiction, Prose
A short story from Haapaperhonen (‘The butterfly’, Gummerus, 2002). Introduction by Kristina Carlson
When Father comes to visit me, he sometimes sings a hymn. I can’t ask him not to. But when he doesn’t, I wonder why not, whether there’s something up with him. I can’t ask him to sing, but something is missing, the same thing that there seems to be too much of when he sings. It’s too much, but I miss it when it’s not there. I wonder about it after Father’s gone; my thoughts curl into dreams and I sleep.
When I sleep I don’t know I’m here, in a strange place. I’m at home, sleeping at home, in my own bed. The window is the right size, not too big like it is here; here there isn’t really a window at all, half the wall is missing and instead there’s glass. Behind a glass wall it’s not safe, everything is taken through it, including me. But sleep takes me to safety; I’m at home there. I breathe it peacefully. In the cabin there are two breathings, mine and Turo’s, and in the bedroom Father’s breathing. They are in no hurry to drive time away; time can linger, sleep, the moment of night, and when sleep withdraws there is no hurry either; I can sit in peace on the window seat and gaze at the cloudy, moonlit yard. The apple tree is asleep; it’s the only one. The fieldfares ate the apples before we could pick them, but it did not bother me or Father. It was good to look at the flock of fieldfares making a meal of the apple tree. Then they went away. More…
Seekers and givers of meaning: what the writer said
2 October 2014 | This 'n' that
‘All our tales, stories, and creative endeavours are stories about ourselves. We repeat the same tale throughout our lives, from the cradle to the grave.’ CA
‘Throughout a work’s journey, the writer filters meanings from the fog of symbols and connects things to one another in new ways. Thus, the writer is both a seeker of meaning and a giver of meaning.’ OJ
‘Words are behind locks and the key is lost. No one can seek out another uncritically except in poetry and love. When this happens the doors have opened by themselves.’ EK
‘I realised that I had to have the courage to write my kind of books, not books excessively quoting postmodern French philosophers, even if that meant laying myself open to accusations of nostalgia and sentimentality.’ KW
‘If we look at the writing process as consisting of three C:s – Craft, Creativity and Chaos – each one of them is in its way indispensable, but I would definitely go for chaos, for in chaos lies vision.’ MF
‘In the historical novel the line between the real and the imagined wavers like torchlight on a wall. The merging of fantasy and reality is one of the essential features of the historical novel.’ KU
‘The writer’s block isn’t emptiness. It’s more like a din inside your head, the screams of shame and fear and self-hatred echoing against one another. What right have I to have written anything in the first place? I have nothing to say!’ PT
‘…sometimes stanzas have to / assume the torch-bearer’s role – one / often avoided like the plague. / Resilient and infrangible, the lines have to / get on with their work, like a termite queen / laying an egg every three seconds / for twenty years, / leaving a human to notice / their integrity. ’ JI
In 2007 when Books from Finland was a printed journal, we began a series entitled On writing and not writing; in it, Finnish authors ponder the complexities, pros and cons of their profession. Now our digitised archives make these writings available to our online readers: how do Claes Andersson, Olli Jalonen, Eeva Kilpi, Kjell Westö, Monika Fagerholm, Kaari Utrio, Petri Tamminen and Jouni Inkala describe the process? Pain must coexist with pleasure…
From 2009 – when Books from Finland became an online journal – more writers have made their contributions: Alexandra Salmela, Susanne Ringell, Jyrki Kiiskinen, Johanna Sinisalo, Markku Pääskynen, Ilpo Tiihonen, Kristina Carlson, Tuomas Kyrö, Sirpa Kähkönen – the next, shortly, will be Jari Järvelä.
A roof with a view
27 August 2009 | Fiction, Prose
Extracts from the novel Mistä on mustat tytöt tehty? (‘What are black girls made of?’, Tammi, 2009) Introduction by Tuomas Juntunen
I’m a chimney sweep’s daughter, born October 1962 as a gift, a light to a darkened world. I’ve had lots of mothers, but none of them ever stuck around for good. One of them gave birth to me, so she’s Mother, not mother. Her name is Dewdrop, because water has spilled over the only photograph of My Mother and now her face has dissolved into a single translucent droplet; her nose, cheeks and chin are now a fat, shiny blob that looks like it’s about to fall out of the bottom of the picture. More…
Helsinki Book Fair: 28–31 October
22 October 2010 | In the news
Looking for books: Helsinki Book Fair (Photo:The Finnish Fair Corporation, 2009)
The tenth Helsinki Book Fair takes place in Helsinki’s Exhibition & Convention Centre over the last weekend of October. More than 1,000 writers, artists, scientists, politicians and specialists will participate in the programme. There are more than fifty authors from 17 countries, among them the British historian Antony Beevor, the Estonian writer Jaan Kaplinski and the Indian writer Kishwar Desai.
The theme country this year is France, and among the French guests will be the novelists Andreï Makine and Nicolas Fargues, the fantasy writer Pierre Pével and the poets Sophie Loizeau, Hélène Sanguinetti and Gabriel Mwènè Okoundji, originally from Congo.
The translator Anne Colin du Terrail will talk to the writers Leena Lehtolainen and Johanna Sinisalo whose work she has translated into French.
Comics and graphic novels as well as poetry are also in the focus at this year’s Book Fair: approximately 70 Finnish and foreign poets feature in readings, interviews and nonstop performances.
In 2009 a record-breaking number of visitors – almost 77,000 – attended the Book Fair. It seems the autumnal Fair is a handy chance to many to buy Christmas presents, among other things; at least last year three out of four said they had come to buy books (and not just spot celebrities, for example).
This time, in addition to books, the visitors to the Exhibition & Convention Centre will be able to attend two other Fairs, entitled Wine, Food and Good Living and Music Fair as well.
Profiles
2 October 2014 | Fiction, Prose
Rosa Liksom’s first book, in 1985, was a collection of short prose; she has also written novels, children’s books, plays, comic and picture books. Her new book, Väliaikainen (‘Temporary’, Like, 2014) – a return to her signature very short prose – features beasts, machines and men
He’s there in the living room. We’ve gotta be very quiet. I left the computer on, and the reading lamp. I’ll go in and turn them off, quietly. Or the computer at least. I can watch Emmerdale on the little tv in the kitchen. You wait here. OK, I turned off the computer but I left the lamp on so I wouldn’t wake him up. I put his nap blanket over him. He’s laying on his left side now. That’s good. Whenever he wakes up on his right side he gets awfully grumpy. Let’s go in the kitchen so we don’t disturb him. The poor guy. It’s been hours since he’s had a good sleep. You know, I think it’s the depression again. It started on Monday when he was supposed to go to his guide’s job.He didn’t taste his breakfast, even though I brought it to him in bed. I had to go to the hospital, my shift was starting, and he just laid there in the bedroom with his eyes open… I don’t know how long it’s gonna last this time. Last month he was depressed for three days. I think it’ll pass more quickly this time because he’s napping a little bit, and licking his paw now and again.
Back in the USSR
3 October 2011 | Fiction, Prose
Extracts from Rosa Liksom’s novel Hytti nro 6 (‘Compartment no 6’, WSOY, 2011). Review by Mervi Kantokorpi
Moscow hunched itself in the dry, frosty March night, protecting itself from the touch of the icy red sun as it set. The girl entered the train’s last sleeping carriage, found her compartment, compartment number six, and breathed deeply. There were four beds in the compartment, the upper ones folded agains the wall, while between the beds was a small table, on the table a white table cloth and a plastic flower vase containing a bunch of pink paper carnations, faded by time; the shelf above the end of the bed was full of large, untidily secured parcels. The girl shoved her modest old suitcase, the one she had got from Zahar, into the metal luggage space under the hard, narrow bed; her small backpack she threw on the bed. When the station bell sounded for the first time, the girl went to stand by the corridor window. She breathed in the scent of the train, iron, coal-dust, the smells left behind by dozens of cities and thousands of people. Travellers and those who had come to see them off pushed past her, shoving her with their cases and parcels. The girl touched the cold window with her hand and looked at the platform. This train would take her through villages inhabited by deportees, through the open and closed towns of Siberia to the capital of Mongolia, Ulan Bator. More…
To sleep, to die
30 September 2004 | Fiction, Prose
Extracts from the novel Unelmakuolema (‘Dreamdeath’, Teos, 2004)
Dreamdeath
Who would not like to cheat the grim reaper? Ways are known, of course, both scientific and non-scientific, but all of them are uncertain and temporary. Except for the simplest: to get there first oneself.
The refinement of this idea was Dreamdeath’s business idea. ‘Dreamdeath – because you deserve it!’ went Dreamdeath’s slogan.
The Dreamdeath home offered those who wished it the means to the most pleasant, even luxurious realisation of an autonomic death in an atmosphere of moral approval, against a suitable fee. At Dreamdeath the client himself decided when and in what conditions he would leave his mortal clay. More…
Disintegration
31 December 1992 | Archives online, Fiction, Prose
From Pythonin yö (‘Night of the python’, Gummerus, 1992). Introduction by Kaija Valkonen
I feel as if the disintegration has already started. I do not want it, I am not yet ready. And I do not want to discuss it with the doctors; I know that they would not understand, and the thing I am talking about has nothing to do with my state of health. It is not an illness; it is something more insidious. It occurs under the cover of health. It is a deception.
It is hard to say when it started, but whenever I try to remember, a certain day comes into my mind. It can hardly be the beginning, how could disintegration start with joy? But it was a day that contained many elements of dissolution: a strong wind, the ice breaking, quickly moving clouds. At one point I picked up an old tub in the corner of the shed, its hoops fell off and it collapsed, ringing. More…
On the bridge
30 June 1993 | Archives online, Fiction, Prose
From Saksalainen sikakoira (‘Schweinehund’, WSOY, 1992). Introduction by Tuva Korsström
From somewhere beneath the bridge – I still hadn’t managed to get across it, which may sound pathetic, or even ridiculous, unless you take into account my exceptional state of mind – or, rather, to one side, I heard a dragging, ominous grinding and rumbling. It stopped for a moment; then, after a short but clearly defined pause, there was a heavy splash. A snow-plough was emptying its load into the bay from the end of the pier. The mounds of snow sank deep into the black water; the tightly packed, sticky snow rose slowly to the surface in greyish-yellow blocks and clods; loose pieces of snow boiled and foamed in the eddies and melted before my eyes. My time was melting away, too, being junked, my remaining time… More…
Poetry and Patriotism
31 December 1985 | Archives online, Authors, Essays
J.L. Runeberg. Painting by Albert Edelfelt. 1893.
Much revered, but little read today, Johan Ludvig Runeberg (1804-1877) is famed for his patriotism and glorification of war in a just cause. Yet Finland’s national poet did not write in Finnish, and never heard a shot fired in anger. It is, perhaps, time for a reappraisal.
What did he himself think about becoming a national poet?
Enjoyed it, probably? Who wouldn’t!
Did he write what he wanted and let
the people find their own interpretation?
Or did he write what he believed
the people expected
of a national poet?
Lars Huldén, 1978
It would not be inappropriate to begin a collection of thoughts about Finland’s ‘national poet,’ Johan Ludvig Runeberg, with a biblical text, Second Samuel, 1:25: ‘How are the mighty fallen!’ Runeberg does not own the position he once did, either in the world at large or in Scandinavia; even in his home land his exceptional grandeur has been reduced or, horribile dictu, smiled at. More…
The gender of the soul
Scenes from the play Kuningatar K / Queen C
Characters:
Christina, the Queen
Friend
The Queen Mother
Karl Gustav, the Count [Christina’s suitor, the King-to-be]
Descartes, philosopher
Official
Man
The King
Oxenstierna, Per Brahe
A choir of midwives
The play can be performed with six actors (3 female, 3 male). Other ways of dividing the roles are possible. All stage directions may be altered.
1. Prologue
The eels’ court
CHRISTINA
If eels had a court then a great female eel would sit in the centre and the little males would writhe about like seaweed around the throne. However they would not be envious of the queen, because they would know that if they swam up into rivers and lakes, into fresh waters, they themselves would gradually become females, great and heavy, and would be able to rule and close into their great embrace all the small little gentlemen. They just have to wait.
KARL GUSTAV
I don’t know. What I do know is that a great black eel, as thick as a rope, was pulled out of the well last night and the Queen looked at its silver stomach and its thrashing tail, but the eel looked the Queen in the eyes and in the heart and since then she has never been the same. More…
Pen to paper
25 October 2012 | Articles, Non-fiction
Writing is ancient: the act of taking a stylus, a quill or a pen into one’s hand still feels powerful. Will we find a way of scrawling in space, to mark our individuality, wonders Teemu Manninen
It was my vacation, and I wanted to catch up on some fun writing projects, but because I didn’t want to depend on my devices (would we have wifi? would the batteries last?) or carry around too much extra stuff I bought a red notebook and wrote in black ink on white paper while sitting in cafes and restaurants with my wife.
Writing by hand got me – surprise – to thinking about handwriting in general. Etymologically, ‘writing’, from Old English writan, means scratching, drawing, tearing. In the original Hebrew, God does not simply fashion humans out of clay, he writes them: his word is his image, giving life to the letter of his meaning, the human being.
Writing is violence. It brings about vivid change in the matter of the world: in the age of clay tablets, the stylus was a carving instrument. During the age of ink, cutting the tip of the quill was, if we believe the early Renaissance manuals of handwriting, as precise and violent an act as cutting someone’s head off. More…
To live, to live, to live!
31 December 2001 | Archives online, Fiction, poetry
From Kaukainen puutarha (‘A distant garden’, WSOY, 1924). Introductions by Vesa Mauriala and Leena Krohn
Flowering earthThe earth’s spilling out purple lilac clusters, To live, to live, to live! So what if death’s coming! |
Kukkiva maaMaa kuohuu syreenien sinipunaisia terttuja. Elää, elää, elää! Mitä siitä, että kuolema tulee! |
In pursuit of a conscience
19 March 2012 | Drama, Fiction
‘An unflinching opera and a hot-blooded cantata about a time when the church was torn apart, Finland was divided and gays stopped being biddable’: this is how Pirkko Saisio’s new play HOMO! (music composed by Jussi Tuurna) is described by the Finnish National Theatre, where it is currently playing to full houses. This tragicomical-farcical satire takes up serious issues with gusto. In this extract we meet Veijo Teräs, troubled by his dreams of Snow White, who resembles his steely MP wife Hellevi – and seven dwarves. Introduction by Soila Lehtonen
Dictators and bishops: Scene 15, ‘A small international gay opera’. Photographs: The Finnish National Theatre / Laura Malmivaara, 2011
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Veijo Teräs
Hellevi, Veijo’s wife and a Member of Parliament
Hellevi’s Conscience
Rebekka, Hellevi and Veijo’s daughter
Moritz, Hellevi and Veijo’s godson
Agnes af Starck-Hare, Doctor of Psychiatry
Seven Dwarves
Tom of Finland
Atik
The Bishop of Mikkeli
Adolf Hitler
Albert Speer
Josef Stalin
Old gays: Kale, Jorma, Rekku, Risto
Olli, Uffe,Tiina, Jorma: people from SETA [the Finnish LGBT association]
Second Lieutenant, Private Teräs, the men in the company
A Policeman
Big Gay, Little Gay, Middle Gay
William Shakespeare
Hermann Göring
Hans-Christian Andersen
Teemu & Oskari, a gay couple
The Apostle Paul
Father Nitro
Winston Churchill
SCENE ONE
On the stage, a narrow closet.
Veijo Teräs appears, struggling to get out of the closet.
Veijo Teräs is dressed as a prince. He is surprised and embarrassed to see that the audience is already there. He seems to be waiting for something.
He speaks, but continues to look out over the audience expectantly.
Snow White's spouse, Veijo (Juha Muje), and the dwarves. Photo: Laura Malmivaara, 2011
VEIJO
This outfit isn’t specifically for me, because… I mean, it’s part of this whole thing. This Snow White thing. I’m waiting for the play to start. Just like you are. My name is Veijo Teräs and I’m playing the point of view role in this story. Writers put point of view roles like this in their plays nowadays. They didn’t use to.
Just to be clear – this isn’t a ballet costume. I’m not going to do any ballet dancing, but I won’t mind if someone dances, even if it’s a man. Particularly if it’s a man. But I don’t watch. Ballet, I mean. Not at the opera house, or on television, or anywhere, and I have no idea why we had to bring up ballet – or I had to bring it up – because this is a historical costume, so it’s appropriate. This is what men used to wear, real men like Romeo and Hamlet, or Cyrano de Bergerac. But we in the theatre these days have a hell of a job getting an audience to listen to what a man has to say when he’s standing there saying what he has to say in an outfit like this. People get the idea that it’s a humorous thing, but this isn’t, this Snow White thing, where I play the prince. Snow White is waiting in her glass casket, she died from an apple, which seems to have become the Apple logo, Lord knows why, the one on the laptops you see on the tables of every café in town. More…
Another darkness
30 September 1994 | Archives online, Fiction, poetry
Poems from Kali (Schildts, 1993)
‘Kali is the Liberator. Kali gives protection to those who know her. Kali is the Terrific One, the Destroyer of Time. As the Dark Shakti of Shiva, Kali is Space, Air, Fire, Water and Earth. Kali performs all the physical needs of Shiva. She is the Possessor of the Sixty-four Arts and increases the Joy of the Lord of Creation. Kali is the Pure Transcendental Shakti. Kali is the Night of Darkness.’
Kalika Purana
*
you show me a distant world
where all the beautiful is mine
you show yourself to me, naked, and whisper:
not the poppy
that murders the heroin addict,
not love
not my dark sister,
that will be the death of your love More…