Search results for "2010/02/2011/04/2009/10/writing-and-power"
Timeless time
30 December 2005 | Fiction, poetry
Poems from Jumala saalistaa öisin eli Jobin kirjaan meidän on aina palaaminen. Osittain kursivoituja runoja (‘God hunts at night, or, we shall always return to the Book of Job. Partly italicised poems’, Otava, 2005)
Greek delights
I eat Giorgios D. Haniotis'
small joys
buried in powdered sugar,
vanilla, rose petal and strawberry,
as if wooing his three daughters,
reading Angelos Sikelianos' poem
'A country wedding':
and it is a beautiful blue day, Sunday,
the strange charm of Greek letters: i kiriaki,
hazelnut kernels dipped in thyme honey,
white herb ashes from the roadside,
a cigarette taste deep as sin,
tobacco smoke the only haze one can stand looking at,
a little quarrelsome noise, bus station flu,
promises made by Turks,
the threadbare pile carpet of the entrance hall as a word of honor, More…
He came in through the bathroom window
30 June 1991 | Archives online, Fiction, Prose
A short story from Utslag och andra noveller (‘Rash and other stories’, Alba, 1989). Introduction by Pekka Tarkka
He heard a voice behind him:
‘Hey, Aspelin, what are you doing here?’
Awakening from a half-sleep, he looked around as Ilpo approached his seat.
‘I work near here. I’m teaching math to the visually impaired.’
Ilpo sat down next to him. For several seconds they sat without speaking. Then Aspelin collected himself.
‘And you?’
‘Visiting a friend. He lives in Mäkkylä.’ More…
What grade is your kid in?
29 October 2010 | Non-fiction, Tales of a journalist
Illustration: Joonas Väänänen
Should a journalist show his hand? Columnist Jyrki Lehtola ponders the pros and cons of showing one’s true political colours
What’s the best way to present an initiative that would get the cynical, lazy news media to take an interest in the outside world?
The easiest way is to make a proposal in which the outside world is actually defined as the news media itself.
This is exactly what Matti Apunen did early this autumn: Apunen, a long-time journalist and the former editor-in-chief of the Aamulehti newspaper, had just left the paper to lobby for Finnish industry and trade interests as director of the Finnish Business and Policy Forum EVA.
He presented the Finnish media with a straw poll, following the Swedish model, in which reporters would anonymously answer questions about their political leanings. More…
Against the grain
30 June 1983 | Archives online, Authors
Gösta Ågren. Photo: Studio Paschinsky
Gösta Ågren (born 1936) represents at least two qualities highly characteristic of Finland-Swedish writers. He was born and grew up in a part of Swedish-speaking Ostrobothnia – in the immediate vicinity of the two small coastal towns of Uusikaupunki (Nykarleby) and Pietarsaari (Jakobstad) – which has been the home of many of the most important Finland-Swedish authors, from Runeberg and Zacharias Topelius through Mikael Lybeck and R. R. Eklund to Evert and Lars Huldén. And like Rabbe Enckell, Oscar Parland and others, Gösta Ågren comes from a family closely associated with literature – two of his brothers, Erik and Leo, are also writers, as was his sister Inga, who died young.
Otherwise Gösta Ågren is an author who in all important respects has gone his own way, often in opposition to the establishments, literary and otherwise, in southern Finland and Helsinki. More…
On Martti Joenpolvi
30 June 1986 | Archives online, Authors
Martti Joenpolvi. Photo: SKS archives
Martti Joenpolvi made his literary debut in 1959 at the age of 23, a young man who had been evacuated twice during the course of the Second World War and had eventually settled in an industrial town in the Häme region of southern Finland.
His first novel, Kevään kuusi päivää (‘Six days in spring’), was in the best tradition of the so-called working-class novel. The book described a young worker’s inner struggles and his quest for life from much the same standpoint as the classic novels of Väinö Linna, Lauri Viita and Toivo Pekkanen.
About ten years later Martti Joenpolvi began to write short stories, which were to prove an important complement to his as a novelist. At the same time he his narrative technique: his use of language become clearer and more.polished, and his unaffected style gained power through the use of symbolism and a dryish wit. At the same time his characters began to move in more middle-class surroundings; these people now had a position in society from which to view the world. More…
A personal appreciation
31 December 1982 | Archives online, Authors
Christer Kihlman. Photo: Magnus Weckström
Almost twenty years ago, a book arrived on my table from a London publisher, a large book called Den blå modern, by someone called Christer Kihlman, of whom I had never heard. Although the book came from Stockholm, in fact it turned out to be the work of a Finland-Swedish writer, perhaps the second or third I had ever read.
The book was to me remarkable. I had never read anything quite like it before, and I have been reading adult fiction for over fifty years. Looking back now in my ancient tatty files, I see I typed three single-spaced pages of synopsis and two and a half of comment, and even translated several extracts, not something I can normally afford to do. This was partly because I was impressed with the book, partly because it was almost impossible to explain the style, or styles, in which it was written, and also it was very difficult to say succinctly just what kind of book it was. The blurb called it a ‘family chronicle’, which in a way it was, but in all other respects it was nothing like what we normally call a family chronicle, anyhow of the kind so familiar from the United States. Two sons trying to live up to their father’s image of a third son, who is dead; but in fact it seemed to me to be the story of one man’s struggle with himself and the agony of existing in a world in which pain and hatred and suffering and despair are constantly victorious over love. In the book was almost everything any thinking person struggles with in his or her mind during a whole lifetime, a search for some kind of meaning in a life that appears meaningless. More…
Boys Own, Girls Own? –
Gender, sex and identity
30 December 2008 | Essays, Non-fiction
Knowing good and evil: Adam and Eve (Albrecht Dürer, 1507)
In Finnish fiction of the present decade, both in poetry and in prose, there seems to be at least one principle that cuts across all genres: an overt expression of gender, writes the critic Mervi Kantokorpi in her essay
Relationships and family have always been central concerns of literature; questions about gender and individual identity have received a new emphasis in Finnish literature from one season to the next. The gender roles represented in contemporary literature appear to become ever more stereotypical. The question is no longer only of the author consciously setting his or her gender up as the starting point for expression, as has already long been the case with modern literature written by women. More…
Among the ice floes
30 September 1985 | Archives online, Fiction, Prose
Alpo Ruuth. Photo: Sakari Majantie / Tammi
Alpo Ruuth came across the diary of a member of the Finnish crew of ten men in the Whitbread Round-the-World sailboat race of 1981-1982, and Ruuth, a sailor himself, used that diary as the basis for his novel, 158 vuorokautta (‘158 days’, 1983). It is the story of a great adventure which takes place with the help of ultra-modern equipment and yet involves confrontation with elemental nature, the dangerous power of the southern seas. Ruuth does not use the actual names of the crew, but has taken the view of the fictional crew member who is able to offer ironic comments on what he observes. The book portrays the relationships among the crew under the cramped and difficult conditions of the long voyage. As the extract begins the yacht is in the Southern Ocean, close to the Antarctic coast, making its way towards Auckland, New Zealand.
An extract from 158 vuorokautta (‘158 days’)
Around noon we run into a blizzard. On deck they shout down that a wind has got up. Below, we wake hurriedly from our afternoon naps and start pulling on clothes against the tough weather outside. It’s quite a business in our cramped quarters, and every now and then someone loses his footing and falls as the boat pitches. Cursing is the only medicine for bruises. One by one the boys go up to help change sails; at the bottom of the steps there are excesses of politeness: after you, sir; no no, after you. Up they go, all the same. More…
The wisdom of the harvester
30 September 2007 | Authors, Reviews
Eeva Tikka. Photo: Gummerus
In our fast-paced times, many people throw themselves into the fast-flowing current of stimulus. Eeva Tikka has remained on the shore, and on her own two feet. Her works include environmentally polemical tales and poems marked by nature mysticism and religious searching, but she is best known for her short prose.
Tikka (born 1939), who has won four Government Literature Prizes, worked as a biology teacher before beginning her career in writing. Her works dealing with everyday life, human relationships, and northern Karelian nature have been translated into five languages. More…
Time walks slowly
30 June 2002 | Fiction, poetry
When Eira Stenberg (born 1943) began writing in the heat of of Africa, her pen sank into the paper like a tattooing needle into the skin, she says. Her experiences there are alive in her book of poems entitled Siksi seurustelen varkaiden kanssa (‘That’s why I consort with thieves’, Tammi, 2002)
The journey
Wheels clattering, landscape speeding by the window to the past
notebook on lap she understood the journey’s essence,
that it’s a lap she lost in early childhood
when she stood up and set off walking
away from the arms that had carried her from room to room
giving views from on high as if from a mountain:
the apparitions of things, the furnishings, the tints of pictures
and the bedroom mirror they arrived in,
mother and a child, a holy image she met
again in churches and on altars everywhere
as if it were the purpose of the journey: More…