Search results for "2010/02/2011/04/2009/10/writing-and-power"
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 Storm • September
30 September 1982 | Archives online, Fiction, Prose
Bo Carpelan. Photo: Charlotta Boucht
Extracts from Jag minns att jag drömde (‘I remember dreaming’, 1979)
The Storm
I remember dreaming about the great storm which one October evening over forty years ago shook our old schoolhouse by the park. My dream is filled with racing clouds and plaintive cries, of roaring echoes and strange meetings, a witch’s brew still bubbling and hissing in the memory of those great yellow clouds.
Our maths teacher – a small sinewy woman who seemed to have swallowed a question mark and was always wondering where the dot had gone, so she directed us in a low voice and with downcast eyes as if we didn’t exist – and yet her little black eyes saw everything that happened in the class, and weasel-like, were there if anyone disobeyed her – was writing the seven times table on the blackboard, when a peculiar light filled our classroom. We looked across at the window; the whole schoolhouse seemed to have been suddenly transformed into a railway station, shaking and trembling, a whistling sound penetrating the cold thick stone walls, and at raging speed, streaky clouds of smoke were sliding past the window, hurtling our classroom forward as if we were in an aeroplane. Our teacher stopped writing and raised her narrow dark head. Without a word, she went over to the window and stood looking out at the racing clouds. More…
New from the archives
13 February 2015 | This 'n' that
Daniel Katz. Photo: Veikko Somerpuro/WSOY.
In the midst of today’s richly cosmopolitan literary scene – we’re thinking of blockbusters like Sofi Oksanen’s Puhdistus (Purge, 2008), or Patjim Statovci’s Kissani Jugoslavia (‘My cat Yugoslavia’, 2014) (linkit) – it’s hard to imagine the colour and excitement represented by the work of Daniel Katz (born 1938) from the publication of his first book, Kun isoisä Suomeen hiihti (‘When grandfather skied to Finland’, 1969) onward. Characterised by dark humour, gentle irony, a wild imagination and a profound world view, Katz’s writing is informed but never defined by his outsider status as a Jew writing in Finnish.
Today’s story, taken from Katz’s book Talo Sleesiassa (‘A house in Silesia’) describes the journey taken by Erwin, a German Jew, to visit the home he lived in before the Second World War. Katz has a fine grasp of the ironies of history:
‘We arrived at the city of his birth, which currently is referred to as The City, for the sake of simplicity and tact: the town has – used to have, rather – two names, a German and a Polish, and one or the other party might take offence. My brother-in-law had in fact been born in a city whose name began with a B, though now it began with a W. Evolution of this kind is called phonetic history.’
The extract is accompanied by an interview of Daniel Katz by Daniel Katz.
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The digitisation of Books from Finland continues apace, with a total of 356 articles and book extracts made available online so far. Each week, we bring a newly digitised text to your attention.
Monikulttuurisen maamme kirja. Suomen kielen ja kulttuurin lukukirja [The book of our multicultural land. A reader of Finnish language and culture]
23 October 2014 | Mini reviews, Reviews
Monikulttuurisen maamme kirja. Suomen kielen ja kulttuurin lukukirja
[The book of our multicultural land. A reader of Finnish language and culture]
Toim. [Ed. By] Marjukka Kenttälä, Lasse Koskela, Saija Pyhäniemi, Tuomas Seppä
Helsinki: Gaudeamus, 2013. 252 pp.
ISBN 978-952-495-253-8
€ 34, hardback
This book opens a fascinating, often entertaining and eminently readable perspective on Finnishness and Finnish culture. It contains short Finnish texts supplied with introductions, from the Kalevala and the writings of Finland’s national author Aleksis Kivi to the present day. There are also Finnish translations of the work of Finnish-Swedish authors. The older texts are drawn from the literary ‘canon’, in works by J.L. Runeberg, Z. Topelius, Juhani Aho, Maria Jotuni, Eino Leino, F.E. Sillanpää, Väinö Linna and Tove Jansson. Among the excerpts that date from more recent times there are even pop and rock lyrics. The writing often throws light on some aspect of Finnishness, sometimes with a critical or ironic note. There is also writing by immigrants. Interspersed with the literary examples are short essays giving the views of experts on subjects like Finnish history, language or sport. Some of the texts conclude with a glossary of unfamiliar words and terms. The explanations are arranged in order of their appearance in the text: for the casual reader seeking the meaning of a word, alphabetical order would have been more practical, though even then some phrases might have remained unnoticed.
Translated by David McDuff
New from the archive
29 June 2015 | This 'n' that
Mirkka Rekola. Photo: Elina Laukkarinen/WSOY
Enigmatic stories, poems and aphorisms by Mirkka Rekola
This week, poems and aphoristic short stories by Mirkka Rekola (1931-2015).
Rekola, as the long-time Books from Finland translator Herbert Lomas put it, was ‘a minimalist before minimalism was invented’. Amazingly enough, her sparklingly terse writing was considered ‘difficult’, and she had to wait until the 1990s before her work was widely read.
Rekola produced her first collection, Vedessä palaa (‘Burning water’) in 1954, making the cardinal mistake of choosing as publisher the conservative WSOY rather than the avant-garde Otava. The book received mixed reviews; as she said, ‘for readers of traditional verse I was completely unfamiliar, while for ultra-modernists I was not modern enough.’
All the work we revisit here shows the extraordinary vividness, accuracy and exuberance of her writing – both in the poems and the often ruefully funny short stories called ‘Mickeys’.
The Books from Finland digitisation project continues, with a total of 402 articles and book excerpts made available on our website so far. Each week, we bring a newly digitised text to your attention.
The Mermaid Café
30 June 2000 | Archives online, poetry
From Cafe Sjöjungfrun (‘The Mermaid Cafe’, Söderströms, 1999). Introduction by Peter Mickwitz
Caesura
Yesterday we had the first evening of autumn
even though it is still July. The cool
moist darkness lights that seemed
softer, the Esplanade’s octagonal cone
lit up red, yellow and green above
the underground tunnel from restaurant
to hotel. In the row of lime trees
worn garlands began to show, more
than a third of their light bulbs gone, broken
lines of burning dots gently
swaying. Farther away
sun-bleached awnings, some oily
neon, it, too, segmented,
and people moving
at a calmer pace, already anonymous,
close to unreal reflected in glass panes,
entryways, street lamps shaped like big hooks.
Traffic noise becomes more explicit
as if in an echo chamber or does it
grow more dense as if we walked about
with yellowing wads of cotton in our ears
or a window or a door was closed
and voices a moment ago
distinct, or at least partly,
are transformed into a numb buzz,
all that remains of the message
are ups and downs, a caesura when the conversation, at regular intervals,
reaches a rhythmic point of rest.
Fools and devils
30 June 2007 | Archives online, Authors, Interviews, Reviews
Anneli Kanto. Photo: Gummerus/Milka Alanen
Witch trials began to be history in 17th century Finland, thanks to the arrival of the country’s first university and an enlightened Governor-general. A new novel by Anneli Kanto is in those times, with a wandering theatre troupe as its focus. Anna-Leena Ekroos talks to the author
Laurentius Petrus Bircalensis, a poor boy from a backwoods village, is accepted to study at the recently founded Åbo Academy, the first university in Finland, in the town of Åbo (known as Turku in Finnish). The young studiosus, greedy for money, is more interested in occult than in theological studies, and becomes charged with witchcraft. Desperate, Laurentius flees a death sentence to wander the countryside with the Comet theatre troupe.
Journalist, theatre critic and playwright Anneli Kanto’s mischievous and adventurous first novel Piru, kreivi, noita ja näyttelijä (‘The devil, the count, the witch and the actor’) takes us to 17th-century Finland, to the days of the Swedish Count Per (Petrus) Brahe, the Governor-General of Finland. At that time the eradication of the ignorance and superstition of the peasantry was beginning in earnest. More…
Upstairs, downstairs
31 March 2000 | Archives online, Fiction, Prose
From Harmia lämpöpatterista (‘Trouble with the radiator’, Gummerus, 1999). Introduction by Tero Liukkonen
The view
From here, I can see straight into their bedroom. The thin man chases the red-haired mountain of lard; round and round the room they go: the man is swinging something in his hand, I can’t see what, while the lard-mountain squeals until the man throws her onto the bed. The same thing happens every night; I can’t see the bed. Too low, and I wouldn’t want to, besides; lewd ugly makes me sick that I can even think of it.
Downstairs a young man is always watching TV, sitting there motionless all evening. The blue flickers, never turns on the light, a young man. He has long, slender legs and arms, but his face I can’t see, it’s too dark. There are painting tools on his window sill. More…
Not joined up
19 February 2015 | In the news
Photo: Brad Flickinger / CC BY 2.0
The news that Finnish schools are to stop teaching cursive writing, in favour of a new emphasis on touch typing and the most efficient way of composing a text message, has been widely reported in the British press.
But not in our household.
With three children – aged 13, 9 and 6 – all struggling, to a greater or lesser degree, to make sense of the curlicues of joined-up writing as it’s taught in British schools, the pressure to abandon school in London and move to Finland would be all but irresistible if they every got to hear the news.
With letter-forms that bear little resemblance to printed characters and a loopy style, apparently derived from old-fashioned copperplate, that few children are going to be able to master completely, let alone develop into an elegant mode of handwriting, joined-up handwriting remains for many an obstacle to, not a means of, communication.
Added to the benefits of Finnish schools my children already know about – the shorter working days, the lighter homework load, the absence of school uniforms, the good school meals, the outdoor breaks every hour – the news that not only will Finnish schoolchildren not be expected to develop good handwriting, but will be issued with tablets on which to practise their computer skills, would axe their enthusiasm for school at home in Britain.
For their mother, the puzzle remains how Finland manages to employ such child-friendly school policies and still remain close to the top of the global Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) assessments. The trick seems to be to recruit top-level graduates into well-run teacher training schemes, pay them well, and to trust them to do their job as teachers, without the mounds of paperwork and need for incessant testing that bedevil the job in Britain.
About the handwriting, my children will find out soon enough, when their friends in Finland come home carrying not exercise books but tablets.
But meanwhile, I’m keeping my fingers crossed they don’t see this piece.
That which simply is
24 October 2013 | Non-fiction, Reviews
Henrika Ringbom. Photo: Curt Richter
Henrika Ringbom
Öar i ett hav som strömmar
[Islands in a flowing sea]
Helsingfors: Schildts & Söderströms, 2013. 78 p.
ISBN 978-951-52-3218-2
€21, paperback
Henrika Ringbom’s new collection of poems is emotionally touching and formally sophisticated – something only the very best poetry can manage. Ringbom is an experienced author whose output since her debut in 1988 has included five collections of poetry and two novels; even so, it feels as if she has taken another step forward in her writing with this latest volume.
The focal point is the loss of a beloved mother. The title, which translates as ‘Islands in a flowing sea’, emphasises the fleeting nature of all life, and the book radiates sorrow more than anything else. There has always been an intellectual, distancing quality to Ringbom’s writing. That stands her in good stead here, preventing the book from becoming too private and introverted, despite its highly personal themes. More…
Inventing reality
30 June 2001 | Authors
Changes of self and perspective – and even of gender – fascinate the chameleon-like writer, dramatist and actress Pirkko Saisio. Set in Helsinki in the 1950s and 1960s, her autobiographical novel Pienin yhteinen jaettava (‘Lowest common multiple’, 1998) was on the shortlist for the Finlandia Prize. ‘We look into the mirror,’ she says in this introduction to her writing, ‘to wonder at the fact that we have the ability to divide in two, into she who looks and she who is looked at’.
Extracts from Miten kirjani ovat syntyneet (‘How my books have been born’, edited by Ritva Haavikko, WSOY, 2000)
On the top shelf of the bookshelf in my childhood home were about thirty volumes of the collected works of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. On the bottom shelf were the same number of the collected Stalin. Between them were A Young Woman’s Cookbook and Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, which my father had had to study in order to graduate from correspondence school as a commercial technician. More…
The Comb
30 September 1981 | Archives online, Fiction, Prose
A short story from Tilanteita (‘Situations’, 1962). Introduction by Vesa Karonen
The young man’s comb dropped behind the radiator under the window. The young man crouched down to look and felt with his fingers in between the pipes and along the floor. No trace of the comb.
Lose something on a train and it eludes you. A train ticket I left once – just placed it long enough on the window ledge for it, too, to fall behind the radiator. Couldn’t find it. The conductor came along, said “Any new fares! Tickets please.” I just sat still, totally unconcerned, until he’d gone. I’m sure there are little details which give the game away to conductors, they know who’s just got on.
New passengers are always somehow fresher, more alert. In winter, I hear, they look at the passengers’ feet. If there’s snow round the edges of the shoes, no need to hesitate. A lot of people are done for by looking straight in their eyes. Offenders always look straight back and then in the middle try to look somewhere else entirely. I was careful not to look steadily into the conductor’s eyes. It was easy when I concentrated on the way the long ventilator cords swung back and forth from the ceiling. They all swung in the same direction but some cords were a bit behind the others. Perhaps it was because the cords were all slightly different in weight and length. Now I remember – it’s not the weight that counts, just as it’s not weight that affects the way a pendulum swings. When the conductor had gone I began to look for my ticket again. I went on looking for it all the way to Tampere. The young man, too, would obviously go on looking for his comb until he got where he was going, without finding it. More…