Search results for "2010/02/let-us-eat-cake"
Poems
30 September 1985 | Archives online, Fiction, poetry
Introduction by Pertti Lassila
If you come to the land of winds, to the bottom of the sea,
there are few trees, plenty of icy wind
from shore to shore.
You can see far
and see nothing.
Around you screech the newborn plains
still wet from fog
but clear as a dream
at the edge, the sea
beneath, the deep earth
above, the wide expanse
shouts to you and to the plains
about being
it looks at you and asks
When we returned home
and leaned against the long table
we could see the simple grain of the wood
and our weariness turned into knowledge
of why we had had to go away:
to come back to see the uncharted patterns
in the table at home.
From Lakeus (‘The plain’, 1961)
A respectable tragedy
30 June 1988 | Archives online, Fiction, Prose
An extract from the novel Säädyllinen murhenäytelmä (‘A respectable tragedy’, 1941). Introduction by Kaija Valkonen. The central theme of the novel is love: young, old, passionate, innocent, proper, improper. The main characters are a middle-aged couple, the doctor and his wife Elisabet, his sister Naimi and the love of her youth, Artur. Hämäläinen’s fine irony, careful and thoughtful psychology and colourful language have made the novel a bestseller. Naimi, an aesthete and an uncompromising character, has left her husband Artur twenty years ago because of his infidelity. But slowly she begins to forgive: this tragic but compassionately told love story, not without tragicomedy and humour, ends in reconciliation
Embalmed passion
In that new Helsinki of the ‘thirties, which had opened like a garden flower, gaily coloured, sunlit, practical and impractical, in love with every novelty of the moment, which it thought astonishing, lived Naimi Saarinen, back from her exile, where she had been driven by wounded passion twenty years before. More…
The blow-flower boy and the heaven-fixer
31 December 1984 | Archives online, Fiction, Prose
A short story from Puhalluskukkapoika ja taivaankorjaaja (‘The blow-flower boy and the heaven-fixer’, 1983). Interview by Olavi Jama
Cold.
A chill west wind came over the blue ice. It went right to the skin through woollen clothes. Shivers ran up and down the spine, made shoulders shake.
In the bank of clouds close to the horizon, right where the icebreaker had crunched open a passage to the shore, hung a pale blotch, a substitute for the sun. It gave off more chill than warmth.
Lennu’s teeth were chattering.
He wore a buttoned-up windbreaker, a hand-me-down from Gunnar, over a heavy lambswool shirt. It couldn’t keep off the cold. More…
Money makes the world go round
31 August 2012 | Fiction, Prose
Extracts from the novel Mr. Smith (WSOY, 2012). Introduction by Tuomas Juntunen
I have a confession to make.
I couldn’t have lived on my salary. Most people would solve this by taking out a loan, living on credit. I’ve never lived in debt. Instead I’ve had to make my modest capital grow by investing it – through the company, of course, because irrespective of their colour governments generally understand companies better than small investors. You have to make money somewhere other than the Social Security Office.
Work doesn’t make money; money makes money.
You have to let money do the work.
This is nothing short of a profound human tragedy: most people are forced to waste the majority of their lives, to use it in the service of complete strangers, for unknown purposes, doing something for money that they would never do if they didn’t have to. The most shocking thing is that people actively seek out this state of affairs, strive towards it; it is a goal towards which society lends us its full support, no less.
Such wage slavery is called ‘work’. More…
Childhood revisited
31 March 2006 | Archives online, Fiction, Prose
Extracts from the novel Tämän maailman tärkeimmät asiat (‘The most important things of this world’, Tammi, 2005). Introduction by Jarmo Papinniemi
I was supposed to meet my mother at a café by the sea. She would be dressed in the same jacket that I had picked out for her five years ago. She would have on a high-crowned hat, but I wasn’t sure about the shoes. She loved shoes and she always had new ones when she came to visit. She liked leather ankle boots. She might be wearing some when she stepped off the train, looking out for puddles. She didn’t wear much make-up. I don’t remember her ever using powder, although I’m sure she did. I could describe her eye make-up more precisely: a little eye shadow, a little mascara, and that’s all.
That’s all? I don’t know my mother. As a child, I lived too much in my own world and it was only after I left home that I was able to look at her from far enough away to learn to know her. She had been so near that I hadn’t noticed her. More…
Elmo’s fire
30 June 2008 | Archives online, Fiction, Prose
Extracts from the novel Elmo (WSOY, 1978)
After returning to Finland and Kainalniemi, Elmo got to feel like a celebrity. The various sport clubs were insufferably keen on getting Elmo into their training rings, but Elmo rebuffed them. He had belonged to Kainalniemi Sweat since he was a little boy, and that was enough for him. His mind was occupied by other matters. In the end, even his mother and father began to wonder at his attitude.
‘Why don’t you just go, since they keep asking, and since you do seem to have some talent in that direction,’ his mother urged as she made Sunday coffee from the can Elmo had brought as a gift.
‘Right. Somewhere down the road you could snatch a few gold medals out from under the noses of the others, just for the hell of it,’ his father said. More…
In the wars
31 March 2005 | Archives online, Fiction, Prose
A short story from Jussi ja Lassi (‘Jussi and Lassi’, WSOY, 1921). Introduction by Pekka Tarkka
One winter evening, Lassi, who was six, asked: ‘Can’t we go out, mother?’
‘It’s late already,’ she said.
‘We’ve been inside the whole day practically,’ said Jussi, who was seven. ‘It gets on my nerves.’
‘Gets on your nerves, does it? Well, boys, you’ll soon be off in bed,’ she said, ‘so you won’t need to get nervy.’
‘Not off to bed – not yet, it’s not yet, not…’ Lassi broke off, trying to work it out.
‘It’s not six yet,’ Jussi said.
‘No, it isn’t,’ their mother said; ‘but you’ll have to stay in your room and not go charging about here, because visitors are coming.’ More…
In a class of their own
31 December 2006 | Children's books, Fiction
Extracts from the children’s book Ella: Varokaa lapsia! (‘Ella: Look out for children!’, Tammi, 2006). Interview by Anna-Leena Nissilä
There was a large van in the schoolyard with a thick cable winding its way from the van into the school. It was from the TV station, and the surprise was that they wanted to do a programme about our teacher, believe it or not.
The classroom was filled with lights, cameras, and adults.
‘Are you the weird teacher?’ a young man asked. He had a funny, shaggy beard and a t-shirt that said ‘errand boy’.
‘Not nearly as weird as your beard,’ our teacher answered.
‘Can we do a little piece about you?’ the errand boy asked.
‘Of course. A big one even. I’ve been expecting you, actually. Is it some educational programme?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘A substantive discussion programme, though?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘A documentary about our contemporary educators?’
‘Not quite.’ More…
‘ware bears!
30 September 1988 | Archives online, Children's books, Fiction
Illustration: Jukka Lemmetty
Urpo and Turpo are a pair of teddy bears. Their family – mother, father and three children – cannot imagine who it is that makes such a mess; the bears live their own absorbing lives in house. Hannele Huovi’s text and Jukka Lemmetty’s illustrations describe the bears’ antics in a way that appeals to the sense of humour of readers of all ages.
In the green house an ordinary family are living a perfectly ordinary life. There’s father, mother, The Big Daughter, The Son, and also The Baby as well. Mother keeps running back and forth all day long shouting, ‘Goodness gracious! Who’s responsible for this?’ For very funny things keep going on in the house. Who on earth is it – always getting up to some sort of hanky-panky?
Father harrumphs and says to The Big Daughter:
‘It was you, wasn’t it?’ But The Big Daughter shakes her head. Father turns to The Son:
‘So it must have been you, then?’ But the son shakes his head. No use asking The Baby. He shakes his head anyway, because he’s always imitating the others. Father and mother are completely stumped. More…
Poems
31 December 1986 | Archives online, Fiction, poetry
Introduction by Kai Laitinen
Evening Mood
It’s widening:
an evening like a sigh –
languidly spreading across the land.
The tree’s unclothing
its branches of their colours, darkening.
As if something somewhere
were ringing and ringing –
a song straying like an orphan.
The words seem
something I’ve heard:
‘only a shadow –
only a shadow of a dream’
It’s slipping away. It’s dwindling.
Everything – everything – I’ve been given
I’ll give away. More…
Star-Eye
31 March 1984 | Archives online, Children's books, Fiction
A story from Läsning för barn (‘Reading for children’,1884). Introduction by George C. Schoolfield
There was once a little child lying in a snowdrift. Why? Because it had been lost.
It was Christmas Eve. The old Lapp was driving his sledge through the desolate mountains, and the old Lapp woman was following him. The snow sparkled, the Northern Lights were dancing, and the stars were shining brightly in the sky. The old Lapp thought this was a splendid journey and turned round to look for his wife who was alone in her little Lapp sledge, for the reindeer could not pull more than one person at a time. The woman was holding her little child in her arms. It was wrapped in a thick, soft reindeer skin, but it was difficult for the woman to drive a sledge properly with a child in her arms.
When they had reached the top of the mountain and were just starting off downhill, they came across a pack of wolves. It was a big pack, about forty or fifty of them, such as you often see in winter in Lapland when they are on the look-out for a reindeer. Now these wolves had not managed to catch any reindeer; they were howling with hunger and straight away began to pursue the old Lapp and his wife. More…
Leena Lander: Liekin lapset [Children of the flames]
23 June 2010 | Mini reviews, Reviews
Liekin lapset
[Children of the flames]
Helsinki: Siltala, 2010. 419 p.
ISBN 978-952-231-022-1
€ 27.30, hardback
Novels by Leena Lander (born 1959) have been translated into more than 20 languages. Liekin lapset is a family saga, told in two parallel timelines. One is a portrait of a small coastal community in south-western Finland from the turn of the 20th century up to the end of the Finnish civil war in 1918 and the years following it. Life in the area is governed by a sawmill and a manor, socially dividing the community in two. Saida, Joel, Anders and Arvi grow up together, the future workers dreaming of socialism and the sons of the manor playing warlords. In the contemporary strand of the story, Sakari Salin, Saida’s grandson, begins researching his grandmother’s life. The documents reveal some rather remarkable events: here, the author defends the rights of those who were on the losing side in the civil war and creates a lively – as well as historically grounded – portrait of the times. The dialogues and characters in this novel work well, and the structure supports a complex system of psychosocial interconnections, in which the present finds an explanation in the past.
Toivo Flink: Kotiin karkotettavaksi: Inkeriläisen siirtoväen palautukset Suomesta Neuvostoliittoon [Exiled home: The return of Ingrian emigrants from Finland to the Soviet Union]
15 October 2010 | Mini reviews, Reviews
Kotiin karkotettavaksi: Inkeriläisen siirtoväen palautukset Suomesta Neuvostoliittoon 1944–1955
[Exiled home: The return of Ingrian emigrants from Finland to the Soviet Union, 1944–1955]
Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2010. 320 p., ill.
ISBN 978-952-222-183-4
33 €, paperback
It has been 65 years since the Allied Commission operation to repatriate Finnic Ingrian emigrants from Finland to the Soviet Union was completed. During the Continuation War (1941–1944), 63,000 Ingrian civilians fled to Finland to avoid the war; 56,000 of them were returned to the Soviet Union at the order of the Russian-dominated Allied Commission. It is estimated that half of those remaining in Finland secretly fled to Sweden. Ingrians continued to be returned from Finland to the Soviet Union for ten more years. The Ingrians had been promised they would be returned to their former home areas around St Petersburg, but they were actually transferred to more remote parts of the Soviet Union. In this first study to deal exclusively with the travails of the Ingrians, Flink has used Russian archives to uncover how and where the population was moved. This subject has long been a sensitive issue both in domestic and foreign affairs. According to Flink, his research would not have been possible if the return of Ingrians to Finland had not begun in 1990. (There have been about 30,000 immigrants since, and now the state is planning to terminate the right of return.)