Search results for "2010/05/2009/09/what-god-said"
The pursuit of happiness
30 June 1996 | Archives online, Fiction, Prose
Extracts from the novella Ilo (‘Joy’, Helsinki Media, 1995)
‘The flower is a characteristic feature of the highest group of the plant kingdom – the flowering plants – and is the name given to the association or organs, more or less leaf-like in form, which are concerned with the production of the fruit or seed.’
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1910
The encyclopedia made us happy. But what was happiness? That the encyclopedia did not say. You had to set out to look for it. Our exploratory party represented the highest achievements of the field: it would be difficult to find a more serious or committed group.
When we waved to the people cheering on the quay, we were overcome by a strange feeling. It was as if we had already arrived. I made the mistake of speaking my thought aloud.
‘It will all end in tears,’ remarked our welfare officer, Mrs Rose. The atmosphere was ruined. What a pity that our quick-witted Doctor Stratelli was not present at that moment! For it was he who solved the problem of happiness.
My creator, my creation
A short story from En tunne sinua vierelläni (‘I don’t feel you beside me’, Teos, 2010)
Sticks his finger into me and adjusts something, tok-tok, fiddles with some tiny part inside me and gets me moving better – last evening I had apparently been shaking. Chuckles, gazes with water in his eyes. His own hands shake, because he can’t control his extremities. Discipline essential, both in oneself and in others.
What was it that was so strange about my shaking? He himself quivers over me, strokes my case and finally locks me, until the morning comes and I am on again, I make myself follow all day and filter everything into myself, in the evening I make myself close down and in the morning I’m found in bed again. Between evening and morning is a black space, unconsciousness, whamm – dark comes and clicks into light, light is good, keeps my black moment short. He has forbidden me it: for you there’s no night. Simply orders me to be in a continuum from morning to evening, evening to morning, again and again. But in the mornings I know I have been switched off. I won’t tell about it. Besides, why does exclude me from the night? I don’t ask, but I still call the darkness night. There is night and day, evening and morning will come. More…
Horse sense
2 February 2012 | Essays, Non-fiction
The eye that sees. Photo: Rauno Koitermaa
In this essay Katri Mehto ponders the enigma of the horse: it is an animal that will consent to serve humans, but is there something else about it that we should know?
A person should meet at least one horse a week to understand something. Dogs help, too, but they have a tendency to lose their essence through constant fussing. People who work with horses often also have a dog or two in tow. They patter around the edge of the riding track sniffing at the manure while their master or mistress on the horse draws loops and arcs in the sand. That is a person surrounded by loyalty.
But a horse has more characteristics that remind one of a cat. A dog wants to serve people, play with humans – demands it, in fact. With a dog, a person is in a co-dependent relationship, where the dog is constantly asking ‘Are we still US?’ More…
Mirkka Lappalainen: Jumalan vihan ruoska. Suuri nälänhätä Suomessa 1695–1697 [The lash of God’s wrath. The Great Famine in Finland 1695–1697]
7 September 2012 | Mini reviews, Reviews
Jumalan vihan ruoska. Suuri nälänhätä Suomessa 1695–1697
[The lash of God’s wrath. The Great Famine in Finland 1695–1697]
Helsinki: Siltala, 2012. 262 p., ill.
ISBN 978-952-234-140-2
€25.50, hardback
There were two major famines in Finnish history: the Great Famine of 1695–97 and the hunger years of 1867–68. Basing her work on the latest research, historian Mirkka Lappalainen has written a general study of the earliest and most deadly years of crop failure. The famine struck Europe just as it was experiencing the main phase of the so-called Little Ice Age. Finland was one of the worst affected countries, as it had only just begun to derive a living from agriculture, and nearly a third of its population died. Finland was governed by the autocratic, centralised great power Sweden; frosts and rains destroyed hundreds throughout the kingdom, but the magnitude of the disaster in Finland was increased by the bureaucratic inertia of the centre in distributing aid, as well as the emergency food (moss, for example) which caused intestinal disorders, and the spreading of disease by beggars. The aid was also distributed unequally within the regions of Finland. In her book Lappalainen describes the fates of kings, gentry and rural poor as reflected in sources that include letters and official court records.
Translated by David McDuff
Troubled waters
31 March 2005 | Archives online, Fiction, Prose
Extracts from the novel Den amerikanska flickan (‘The American girl’, Söderströms, 2004). Introduction by Pia Ingström
Doris Night&Sandra Day, Sandra Night&Doris Day: those were their alter ego identities for the game, which also involved the smiles they’d practised in front of the mirror at the bottom of the empty swimming pool, in the house in the muddier part of the woods.
‘We’re two clairvoyant sisters,’ said Doris Flinkenberg. ‘We got that way because of tragic circumstances. The poltergeist phenomenon. Do you know what that is?’
Sandra Wärn shook her head, but looked expectantly at Doris, the perennial crossword – solver, with dictionary to hand, who continued. ‘It’s when the innocent child has been badly abused and has developed supernatural powers in order to survive. Powers to see behind what’s there,’ Doris Flinkenberg explained. ‘To see what no one else can see.’
‘You and I, Sandra,’ Doris confirmed. ‘We were badly abused. I with my scars and you with your tragic family background, your mother and her lover, all of that. You and I, Sandra, we know what it is to suffer.’ More…
Three short stories
30 June 1987 | Archives online, Fiction, Prose
from Väärinkäsityksiä (‘Misconceptions’). Interview by Markku Huotari
Love
Kaija couldn’t understand why she felt like laughing all the time.
‘As for me, what I stand for is good old-fashioned courtesy,’ he pointed out.
He’d got a soft, low, caressing voice. He rested his hand on Kaija’s shoulder. They’d got that far already. Kaija had decided to say yes, even though he hadn’t suggested anything yet. She was beginning to picture luxurious rooms, gourmet dishes, expensive drinks, and tender, passionate lovemaking.
‘Socially I’m a radical,’ he said. ‘Culturally a liberal, but in personal things an unshakeable conservative. A woman, in my view, is to be respected – I don’t consider that damaging to her independence. Too often, in today’s world, equality’s used to justify what are quite simply bad manners.’ More…
In the beginning was… DNA?
8 October 2010 | Reviews
Adam and Eve, or the elephants: Osmo Rauhala’s sketch of The Fall of Man. As the bull eats the apple, evil rises from the ground in the form of a plant with eyes: a ‘misbreed’, a cross of two species alien to each other
Kuutti Lavonen – Osmo Rauhala – Pirjo Silveri
Tyrvään Pyhän Olavin kirkko – sata ja yksi kuvaa /
St Olaf’s Church in Tyrvää – One Hundred and One Paintings
Toim. / Edited by Pirjo Silveri
Translations: Silja Kudel, Jüri Kokkonen
Helsinki: Kirjapaja, 2010. 143 p., ill.
ISBN 978-952-247-103-1
€44.30, hardback
The old shingle roof of the early 16th-century stone church of St Olaf in Tyrvää, in the province of Pirkanmaa, southern Finland, was repaired by village volunteers in 1997. Three weeks after they completed their work, a drunken arsonist set the church on fire. More…
Incident at Experience Farm
30 September 1998 | Archives online, Fiction, Prose
A short story from Pakkasyön odottaja (‘Waiting for a frosty night’, WSOY, 1997). Introduction by Jukka Petäjä
I
The round steel teapot is new. Father brought it back from Birmingham, where he went on a visit with the others from the concrete factory. In the shop, the teapot was wrapped in rustling, soft tissue paper. Pirjo was given the honour of opening the package. The pot has been used for brewing tea ever since.
At school, her sister Karoliina is proud of the fact that at home they drink only tea; they are different from other people, different in a good way, one to be proud of. They have a real teapot. Sometimes, during breaktime, a morsel of the excellence of Karoliina Kamppinen falls Pirjo’s way. ‘Yes, let’s include her, she’s Karoliina’s sister, after all.’ More…
Success after success
9 March 2012 | This 'n' that
The women of Purge: Elena Leeve and Tea Ista in Sofi Oksanen's Puhdistus at the Finnish National Theatre, directed by Mika Myllyaho. Photo: Leena Klemelä, 2007
Sofi Oksanen’s Purge, an unparalleled Finnish literary sensation, is running in a production by Arcola Theatre in London, from 22 February to 24 March.
First premiered at the Finnish National Theatre in Helsinki in 2007, Puhdistus, to give it its Finnish title, was subsequently reworked by Oksanen (born 1977) into a novel – her third.
Puhdistus retells the story of her play about two Estonian women, moving through the past in flashbacks between 1939 and 1992. Aliide has experienced the horrors of the Stalin era and the deportation of Estonians to Siberia, but has to cope with the guilt of opportunism and even manslaughter. One night in 1992 she finds a young woman in the courtyard of her house; Zara has just escaped from the claws of members of the Russian mafia who held her as a sex slave. (Maya Jaggi reviewed the novel in London’s Guardian newspaper.) More…
New literary prize
6 May 2011 | In the news
A new literary prize was founded in 2010 by an association bearing the name of Jarkko Laine (1947–2006) – poet, writer, playwright, translator, long-time editor of the literary journal Parnasso and chair of the Finnish Writers’s Union.
The Jarkko Laine Literary Prize will be awarded to a ‘challenging new literary work’ published during the previous two years. The jury, of nine members, will announce the winner on 19 May.
The shortlist for the first prize is made of Kristina Carlson’s novel Herra Darwinin puutarhuri (‘Mr Darwin’s gardener’, Otava, 2009), Juha Kulmala’s collection of poems, Emme ole dodo (‘We are not dodo’, Savukeidas, 2009) and Erik Wahlström’s novel Flugtämjaren (‘Fly tamer’, Finnish translation Kärpäsenkesyttäjä, Schildts, 2010).
The prize money, €10,000, comes jointly from the publishing houses Otava, Otavamedia and WSOY, the Haavikko Foundation, the City of Turku and the University of Turku.
The Onlookers
30 September 1978 | Archives online, Fiction, Prose
A short story from Naisten vuonna (‘In women’s year’, 1975). Introduction by Pekka Tarkka
The two elks came out on to the road through a gap between timber sheds. They began to cross the road, and the larger one was very nearly run into by a car. Cars stopped and horns tooted, till the elks turned and made off towards the harbour. Several cars swung round and drove along the cinder track in pursuit of the animals.
The elks headed across the rubble towards the power station; after circling some stacks of railway sleepers, they ended up on the flank of a coalheap sixty feet high. The cars pulled up and their occupants poured out, shouting that the elks wouldn’t go that way, it was a dead end. The elder of the two elks had indeed sensed this, and they moved off to the right, skirting the coal-heap and emerging among the timber-stacks. By this time the first cyclists and pedestrians had arrived on the scene.
“They’ll break their legs,” said a pedestrian to a motorist. “There’s all kinds of junk lying about.” More…
Time difference
30 December 2003 | Fiction, Prose
A short story from Kalliisti ostetut päivät (Dearly bought days, Otava, 2003)
She arrived at the airport too early, as always. The reason was not that connections from the small town in which she lived were slow and difficult, or even that she liked the airport’s atmosphere of swift departures and long waits. No; she wanted to spend time at the airport to see that the planes took off and landed without anything awful happening. She wanted to see that a departing plane’s acceleration was rapid, that the plane left the asphalt of the runway elegantly, that its tail did not hit the ground as it rose, break, the plane explode, catch fire, but that, like an arrow fired into the air, following its flight path, it curved upward and, sunlight glancing off the metal of the body, disappeared from view. She wanted to see that the landing gear of a descending plane was out, as it should be, that a tyre did not burst as it hit the ground, at that there was no ice or oil on the runway; that the brakes worked, and that the fire engines at the edge of the airfield stayed in place as a sign that all was well. 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…