Search results for "2011/04/matti-suurpaa-parnasso-1951–2011-parnasso-1951–2011"
Sun and shade
3 August 2011 | Extracts, Non-fiction
Springtime: the new graduates celebrate the beginning of summer. Photos: ©Jussi Brofeldt
Documentary film-making and photography arrived in Finland in the 1920s with pioneers like Heikki Aho and Björn Soldan, who founded a film company in 1925 in Helsinki. They also took thousands of photographs of their city; in a selection taken in the turbulent 1930s, people go on about their lives, rain or shine
Photographs from Aho & Soldan: Kaupunkilaiselämää – Stadsliv – City life. Näkymiä 1930-luvun Helsinkiin (‘Views of Helsinki of the 1930s’, WSOY, 2011)
Photos: Aho & Soldan@Jussi Brofeldt. Texts, by Jörn Donner and Ilkka Kippola, are published in Finnish, Swedish and English.
The exhibition ‘City life‘ is open at Virka Gallery of the Helsinki City Hall from 1 June to 4 September.
Aho and Soldan were half-brothers, Heikki the eldest son of the writer Juhani Aho (1861–1921; an extract from one of his novels is available here) and the artist Venny Soldan-Brofeldt. (Juhani Aho changed his original Swedish surname, Brofeldt, to Aho in 1907), Björn Soldan was Aho’s son from an extramarital relationship. More…
Hatefully yours
23 December 2011 | Non-fiction, Tales of a journalist
Illustration: Joonas Väänänen
In the new media it’s easy for our pet hatreds to be introduced to anyone who is interested. And of course everyone is interested, how else could it be? Jyrki Lehtola investigates
Twitter, Facebook, Twitter, Twitter, Twitter, Facebook, Twitter, how can we get the revenue model to work by using our old media, Twitter, Facebook, Twitter, Twitter, hey, what about that revenue model of ours, Twitter.
The preceding is a poignant summary of what the Finnish media was like in 2011 when the rules of the game changed like they have changed every year. And we still don’t even fully understand what the game is supposed to be. 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…
Finland, cool! The Frankfurt Book Fair 8–12 October
30 September 2014 | Articles, Non-fiction
Finnland. Cool. pavilion in Frankfurt, designed by Natalia Baczynska Kimberley, Nina Kosonen and Matti Mikkilä from Aalto University
It starts next week: Finland is Guest of Honour at the Book Fair in the German and global city of Frankfurt. This link will take you to it all.
Approximately 170,000 professionals from the literary world are expected to visit the exhibition halls from Wednesday to Friday; the weekend is reserved for the general public, c.100,000 visitors. Since 1980s different countries have been in focus each year. More…
C.L. Engel. Koti Helsingissä, sydän Berliinissä. C.L. Engel. Hemmet i Helsingfors, hjärtat i Berlin [C.L. Engel. Home in Helsinki, heart in Berlin]
23 February 2012 | Mini reviews, Reviews
C.L. Engel. Koti Helsingissä, sydän Berliinissä. C.L. Engel. Hemmet i Helsingfors, hjärtat i Berlin
[C.L. Engel. Home in Helsinki, heart in Berlin]
Tekstit [Texts by]: Matti Klinge, Salla Elo, Eeva Ruoff
Valokuvat [Photography]: Taavetti Alin & Risto Törrö
Översättning [Translations from Finnish into Swedish]: Ulla Pedersen Estberg
Helsingfors: Schildts, 2012. 140 p., ill.
ISBN 978-951-50-2183-0
€ 31.50, hardback
The life and works of the German architect Carl Ludvig Engel (1778–1840) are portrayed in four articles by specialists in Finnish history, the history of Helsinki and the history of gardens. Engel spent almost 24 years in Helsinki, transforming it with his architectural designs. For eleven of those years, he and his family lived in a house surrounded by a large garden, both of them his own creations. Looking for work, the young Engel finally found it in the tiny northern town that was pronounced the new capital of the Grand Duchy of Finland in 1812 – both Tsar Alexander I and his successor, Nikolai I, favoured him. From 1816 onwards he designed more than twenty neo-classical buildings, among them nationally important landmarks: the Cathedral, the City Hall, the National Library and the University. Despite his mostly rewarding job as a highly regarded city planner, Engel found Helsinki cold, small and quiet, and he constantly longed for his native Berlin, which he never saw again. However, his flourishing garden gave him great pleasure. Richly illustrated with photographs, the book gives the reader an thorough and interesting picture of this city-changing man and his era.
Reading matters? On new books for young readers
9 January 2014 | Articles, Children's books, Non-fiction
The Pixon brothers don’t read books, they love the telly: story by Malin Kivelä, illustrations by Linda Bondestam (Bröderna Pixon och TV:ns hemtrevliga sken, ‘The Pixon brothers and the homely shimmer of the telly’)
Finnish picture books for children have long been reliable export goods around the world. In the last few years, a number of novels for children have come along in their wake: works by authors such as Timo Parvela and Siri Kolu have been translated into a good many languages.
Now young adult literature has also blazed a trail on to the international market – in what also seems to be almost a matter of precision timing with regard to the Frankfurt Book Fair 2014. Finnish publishers have been investing in their home-grown lists of children’s and young adult books ever since the turn of the millennium, and now the time has come to harvest the fruits of their long-term efforts.
Home alone?
30 June 2003 | Authors
Photo: Veikko Somerpuro
Kari Hotakainen’s novel Juoksuhaudantie (‘The Trench Road’, WSOY, 2002), has sold more than 100,000 copies, an enormous number in Finland, and more than any other Finlandia Prize-winning work since 1986. Why?
Matti Virtanen is close to being the most common man’s name in Finland. In Kari Hotakainen’s sixth novel, this on the one hand ordinary but on the other extraordinarily obsessive Virtanen chances, in a state of agitation, to hit his wife, as a result of which the wife and their daughter leave. Virtanen gets it into his head that the only way to win forgiveness and get his family back again is to get them a home of their own. Virtanen believes himself to be a blameless ‘home-front man’, the opposite of the wargoing generation of his father and grandfather:
‘A home veteran looks after all the housework and understands women. Throughout our marriage I have done everything that our fathers did not. I did the laundry, cooked the food, cleaned the flat, I gave her time to herself and protected the family from society…. I listened, I understood,I caressed, I foreplayed and kept the mood going after intercourse. I had had no education in any of this, nor was there any kind of example for me tofollow.’ More…
The way to anywhere
30 September 2003 | Archives online, Fiction, poetry
Poems from Parittelun jälkeinen selkeys (‘Post-coital clarity’, WSOY, 2003). Introduction by Matti Saurama
Enlightenment needs no tools
1. And I laughed at everything
and didn’t want to see anything old
there was a fingernail-sized buddha and I walked by it
in the room, trying to find the ceiling,
camping out in life, fag in mouth
the soft letters of the clouds, and a blowing skysign
oh sky
2. I stand on the street corner
illuminated like a phone box.
On the way to anywhere
and always there already. More...
Springtime in Paris: Nordic writers on a French visit
25 March 2011 | In the news
With an icy northerly wind at my back I took off from Helsinki and landed in Paris, where it was springtime and the cherry trees were in bloom. The aim of my trip was to join eleven translators from Finnish into all the main Nordic languages in examining the trickiest corners of the Finnish language and discussing the actual working conditions of literary translators, as well as the possibilities for Nordic literature to assert itself in the world.
I was also going to meet with and listen to more than sixty writers from all the Nordic countries. Why did I have to go to Paris to do it? Because this was where Bokskogen, the Forest of Books, had grown.
At the Salon du Livre held in Paris from 18 to 21 March, at which the Nordic countries were the guests of honour, FILI (the Finnish Literature Exchange) was in charge of coordinating the Nordic pavilion, some 400 square metres in area.
The airy Scandinavian Forest of Books was filled with the murmur of Parisians in search of something Nordic to read and intent on having their newly purchased books signed by authors like Sofi Oksanen, Kari Hotakainen, Matti Rönkä, Monika Fagerholm, Katarina Gäddnäs, Seita Parkkola, Aira Savisaari, Johanna Sinisalo, Aino Havukainen and Sami Toivonen.
Before the official inauguration by France’s Minister of Culture Frédéric Mittérand the programmes had already been underway for four days. Just over a hundred professional people – publishers, translators and other cultural figures and institutions from across the Nordic countries – took part in various workshops to discuss common focal points and share experiences and best practices with each other and their French colleagues.
One of the major events was the Cultural Forum, a collaboration between FILI, the Nordic Council of Ministers and the Finnish presidency of the Nordic Council of Ministers. Its theme was the training of translators, and also the book industry in a global context.
In early March a dozen French journalists and booksellers toured Helsinki and Tammisaari (Ekenäs) in order to meet Finnish authors and interview them as a prelude to the big show. As a result Nordic literature also made its presence felt in France’s press and bookstores.
Translated by David McDuff
Moving on
30 June 2003 | Archives online, Fiction, Prose
Extracts from the short story ‘Tunnin kuvat’ (‘One-hour processing’, from the collection Vapiseva sydän, ‘Tremulous heart’, Tammi, 2002). Introduction by Harry Forsblom
Last summer, when I was helping my brother with his move, he said I could take as many of his old LPs as I wanted. There were actually two of us on the job: his younger friend Timbe was along, and when we’d almost completely cleared out the flat and my brother’s two cellar closets (he’d rented an extra closet from the next-door flat, as he was submerging under the clobber lying around everywhere), he said the same to Timbe: ‘Just help yourself.’ The records we ourselves didn’t want would be chucked in the rubbish.
A musical advent calendar
9 December 2011 | This 'n' that
The Finnish Broadcasting Company has delved into its vast archives, and its website, YLE Areena, is throughout December featuring a series of musical numbers, many with reference to Christmas, sung or played Finnish singers and musicians. These inserts are being broadcast on each day, from 1 to 24 December, and they can be listened to via the Internet (although be warned, the information is given in Finnish only).
Among the Finnish composers are, among others, Oskar Merikanto (1868–1924), Erkki Melartin (1875–1937), Toivo Kuula (1883–1918) and Jean Sibelius. The sopranos Irma Urrila and Helena Juntunen are presented, singing Mozart and Gounoud respectively.
For example: on 6 December, the Finland’s Independence Day, one of the three inserts is a piano piece, entitled Pankakoski, by composer Heino Kaski (who died a day earlier than Sibelius, in September 1957), played by Juhani Lagerspetz (1995). The other two are Andante Festivo (1922), a work originally composed for a string quartet, by Jean Sibelius, played by the Radio Symphony Orchestra (1995) and a song from the 1970s opera Punainen viiva (‘The red line’) by Aulis Sallinen, sung by Matti Salminen (1984).
Fifteen more days to go…
Dolce et espressivo: Violin concerto by Sibelius, 1st movement (1905). Photo: Wikimedia
In the detail?
11 December 2009 | Essays, Non-fiction
Extracts from Kuoleman ja unohtamisen aikakirjat (‘Chronicles of death and oblivion’, WSOY, 2009)
What’s the meaning of life? There are those who seek it in religion, while for others that is the last place to look. The scientist Kari Enqvist ponders why some people, including himself, seem physiologically immune to the lure of faith. Perhaps, he suggests, we should look for significance not in the big picture, but in the marvel of the fleeting moment
As a young boy I must have held religious beliefs. However, I cannot pinpoint exactly when they disappeared. At some point I eventually stopped saying my evening prayers, but I am unable to remember why or when this happened. ‘I was born in a time when the majority of young people had lost faith in God, for the same reason their elders had had it – without knowing why,’ writes the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa in The Book of Disquiet. More…
Comic prize
26 March 2010 | In the news
Eero the hero: the winner of the Sarjakuva-Finlandia comics prize 2010
Sarjakuva-Finlandia, worth €5,000, is the name of a prize created in 2007 for Finnish graphic novels or comic books. (Sarjakuva, literally ‘serial picture’, refers to both comic strips and books as well as graphic novels.)
It is awarded annually at the Tampere comics festival (and has nothing to do with the Finlandia prizes for literature, awarded by the Finnish Book Foundation).
Out of 56 contestants, ten made it into the final run, and the winner, Eero, by Petteri Tikkanen, was chosen by the thriller writer Matti Rönkä.
Petteri Tikkanen (born 1975) is a graphic artist who has published several books. In his previous graphic novels about a girl named Kanerva, Eero has appeared as her friend. Now Eero is the central character, and it seems childhood is over. Kanerva likes to chill out with her girlfriends only – what is a boy to do?
Henrik Meinander: Kekkografia. Historiaesseitä [Kekkography. History essays]
1 April 2011 | Mini reviews, Reviews
Kekkografia. Historiaesseitä
[Kekkography. History essays]
Suomentanut [Translated into Finnish from the original Swedish texts by] Matti Kinnunen
Helsinki: Siltala, 2010. 229 p.
ISBN 978-952-234-040-5
€ 34, hardback
Professor Henrik Meinander examines the forces that have shaped Finnish history and the controversial issues that have marked its development; Finnish history and culture were formed by chain reactions in European power politics. Finland did not emerge as a nation until the 19th century, as a by-product of the Napoleonic wars, and the independence of 1917 was not the result of an autonomous process of national development but rather a consequence of events elsewhere, especially in Russia. The history of independent Finland is roughly equal in length to that of the Soviet Union; in the early 1990s the Soviet Union collapsed, and Finland joined the European Union. The author does not take a position on the desirability of this development, and points out that the increasing integration and globalisation Finland’s era of independence may appear to be only a transitory phase. President Urho Kekkonen (1900–1986), who influenced Finnish politics for half a century and whose name gives the work its title, figures in approximately half of the texts.
Translated by David McDuff