Search results for "jarkko/2011/04/matti-suurpaa-parnasso-1951–2011-parnasso-1951–2011"
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
At your service
19 March 2014 | Extracts, Non-fiction
Melancholy man: detail of the almsman in Pomarkku, carved by Artturi Kaseva in the 1920s. Photo: Aki Paavola
Old men carved of wood have stood outside churches since the 17th century, begging for money to be given to the poor and the sick of the parish. These almsmen, or men-at-alms, mostly represented a disabled soldier; the tradition is not known elsewhere. Some 40 of the still surviving almsmen (there is one almswoman) were assembled for an exhibition in Kerimäki – in the world’s largest Christian wooden church – in summer 2013. The surviving specimens were hunted down and photographed by Aki Paavola for the book Vaivaisukkojen paluu (‘The return of the almsmen’). Otso Kantokorpi asks in the title of his introduction: are men-at-alms pioneers of ITE (from the words itse tehty elämä, ‘self-made life’; the English-language term is ‘outsider art’) or a disappearing folk tradition?
Many a church or belfry wall, particularly in Ostrobothnia, has been decorated – and is often still decorated – with a wooden human figure. Often they stand beneath a decorative canopy, sometimes accompanied by an encouraging phrase: He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto the LORD. They have been called men-at-alms or boys-at-alms. More…
Jukka Sarjala: Kotomaamme outo Suomi [Finland, our strange homeland]
4 April 2013 | Mini reviews, Reviews
Kotomaamme outo Suomi
[Finland, our strange homeland]
Helsinki: Teos, 2013. 264 p.
ISBN 978-951-851-440-7
€ 27, paperback
Jukka Sarjala, ex-director general of the Finnish National Board of Education and bibliophile, is the author of several works of non-fiction, mainly in the field of history. In this book he focuses on the phenomena and events that characterised early twentieth-century Finland, some of them rather peculiar. In a couple of dozen chapters written in a humorous and conversational style the author does not conceal his own opinions, for example, on the foolishness of politicians. Much of the writing is devoted to the era of Finnish independence and the Finnish Civil War, as well as to episodes from political history, such as the story of the attempt to import to the newly independent country a German-born prince as King of Finland, the vagaries of the political far right and far left, the recruitment of Finnish Reds into the British Army – and the horse that gave rise to a small rebel movement. Sarjala draws many fascinating portraits of early twentieth-century figures, for example the utopian socialist Matti Kurikka and the founder of a party that in some ways anticipated the present-day True Finns [Perussuomalaiset], the talkative politician Veikko Vennamo (1913–1997). Although the book lacks footnotes and a bibliography, it demonstrates its author’s extensive reading.
Translated by David McDuff
After thirty years
31 March 1987 | Archives online, Fiction, Prose
This, the very first Finnish science fiction story, is an extract from Viktor Pettersson’s (1849-1919) Efter trettio år (‘After thirty years’), published in 1886. Introduction by Matti Apunen
On 31 August 1916 father and daughter went up on the ‘deck’ of the air balloon Atlantic. Atlantic was just one of the comfortably furnished air vehicles that plied the regular route between the New and Old Worlds. Pleasure trips between these continents were now made, preferably, by air balloon rather than by ship, because the journey took half the time – a mere three days; and this despite the fact that the standards of comfort in ships were now excellent, since they were made of cardboard and furnished with electric motors. In addition, air balloon travellers avoided sea-sickness and the associated unpleasantnesses. Of course, they did suffer from ‘airsickness’, but the symptoms of this disease made themselves felt in a much more bearable form. For they actually made the sufferer happy, enthusiastic and friendly, so that he wanted to embrace the Lord and the whole world. Dried-up and creaky old bachelors became as lovable and sympathetic as confessors who have made their vow of celibacy; spiteful and pompous wives and spice-selling madames smelling of wormwood became in a second as devoted and sweet-natured as a mademoiselle in a shop selling drinking water. It was like being under the influence of some wonderful aphrodisiac. More…
In the starry heavens
31 March 1987 | Archives online, Fiction, Prose
An extract from Tähtien tarhoissa (‘In the starry heavens’, 1912). Introduction by Matti Apunen
The sun sank and the evening began to draw in. It was a Wednesday towards the end of October, 2140. At Teuvo’s house the electric lights were being switched on.
Teuvo lived in Helsinki on what had once been Korkeavuori Street. Now it had no particular name. It was just Street No 311, for during the course of time there had been so many new streets that it had become impossible to name them all and numbering became necessary.
Teuvo’s home was on the thirtieth storey. But of course it was not important how high up you lived, because no one used stairs. Lifts had replaced the old flights of stairs, and even they were only seldom necessary.
Every storey had an airship stop, and since everyone, even the smallest children, had a pair of wings made of fine aluminium, it was very easy to go from one floor to another without using stairs.
Teuvo looked out of the window. There was a wide space between houses. On the right hand side of the road traffic was flying towards the centre of town, on the left in the opposite direction. What a lot of people there were! He could hear the even whisper of their wings. All kinds of people, old and young, were flying along. More…
Jari Tervo: Koljatti [Goliath]
23 October 2009 | Mini reviews, Reviews
Koljatti
[Goliath]
Helsinki: WSOY, 2009. 317 p.
ISBN 978-951-0-35610-4
25 €, hardback
Jari Tervo (born 1959) writes comic, swiftly paced, linguistically accomplished prose with touches of historicism, philosophy and social commentary. Koljatti is a contemporary satire that prompted a great deal of fuss in the Finnish press for its perceived nastiness: the similarities between its character Pekka Lahnanen, an isolated and beleaguered prime minister, and Matti Vanhanen, the current Finnish Prime Minister, are clear. This novel outlines some crude caricatures, but its critical barbs are aimed not at politics, but rather at the relationship between the media and politics. This book, which describes the events of a single fast-paced weekend, portrays politics as theatre, in which the only thing that matters is how things appear; the media will drop any substantive questions in their relentless pursuit of new sensationalist headlines of politicians’ private lives. The news may not look the same after reading this novel. Tervo is one of Finland’s most popular authors; three of his novels have appeared in translation, in four languages. [Read a short story here.]
The almost nearly perfect travel book
4 April 2014 | Articles, Non-fiction
Illustration: Joonas Väänänen
The question of what foreign people think of us Finns, and Finland has always been a particularly burning one in these latitudes: a young nation, a small people. Can we be as good as bigger and wealthier nations? Tommi Uschanov reads a new book on the Nordic countries published in England, keeping a sharp eye on what is being said about…. Finland, naturally
When an article based on The Almost Nearly Perfect People: The Truth About the Nordic Miracle by Michael Booth was published last January in the London Guardian, there was a nationwide outcry in Finland. ‘Finland being bashed in the British media,’ one tabloid headlined grandiosely, while a sober financial paper spoke of ‘a broadside full of stinky stuff’. It takes a re-reading of the article after having read the book to understand why. To create an artificial atmosphere of controversy, the article is lop-sidedly critical of Finland in a way which the book goes out of its way to avoid.
The Almost Nearly Perfect People belongs in a by now time-honoured genre within English letters: the humorous encomium to a host culture by an expatriate – or immigrant, as we hosts impolitely insist on calling them. The only difference is that Michael Booth, a British food and travel writer, does not discuss only Denmark, where he has lived for a decade, but visits each of the other four Nordic countries in turn. More…
Grim(m) stories?
30 April 2010 | Letter from the Editors
‘There’s not been much wit and not much joy, there’s a lot of grimness out there.’
This comment on new fiction could have been presented by anyone who’s been reading new Finnish novels or short stories. The commentator was, however, the 2010 British Orange Prize judge Daisy Goodwin, who in March complained about the miserabilist tendencies in new English-language women’s writing. More…