A realist trend describing people in their social setting has continued unbroken in Finnish literature via K.A. Tavaststjerna, Joel Lehtonen, F.E. Sillanp and V in Linna to the prose-writers of today, such as Eeva Joenpelto, Paavo Rintala, Hannu Salama and Christer Kihlman. Realism has constantly developed toward a more internalised description and a psychologically oriented perspective.
Artistic ambition directed the human destinies described subtly by Maria Jotuni, Hella Wuolijoki and Aino Kallas, most of them stories about women and often taking the form of plays. Wuolijoki s Niskavuori series became a handsome tribute to the strength of the Finnish peasant, in whose care the countryside lives and also encounters new winds. Among novels, Maria Jotuni s Arkiel m ( Everyday life , 1909) and Joel Lehtonen s Putkinotko (1919-20) took depiction of ordinary people in a more intellectual and critical direction. Volter Kilpi brought his narrative style, based as it was on the personal richness of language, to a climax in his novel Alastalon salissa ( In Alastalo s parlour , 1933), whose slow tempo describes the nature and life of the islanders of south-west Finland through a shipbuilding project. Frans Eemil Sillanp , too, found a sensitised descriptive style that reflected the ultimate questions of life in his novels of the 1930s, Nuorena nukkunut ( Fallen asleep while young ) and Ihmiset suviy ss ( People in a summer night ). In 1939 he was awarded the Nobel prize for literature.
The modernism of the lyrics and “the new poetry”
The 80 years of Finnish independence are divided, in poetry, into two periods by the years of the Second World War. The starting signal for each was given by change. Symbolism and late romanticism, however, continue to echo in the verses of the representatives of the older generation, Eino Leino, V.A. Koskenniemi and Otto Manninen. The first transition led to the breakthrough of modernism in Finland-Swedish poetry, to free form and new imagistic expression. Edith S dergran (1892-1923) employed the daring expressive devices of the new European poetry, which transcended genre, and filled them with the colourful inner visions of her eremitic life.
The Finnish-language poets of the Fire-bearers group of the 1920s opened windows noisily to Europe and farther afield, on exotic, strangely glowing gardens of images. Gradually these poets, such as Katri Vala and Elmer Diktonius, also awoke to the growing violence in Europe and spoke up strongly for peace. Close to them in ideas was Hagar Olsson, who wrote in both Swedish and Finnish and whose essays and plays pulse with the angst of the times and with the question of individual responsibility. Olsson s play Lumisota ( The snow war , 1939) was such an accurate anticipation of future political reality that it could be performed only after the war was over.
The next phase of modernism was associated with the ending of the Second World War, and with the recovery of Finnish cultural life, which had been isolated or caught in the mills of propaganda. The new poetry, supported by Swedish poetry of the 1940s and by the work of T.S. Eliot, settled its accounts emphatically with past values, experimented with a diversity of stylistic and formal possibilities and interpreted mystical experience and new freedoms. Eeva-Liisa Manner, Paavo Haavikko, Pentti Saarikoski and Lassi Nummi approached the uncertain feeling of the time through philosophy, history, politics and experience of nature.
The starting-points of Eeva-Liisa Manner s poetry include her experiences as a refugee in her childhood and existential questions that are reflected in both her mould-breaking collection T m matka ( This journey , 1956) and in the conflict between dreams and the cruelty of everyday life, which recurs in many radio and stage plays. Paavo Haavikko has developed into a master of many genres, who wields his pessimistic philosophy of life like a surgeon s life to dissect the apparent truths of power, money, love and death. Pentti Saarikoski represented a new kind of detective nomad who was given a home by the classical poetic tradition and a constant, ardent opposition to conventionality that also expressed itself in political terms; for him, quotidian introspection was the fount of poetry. In Lassi Nummi s poetry, the atmospheres of nature have consistently deepened and taken on a devotional quality that expresses itself in imagery that ranges from the metaphysical to the religious, without losing their highly individual, fluent melancholy. Solveig von Schoultz, Bo Carpelan, Claes Andersson and Tua Forsstr m have continued to develop the expressive language of modernism in Swedish-language poetry.
The novel after the Second World War
In novels, the war continued for a long time to influence subjects and coming to terms with experiences. Helvi H m l inen s critical depictions of cultural circles in Helsinki, S dyllinen murhen ytelm ( A genteel tragedy ), appeared on the eve of war and was the subject of renewed attention in the early 1990s, when H m l inen was awarded a big literary prize for a collection of poetry settling accounts with the war period, Sukupolveni unta ( Dreams of my generation ). Maria Jotuni s tragic description of a marriage, Huojuva talo ( The swaying house ), written in the 1930s, was likewise not published until 30 years after it was written. Greater distance was needed in order to understand the work of these writers, filled with bitter humour and submissive women.
Distances from the events of his time was sought by Mika Waltari in his youth an admirer of machine and city culture in the subjects he chose for his novels. His Sinuhe egyptil inen (I, Sinuhe, 1945) gave melancholy voice
and resigned wisdom to the uncertainty and feelings of emptiness of the generation that had experienced the war. Of the depictions of the war itself, the most significant were V in Linna s Tuntematon sotilas (The Unknown Soldier, 1954), Olavi Paavolainen s Synkk yksinpuhelu ( Sombre monologue , 1946), which takes the form of a diary, and Veijo Meri s Manillak ysi ( The manila rope , 1957). In Meri s work, absurdist humour and the randomness of events often lead to chaos. Linna revised the Finnish view of history with his three-part novel T ll Pohjant hden alla ( Here beneath the North Star , 1959-62), in which the life of a small rural community is dominated by both the increasingly pointed class differences of the civil war and the struggle with nature.
International influences transform the novel
During recent decades, the image of literature has emphasised the novel more than poetry. The representatives of modernism have remained vital, and no new transition has occurred in poetry. Rather, greater self-assuredness has been gained in relation to international movements, for example in the poetry of Pentti Holappa (born 1927). Many contemporary poets are also translators, often from distant languages, such as Pertti Nieminen and Kai Nieminen from Chinese and Japanese.
In novels, contacts with international developments are clearly visible. The generation that is now in middle age has seen national traumas in wartime, traumas that cast a long shadow into the future in human relations and world-views, as Antti Tuuri has demonstrated in his Pohjanmaa ( Ostrobothnia ) series. There problems have been handled with macabre humour by Veikko Huovinen, whose social criticism is directed at the bureaucratic nannyishness of the welfare state and sees as salvation the attempt to regain the old, wise everyday reality, often outside society, as in the novel Lampaansy j t ( The mutton-eaters , 1970), or as an insignificant side-character in nature in the work Puukansan tarina ( Tale of the wood-folk , 1984).
Psychological description sometimes has its origin in the writer s own circles, but also in cultural and historical contacts. Bo Carpelan s Axel (1986) describes the life and creative struggle of Jean Sibelius through the eyes of an apparently humble onlooker whose friendship, however, is all-enduring, while Hannu M kel s Mestari ( The master , 1995) draws a new fictive chart of the earthly wanderings of the great poet Eino Leino.
Alpo Ruuth s work follows in the tradition of broad depictions of working-class life, but for example in K mpp ( Digs , 1969) and Kotimaa ( Homeland , 1974), a story about unemployment, it frees itself from the earlier pathos of the genre to become more ironic and at the same time more understanding. A new identity free of all embellishment has been sketched by Hannu Salama who, in the 1960s, horrified the moral majority with his depiction of the grotesque drunkenness of the Finnish midsummer night s dream in his novel Juhannustanssit ( Midsummer dance , 1964). Siin n kij miss tekij ( No crime without a witness , 1972) is, with its political analysis seen from different angles, an important indicator of the acceptable and forbidden solutions of wartime.
Powerlessness and anxiety often appear as main themes in the new Finnish novel. In Olli Jalonen s novels, security systems people build for themselves become threatening and ominous. Behind a public life that follows conventional forms live shame and violence, as in the novel Hotelli el ville ( A hotel for the living , 1983). With its changing narrators, Kenen kuvasta kerrot ( Whose image are you talking about , 1996) shows that uncertainty and surprises also include the agreement between the book and its reader. In his latest, highly successful work Yksityiset t htitaivaat (’Private heavens’) Jalonen builds an extensive family tale full of surprises based on three of his earlier works. Its events unfold through the 1990s and on into the new millennium. Jalonen creates his characters from the inside, from dreams and fears, from the inexplicable logic of life and from memories of nightmares. Out of the relationship between nature, history and man grows both oblivion and order. Society has a strong metaphysical dimension.
An easily recognisable picture of modern times is formed in the novels of Juha Sepp l , Kari Hotakainen and Jari Tervo. Their style is often irony tinged with bitterness, in the light of which they examine the absurd and cruel traits of human chaos. Their literary style and worldview have earned them sobriquet ‘Meri’s sons’. Few rays of light strike their manly reality, at most a curl, mysteriously thrilling, from their own children’s hair.
The world of interdictions and liberties is also the territory of Arto Paasilinna. In his novels, however, he has produced a completely different image of the reality of everyman s Weltschmerz, his encounters with rules and tyranny and his cheerful liberation from the guardianship of society. Paasilinna has also reached large readerships abroad. A large, faithful readership has also claimed Laila Hietamies and Kalle P talo as its own. Both write novels whose nostalgic tone includes memories from their own childhood s, Hietamies of romantic Karelian-Russian history, P talo, in novel after novel, in the slow story of the development of a boy from Kainuu in north-east Finland. In her latest novel Siniset Viipurin illat (’The blue evenings of Vyborg’) Hietamies paints a vivacious and picturesque portrait of this erstwhile Finnish town in north-west Russia where days are brightened by the warmth of home-baked bread and ladies of style decorously sip their wine as the milestones and mysteries of life roll past.
Women authors with their own voice
In literature written by women, the epic form emphasises adaptation to the harsh reality of everyday life, but criticism of dreams and unrealistic expectations also recognises their necessity, as in Eeva Joenpelto s Lohja series. Eeva Kilpi has continued in the tradition of Jotuni and Kallas by emphasising women s right to their emotional lives and sexuality despite the resistance of social opinion. Raija Siekkinen too has developed into a polished and profound chronicler of male-female relationships who distils the themes of discovery and loss, fear and courage into the forms of both short story and novel.
Annika Idstr m is interested in the force of evil and the forbidden in inter-personal relationships, the greedy struggle for power between mother and child in Veljeni Sebastian ( My brother Sebastian , 1985) and the culmination of a myth-negating cruelty in cannibalistic symbols in El v ravinto ( Living nourishment ). Loathing between children and adults can also grow to embrace ecological destruction and guilt, as in Leena Lander s novel Tummien perhosten koti ( Home of the dark butterflies ). Anja Kauranen (now Anja Snellman) has described the turning-points of a woman s development and the difficulty of following one s own path; since her first book, Sonja O. k vi t ll ( Sonja O. was here ), which attracted a great deal of attention, she has wandered in the borderland between dreams and raw reality. Her new novel Paratiisin kartta (’A map o paradise’) tells of a young woman teacher’s anxieties and attempts to reach out to her schoolchildren in a society that is restless and constantly ailing from a values crisis.
A wild appeal to understand even the dark sides of human life is contained in the short stories of Rosa Liksom. Their subjects range from the world of the displaced young people of the cities to the dying spark of life in the countryside. Absurdist humour creates an extraordinary combination in the encounter between the helpless individual and the power of expression. The clash of dreams and reality for young city women has been described with refined irony by Monika Fagerholm in her Swedish-language novel Underbara kvinnor vid vatten (Wonderful women by the water, 1994).
Dramatic literature
Finnish plays have always been distinctly literary by nature: they address moral and existential questions such as power and violence, youth and old age, from the basis of both history and the present day. Jussi Parviainen binds the superficial fashion phenomena of today together with the individual s desperate searching, and ends in a destructive dead-end. Jouko Turkka s method is a cruel but comically disarming cynicism, which reveals the corruption of both love and political life. Esa Kirkkopelto has had the courage to address difficult historical processes and to find in them basic human strength and the search for a better world. Reko Lund n and Ilpo Tuomarila chart turning points in history often via people of apparent insignificance and their little worlds. The pair sometimes has fun destroying the images of the rich, the famous or the powerful. Their plays get an earthy grip on rank and title and make a mockery of them. People might find togetherness if they learned to assess and accept their own condition and potential in this world of oddities.
Children s literature
The post-war period has also altered attitudes toward children: the success of didactic stories has been passing, and the world of fantasy offers a better preparation for the encounter with complex reality. This was proved early on by Yrj Kokko s Pessi ja Illusia ( Pessi and Illusia , 1944), a projection of war and humanity on to the level of a child s understanding and emotions. The best children s books are also beloved of adults: Tove Jansson s Moomin books are still read by the grandparents of the current generation of children, and the poems of Kirsi Kunnas and the stories of Kaarina Helakisa include both the pain of life and inventive, triumphant humour. In an important sense, children s literature constitutes and invitation to new readers who sustain the reputation of Finns as real lovers of books.
2.3 Art
Finnish art has been highly successful in merging national and international influences. The various isms have taken on a distinctly Finnish garb here, adapted to the local mentality, landdscape and climate. Even the severest abstract modernism is imbued with the warmth of natural forms, as seen in the flowing lines of the sculpture of Kain Tapper (b. 1930) and others, reflecting the smooth surface of the Finnish bedrock.
The first Finnish painter to rise to European standard was Werner Holmberg (1830 1860), who studied in Dusseldorf in the 1850s. Before his time, the gentry commisioned their portraits from itinerant painters known as counterfeiters most of whom were of foreign origin. One of the best Finnish painters among them was Margareta Capsia (1682 1759), Finland s first woman artist. Mikael Toppelius (1734 1821) was a prolific religious painter who filled many churches in northern Finland with didactic religious imagery.
The Finnish artists of the late nineteenth century flocked to the studios of Paris, bringing back the fashions of outdoor painting and impressionism when they returned. The new continental style of painting, however, presented an almost insuperable challenge back in the home country: how to capture on canvas the cool, translucent northern light: the midnight sun in summer; the cold, glittering blue lakes; the brooding forest, with spruce trees standing to attention in military fashion; the snow and ice with their endless shades of white? These were the problems tackled by painters such as Albert Edelfelt (1845 1905), highly successful in the salons of Paris and a precursor of impressionism in Finland, who also depicted the Finnish country people in images of idealized dignity.