Archive for June, 2003

The oldest language

Issue 2/2003 | Archives online, Fiction, poetry

Poems from Istun vastapäätä (‘I’m sitting across from’, WSOY, 2002). Introduction by Anselm Hollo

After the last lines spoken, snowflakes fall into the river.
You flow on out. Stop.
People keep going, as do the credits,
into the dark, out of sight.
You don’t remember the name of this street
but its back hunches up into a bridge across the fog.
From when on have we been terrified? The heart
wants to say something about that, to whomever
happens to cross its path, one’s own heart,
the beat that keeps on repeating itself.
An unpleasant warmth
on the seat that has just been abandoned. More…

Intense whispering

Issue 2/2003 | Archives online, Authors, Reviews

I have never heard Timo Hännikäinen read his poems out loud. On the page, the voice I hear is something like an intense but laconic whisper. There are times when the poems in the 23-year-old author’s first book, Istun vastapäätä (‘I’m sitting across from’, WSOY, 2002), skirt the edges of despair:

My thoughts are hurting,
my hands numb.
The newsprint raises a racket: even the
   unbuilt cities
already bombed.

More…

Song without words

Issue 2/2003 | Archives online, Fiction, Prose

Extracts from the novel Näiden seinien sisällä me emme näy (‘Within these walls we are invisible’, Tammi, 2003). Introduction by Maria Säntti

During the night the child was with Ellen, in her dreams. Ellen was turning over a pack of cards, the king rose, she followed the course of events from outside as it proceeded without her. The child was resting, settled, repeating her profile. The world was beautiful and all of them together in the face of death. Time stood still. A nocturnal bird sang through the rain. Ellen awoke, at night time does not stop; she thought, stepping from one memory to another. Everything was unfinished. It was a watchful night before words.

In the morning time rushed forward. Brain chemistry, Ellen thought as she lay in bed, mere brain chemistry. Then the train of thought broke off, a bright light suddenly snapped on as Tapani pressed the bedroom switch to search the wardrobe for a clean shirt. Ellen got up quickly, during the night the child had grown into something of which she knew nothing. She began to make porridge, and watched as the child opened like a plant toward the light. More…

Alone together

Issue 2/2003 | Archives online, Authors, Reviews

The novel Näiden seinien sisällä me emme näy (‘Within these walls we are invisible’, Tammi, 2002) depicts the experience of motherhood. When a child is born, the balance of power in Ellen and Tapani’s home, in which they have been alone together for ten years, shifts. Ellen’s relationship with her baby is so all-embracing that her husband inevitably becomes an interloper; Tapani continually leaves his teacup on the bookshelf and shatters the secret order Ellen has created. Washing-up, gumboots, dirty shirts shackle her thoughts to the material, which humiliates her.

Katri Tapola (born 1961) has, in earlier prose-works, cast light on women’s interior landscapes; Kalpeat tytöt (‘Pale girls’, Tammi, 1998), which followed a woman’s growth, received the Helsingin Sanomat prize for a first novel. Even then, the narrative ran much deeper than the psychological level, to the time before the developed self. Tapola’s children’s book, Kivikauppaa ja ketunleipää (‘Stone trade and wood sorrel’) received the Arvid Lydecken Prize for children’s literature in 2002. More…

Surviving mammals

Issue 2/2003 | Archives online, Authors, Reviews

Arto Virtanen (born 1947) has written a couple of thousand reviews, including art reviews. His own career as a writer began in 1970 with the poetry collection Kaikki liikkeessä (‘Everything in motion’); it was followed by collections of short stories and novels. Virtanen, who trained at the Finnish Academy of Art, comes from a working-class background. His novels Tyhjä testamentti (‘Empty testament’, 1992,) and Koiran vuosi (‘The year of the dog’, 1995) deal with men’s mid-life crises through figures rather similar to their main characters. The same starting point is evident in his new collection of short stories, Vapiseva sydän (‘Tremulous heart’, Tammi,2002,). More…

Moving on

Issue 2/2003 | 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.

More…

Home alone?

30 June 2003 | Authors

Kari Hotakainen

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…

Des res

30 June 2003 | Fiction, Prose

Extracts from the novel Juoksuhaudantie (‘The Trench Road’, WSOY, 2002)

Matti Virtanen

I belonged to that small group of men who were the first in this country to dedicate themselves to the home front and to women’s emancipation. I feel I can say this without boasting and without causing any bickering between the sexes.

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. For hours on end I listened to her work problems, her emotional ups and downs and her hopes for more varied displays of affection. I implemented comprehensive strategies to free her from the cooker. I was always ready with provisions when she got home exhausted after a day at work. More…