Tua Forsström - The Principle of Wings

The Snow Whirls Over the Courtyard's Roses

Tua Forsström, translated from the Swedish by Stina Katchadourian

The snow whirls over the courtyard's roses.
Didn't bring my boots and scarf, leafing
through books, don't know what to do with all this light!
You wouldn't approve of the colours.
It's too striking, Andrei Arsenyevich, too
much, too much of everything!
You exchanged the wings for an aerial balloon, a clumsy
creation cobbled together from rope and rags, I remember so well.
Before, I had a lot and didn't remember. Difficult
to stick to the subject. Difficult to stick to the subject.
Hope to return. Hope to return to the principle
of wings. The fact remains: the freeze preserved
the rose garden last night. 'The zone is a zone, the zone is life,
and a person can either be ruined or survive when
she makes her way through this life. Whether she makes it or
not depends on her sense of self-esteem-' A hare
almost hopped into the entrance hall here at the Foundation,
mottled against the snow; it's October in the hare's calendar.
You seem to be a moody sort of person
and it's possible that none of this is of interest to you.
On the other hand, you yourself complain fairly often.
I'm writing because you are dead and because I woke up
last spring in my streetside hotel room in Benidorm to that wonderful
high twittering. One shouldn't constantly say one is sorry, one should
not constantly give thanks, one should definitely give thanks. Lake
Mälaren like lead down there. The rest is white and red.

*

The books blog writer, Carol Rumens, writes about this particular work:

The poems in After Spending a Night Among Horses are inspired by the film-maker Andrei Tarkovsky and are interleaved with quotations from Tarkovsky's film, Stalker, and from his prose-book, Sculpting in Time: Reflections on the Cinema. Tarkovsky once said, "There is only one way of thinking in cinema: poetically." Forsström expresses the reverse idea, of thinking in poetry cinematically. The collection itself is a montage, and many of the individual poems, like this one, draw on a similar technique, combining different settings, seasons, voices and moods in one imaginative sweep. All have a dream-like and open-ended quality. 

Forsström has said that she writes every poem 50 or 60 times, and that she often travels with her notebooks to a foreign city in order to complete a poem. "The snow whirls over the courtyard's roses" seems to open a poetry workbook, to show us an intriguing display of raw material. It's a series of comments, notes and sketches for future writing, held together by the casual but constantly-renewed conversation with Tarkovsky. There are moments of lyric concentration and heightened rhythm, but they're held in a framework of increasingly long and enjambed lines which seem to exert an outward pull. While the imagery of snow and roses recalls Louis MacNeice's poem "Snow," Forsström's vision of the world's incorrigible plurality is far more discursive. There's really no zone, it seems to say, and no magical room, even for the poet: there's only the journey.

I'm fascinated by the recursive qualities, the repetitions and dialogue with the film-maker. The visual images are vivid.  The principle of wings seems important - an upward movement whether this is actual bird flight, the ascending balloon, or snow.

To see the entire article: http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2013/mar/04/poem-week-the-snow-whirls-tua-forsstrom

To read another poem, "Houdini in Karis" by Tua Forsström featured by this blogger: 
 http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2015/jun/15/poem-of-the-week-houdini-in-karis-by-tua-forsstrom

Helvi Juvonen

Because I am so close to the Finnish culture (my grandparents were born in Finland), I love to explore literature from Finland. These perhaps were influences on my grandparents, and as I read more Finnish literature in translation, I recognize and appreciate the connections.

Maybe this is because of the northern landscape — the cold and dark winters, the forests and lakes, the animals. Maybe this is because I was born in two languages. Each language shapes perception and thought. In poetry, my fascinations, my methods, my style is sometimes similar to the work of certain Finnish poets. Finnish poetry adds a new and interesting light.

Helvi Juvonen's poetry is arresting. According to Emily Jeremiah,

The sense of being in between can also be linked to Juvonen’s place in literary tradition, for she was a poet at the cusp of modernism. 

Modernism came to Finnish poetry in the 1940s and 1950s; at this time, formal restraint slowly gave way to freer forms. Juvonen’s poetry combines technical formality with startling imagery and a clear, direct voice. It moves between rhyme and free verse and forms a bridge between ‘tradition’ and modernism. 

Helvi Juvonen published five collections of poetry between 1949 and 1955; a sixth was published posthumously in 1959, and in 1974, a collection of prose works, edited by Mirkka Rekola, came out.

Helvi Juvonen's poem, "Cup Lichen" (1952) is vivid:

The lichen raised its fragile cup,
and rain filled it, and in the drop
the sky glittered, holding back the wind.

and from her poem "The Tightrope Walker": 

Two summits rose up above the dark.
Between them,
taut as a bow’s arc
the walker’s rope is strung.
If you look into the dark, dizziness strikes.
You need to have brains of ice. 

I see the summits, both ablaze.
Back and forth, back and forth!

And this poem:

Mid-day 

At mid-day the cranes flit.
The furrow is slashed bare.
Voices cry
with longing for some place away from here,
with longing for somewhere else away from here.

In another review by Soila Lehtinen, Juvonen is quoted as saying: "Kneel before what’s smaller than you, listening with your eyes. A word’s hidden there, bright and quiet."  Here is an excerpt of prose by Helvi Juvonen:

At last she grasped what was ahead. Not, in fact, discrete sunrises or sunsets, not some particular burning day here or there, but the present moment unfolding forward by itself. Coiling forward, it rolls into a ball within her brain, within her consciousness and beneath it. It is pastness living in herself and in the present moment. To meet the past you must meet yourself. Suddenly she grasped that you could find yourself in another’s eyes, live in another’s interior, note it as a fact, close your eyes and forget, repose in recipience of peace, because you’ve driven into peace the dead living within you, or the shades they left behind, dream-beings repeating events of long ago.

The pastness lives in me, and my exploration of the language and literature allow me to meet this aspect.

Juvonen also translated the work of Emily Dickinson into Finnish. I can feel similarities between their voices, and obviously Dickinson has had some influence.

The following two reviews provided information for this profile:
http://www.booksfromfinland.fi/2010/05/dreaming-a-dream-the-poetry-of-helvi-juvonen/
http://www.booksfromfinland.fi/1992/03/images-of-isolation/

More poems by Juvonen (in English):
http://www.booksfromfinland.fi/2010/05/words-like-songs/
More prose by Juvonen (in English):
http://www.booksfromfinland.fi/1992/03/moles-hole/

Kalevala: The National Epic of Finland

I consider the Finnish Literature Society website a good source that describes the Kalevala.  To understand it's significance, read this:
http://neba.finlit.fi/kalevala/index.php?m=163&l=2

To see the text in Finnish http://neba.finlit.fi/kalevala/index.php?m=1&s=2&l=1
To see the text in English http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5186

Runos singers perform the Kalevala while playing a kantele :
http://www.temps.fi/en/research/


An excerpt from the Finnish Literature Society:

It has been estimated that approximately 2,500–3,000 years ago there occurred a major new development in the culture of the proto-Finnic groups living near Gulf of Finland. The result of this development was a unique form of song characterized by alliteration and parallelism as well as an absence of stanza structure. The poetic metre of these songs was a special trochaic tetrametre which is now often called Kalevala metre.  

When sung, the lines actually had four or five stresses, and the melodies covered a narrow range, usually consisting of only five notes. The old folk poetry does not originate from a single historical period, but is a mixture of numerous layers which vary in age. The oldest layers are represented by mythical poems which tell of creation acts in a primordial past, as well as the origins of the world and human culture. 

The main character in epic poems is usually a mighty singer, shaman, and sorcerer, the spiritual leader of his clan who makes journeys to the land of the dead in order to seek knowledge. The songs' heroes also have adventures in a distant land beyond the sea, on journeys where they woo potential brides, make raids, and flee the enemy. Lyric songs express human, personal emotions. Ritual poems focus especially on weddings and bear-killing feasts. Kalevala metre incantations are verbal magic, which was part of people's everyday lives and activities. 

The archaic song tradition was a vital, living tradition throughout Finland until the 1500s. Following the Reformation, the Lutheran Church forbade the singing of the songs, declaring the entire tradition to be pagan. At the same time, new musical trends from the West found a foothold in Finland. The old Kalevala metre song tradition began to disappear first from the western part of the country and then, later, from other areas as well. Some songs were recorded already in the 1600s, but most of the folk poetry collection work was not carried out until the 1800s. In Archangel Karelia the old poetry tradition has survived until the present day.

Akseli Gallen-Kallela

All of these paintings are by Finnish visual artist Akseli Gallen-Kallela.  Click on this link for a timeline of his life and works: http://www.gallen-kallela.fi/en/akseli-gallen-kallelas-lifespan-and-timeline/

The Boat's Lament

Akseli_Gallen-Kallela_Lake_Keitele_1905

Sauna Girl

Swan of Tuonela

Waves

Biography Information:

http://www.kansallisbiografia.fi/english/?id=3194

Photos of the artist: https://www.flickr.com/photos/gallen-kallelanmuseo

Home Now

with cousin Maria and second cousins in Järvenpää

At the Railway Station in Helsinki

A Journal Entry: Dec 8

Home now. The Finnish language recedes as the plane carries me west. The flight of eight hours, to Rejkavik, Iceland for an hour layover and then onward over the tip of Greenland, the arctic, Hudson Bay and Canada. The flight makes the sun never set until we're down in Minneapolis and then it's dark. I grew up in the Finnish language and it recedes like a tide. I have been traveling many years away, and I have been traveling many years toward this question of home.

Going to Finland is like going to my grandmother's home. My grandparents and my parents are long gone, having passed when I was much younger.  I'm not sure what I should do or where I should be.

Meanwhile, we are at the airport. We check baggage, get our boarding passes, go through security, and walk through and past merchandise. Last chance to buy! Duty free! Snacks! I find a bathroom in the Helsinki airport that is for children. The toilet is miniature.  At the Kiasma museum, and at several public places, I have seen children's potty chairs in the bathrooms.  It is so kind of the country to think of their children and make places for them. I have never seen a bathroom like this in America. Because I can't find the adult bathroom, I use the tiny one, fast. It was urgent.

At the boarding call, we line up and walk up the ramp through the tube into the plane. I can't quite stand upright between the rows, but must lean sideways as I walk. The person behind me is very sick with a horrible cough. Meals on the plane now cost 14 Euros. Earphones are 4 Euros. Non-alcohol beverages are free. The passengers are trying to read, trying to watch a movie, trying to sleep, or trying to get over the sleeping passenger blocking them from the aisle while stewardesses are trying to sell merchandise from carts that block those wanting to walk down the aisle to the bathroom. I am trying not to be sick.

A reverse culture shock: The American media feels like a bombardment. I can't bear watching the news or on social media, the rants, preachings, images of terrorism, guns, Trump, atrocities. Maybe the foreign language has been protecting me from knowing all this. All of the news is flooding my mind now and I am ill.  Downtown Minneapolis is much too corporate. When I walk between the hotel and a restaurant, I wonder where are the children, the old people, the dogs? All I can see are people who look like they are in their thirties, and they are dressed for corporate jobs.  They walk mostly in the skywalks, and on the sidewalk, I encounter mostly homeless people.

In Duluth, my house feels too full. There is too much stuff. I want empty rooms. I want only a desk, a chair, and a window. I want to look out of my window and see Finland.  It makes me sad not to hear the Finnish language.  On the internet, I google more residencies. I try to find an opportunity to get myself back.

I think about creating stories. Sometimes they only come during a transformation of the self, because of a transformation of the self. Is that possible? I ask myself.  One doesn't just tell a story, one must live through it.  One must enter and pour the self's compassion out among the characters. One must pour out the self completely. Then something new can arise.

But first, sleep.

Philip Apeloig and Roland Barthes' Fragments of a Lover's Discourse

At the Stedeljk Museum, I saw this work. Philip Apeloig recreated all of the individual pages of this Barthes' book, printed on cashmere and silk.  The text is not on the fabric. The white represents paragraphs, each page with different spacing and arrangement of lines on the page.

See more of his projects:
http://apeloig.com/

Finlandia Hymn

Flash Mob in the Helsinki Railway Station 2012

Contemporary Finnish Poets

From Reetta Pekkanen, Coordinator at Arteles :  A Few Contemporary Finnish Poets

Harry Salmenniemi

Eino Santanen 

Harry Salmenniemi (b. 1983): http://www.lyrikline.org/en/poems/jos-minulla-olisi-tunteita-ne-7900#
Perhaps he's the best-known and most valued contemporary poet at the moment. Brilliant, one of my personal favorites. Has published 5 books of poetry, all very different from each other. "Texas, sakset" (2010) (sakset = 'scissors') marks a culmination point in the flarf/google-poetry genre in Finland - it never got bigger or better than that. Sadly I don't own a copy of that book, but I have all the others if you want to have a look. None of his books have been translated, at least not that I know of, which I find strange. Those short ones behind the link are maybe not the best example of his work.

Eino Santanen (b. 1975): http://lettretage.de/soundout/en/banknote-poetry-eino-santanen-finnland
Another interesting poet that is yet to be translated into English. Santanen's work leans towards performance / performative poetry, and he has done many interesting experiments such as writing poems on banknotes. A videowork of the process and of him performing the poems: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfpRZe29VFY

Tua Forsström

Tua Forsström (b. 1947): http://www.poetryinternationalweb.net/pi/site/poet/item/14297/11622/Tua-Forsstrom Again, one of my personal favorites. this Finnish poet writes in Swedish. Perhaps she counts more as a modernist. Her fragmented, mournful yet warm, story-like way of writing poetry is really quite unique.
And this list is not complete without information about Reetta Pekkanen:

Her book, Pieniä Kovia Nuppuja, Small Hard Buds, has received recognition.










Just a note: This list is not comprehensive.

If you would like to let me know of other Finnish poets, please reply to this post!

Mestässä

Poetry Reading in Hameenkyrö

Runoklubi @ Frantsilan
Nov 21, 2015

The Finnish word for poem is "runos."

Working in Two Languages

In Finland, I've been aware of the influence of the language on my work. Because it was the language of my childhood (the first language of my mother and grandmother), I have always felt close, and though I don't always have the meaning, I have the sound and rhythm of the language inside. The language haunts me, and I continually desire to hear it and learn it.

Recently, I came across two writers talking about what it is like to go between languages.  Luiselli was born in Mexico City and now lives in New York City. This is what she says:

I often write in English and then self-translate into Spanish, and vice-versa too. It's a messy process, but that messiness creates a space for more clear, lucid things to emerge. Not always, though. Often I just dwell for long periods in this completely confusing space, not knowing which language I should write in. I go back and forth and it's very unproductive, until one day something happens and I'm able to write, at least so far. That's what happened to me with Sidewalks and Faces in the Crowd. 

Also, when my writing is getting translated, I rewrite a lot, and work on it with the translator. I often bring those modifications back into the original. So the ghost of translation always haunts the original.

The holes between the languages is a place of fascination. The interviewer Jennifer Kabat observed, in conversation with Luiselli, "there's always this act of translation, and questions about what language you write in and how you play with the holes between the two languages. Translation in itself leaves this sort of ghostly imprint of the past."  In this interview, the topic is Luiselli's book Faces In the Crowd, which contains a story about the Mexican poet Gilberto Owen, who also lived in NYC in an earlier era, and coincidentally he lived near Luiselli's apartment.

Haruki Murakami, a Japanese novelist, described how he became a novelist in the introduction to Wind/Pinball, his latest novel. After he wrote his first novel, he was unhappy with the results. So as an experiment, he rewrote the beginning in English. Because his knowledge of English was limited, this forced him into very simple sentence structures. He had to compress his thoughts into a smaller container.  This explanation was excerpted on LitHub:

Having discovered the curious effect of composing in a foreign language, thereby acquiring a creative rhythm distinctly my own, I returned my Olivetti to the closet and once more pulled out my sheaf of manuscript paper and my fountain pen. Then I sat down and “translated” the chapter or so that I had written in English into Japanese. Well, “transplanted” might be more accurate, since it wasn’t a direct verbatim translation. In the process, inevitably, a new style of Japanese emerged. The style that would be mine. A style I myself had discovered. Now I get it, I thought. This is how I should be doing it. It was a moment of true clarity, when the scales fell from my eyes. 

Some people have said, “Your work has the feel of translation.” The precise meaning of that statement escapes me, but I think it hits the mark in one way, and entirely misses it in another. Since the opening passages of my first novella were, quite literally, “translated,” the comment is not entirely wrong; yet it applies merely to the process of writing. What I was seeking by writing first in English and then “translating” into Japanese was no less than the creation of an unadorned “neutral” style that would allow me freer movement. My interest was not in creating a watered-down form of Japanese. I wanted to deploy a type of Japanese as far removed as possible from so-called literary language in order to write in my own natural voice. That required desperate measures. I would go so far as to say that, at that time, I may have regarded Japanese as no more than a functional tool.

Murakami goes on further to say:

Since I was born and raised in Japan, the vocabulary and patterns of the Japanese language had filled the system that was me to bursting, like a barn crammed with livestock. When I sought to put my thoughts and feelings into words, those animals began to mill about, and the system crashed. Writing in a foreign language, with all the limitations that entailed, removed this obstacle. 

Both of these writers indicate that the limitations of the new language imposed a constraint, and initially, this was useful as they began to write.  The simple and direct style was a necessity, and the style achieved a sense of mystery that might not have existed otherwise.

Empty Spaces

"Cities haunted by ghosts, ghosts that are a metaphor for language in their haunting doubling and mistranslations, language that's full of holes, while the holes themselves are suggestive of abandoned places and writing that fails to describe anything accurately enough—this is Valeria Luiselli's terrain," says Jennifer Kabat.  She interviewed the writer Valeria Luiselli about her books, Faces in the Crowd (novel), Sidewalks (essays), and The Story About My Teeth (novel).  Luiselli said:

"writing is not about furnishing, or about filling up a space with things and voices and stories, but about moving around an empty space and allowing that space to have enough holes for one's imagination to unfold."
http://bombmagazine.org/article/10109/valeria-luiselli

See another good interview "Every Book I've Written Has Dictated Its Own Laws." http://www.vol1brooklyn.com/2015/11/17/every-book-that-ive-written-has-dictated-its-own-laws-an-interview-with-valeria-luiselli/

Tiina Pystynen

Tiina Pystynen in Finnish Comics Annual 2013 (images via Rackham)

In her books, Tiina Pystynen combines her own visual art and text. These are modern-day illuminated manuscripts.

Tiina Pystynen is a writer and a graphic artist, born in Finland in 1955. Since 1987 she has published novels, non-fiction, illustrated poems and autobiographical graphic novels for adults. 
She dwells mainly on sensual, eternal, female subjects like love, motherhood and sexuality. Pystynen deals with her subject matter with experience, wisdom and broadmindedness. She is well loved among comic and poetry readers as well as all women fiction readers who, in turning points of their lives, look for knowledge, joy and support in her work. 
Among her works are an autobiographical picturebooks for adults, The Memoirs of the Queen Widow and The Lonely Woman´s Love Stories, about life of a family after the father´s suicide. A novel, The Cage of Shame, showing the process of psychotherapy from a patient´s point of view.

See more of her artistry on her website: http://tiinapystynen.com/IN-ENGLISH/

Interview: https://www.lukulamppu.fi/mita-luet-tiina-pystynen/

Profile: https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&hl=en&prev=search&rurl=translate.google.fi&sl=fi&u=http://www.kirjasampo.fi/fi/kulsa/kauno%25253Aperson_123175949240251&usg=ALkJrhjbirN278EerAkoima8WqsrKn5ytg#.VkzCBt-rRp8

Henri Cartier-Bresson

The photography of French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson is on exhibit at the Ateneum Museum in Helsinki.   

"In photography, the smallest thing can be a great subject. The little, human detail can become a Leitmotiv.”  

“As far as I am concerned, taking photographs is a means of understanding which cannot be separated from other means of visual expression. It is a way of shouting, of freeing oneself, not of proving or asserting one’s own originality. It is a way of life.”

“Thinking should be done before and after, not during photographing.”

http://www.ateneum.fi/en/henri-cartier-bresson
http://www.henricartierbresson.org/en/

To find out more, visit the Henri Cartier-Bresson page at artsy.net.  This provides visitors with Cartier-Bresson's bio, over 100 of his works, exclusive articles, and up-to-date Cartier-Bresson exhibition listings. The page also includes related artists and categories, allowing viewers to discover art beyond this particular, incredibly talented individual. 

  https://www.artsy.net/artist/henri-cartier-bresson

Pentti Saarikoski

Poet
Pentti Saarikoski (1937–83)

According to Wikipedia, Pentti Saarikoski was one of the most important poets in the literary scene of Finland during the 1960s and 1970s. His body of work comprises poetry and translations, among them such classics as Homer's Odyssey and James Joyce's Ulysses.

The beginning of this poem rejects a criticism
of the poem.



Today He Is Critical

…
that when I'm writing I'm picking mushrooms
and you can only find mushrooms by wandering in the forest
without haste
and when I find one I don't take just the cap
but also the stalk and the stem
even mycelium
though it might be short-sighted and stupid
but a poem must be a complete organ
not a mere fruiting body
a good poet
doesn't make poems
but looks for them

Teemu Mäki - Research with Art

In Art and Research Colliding, artist Teemu Mäki presents a strong case for art and research:   

"I am more interested in the valuable insights that art or artistic research can produce about the world and in the kinds of changes it can cause in society than in what research of art can tell me about the family tree of artistic movements, the structure of artworks, or the way some of the players in the field manage to steer the art world according to their own agendas.

…
"art's greatest strength is in the continuation of thinking beyond verbalisable reasoning. Especially when perceiving, testing, and creating values, this is an essential dimension, since the ability to appreciate things, the will to live, and the joy of living are mainly experiences, not conclusions of rational pondering."

...

"Art creates and distributes the kind of silent, tacit, or experiential knowledge and values that are only partially verbalisable. Art (and philosophy) are essential, because values cannot be derived from mere facts. In other words: from how things are we cannot directly draw any conclusions about how things should be. 

... 

"Art is the most efficient (though not the most used) human-made method for moulding our lifeworld, and thus an excellent form of innovative and embodied moral pondering." 

Read the entire article, and see many examples of his strong artwork at
https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/49919/49920

He recommends his book, A Practical Utopia, as the one that best represent his ideas and teaching:  https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/89494/89495

Visit the artist's website for more images and current projects: http://www.teemumaki.com/

100,000 Poems of Hilja Onerva Lehtinen

Finnish Poet and Novelist

L. Onerva

1882-1982

At her death, 100,000 poems were found, according to the University of Helsinki:

"Hilja Onerva Lehtinen was a variously talented individual whose interest extended beyond literature to visual arts, music and theatre. She wrote poems, prose and drama under the professional name L.Onerva. She also wrote reviews on arts, literature and theatre for newspapers and translated French poetry into Finnish.
...
"In the first decade of the twentieth century L. Onerva published three collections of poetry as well as a novel Mirdja (1908). In her writing she brought out her rebellious nature and took a stand against the conventional morality of the time. L.Onerva’s later works dealt with the conflict between freedom and commitment in the life of a woman.

Hilja Onerva Lehtinen died shortly before her ninetieth birthday on March 1, 1972. In her household effects literarily a hundred thousand poems have been uncovered, a mere fraction of them published."

Read More:
http://375humanistia.helsinki.fi/en/hilja-onerva-lehtinen/a-woman-of-over-one-hundred-thousand-poems

In an essay by Taina Kotti, "Finnish Women Writers at the Turn of the 19th and 20th Centuries And Their Impact on Modern Finnish Literature"

In Onerva’s first novel [Mirdja] in 1908,  "the main character’s femininity is depicted differently from the traditional way. Mirdja is a feminine character with male traits, an androgenic. She is not a motherly madonnalike character with a built-in willingness to have children (Parente-Čapkova 222)." 

Read More: https://www15.uta.fi/FAST/FIN/A14PAPS/tk-women.pdf

A poem sample:

Falling to Shadow 

As you see, as you see, my forehead is wet,
from the sweat of death and fright,
you already managed to get too close,
let me go alone into the night. 

Please let me just like a shadow pass
to wilderness quietly sighing,
drop on the hummock and wake up as grass
in the holy morning.

See more at :https://jewelsfromfinlandtwo.wordpress.com/2011/01/23/l-onerva/
and http://classical-iconoclast.blogspot.fi/2010/12/l-onerva-feisty-poet.html

Many of L. Onerva's poems were made into songs.   Sample: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-jmUgMi2HQ

Lastuja (Splinters)

Finnish Writer
Juhani Aho
1861 – 1921
"Aho’s literary output was wide-ranging since he pursued different styles as time passed – he started as a realist and his first novel “Rautatie” (Railroad, 1884), one of his main works, is from this period. Later he moved towards neo-romanticism with his novels “Panu” and “Kevät ja takatalvi” as well as Juha, his most famous work which has been twice adapted an opera, and filmed four times, most recently in 1999 by Aki Kaurismäki. In addition to his novels Aho wrote a number of short stories in a distinct style, called “lastuja” (“splinters”). Their topics varied from political allegories to depictions of everyday life. The first and most famous of the short stories is “When Father Brought Home the Lamp”, depicting the effect of technical innovation on people living in the countryside. Nowadays the title is a Finnish saying used when something related to new technology is introduced. Aho was one of the founders of Päivälehti, the predecessor of the biggest newspaper in Finland today, Helsingin Sanomat." (see source)

Here is an English translation of "When Father Brought Home the Lamp,"  : 

http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/5336/pg5336-images.html

Writers History: Realism: Juhani Aho:  http://writershistory.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=293&Itemid=43

Wikipedia Information Juhani Aho: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juhani_Aho

The idea of splinters or wood chips intrigues me. It seems closely related to the proletarian "sketches" that were done by some US writers, in the early 1900s. These sketches were sometimes profiles, sometimes a scenario, without a plot.  Now perhaps the form might be called a short short story.

Hyvää ruokaa keittiössä

Here's the kitchen at Arteles where we make our lunch and dinner.  In mid November, daybreak is at about 8:00 am and sunset about 4:30.




In the studio, I've finished first drafts on new short stories so far.  In addition, I'm revising a manuscript.


Foods: http://foodfromfinland.com/recipes

Hyvää ruokaa:

Ruisleipä (Rye Bread)

Leipäjuusto (Finnish Squeaky Cheese)

Puolukkahilloa (Lingonberry Jam)

Silliä (pickled herring)

Viili (soured whole milk)

Lohikeitto (salmon and potato soup)

Poem XXIV by Antonio Machado

Traveler, your footprints
are the only road, nothing else.
Traveler, there is no road;
you make your own path as you walk.
As you walk, you make your own road,
and when you look back
you see the path
you will never travel again.
Traveler, there is no road
only a ship's wake on the sea

See more of his work at http://www.whitepine.org/noroad.pdf

Near Arteles

In Finland

Our studio at Arteles

The neighbor farm

In Tampere, the Vanhakirkko

Tampere Keskus/Centrum

An art opening at a gallery

Picasso Said

Everything you can imagine is real.

Art is the elimination of the unnecessary.

Action is the foundational key to all success.

I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them.

                                     --Pablo Picasso