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