Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1943, Page 186

168
LE NORD
match against Apollo, the inspired
god o£ clarity and the noble form.
In various ways connected with
much of what was said above —
not least as regards the painters’
coarse way of narrating — there
seems to me, both in Finnish and
Swedish quarters in Finland, to be
a common active historical sense. In
art and poetry there is an interest in
analysis in the description of con-
temporary conditions. In literature
it inserts retrospective passages
throwing a light far and wide on
“the Background of Independence”
(to borrow the title of the historical
introductory chapter of the Liberté
créatrice). What can be more gra-
phic than the suggestions on the
course of events, on the growth
of Finnishness and other things
seen dimly in the horizon far from
the bathing-house, where Toivola
Jussi, the hero of Sillanpaa’s Det
fromma elándet (‘Pious Misery’),
was born one moonlit night, unwel-
come from first to last? This great
work of Sillanpaa’s — amongst
others — reminds of a particular
aspect of the historical work with-
in Finnish fiction, what I should
call the anti-Fanrik Stal element,
its pensive and hateless drawing of
the opponents in the Red revolt of
1918. It is a fact that the military
men already then, as now the
author of Vára frihetskrigs armé
(‘The Army of our Wars of In-
dependence’) in the Liberté cré-
atrice, P. Huhtala, very well knew
that “the Finnish soldier on both
sides fought equally toughly,” and
valued this also in the opponent.
Fiction has tried to get behind this
observation and in work after work
wanted to understand and interpret
those who in 1918 turned against
their native country and its here-
ditary social customs. On the Fin-
nish side Sillanpáá’s Toivola Jussi
is the great, absolutely dominant
figure, this ragged stepson of socie-
ty, who after a short time of great-
ness in the Red guárd, never quite
understood, without boots (others
needed them), is shot dead and falls
into the grave dug by himself. Sil-
lanpáá’s explanation of this social
phenomenon is actually a historical
just as much as a literary achieve-
ment. And to this — as pointed out
by Viljanen — should on the Swe-
dish side be added Runar Schildt’s
Den stora rollen (‘The Great Role’),
Aapu and Armas Fager. Indeed, I
should no less than these also form-
ally splendid short stories mention
the modernist Elmer Diktonius’s
bizarre poem Röd Eemeli (‘Red
Eemeli’) too.
These intimations on Finnish
and Swedish poetry in Finland may
be connected with a memorial
volume published in honour of the
Akademiska Bokhandeln in Hel-
singfors by Professor Yrjö Hirn in
1943. There is a special atmosphere
of rest in this book — rest from
greater subjects and from the unrest
of the war. The famous old pro-
fessor, who lets himself go and
reverently describes the helpers of