Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1943, Side 187

REVUE LITTERAIRE
169
the learned studies and science in
the course of time — this is also a
piece of Finland of today worth
remembering.
The Akademiska Bokhandeln
(‘The Academical Bookshop’) of
Helsingfors in the course of time
has been praised also outside Scan-
dinavia for its excellent display of
books. It has also for a long time
kept up the old tradition of book-
shops of being an inviting reading-
and conversation-room, where good
advice may also be had. In a way
— in this Hirn is right — this
bookshop, like the periodical Nya
Argus, is a proof of the unusually
great literary interest in Finland.
Its importance is a feature in the
picture of the country during these
fifty years. It should also be re-
membered how its predecessor in
Runeberg’s little Borga had an
astonishingly great sale of Moliére
and Calderon, of the Sonetti di
Petrarca, Rime Scelte di Torquato
Tasso, and Thomas Moore’s poems,
etc., as early as the forties. The
Akademiska Bokhandeln has itself
grown strong in evident connexion
with the national revival and re-
armament of Finland. It has actu-
ally been in the middle of it all
through its work for indigenous
literature in both languages of the
country. It has been a rallying-
place of strong native interests, but
also been directed against patriotic
gleichschaltung. It maintained the
neutrality of the book trade even
against demands of boycott of
Le Nord, 1943, 2—4
literature with tendencies towards
compliance as regards Russia.
Again, it enters as a link in the
concentration of forces which
created Free Finland and supported
its peaceful progress during the
happy period of 1918—39, when
the brightest dreams and efforts of
the people flourished.
These notes on the importance of
the book trade anticipate what I
should summarily state on art and
poetry in Finland, — their remark-
ably great influence in the life of
the country. The poets of Finland,
a sculptor like Aaltonen, a musician
like Sibelius, keeping up the leading
position given to them by Kalevala
and Runeberg in the strivings and
fight of the people, inspiringly give
courage to believe, as recently said
by a young Finnish poet (Rabbe
Enckell, Argus 1943 p. 76), that
poetry and music at their best are
facts based on imponderable things.
They inspire their people with a
courage to believe in a brighter re-
ality, which the composer, the poet,
and the musician can see, and in
its power to form our destinies in
the long run. Hence they get a
leading position, a place amid the
fighters which may remind of what
Atterbom, the Swedish poet, in
Skaldarmal assigned to the poet in
the Golden Age of the Old Norse
saga and lay.
This brings us to that which
takes up the greater part of the
survey in the Liberté créatrice, the
self-collection and reconciliation
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