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Aino Kallas (1878-1956) - wrote also as Aino Krohn, Aino Suonio | |
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Finnish writer, who gained fame with her symbolistic and neoromantic short stories and novels. Among Aino Kallas' best known works are Barbara von Tisenhusen (1923), Reigin pappi (1926, The Pastor of Reigi), Sudenmorsian (1928, The Wolf's Bride), and Pyhän Joen kosto (1930, The revenge of the Holy River). Kallas adapted a number of her works for the stage, some of which were made into operas by the Finnish composer Tauno Pylkkänen. She was one of the most internationally orientated Finnish writers, making lecture tours in Holland, Great Britain, Canada, and the United States. "The story of Aalo, wife of Priidik the forester, who was changed by Satan into a werewolf, and fled from her lawful husband into the wilds, and there did consort with wild beasts and the Diabolus Sylvarum or Wood Daemon, wherefore she was called by the peasants Wolf's Bride." (from The Wolf's Bride: A Tale from Estonia, translated by Alex Matson, in collaboration with Bryan Rhys, London: Jonathan Cape, 1930, p. 5) Aino Kallas was born in Kiiskilä near Viborg into an intellectually distinguished Krohn family, known for contributions in the arts and science. Maria Wilhelmina (Lindroos) Krohn, her mother, was headmistress of the first Finnish-language girls' school in Helsinki. Kallas' father, Julius Krohn, Professor of Finnish Literature at the University of Helsinki, was a poet, and folklorist. He died during a boating trip when she was 10 years old. Kallas was educated at the Finnish Girls' School in
Helsinki. The summers she spent in Kiiskilä. As a poet Kallas made her
debut at the age of nineteen with Lauluja
ja balladeja (1897) under the name Aino Suonio – her father
had used the
pseudonym Suonio. At the request of the journalist and photographer
I.K. Inha, Jean Sibelius set music to the poem 'Kuutamolla' (In the
Moonlight). It was first performed in the middle of the night under the
window of her bedroom. Inha was hoping he can turn her attention toward
himself, while her beloved Herman Stenberg was away – he had gone on an
expedition to Siberia to study the Ostyaks. Inha's courtship failed,
but to
Kallas' great disappointment, Herman's feelings had cooled
in Siberia; he broke with her after returning to Helsinki. Kallas
packed her bags in January 1899 and travelled for four months in
Central Europe. The increasing pressure for Russification culminated in 1899 in the 'February manifesto', which meant a serious threat to the autonomy of Finland. Kallas wrote in her diary in Lausanne."My fatherland is not a land of sunshine – it is a forgotten, remote corner far away in the north, a land of long winters, short springs. I know well what awaits me there: at best work, work in silence and invisibility – in any case, distress, sorrow, unrest. I do not go there to seek joy – I hardly remember, any longer, that I am young – or to encounter my happiness; I go there to suffer, to carry the same burden as the others." (tr. Hildi Hawkins, Helsinki: A Literary Companion, edited by Hildi Hawkins & Soila Lehtonen, 2000, p. 94) At the age of 22, Kallas left Finland after marrying Dr. Oskar Phillip Kallas, an Estonian scientist, who was one of the central figures of the newspaper Postimees. He was later appointed the first Estonian Minister to Helsinki. From 1900 to 1903, they lived in St. Petersburg, and moved then to Tartu. In 1906 she lost her newborn baby Lembert. Kallas' brother-in-law Eemil Setälä accused her of
deserting her nation: "Who are Estonians really? A dying race . . . if
you want [your children] to grow up Estonian you need to prepare them
from the start for the life of a peasant or a craftman because there's
no such thing as Estonian culture." ("The vitality of
the primeval peasant blood": The Hereditary Potential in the Work of
Aino Kallas by by Leena
Kurvet-Käosaar, in Aino
Kallas: Negotiations with Modernity, edited by Leena
Kurvet-Käosaar
& Lea Rojola, 2011, p. 95) While
in Tartu Kallas joined the literary group Noor-Eesti
(Young Estonia), and participated with her writings to the struggle of
Estonian people to free themselves from foreign domination. Her reviews
and essays were later collected in Nuori Viro: muotokuvia ja
suuntaviivoja
(1918), which portrayed such poets as Gustav Suits
and Villem Grünthal-Ridala, and prose writers Jaan Oks, A.H. Tammsaare,
and Friedebert Tuglas, who became the main
translator of her works into
Estonian. Kallas's close Finnish friends included the poet and Otto Manninen and the writer Anni Swan
(married from 1907); she was a regular guest at their home in Helsinki.
"Ei liene sitä kirjallisen syys- tai kevättulvan tuomaa kotimaista
uutuutta, jonka johdosta ei sisäänastuessa heti tervehdyksenä kaikuisi:
"olet tietysti lukenut sen? – no, mitäs pidät?" On jollain lailla
turvallista tuntea, että yhä vielä on säilynyt ihmisiä, joille jokin
hengenhedelmän kypsyminen kirjallisen puun latvassa voi tuntua
tärkeämmältä tapahtumalta kuin uusimman, nerokkaimmankin pommikoneen
keksintä." (Tarinankertoja:
Anni Swanin elämä by Riitta Konttinen, 2022, p. 299) The race issue, heatedly debated in Estonia, played an
important role in Kallas' thinking, too.
Willed Ridala valued highly the Estonian race variation in
'Tõu küsimus' (1913).
Refering to Taine, Kallas argued all talented writers, whether they
want it or not, reflect their racial identities: "Harvinaisissa
tapauksissa hän voi olla kaikkien niitten eri
ominaisuuksien synteesi, joista hänen rotunsa ja heimonsa psyyke on
kokoonpantu. Mutta useimmiten hajaantuu rotuperintö, ja eri yksilöt
heijastavat vain murto-osia suuresta yhteisestä rotupääomasta. Tämä
rodullinen yhteenkuuluvaisuus voi olla kirjailijalla usein miltei
tiedotonta, eikä se suinkaan aina käy yhteen sen käsitteen kanssa, mitä
olemme tottuneet nimittämään kirjallisuudessa "kansalliseksi"." (Nuori Viro: muotokuvia
ja suuntaviivoja, by Aino Kallas, 1918, p. 222)
According to Kallas, Tuglas' leaning toward fantasy, "the graveyard
imagery", derived from the spirit of the Noor-Eest
movement, but "the sense of horror is already in his blood". (Ibid., p. 224) Estonia, whose language is of the same group that of Finland, had been ruled by a succession of occupiers. At the end of the World War I, Russian-controlled Estonia proclaimed independence. Soviet recognition came about the Treaty of Dorpat (Tartu) in 1920, but later in 1940 Soviet troops occupied the country and it became a Soviet republic for over fifty years. In her early stories Kallas blended fiction and folklore, derived from the heritage of Estonian literature. At that time she was not ready to set out to write a full-lenght novel. In the two volumes of Meren takaa (1904-05) and the short novel Ants Raudjalg (1907) Kallas preferred the form of realism. She depicted the vestiges of the centuries-old serfdom in Estonia under the double oppression by the ethnically German aristocracy and the Russian bureaucracy. Lähtevien laivojen kaupunki (1913) ended a silent period in her work, during which she searched for new ways of artistic expression. This collection of short stories showed the influence of symbolism and marked shifting from social issues to problems of a more universal nature. However, the events depicted in 'Lasnamäen valkea laiva' (The White Ship), a story of mass nsuggestion, were based on historical events. From the spring of 1861, the peasants' religious-social movement, called the Maltsvetite movement, began to wait for a white ship to take the members to the Crimean region, where their prophet was said to have gone. Eventually Kallas found her true voice in neoromanticism,
especially in her short, tragic "ballad novels". They were written in
an archaizing language about 16th- and 17th-century Estonia. These
works include Barbara von Tisenhusen (1923), in which a
blue-blooded girl is tried and drowned by her family for falling in
love with a clerk. Kallas's vision of the people of her adopted
homeland took a mythical, universal character. She made use of
historical research, Johannes Renner's (1525-1583) Die
lievlähdische Chronik, Balthasar Russow's (1535-1600) Chronica
der Prouintz Lufflandt
(1578), and the yearbook
Sitzungsberichte (1885) by Die Gelehrte Esthnische Gesellschaft. For The Wolf's Bride Kallas read widely books on werewolves and records of witch trials. Wilhelm Hertz's dissertation Der Wehrwolf from 1862 provided some background information. Kallas did not aim at writing a horror story, the novel is too melancholic and detached for that. In Finland, werewolves were also called "vironsusi" (Estonian wolf). Kallas's brother Kaarlo Krohn wrote in Suomalaisen runojen uskonto (1914): "Suomessakin tunnettu on tarina susiksi noidutusta hääväestä. Tapauksen paikkana mainitaan usein Viro, mistä nimityksen Viron susi käsitetään johtuneen. Tämä on kuitenkin kansanjohdannainen, jonka alkuperän selvittää ruotsin var-ulj ja saksan ivenvolf 'miessusi' (vrt. latinan vir 'mies')." (Ibid. p. 169) In 1919 Kallas met in Copenhagen the critic and essayist Anna-Maria Tallgren (1886-1946); they kept up a correspondence for decades. During her husband's tenure (1922-1934) as ambassador to Great Britain and Holland, Kallas wrote several of her major works. In Katinka Rabe (1920), about the end of childhood, she commemorated her father and the family manor in Kiiskilä. Most of her novels were born on the peaceful island of Kassari, Hiiumaa, where Kallas spent her summers in the 1920s and 1930s. In London, where the slums of East End aroused almost physical revulsion in her, the Kallas family stayed for 12 years. Soon after arrival, she was photographed by the commercial companies Lafayette (1922) and Val L'Estrange (1922), and then by Swaine (1924), Hay Wrightson (1923) and Madame Yevonde (1925). The White Ship, a collection of short stories, came out in 1924 with a foreword by John Galsworthy. In The Pastor of Reigi (1926) the wife of the pastor on the island of Hiiumaa falls in love with her husband's curate. They run away and are apprehended and executed. Other translations were Eros the Slayer (1927), and the dreamy, symbolic The Wolf's Bride, a tale of a forester's wife, Aalo, who can assume a wolf's shape and is killed in the end by her husband's silver bullet. As in Barbara von Tisenhusen and The Pastor of Reigi, Kallas used rhythms and idiom of the archaic language. These three works form the so-called "Deadly Eros" trilogy, which deal with the theme of illegitimate love. Kallas' female protagonists are usually in conflict with the norms of the social system and the official truth. They are killed, when they follow their hearts, or insticts as in The Wolf's Bride. In The Pastor of Reigi the wife is killed for committing adultery. Many of Kallas' diary entries record changes in the author's sexuality and creativity. Over the years, she gradually moved toward an acceptance of free love. "Am I not justified to do with myself, with my soul and my body, what I want," she asks at one point of her life. (Embodied Subjectivity in the Diaries of Virginia Woolf, Aino Kallas and Anaïs Nin by Leena Kurvet-Käosar, 2006, p. 27) With her affairs, Kallas established herself as a femme fatale, but most likely she also exaggerated her amorous involvements. She fell in love in 1916 with the Latvian artist Janis Rosentals, who painted her portrait but replaced the head with that of his housemaid. She also had an affair with the Finnish poet Eino Leino. When Kallas traveled to the United States in January 1926 she heard there of his death. It was a crushing blow. However, it was not until the 1950s, when Kallas published her diaries, her relationship with Eino Leino was revealed. Kallas's dramatic works, mostly adaptations of earlier short
stories, were written mainly in the 1930s. The Wolf's Bride was
rewritten for the stage on 1937. Mare ja hänen poikansa
(1935), which was performed in Helsinki at the National Theatre of
Finland, did not gain much success, which disappointed Kallas. Reviews
were hostile in Estonia – the storm around Mares ja tema pojas
inspired also caricaturists. Although Kallas continued to write plays,
she
could not forget these attacks. The play inspired Tauno Pylkkänen's
opera from 1943; Pylkkänen's first opera, Bathseba Saarenmaalla
(1940), was also based on Kallas's work. Taavi Kassila planed to film The Wolf's Bride,
Catherine Ann Jones finished the screenplay in 1991, but the project
never realizes. Also Ilppo Pohjola's film project never came to
fruition. The Nazi occupation of Estonia during World War II from 1941 to 1944 forced the family into exile in Sweden, where Kallas remained until 1953. Her son Sulev committed suicide in 1941 to avoid arrest by the GPU. Laine, her daughter, met a tragic death in the same year when she was shot accidentally by a Russian soldier. Oskar Kallas died in Stockholm in 1946. Her poems from this period, collected in Kuoleman joutsen (1942), Kuun silta (1943), and Polttoroviolla (1945), reflect both her personal tragedies and the fate of Estonia, occupied by the Soviet Union, Germany, and the Soviet Union again. Hundreds of her relatives and friends had been deported to Siberia. Kallas' silk-black hair turned gray in the spring of 1947. Knitting gave her relief from the sorrows. In 1948 Kallas entered Helsinki on a refugee passport, staying
in Finland 16 months. One of the poems in Kuunsilta, entitled
'Vihmalintu' [Drizzle bird], was made into a song by the gay
artist Tom of Finland (Touko Laaksonen) and live recorded in 1949.
Kallas returned to Sweden after the Finnish foreign ministry warned her
– the Soviets were eager to repatriate their
citizens. Kallas settled permanently in Helsinki in 1953,
but she felt that she had received too little recognition in Finland
and in Estonia. The windows of her home on Merikatu 1 opened towards
the south and Estonia. "A lone wolf" was what she called herself in Vaeltava vieraskirja vuosilta 1946-1956
(1957), feeling nostalgic about the time when she was a member of the
Young Estonia group. Kallas's works have been translated into English, French, Dutch, Swedish, German, Italian, Danish, and Hungarian. She was awarded several times the State Prize for Literature in Finland, and she also received the Lyceum Club Literature Prize in London. Kallas died in Helsinki on November 9, 1956. She kept a diary more or less throughout her life, but later destroyed the earliest volumes. In addition, the diaries from the years 1931–1943 were lost during the Second World War. Wandering guest book from the years 1946-1956 was published posthumously. For further reading: Aino Kallas 1897-1921 by Kai Laitinen (1973); A History of Finnish Literature by Jaakko Ahokas (1973); Aino Kallaksen ja Marja-Liisa Vartion proosarytmin vertailua by Tuovi Monola (1976); Aino Kallaksen maailmaa by Kai Laitinen (1978); Aino Kallaksen mestarivuodet by Kai Laitinen (1995); 'Kallas, Aino (Julia Maria Krohn),' in World Authors 1900-1950, Volume. 2, edited by Martin Seymour-Smith and Andrew C. Kimmens (1996); A History of Finland's Literature, edited by George C. Schoolfield (1998); Embodied Subjectivity in the Diaries of Virginia Woolf, Aino Kallas and Anais Nin by Leena Kurvet-Käosaar (2006); Aino Kallas: Negotiations with Modernity, ed. Leena Kurvet-Käosaar & Lea Rojola (2011); Kauneudentemppelin ovella: Aino Kallaksen tuotanto ja raamatullinen subteksti by Silja Vuorikuru (2012); Haltiakuusen alla: suomalaisia kirjailijakoteja by Anne Helttunen, Annamari Saure, valokuvaaja Jari Suominen (2013); Aino Kallas: tulkintoja elämästä ja tuotannosta by Maarit Leskelä-Kärki, Kukku Melkas, Ritva Hapuli (2016); Aino Kallas: maailman sydämessä by Silja Vuorikuru (2017); Suomalaisia naiskirjailijoita: Minna Canth, Maria Jotuni ja Aino Kallas by Silja Vuorikuru (2019); Heistä tuli taiteilijoita: 12 muotokuvaa suomalaisista naistaiteilijoista by Vilja-Tuulia Huotarinen, illustrated by Riikka Sormunen (2019); Omat huoneet: missä naiset kirjoittivat vuosisata sitten by Suvi Ratinen (2021); 'Rikkiviisasta, taiteellista? Aikalaisarviot Aino Kallaksen teoksen Seitsemän. Titanic-novelleja varhaisina tulkintoina' by Silja Wuorikuru, in Kaanon ja marginaali. Kulttuuriperinnön vaiennetut äänet, edited by Niina Hämäläinen and Lotte Tarkka (2022) Selected works:
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