 
Choose another writer in this calendar:
by name: by birthday from the calendar.
TimeSearch |
|
Henry Parland (1908-1930) |
|
Finland-Swedish poet and cosmopolitan critic, whose career as a writer lasted only a few years – he died at the age of 22. Henry Parland was among the rising stars of modernism in the 1920s, who introduced formalism and semiotic concepts to Finnish literature. Idealrealisation (1929, The clearance sale of ideals), a collection of poetry, was the only book published during his life time. His brothers and Oscar Parland (1912-1997) and Ralf Parland (1914-1995) also gained fame as novelists. Min hatt Henry Parland was born in Vyborg into a family with a distant
English background. His father Oswald Parland was an engineer and
bridge builder, who worked for the Russian civil service. His mother
Ida Maria Parland came from a Baltic-German family, the Sesemanns,
prominent in Vyborg's history. The family's home language was German
and Russian. Parland spent his first years in Russia in Kiev and St.
Petersburg. His early diary notes – he was about 10 years
old at that time – were written in Russian. The family
returned to Vyborg in 1912 and then moved to Finland on the outbreak of the
Russian Revolution. When the border was closed, the father was unable
to join his family until 1920. Henry Parland's early years in his new
surrounding in Helsinki were not happy – he felt lonesome, was
bullied in a Finnish school, and eventually he was transferred to
the Swedish school at Grankulla. According to Oscar Parland he never
fully learned the new language, but wrote his books in Swedish. (He
never visited Sweden.) In 1927
Parland graduated from the Grankulla gymnasium, and started to study
law at the University of Helsinki. But more than his studies, Parland
was interested in fashion, watching films, dancing and drinking. He was
soon heavily in debt. In 1928 Parland joined the modernist literary group around the magazine Quosego; he was the youngest member. The subtitle of Quosego was "Tidskrift för ny generation" (Magazine for a new generation). Parland was in the beginning more interested in fiction, but a meeting with Gunnar Björling in November 1927 inspired him to try his hand at poetry. They both were interested Dadaism and the German Neue Sachlichkeit (the New Objectivity), which Parland wanted to introduce into literary discussions. The results were
seen in Parland's first collection on poems, Idealrealisation,
a youthfully cynical visit to the jazz age. It remained Parland's only
published book. Elmer Diktonius
described it in his review as a good literary illustration of the
concept "modern youth". "Redan titeln och titeldikten . . . hänvisar
till den sjunkande kurs för alla gamla ideal, som namnda ungdom går
omkring och noterar – ganske med sig själv som måttstock. . . . Mången
kommer säkert att inte finna något vidare i denna knappnålshuvudsdikt –
den är en intellektuell poesi, some kommer med vissa anspråk på
läsarens hjärna. ('Intellektuell dikt' by E. D — s, Arbetarbladet, No. 51, 03.05.1929, p. 4) Some of Parland's short stories employed elements of horror, as in 'Khimaira' (1926), published in Allas Krönika. Parland's Bohemian lifestyle worried his parents and in 1929 they
decided to sent him to Kaunas (Kovno), the capital of Lithuania. There
his uncle Wilhelm Seesemann was a professor of philosophy. In a letter
to his parents which Parland wrote soon after arriving the city he
complained of bad coffee and muddy roads. Parland ate daily at the home
of his uncle's woman friend. "It doesn't matter where I go, I'm always a foreigner,"
Parland once said. While he was not spending his time in
cafés, he worked as a secretary at the Swedish consulate and
contributed to Lithuanian magazines. He wrote in German about
Scandinavian literature and introduced new Russian and American films
and Russian avant-garde to the Finland-Swedish public. For his
disappointment Kaunas was a periphery of film art – Helsinki was
New York compared to Kaunas, as he claimed. Parland loved the films of Eisenstein, Pudovkin and Chaplin: "Charlie Chaplin, kanske även Buster Keaton, har visat en väg i enlighet med filmens egentliga väsen, så även delvis den föraktade amerikanska sensationsfilmen och farsen, gjorda efter originalmanuscript." ('Den psykologiska filmens bankrutt,' in Återsken by Henry Parland, 1932) On his bookshelf, he had works by Aleksandr Blok, Sergei Esenin, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and Anna Akhmatova. "Man kunde dra en parallell mellan [Rabbe] Enckell och Sergej Jessenin. Överensstämmelsen mellan deras motiv är slående," he argued. ('"Mariengof är mindre pervers än vad jag trott". Henry Parland ja venäläinen imaginismi' by Tomi Huttunen, in Joutsen / Saven 2017-2018: Kotimaisen kirjallisuudentutkimuksen vuosikirja, edited by Päivi Koivisto & Daniela Silén, 2018) In 1929 Parland participated in a literary contest arranged by the magazine Bonniers Veckotidningen with the short story 'Jag och min fars glasögon'. It was included in the anthology De 14 bästa studentnovellerna (1929). During the winter 1929-30 Parland started to work on his first novel, entitled Sönder, but he never finished it. Gunnar Björling read its early draft when Parland visited Helsinki in 1930 and considered it too sentimental and too much autobiographical. The novel, which resonates with Proust's Á la recherche du temps perdu and contemporary Russian literature theories, was partly based on actual events. Henry Rapp, the protagonist is, a businessman and a writer, who recalls his past and relationship to a woman, Amy. The book ends with the death of Amy, Henry's faithless beloved, who remains a mystery to him. Jag är en stor Gud Capturing the atmosphere Baltic jazz age, Parland saw jazz as an expression of revolt against older culture. He was fond of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, and wrote: "The dictatorship of jazz – a new form of Catholicism, / I have seen a thousand trouser-creases flutter in rhythmic feeling." (A History of Finland's Literature, edited by George C. Schoolfield, Lincoln & London: University of Nebraska Press, 1998, p. 483) In Sönder Parland also referred to another idol: "Motto: this novel is perhaps a plagiarism of Marcel Proust". When 'The Singing Fool' (1928) premiered in Helsinki – it was the first full-length sound film seen in Finland – Parland greeted it with an enthusiastic poem. Parland died of scarlet fever on Novembr 10, 1930, at the age of 22, in Kaunas, as suddenly as Amy in Sönder. He was buried in Kaunas, but his grave at the churchyard disappeared during World War II. Parland's death was a deep blow to Björling, who once described his young protegée as 'Ett ljus tänt i livets fördumningsanstalt' (a candle light in life's dumbing down institution). In 1932 Rabbe Enckell edited a volume of his unpublished works, entitled Återsken. Unfinished Sönder appeared again in 1987. In this edition, Finland-Swedish words were changed into "Rikssvenska," Swedish as spoken in Sweden. A new edition of Sönder, with commentaries by Per Stam, came out in 2005. For further reading: Sakernas sammanhang: om ting, människor och materiella relationer hos Henry Parland, James Joyce och Virginia Woolf by Ellen Frödin (2022); '"The Clearance Sale of Ideals" – Henry Parland and Finland-Swedish Literary Modernism, 1928–1930' by Per Stam, A Cultural History of the Avant-Garde in the Nordic Countries 1925-1950, edited by Benedikt Hjartarson, Andrea Kollnitz, Per Stounbjerg, and Tania Ørum (2019); '"Mariengof är mindre pervers än vad jag trott". Henry Parland ja venäläinen imaginismi' by Tomi Huttunen, in Joutsen / Saven 2017-2018: Kotimaisen kirjallisuudentutkimuksen vuosikirja, edited by Päivi Koivisto & Daniela Silén (2018); Framkallning: skrift, konsumtion och sexualitet i Karin Boyes Astarte och Henry Parlands Sönder by Caroline Haux (2013); Fotografiet bleknar, hon försvinner: materia, begär och Gilles Deleuzes litteraturfilosofi i Henry Parlands Sönder by Jenny Wikström (2013); Erhållit Europa: vilket härmed erkännes: Henry Parland-studier by Clas Zilliacus (2011); Jag är ju utlänning vart jag än kommer: en bok om Henry Parland, edited by Agneta Rahikainen (2009); 'Henry Parland ja elokuvataide' by Max Ryynänen in Filmihullu 3 (2001); Krapula. Henry Parland och romanprojektet Sönder by Per Stam (1998); 'Henry Parland' by George C. Schoolfield, in A History of Finland's Literature, edited by George C. Schoolfield (1998); Kunskap och inlevelse: essayer och minnen by Oscar Parland (1991); 'Henry Parland' by Kim Nilsson, in Dictionary of Scandinavian Literature, edited by Virpi Zuck with Niels Ingwersen and Harald Næs (1990); 'Henry Parland' by Agneta Ara, in Författare om författare (1980) - See also 'Henry Parland semiotiikan edelläkävijänä Suomessa' by Henri Broms, in Alkukuvien jäljillä (1984), Agneta Ara's article 'Henry Parland' in Författare om författare (1980); 'Avantgardet i öster - finlandssvensk modernism' by Clas Zilliacus, in Den Svenska Litteraturen, Vol. 5 (1989); Studier i Henry Parland by Betsey Robbins and Stefan Malmberg (1985) Selected works:
|
