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Juhani Aho (1861-1921) - surname until 1907 Brofeldt, pen names Siltanen, J.S-n, Jussi |
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Journalist and the first Finnish professional writer, best known Finnish author in Scandinavia in his own time, who specialized in short stories called "lastuja" (splinters). Although Juhani Aho chose his subjects from Finnish folk life, his works were far from provincial. They reflected consciously modern literary movements, especially realism, which is seen in his first novel Rautatie from the year 1884. Aho also translated such writers as Kielland, Daudet, Lagerlöf, Hugo, and Maeterlinck. We, the youths of the parish, escorted our dear old friends to their new home. The long summer day passed away as we wandered through the forest bright with vernal green, and we danced away the night in the new hut. The planks of the new dwelling were still quite roughish; the jagged, unsawn timber ends jutted unevenly out of the knots in the wood and the brown river appeared to be spreading everywhere over the newly reclaimed field. But on the hill-slope the fresh rye shoots glistened bright and green amidst the sooty tree-stumps, and on the plot of land cleared for corn the trees were lopped gaunt and dry. The young hostess lit a bonfire on the clearing and milked her cow there for the first time. Ville and I sat on a stone and watched her bustling about in the sickly sheen of the evening sun: she still wore her bridal garments. (from 'Pioneers,' in Squire Hellman and Other Stories by Juhani Aho, London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1893, p. 156) Juhani Aho was born in Lapinlahti. The family moved to the parsonage of Vieremä in 1884, when his father, Th. Brofeldt, was appointed minister of Iisalmi. His mother, née Emma Snellman, came from a pietistic family. Later in his books Aho depicted remote and idyllic parsonages, among others in Papin rouva [The Parson's Wife]. However, while still living at home, his literary interest did not receive support from his family. From 1872 to 1880 Aho studied in Kuopio, where he fell in love with Mrs. Järnefelt, more than twenty-years his senior. During this period he started to write poems under the influence of J.L. Runeberg, and later translated his works into Finnish. He read also Heine and Schiller. In 1880 Aho entered the University of Helsinki, where he studied the
classic languages until 1884 without graduating. During this period, he
befriended with the older writer Arvid Järnefelt and his family.
Järnefelt wrote in 1930 that he had never met anybody, who was more
enthusiastic and passionate about his work than Aho. Elisabeth, Arvid Järnefelt's mother, introduced Aho to Russian writers. People don't dare to live now as Nature bids them. It is an eternal avoiding opportunities and balancing chances. Not one in a hundred is really loyal at heart. Now look at those people there! Their life is something quite different. They know nothing about the silly prejudices of educated people. They all enjoy life in its fulness, the women as well as the men. That is why they are all so fresh, gay, and lively. They know how to celebrate their midsummer fete, and rejoice in the feast of the sun. (from 'Loyal,' Squire Hellman and Other Stories, pp. 174-175) Aho began to work as a journalist, contributing in the following decades to a number of newspapers. His first book,
Siihen aikaan kun isä lampun osti,
was published in 1883. In this and subsequent short stories, Aho showed
his skill in registering small, but profound changes in everyday life
and material culture in the rapidly modernizing country. In the title
tale, 'When Father Brought Home the Lamp' a farmer buys an oil lamp and
its light – an optimistic symbol of progress, perhaps – astonishes his
family and his neighbors. "It was known all over the parish that our
house was the first, after the parsonage, where the lamp had been used.
After we had set the example, the magistrate bought a lamp like ours,
but as he had never learned to light it, he was glad to sell it to the
innkeeper, and the innkeeper has it still." The story ends with a
melancholic note of a farm worker, who continues to burn shingles in
his room in the sauna. In 1884 appeared Aho's first major work, Rautatie [Railway], a humorous story of a country couple Matti and Liisa, who embark on their first railway journey. When Minna Canth read the manuscript, she got so enthusiastic that she compared Aho to Gogol and Zola. In 1921 Rautatie had become the bestselling work of fiction after Kalevala and Vänrikki Stoolin tarinat. Papin tytär (1885, The Parson's Daughter) and Papin rouva (1893) consider the aspirations and ultimate disappointments of the intellectually gifted and emotionally thwarted Elli. In both of these novels Aho developed his philosophy of freedom, and expressed his longing to escape from the confinements of dull everyday obligations. As a journalist he advocated new ideas and attacked conservatism of the clergy. In 1886 Aho edited in Jyväskylä with his brother Pekka Brofeldt the newspaper Keski-Suomi,
from 1887 to 1889 he worked in Kuopio
for the newspaper Savo, and in 1889 he joined the founders of Päivälehti, the mouthpiece
for Young Finland. In his novel Helsinkiin (1889) Aho drew a detailed portrait of a young student who moves from a small
town to a metropol and is swept into the joys of the city life. "When Antti had taken a few sips from his
glass, he began to feel a charm he had never felt before. It was as if he had wings, a blissful feeling. For
the first time he was realizing what a student's life was, what Helsinki was and what freedom and independence
were! He began to feel freer and happier. His courage grew, he was already chattering fearlessly, telling all sorts
of tales and making others laugh. The general friendliness seemed to be growing. Clearly, he was the unanimous
centre of attention at his table, just as Kalle was his." (translated by Herbert Lomas, in
Helsinki: A Literary Companion, edited by Hildi Hawkins and Soila Lehtonen, Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2000, p. 78) Aho lived in Paris from autumn 1889 to summer 1890 as a correspondent and reported on the World Fair Paris 1889. Movements in French literature, realism and naturalism, left traces in Aho's fiction. Especially his short stories, collections of lastuja – "shavings" or "splinters" – showed the impact of Alphonse Daudet (1840-1897), whose Letters from My Windmill (1869) wasn't translated into Finnish until 1907. The Karelian-Russian literary historian Eino Karhu has spotted influences from Ivan Turgenev's 'Singers' (1852), about a singing contest, in Muuan markkinamies (1884). Turgenev's piece had appeared in Finnish in Kirjallinen kuukausilehti in 1872. (Suomen kirjallisuus runonlaulajista 1800-luvun loppuun: II osa by Eino Karhu, 1979, pp. 221-222) Pirjo Lyytikäinen, a Professor of Finnish Literature at the University of Helsinki, has said that Aho's Papin rouva "can be seen as a national "transformation" of Flaubert's Mme Bovary with its amorous triangular drama". ('The Tale of a Thousand Lakes' by Pirjo Lyytikäinen, in Nordic Literature: A Comparative History. Volume I: Spatial Nodes, edited by Steven P. Sondrup, Mark B. Sandberg, Thomas A. DuBois, Dan Ringgaard, 2017, pp. 131-132) The Danish literary critic and scholar Georg Brandes, who wrote a critical essay on Papin rouva, noted that Aho's writing style was characterized by his loving attention to small details. While in Paris, Aho wrote the melancholic short story 'Yksin' (1890, Alone), which shocked Finnish readers. The protagonist spends a night with a prostitute, and this scene caused much controversy. Yksin spoiled also the Christmas of the composer Jean Sibelius, who read it in Vienna and recognized in the character of Anna his fiancée Aino Järnefelt; Anna is the love of the narrator. After 111 years, the story is due to appear in French, translated by Bénédicte Villain. In 1891 Aho married the artist Venny Soldan-Brofeldt (1863-1945), with whom he went to Russian Carelia and Italy. Aho had two children with Venny Soldan-Brofeldt, Antti and Heikki. From his relationship with Matilda (Tilly) Soldan (1873-1931), Venny's sister, he had a son, Björn. When the sisters agreed the share him, Aho adjusted himself to their needs. Basically Aho was a conservative, and a melancholic, who felt nostalgia for the past. But his disgust for human condition in modernity did not place him outside the literary trends of the time. The stand is seen outside Finland in the works of such Danish writers as Herman Bang and Jens Peter Jacobsen, and the Norwegian Arne Garborg. The turn in Aho's work occurred with his neoromantic novel Panu
(1897), set in Russian Karelia where he had made his own pilgrimage in
1892. Aho studied folklore and knew both the practice of magic by the
old shamans. The eponymous hero is a shaman, the last champion of
paganism in the 17th-century Karelia. His antagonist is the local
parson, whose triumphant Christianity is not without corrupt shadows.
Panu's uncle Jorma preserves his pantheism and withdraws from the new
era ever farther into the forest. In many respects, Panu is related Knut Hamsun's Pan (1894), which expressed a pantheistic vision of the world. In 1897 the Ahos moved to Tuusula. Its lake shore attracted many artist, writers, and prominent personalities in Finnish cultural life, among others J.H. Erkko, Pekka Halonen, Eero Järnefelt, and Jean Sibelius. Aho liked to outdoor activities, long walks, mountain climbing, ski trips, and fishing, a pastime which he connected with spiritual values like Izaak Walton, whose classic book The Compleat Angler was familiar to him. Despite being an avid hunter, Aho did not hide his disgust at senseless slaughtering of the animals in his writings. From 1893 to 1903 Aho was a staff member of Uusi Kuvalehti. Besides biographies and memoirs, his later works include novels, such as Juha (1911), about adultery and suicide, Omatunto (1914), written while he was a member of the Board of Tustees of the Finnish National Theater, and Rauhan erakko (1916), about a man who lives in protest as a hermit in the Tyrolian Alps. Kevät ja takatalvi (1906) was an allegorically national awakening in the 1840s, and the political regression that followed it. In Juha an honest, hardworking settler, who is burdened by an ugly appearance and a lame leg, loses his young wife, Marja, to a Russian Karelian peddler, Shemeikka. Marja finds herself in Shemeikka's harem, and goes back with Juha when he comes to fetch her. When it becomes clear that Marja followed Shemeikka more than willingly, Juha lets his boat drift into the rapids, to suicide. Aho continued to write for another ten years or so, but he never again achieved the intensity of Juha.
As a writer Aho was highly respected and influential Finnish
politicians suggested him as the Finnish candidate for the Nobel Prize
in literature. He traveled in Italy and Switzerland and published from
this journeys travel books. Aho's later work depart from his realistic
beginnings. During the Finnish Civil War (1917-18), Aho did not escape from Helsinki, which was under the Red rule. He stayed at home, read Romain Rolland's Jean Christophe, and recorded his thought in Hajamieteitä kapinaviikoilta (1918-19). Politically, Aho was on the right, but when the Whites, with the help of German troops, conquered Helsinki, Aho wrote: "this was not a victory, but defeat – for everybody, the whole Finland." V.A. Koskenniemi referred to Edmond de Goncourt's Paris Under Siege, 1870-1871 in his review of the book. Koskenniemi expressed his strong reservations on Aho's compromise suggestions to the Reds, which Aho had recorded in his diary in February, but acknowledged Aho's idealism: it paves the way to mutual understanding and cooperation between social classes. ('Juhani Ahon kapina-muistelmat,' in Kirjoja ja kirjailijoita: kolmas sarja by V.A. Koskenniemi, 1922, p. 229) After the
war Aho tried to find the middle way between the Reds, who
were beaten, and the victorious Whites with their conservative culture
politics. Although he could not tolerate Bolshevism, as a liberal he
understood Socialists who advocated important social reforms. Aho's final novel
was the lyrical, impressionistic Muistatko -? (1920), in
which the main character tries to overcome the feeling of depression by
returning to childhood memories and fantasy. Aho died of diphteria, in Helsinki, on
August 8, 1921. He was given the state funeral and buried at the Iisalmi Old Cemetery. Rautatie, Juha, and short "shavings"
remained highly popular for decades. Mostly Aho was considered as a
"portrayer of people" and a humorist. For a modern reader Aho's
language still doesn't appear too
old-fashioned. The significance of
his work dealing with the educated class has been recognized since
1980s. In 1999 the film director Aki Kaurismäki made the fourth adaptation of Juha – exceptionally, it was a silent film. The television drama Venny (2003), directed by Pekka Ruohoranta and written by Liisa Urpelainen, was based on the triangle drama of Aho, Venny Soldan-Brofeldt, and Tilly Soldan. For further reading: '"Papin tytär,"' in Kirjoja ja kirjailijoita: toinen sarja by V.A. Koskenniemi (1918); 'Juhani Ahon kapina-muistelmat,' in Kirjoja ja kirjailijoita: kolmas sarja by V.A. Koskenniemi (1922); Juhani Ahon sanataide by Kaarlo Nieminen (1934); Juhani Aho by Antti J. Aho (1951); Kymmenen tutkielmaa Juhani Ahosta by Rafael Koskimies (1975); Juhani Aho by Juhani Niemi (1985); A History of Finland's Literature, edited by George C. Schoolfield (1998); Kuvassa oikealla Juhani Aho by Tarja-Liisa Hypén (1999); Neiti Soldan by Tuula Levo (2000 - note: a novel); Aika Pariisissa. Juhani Ahon ranskalainen kausi 1889-1890 by Jyrki Nummi (2002); Naisten mies ja aatteiden. Juhani Ahon elämäntaide by Panu Rajala (2011); Juhani Aho: myrskyisästä myllerryksestä seesteiseen suvantoon by Martti Turtola, Tarja Lappalainen (2014); Salonkielämää: rakkautta, riitoja ja kirjoittamisen paloa by Tarja Lappalainen (2014); Juhani Ahon "Juhan" dialogi by Pirkko Sallinen-Gimpl (2015); Alkukantaisuus ja tunteet: primitivismi 1900-luvun alun suomalaisessa kirjallisuudessa by Riikka Rossi (2020) Selected works:
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