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Juhani Peltonen (1941 - 1998) |
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Finnish novelist, playwright and poet, who depicted mythological, larger-than-life -characters with affection, humour and psychological understanding. Among Juhani Peltonen's best known figures is Elmo, a super athlete, who falls on 100 meters run, but wins the race, and makes a new world record. The author's melancholic view of the world is lightened by absurdity and themes of romantic love and longing. Elokellarin vokabulaarissa Juhani Peltonen was born in Tuusula, the son of Jorma Angervo
Peltonen, a salaried employee, and Kerttu Maria (Taivola) Peltonen, a.
clerk. During summer holidays from the school learned seafaring as a
ship's boy (1956-59) -
his uncle had been a
seaman before he became an agronomist. At home Peltonen shared his room
with his grandmother, and listened with her radio plays in the
evenings. Because Peltonen could not discern red and green, he had to forget his plans to become a seaman. He read works by Gogol, Dostoevsky, Kafka, Camus, and published his first columns at the school magazine. He said in 1988: "I'm always taking Chekhov or Dostoyevsky down from the shelves and reading their old, familiar, beloved words." ('The comi-tragedist' by Erkka Lehtola, in Books from Finland, No. 2, 1988) Peltonen graduated from the secondary school in Kerava in
1961, and after serving in the Navy, he entered the University of
Helsinki, where he studied literature and art history from 1962 to 1965.
He also contributed to the student magazine Ylioppilaslehti. With the translator Juhani Koskinen and the poet Pentti Saaritsa he formed the "Hermetic Gang". At the cafe of the university, they occasionally sat with the Marxist philosopher Pertti Lindfors. Peltonen's first serious literary efforts, a novel and radio play, came back with rejection slips. In 1965 he married Tuula Anneli Nykänen, a sales manager. They had two children. After winning novel series in J. H. Erkko's writing competition, Peltonen made his debut as a poet at the age of 23 with the collection Ihmisiät (1964), published by Otava. From the same years he devoted himself entirely to writing. He typed away every weekday from nine in the morning to three in the afternoon. On his journey to Sweden, Peltonen read Franz Kafka's novel Amerika. With Pekka Suhonen, he translated H. W. Janson's acclaimed survey History of Art (1962) into Finnish under the title Suuri taidehistoria (1965). Throughout his life, Peltonen had a passion for
traveling. His carnivalesque letters to his friends around the
world form a kind of extension of his poems and stories. While in
Copenhagen, where Peltonen went after receiving a travel
stipend
from the Union of Finnish Writers, he briefly shared an apartment with
the cinephile critic Peter von Bagh, the Executive Director of the
Finnish Film Archive. When Peltonen visited Rome, he saw there Bernardo
Bertolucci's film Novecento
(1976, Twentieth Century) in cinema. He regarded the polemics against
the film as the most certain sign that it was an ingenius work of art. (Kirjailijan koti: esseitä ja puheenvuoroja by Arto Virtanen, Helsinki: Tammi, 2006, p. 238) The most famous short story in Peltonen's second book, Vedenalainen melodia (1965) is 'Orjien kasvattaja,' which was anthologized in Uuden proosan parhaita (1969, edited by Pekka Tarkka) and has been translated into English as 'The Slave Breeder' in The Dedalus Book of Finnish Fantasy
(2005, edited by Johanna Sinisalo, translated by David Hackston). This Kafkaesque horror
story tells of a Werner Reiss, who abandons bourgeois life
and retreats into his castle. He becomes a master of slaves,
whom he transforms into grotesque beings. Eventually his sadistic reign ends: like Doctor Moreau,
he is destroyed by one of his own creations. "Onko "Orjien kasvattaja"
kauhukirjallisuutta? Se on fantasiaa ja sen näkemys on vahvasti
groteski, ja lisäksi sen kuvissa on pelottavaa voimaa . . . Ehkä se
kuuluu laajempaan oudon ("weird") kirjallisuuden lajityyppiin, josta
kauhukirjallisuus on vain osa." (Kuoleman usvaa ja pimeyttä: suomalaisen kauhukirjallisuuden historia by Juri Nummelin, Helsinki: Oppian, 2020, p. 204) Oudot minät (1966) was a collection of romantic
or nostalgic poems and fragments tinted with surrealistic or whimsical
colour. "Pehmeimmilläänkään eivät kokoelman rakkausrunot lankea
sentimentaalisiksi; niissä on kauneutta ja aitoutta sekä riittämiin
konkreettisia siteitä tähän maailmaan – vaikutelma joka syntyy Peltosen
yhdistäessä toisiinsa abstraktin monimielisiä, usein surrealismin
sukuisia kuvioita ja arkea, sen asiallisuutta." ('Päistikkailla kiipeilemässä' by Tuukka Kangasluoma, Helsingin Sanomat, No. 196, 24.07.1966, p. 11) Felix Navitan etu- ja takaraivo (1967) introduced Peltonen as a successor of Lauri Viita in the mastery of wordplays: "Täynnä kuin / Turusen inkivääri," "Luu viulusta helää, / puoli luuta sellosesta, / toti torvesta rustotkaan," "Soisin soivani!," "Mi ja Po / liiseja kummatkin". Many of the poems had first appeared in the student newspaper Ylioppilaslehti. At night, mopeds and swearwords crackle in the village. The fruitful combination of silent observations and witty insights continued in Kesken asumisen (1968) and Pitkää, omalaatuista rykimistä (1974). Peltonen's later collections, Välimatkakirja (1984) and Näköisveistos ruumiskirstusta (1987),
about death, loss and loneliness, were somewhat more serious. "Olen
yksin. Tällä alalla / ei tunneta työttömyyttä." (I'm alone. In
this line of work / there's no unemployment.) ('Olen yksin,' from Näköisveistos ruumiskirstusta, in Koko valittu runous: runoja vuosilta 1964-1887 by Juhani Peltonen, Helsinki: Werner Söderström Osakeyhtiö, 2007, p. 264) Salomo ja Ursula (1967), Peltonen's first novel, gained an immediate success. "The exuberance, which Peltonen offers with his text, must be praised: only a bold writer can be so generous," wrote Pekka Suhonen. ('Asunnottomat ja puheliaat' by Pekka Suhonen, in Parnasso, No. III, 1968, p. 174) The novel was inspired by a newspaper article, which told about a young couple, who had difficulties in finding accommodation for them and their child to be born. Salomo meets Ursula in a park -
she
is eating a pear and asks her, do you know what is "Otto tenet mappam,
madidam mappam tenet Otto." Ursula has no Latin palindromes to make an
impression. Through the story she acts as stooge for Salomo. They spent
time in restaurant, railway station and after
they are thrown out from Salomo's small room, in a ghostly church.
Finally the young couple
finds a place to live between railway tracks. Salomo, who plays piano,
can't stand the noise. Ursula becomes pregnant. Like in a Shakespeare's
play, the story ends tragically. Salomo is killed after being hit by a
lorry
and Ursula commits suicide in a public toilet by a razor blade.Peltonen's surrealistic
love story of modern day Romeo and Julia was adapted into a television
film and widely read over two decades at schools. Valaan merkkejä (1973), which marked Peltonen's
move from Otava to WSOY publishing company, is an ambitious
surrealistic novel. The protagonist,
Joona Hemmermain, dreams about a neglected manor house, flower shop,
and whaling
ship, but he lives under the harsh reality of the tycoon Mundixon. He
is an Orwellian Big Brother, who has a special lead pointed chrome boot
to kick his subordinates whenever he fancies it. At the
end Joona kills Mundixon by biting his throat and escapes to freedom
with his family by climbing up a rope
into the sky. In the 1960s and 1970s Peltonen wrote several works for Yleisradio Oy, the national public broadcasting company, among them the radio plays Elmo, urheilija (1978) and Elmo - muu maailma (1978). Lars Svedberg, who had cooperated with Peltonen in the radio drama Kohti maailman sydäntä, directed these productions. The texts were later enlarged into a novel, titled simply Elmo (1978). The English translation of the play received an honorary prize at a cultural festival in Montreux in 1979. It has been argued that in Finland literature à theme sportif was connected with Juha Väätäinen's two gold medals in the Olympic Games of 1972 and Lasse Virén's four gold medals in the Olympic Games of 1972 and 1976. The latest edition of Elmo was published in 2011. "The most accurate characterization of the novel Elmo
is that is perhaps a burlesque satire of the outworn and politically
problematic nationalistic metaphors in circulation in Finnish public
life in general." ('Nature Boys, Supermen, Fanatics: Perspectives on Finnishness in Three Sports Novels' by Henrik Meinander, in Sport, Literature, Society: Cultural Historical Studies, edited by Alexis Tadié, J. A. Mangan and Supriya Chaudhuri, London and New York: Routledge, 2014, pp. 104-106) Originally, in an unfinished manunscript, the
protagonist was
a
master guitar player, not an athlete. With this book Peltonen made his
breakthrough as the forefront satirist in Finland. The dialogue imitated
the
nationalistic language of sports commentators (especially that of Raimo
"Höyry" Häyrinen and Paavo Noponen). Especially sports fanatics
adopted Elmo as their hero, quite contrary to the purposes of the
author, whose work opposed all forms of national chauvinism. One
internationally successful Finnish
decathlonist, Petri Keskitalo, was even nicknamed "Elmo." Peltonen's multi-talented super-athlete, member of the athletic club
Kainalniemen Hiki (Armpitpeninsula Sweat), is interested in
church architecture and growing of apples. Elmo is an unbeatable
single-man football team, he plays card during a marathon, smokes a
pipe in the 10,000-metre run, but wins
all the competitions,
even after falling in the 100-metre final: "Ensimmäinen lähtö onnistui!
Miehet räjähtävät matkaan! Elmo kaatuu! Elmo on nurin! Nousee
pystyyn!Saavuttaa muut! Viimeiset metrit! Menee ohi! Heittäytyy!
Voittaa! Mikä ihmeellinen juoksu!" (Elmo by Juhani Peltonen, Porvoo: Werner Söderström Osakeyhtiö, 3rd ed., 1978, p. 101) Elmo's good friend is the Hungarian athlete Endre Kiss, who takes the silver medals. A pacifist, Elmo doesn't want that sports
achievements are celebrated by military music, he prefers Järnefelt's
'Berceuse'.
(Traditionally, every time a Finnish athlete won a gold medal in a
major international sports event, 'March
of The Pori Regiment' was played on radio or television.) Finally,
after being disappointed in love, Elmo joins a circus and is shot as a
human cannonball into the space. "Mutta jotkut ihmeelliset voimat
olivat sekaantuneet tähän aavikkotivolin arkiseen tapahtumaan. Elmo
nimittäin lävisti nahkamaton yhtenä suhahduksena, kääntyi sen jälkeen
pystyasentoon ja alkoi korviahuumaavalla jylinällä ja pauhulla kohota
korkeuksiin niin kuin kantoraketit Cape Kennedyssä ja Baikonurissa.
Pian hän oli kadonnut näkymättömiin." (Ibid., p. 277) Elmo becomes a satellite in the night sky. Osuma- ja harharetkiä (2005) collected Peltonen's travel essays written for Helsingin Sanomat between November 1974 and February 1985. Empowered by his own version of religion, which Peltonen called orthodox mysticism, he often went to the Soviet Union. However, his fiction had more parallels with Magic Realism than with Russian classics, except Anton Chekhov, who influenced him most strongly. (Gabriel García Márquez's foundational novel One Hundred Years of Solitude came out in Finnish in 1972.) Peltonen was also interested in Latin American and Spanish poetry. In Iloisin suru (1986) Peltonen continued his religious meditations. The story portrayed a deputy Lutheran minister, Sauli Rekelä, whose wife and daughter have left him. The only joy in the gloomy life of Rekelä is his relationship with his 11-year old son Aleksi. In Jumalan kuopus (1980) life is a dream, novel a fiction, and God is a fascist. Peltonen considered that Välimatkakirja (A traveller's guide to intervals), Iloisin suru (The happiest sadness), a novel about a deputy parson, and Näköisveistos ruumiskirstusta (An effigy of a coffin), formed a kind of trilogy about loneliness. An
outsider like his fictional characters, Peltonen occasionally wrote of himself in the third person – he is P., Ivan Jormanovitš Malopoljev, Koito Susirenka, know-how-mies,
and Matkamies Maan. After several tragicomic attempts to visit
Chekhov's estate in Melikhovo, Peltonen eventually managed to see the
place with the help of Kalevi Sorsa, Finland's Prime Minister. Peltonen
become acquainted with him in 1963 in Paris, where Sorsa at that time
worked for the Unesco. Much of his life Peltonen lived in Korso, in a house called "Villa
Orrela" on the Orion road 6. In the late 1970s he was forced to leave his home and his dear
Chekhovian apple orchard due to construction work, which totally changed the
idyllic area. Orrela was pulled down; it was a
deep blow to Peltonen. He even appealed to Sorsa through a letter in
1978: "Allekirjoittaneelle, joka on elänyt "Orrelassa" 35 vuotta ja
tehnyt tästä ajasta päätoimista kirjallista työtä 15 vuotta, on
nimenomaan tämä puutarha merkinnyt vähintään samaa kuin esim. Tapperin
kuululle veljessarjalle saarijärveläinen koskimaisema tai taidemaalari
Alpo Jaakolalle loimaalainen pajukko." (Kirjeitä hullunmyllystäni: kirjeitä ja kortteja vuosilta 1962-1996 by Juhani Peltonen, edited by Antti Seppä, Helsinki: Werner Söderström Osakeyhtiö, 2009, p. 123) Peltonen settled with his family in
Loppi. He bought a school house, "Heikkilä's old school," where
he began small scale sheep farming. In the new surroundings, he wrote
two darkly hilarious collections of poems, several radio plays, three
novels, and four collections of stories. Juhani Peltonen died in Loppi, on
February 27, 1998. Kuolemansairauteen rinnastettava syli-ikävä (1991) was Peltonen's final novel, set in the war years 1808-09, which led to Finland's
annexation to the Russian Empire and end of the Swedish rule. A group
of prisoners is taken to Russia. Captain Värnhjelm leaves his nostalgic
farewells to his country, wife Ottiliana and daughters Catharina and
Sofia. He discusses with the feverish Major af Åkerlille about death on
the way to a small village on the banks of the river Volga. There af
Åkerlille meets the youngest daughter of a prince, Marfusa. She tells
that she don't believe in God – God is bitter, disappointed and lonely.
"Me too," answers af Åkerlille. Pensasaidan takana (1993), a radio play, was based on a short story published in Puisto jouluksi (1990). The central characters are two old people (in the radio adaptation the actors Pentti Siimes and Elina Pohjanpää, a real life couple), who began to plan a life together. For further reading: 'Nature Boys, Supermen, Fanatics: Perspectives on Finnishness in Three Sports Novels' by Henrik Meinander, in Sport, Literature, Society: Cultural Historical Studies, edited by Alexis Tadié, J.A. Mangan and Supriya Chaudhuri (2014); 'Juhani Peltonen ja "vedenalaiset" maailmat' by Irma Perttula, in Groteski suomalaisessa kirjallisuudessa (2010); 'Poem of Our Land,' in A Way to Measure Time: Contemporary Finnish Literature, edited by Bo Carpelan, Veijo Meri, Matti Suurpää (1992); 'Juhani Peltonen,' in Miten kirjani ovat syntyneet. 3, Virikkeet, ainekset, rakenteet, edited by Ritva Haavikko (1991); 'Juhani Peltonen,' in Suomalaisia nykykirjailijoita by Pekka Tarkka (1989); 'The comi-tragedist' by Erkka Lehtola, in Books from Finland, No. 2 (1988) Selected works:
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