  Choose another writer in this calendar: by name: by birthday from the calendar. TimeSearch |
|
Yrjö (Armas Kirso) Kivimies (1899-1980) - original name Uuno Armas Mattila - pen names: Kirso, Urbanus, Puumerkki |
|
Finnish writer, translator, columnist, and essayist, whose special fields were literature, history, and philology. As a critic Yrjö Kivimies was a genuine conservative, who admired classics, and opposed all that he considered modernist. His close friend, the writer and critic Kauko Kare, once said that Kivimies had "French brains and English sense of humor." On the literary scene Kivimies stayed away from the spotlight and produced most of his writing in fields often considered marginal to literature. During the period between the world wars, when many Finnish intellectuals were German-oriented, Kivimies translated works from British and American writers. "Epäilemättä raitiovaunu on nykyaikaisen filosofin paras ja ajanmukaisin havaintoposti. Vanhanajan elämäntarkastelija huomioi lähimmäisiään jalankulkijana toreilla ja kylpylöissä, ja siksi hän yleensä oli demokraatti, keskiajalla hän katseli heitä torneista ja pienistä kalteroiduista ikkunoista — ylipäätänsä lintuperspektiivistä — ja hänestä tuli monarkisti. Nykyaika havannoi milloin mistäkin — jopa orkesteri- eli matoperspektiivistäkin — ja senvuoksi se ei tunnusta mitään selvää väriä: mutta raitiovaunulla on kuitenkin monta yhtymäkohtaa yleiseen äänioikeuteen, eduskuntaan, joka on puhtaasti nykyajan tuote: molemmat ovat omnibus (kaikille), molemmat liikkuvat tasaisesti ennakolta viitoitettua latuaan ja pitävät pientä jyryä mennessään." ('Omnibus' (1931) by Yrjö Kivijärvi, in Suuri pakinakirja, edited by Tauno Karilas, Porvoo: Werner Söderström Osakeyhtiö, 1950, p. 218) Yrjö Kivimies was born Uuno Arman Mattila in Joensuu, the son of Enok Mattila, a contractor, and Maria (Paavola) Mattila. In an interview he recalled, that at school he was not the best student. He wrote to the school magazine, and was active in sports. Vilho Helanen was his schoolmate in Oulu. "Huomiota herätti joka tapauksessa jo tuolloin hänen ajatustensa terävyys, hänen persoonansa omaperäisyys." ('Yrjö Kivimies' by Kauko Kare, in Aleksis Kivestä Martti Merenmaahan: suomalaisten kirjailijain elämäkertoja, Porvoo: Werner Söderström Osakeyhtiö, 1954, p. 764) When he was fourteen
fourteen, Kivimies gave a public speech on the poetry of V. A.
Koskenniemi, the leading poet in Finland between the world
wars, at the Voluntary Fire Brigade House in Heinola. Later
Koskenniemi became his lifelong friend. Kivimies graduated from a
secondary school in Helsinki, and in 1919 – like Vilho Helanen – he participated in the independence struggle of
Estonia. Sotureita (1921)
drew from his experiences. Elsa Enäjärvi noted Kivimies's easy going
style in her review of the 1923 edition: "Kivimiehellä on "jutun"
häkeltymätön suhtautumistapa asioihin, ote enemmän toimintaa tehostava
kuin psykologinen, kertomistapa luistava ja vaivaton." ('Kuvauksia Viron retkeltä' by E. E—vi, Ylioppilaslehti, Vol. 24, No. 13, 1924, p. 238) For a short time Kivimies studied at the University of Helsinki, but then dropped out and devoted his time to chess and to freelance writing and translation. In the mid-1930s he worked for the publishing company Gummerus. For the publishing company WSOY he edited Helvi Hämäläinen's much debated novel Säädyllinen murhenäytelmä (1941). During his career Kivimies contributed under 50 different pseudonyms columns to Uusi Suomi, Suomen Kuvalehti, Kuva, and Seura. A born conversationalist in the tradition of Samuel Johnson, he was one of the central figures of the artist café Bronda. Kivimies read such writers as Diderot, Winckelman, and
Burckhardt, whose culture historical views influenced his own thinking,
but as a translator he began in the 1920s with Rudyard
Kipling's stories, and continued with works by Mark
Twain, Edgar Allan Poe,
and Edgar Wallace. He also translated non-fiction and popular science
books. Yasunari Kawabata's Yukiguni
(1937) and Junichiro Tanizaki's Tade
kuu mushi
(1929) were not translated from the original language, the former was
made from English and German translations and the latter from English
and French translations. Both were published by Tammi in the Keltainen kirjasto (yellow library) series. In 1926 Kivimies travelled with Tahko Pihkala to the United States. This journey produced a highly popular travel book, "Tahkon" mukana jenkkien maassa (1928, published by WSOY). The friends bought a small car from Chicago, it was a Nash, and drove to Iowa City, then from Fort Benning and Augusta to New York, about 4 500 miles. There was no safety belts in the vehicle and "Tahko" started to plan "suspenders" that would keep the driver and passengers on the seat when the car was bumping on the bad roads. Kivimies's Pidot tornissa (1937), published by
Gummerus, gained a wide publicity. In the conservative cultural
atmosphere of Finland, it tried to introduce more or less fresh ideas,
but at the same time the discussion is characterized by chauvinism,
rejection of left-wing ideas (the Communist Party was illegal in Finland),
and fundamental mistrust in the broad masses of the people, a notion
that the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset had crystallized in The
Revolt of the Masses (1929). For the book Kivimies collected representantives of the younger generation around a table to discuss anonymously about various subjects. The conversation was recorded by Kivimies. Among the participants of this meeting in the Hotel Torni were Martti Haavio ('the Docent') Urho Kekkonen ('the Minister'), Matti Kurjensaari ('the Radical'), Olavi Paavolainen, ('the Cultural Traveler'), Tatu Vaaskivi ('the Writer'), and Lauri Viljanen ('the Aesthete'). Kivimies's own pseudonym was 'the Conservative'. (Kansakunnan resonoivat muistot: Olavi Paavolaisen jatkosodan päiväkirja Synkkä yksinpuhelu I-II (1946) kansallisen identiteettiprojektin uudelleenarviona by Antti Vesikko, Jyväskylän yliopisto, pro gradu, 2011) His skeptical comments dealt often with cultural history. Later the conversation continued with new participants and topics in Toiset pidot tornissa (edited by Eino S. Repo, 1954), Pidot Aulangolla (edited by Erno Paasilinna, 1963), and Pidot Suomessa (edited by Erno Paasilinna, 1972). Nowadays the opinions presented in Pidot tornissa are mostly outdated. Toisen asteen ihmisiä (1938), marking Kivimies's debut as a novelist, sold poorly. It developed further his comments as 'the Conservative' in Pidot
tornissa.
The protagonist is a student, and the story mostly focuses on
discussion of four eccentric polymaths in a second-hand bookshop. Tatu
Vaaskivi gave the novel a positive review: "Kivimiehen suppeassa
romaaniesikoisessa tapaa oikestaan ne ainekset, joiden varaan
voitaisiin luoda suomalaisen 30-luvun satiirinen huoneenpeili. Sen
raiskähtelevä vuorosanojen vaihto puhuu itse puolestaan." ('Harmaa runotar' by T. Vaaskivi, Suomalainen Suomi, No. 9, 1938, p. 531) Kaksikymmentä, Kivimies's first collection of short
stories, came out in 1943. From 1931 onwards Kivimies put out four
collections of columns, Senaattorin sankarityö (1931,
published by Gummerus), Tyhmyydestä sakotetaan (1937,
published by Gummerus), Kantaäidin kylkiluu ja muita
senttauksia (1953, published by Tammi), and Neljäkymmentäneljä
pakinaa (1959, published by Tammi). The publishing company
Tammi was founded in 1943 by an initiative of the Social Democratic
leader Väinö Tanner. In the 1930s, Kivimies formed a friendship with the
Russian-born film director Teuvo Tulio and wrote with him two film
scripts, Taistelu Heikkilän talosta (1936), based on Johannes
Linnankoski's short story about an embittered farm hand, and Nuorena
nukkunut (1937), a version of F.E. Sillanpää's novel (The Maid
Silja / Fallen Asleep While Young). The outcome of their
cooperation was surprisingly successful, although Tulio was known for
his melodramatic sense of doom and Kivimies was more subdued and had a
different kind of humor. In Taistelu Heikkilän talosta Kivimies softened the story and added a prologue. Kivimies and the director received good reviews, his screenplay was considered faithful to the original work. Teuvo Tulio made a new version of the story in 1947, under the title Intohimon vallassa. Kivimies revised Nuorena nukkunut seven times, and and did not dealt with the traumatic Civil War of 1917-18, a controversial theme at that time, in the script. A scene in which a farmer peeps the young Silja, who is in sauna, was later cut out. Alone Kivimies wrote the scripts for Laulu tulipunaisesta kukasta (1938), based again on Linnankoski's work, Kiusaus (1938), love drama about a fisherman, priest and two women, and Varaventtiili (1942), based on a popular novel depicting love problems of a teacher. During the Continuation War between Finland and the Soviet Union (1941-44), when Äänislinna was occupied by Finnish troops, Kivimies went there with the writers Toivo Pekkanen and Lauri Viljanen and the composer Sulho Ranta. He traveled also in Germany and gave an account of his impressions in Eurooppalainen veljeskunta: runoilijamatka halki Saksan (1942). As a representantive the Union of Finnish Writers, he signed the founding document of the "Europäische Schriftstellervereinigung" (European Writer's League), founded under auspices of Joseph Goebbels. Though Kivimies was not a supporter of Nazi policies, Eurooppalainen veljeskunta became after the war a banned book and it was removed from libraries. While
being employed by the publishing company Oy Suomen Kirja, Kivimies
was the superior of the writer Eeva-Liisa Manner (1921-1995); he was
her first great love. Between 1946 and 1948 Kivimies worked
as the subeditor of the journal Suomalainen Suomi.
In 1949, at the age of fifty, he married Kaarina Saarnivaara. As a translator, Kivimies was faithful to the original text, not word by word. His translation flows naturally, and follows grammar and spelling rules. Kivimies's version of Mark Twain's The Advntures of Huckleberry Finn (1927, Huckleberry Finnin seikkailut) gives a somewhat distorted impression of the novel. All of its main characters speak in dialect, which is essential in the original text. But the language of the first-person narrator, who is Huckleberry himself, has been more or less standardised in the Finnish translation. Jim's style of speech is basically the same as in Twain's work: that of an uneducated person. His dialect is thick. What becomes of Kivimies's version, Jim don't have the ability to inflect verbs and nous correctly. However, it is not a proper dialect of its own, but Tarzan's English. "You don't know about me, without you have read a book by the name of "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," but that ain't no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied, one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary." (Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sayer's Comrade) by Mark Twain, with one hundred and seventy-four illustrations, New York: Charles L. Webster and Company, 1885, p. 2) A language purist, Kivimies became in the 1950s one of the major opponents of modernist currents in literature, firmly holding to his beliefs, despite pressures and the breakthrough of modernism and its ultimate acceptance. He was appointed a member of the National Council for Literature (Valtion kirjallisuuslautakunta) in 1961 . After the appearance Pentti Saarikoski's
translation of Salinger's novel The Catcher in the Rye,
(1961, Sieppari ruispellossa), Kivimies attacted it in Suomalainen Suomi in a review headed 'Teos ja väärennys' (The original and the fraud).
Kivimies argued that Salinger is a New Yorker
man
and thus inclined to make fun of the language of the low brows. The
real Holden Caulfield, the narrator, is a well educated schoolboy.
"It is all very unappealing," was Kivimies's conclusion. ('Norms and Storms: Pentti
Saarikoski’s Translations of J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye'
by Laura Routti, The Electronic Journal of the Department of English at
the University of Helsinki, 2001)
However, the problem was
not the Helsinki slang ("stadin slangi"), but Saarikoski's superficial
knowledge of it. Moreover, he took liberties with the original text;
the protagonist's vocabulary drove Saarikoski almost to despair. A new
translation of Salinger's novel by Arto Schroderus came out in 2004. Kivimies's synonym dictionary, published by Suomen kirja in 1946, and a phrase
dictionary published by Tammi in 1964, were widely read in
their time. Curiously, despite being a literary stylist, Kivimies recommended
a number of worn out
phrases for general use, such as "ajan hammas" (the teeth of time), and
"näki päivän valon" (saw the daylight). Kivimies's etymological
explanations of words reflected his
wide knowledge of cultural history, but are sometimes racist.
"Keltainen vaara" (yellow peril) has become according to Kivimies
"political reality at present." (Näinkin voi sanoa: suomen kielen
fraseologiaa by Yrjö Kivimies, Helsinki: Tammi, 1964, p.
137) In 1956 Kivimies received the Linnankoski Award and in 1959 the Mikael Agricola Award. He was awarded in 1960 a Ph.D. (h.c.) at the University of Turku. Yrjö Kivimies died in Helsinki on March 18, 1980. For further reading: 'Tornin pidot - korkokuva 30-luvusta?,' in Ajan paineessa: kirjoituksia 1930-luvun suomalaisesta aatemaailmasta, edited by Pertti Karkama, Hanne Koivisto (1999); 'Kivimies, Yrjö,' in Suomalaisia kirjailijoita: Jöns Buddesta Hannu Ahoon by Lasse Koskela (1990); Yrjö Kivimies 8.12.1899-18.3. 1980: muistojulkaisu, edited by Kauko Kare (1980); 'Yrjö Kivimies' by Kauko Kare, in Aleksis Kivestä Martti Merenmaahan: suomalaisten kirjailijain elämäkertoja (1954) Selected works:
|
