  Choose another writer in this calendar: by name: by birthday from the calendar.
TimeSearch |
|
Larin-Kyösti (1873-1948) - pseudonym of Karl Gustaf Larson; Kaarlo Kyösti Larson |
|
Finnish writer, who gained fame
with his ballads and humorous folk-song-alike poems, such as 'Heilani
on kuin helluntai,' 'Soitin pillillä' and 'Tuulan tei'. As a poet
Larin-Kyösti was ambitious and productive, but he never had similar
position in the consciousness of people as his friend Eino Leino (1878-1926) had. Between 1897 and
1924, he published forty volumes, mostly verse. Today, some of
Larin-Kyösti's most loved poems are often mistaken for Finnish folk
songs. My love is like the Whitsuntide Karl Gustaf Larson (Larin-Kyösti) was born in Hämeenlinna, the
son of Gustaf Israel Larson, a restaurateur, and Sofia Vilhelmina Skog.
His parents were Swedish immigrants but Larin-Kyösti grew up in Finnish
surrounding and adopted Finnish for his language. However, the
influence of the Swedish poets, Bellman – especially
in the early poems – and Gustaf Fröding, is seen in Larin-Kyösti's work. With Eino Leino, he shared
enthusiasm for neoromantic themes and motifs. In his childhood Larin-Kyösti's favorite books included Daniel
Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Alexandre Dumas's Three Musketeers,
and selected stories from The One Thousand and One Night.
His father, who was an amateur ventriloquist and had artistic talent,
committed suicide in 1884 – gambling debts had got him into
trouble and he eventually he cut his wrists with a piece of mirror.
When recalling his early years, Larin-Kyösti
spoke lovingly of his father, from whom he had inherited an interest
in music. Larin-Kyösti's mother continued to take care of the family
business. While studying at the Hämeenlinna Lyceum, Larin-Kyösti became
friends with Eino Leino, who was five years his junior, but a
precocious poet. Together they wrote and discussed poetry, drank wine
and punch, and eventually they both graduated in 1895, although
Larin-Kyösti failed the mathematics exam. Throughout his time in
school,
he had problems with mathematics, and he had to repeat a year, a couple
of times. After graduating, Larin-Kyösti and Leino went to Aulanko,
where they rented a small room for the summer. Leino translated
Runeberg while Larin-Kyösti amused himself by playing his five-string
kantele. Larin-Kyösti's first poems appeared the handwritten school
papers Joci Baccalaureus and Vasama, and in the local newspaper Hämeen
Sanomat. In his writing aspirations he was encouraged by the elder
poet J.H. Erkko. With the help of Kasimir Leino
(1866-1916), Eino Leino's brother, Larin-Kyösti debuted as a poet in
1897 with the collection Tän pojan kevätrallatuksia
(This
lad's spring-lilts), published under the name Kyösti Larson.
There was quite a lot of joyfullness in the poems – their joie de vivre
(a rare feature in Finnish poetry) was greeted as "a fresh
breeze to our young song lyrics" by J. H. Erkko in his review. "Ne ovat
raikkaasti väritettyjä vilkkaan toiminnan lauluja, useimmat keveästi
iloisia ja tuovat virkeän tuulahduksen nuoreen laulurunouteemme. Perin
kansanomaisella luonteeltaan uurtavat ne taiderunoudella tietä kansan
kesken." ('Kyösti Larson, Tän pojan kevätralaltuksia' by J. H. E., Valvoja, No 11, November 1897, p. 525) The first edition of 1,300 copies was sold out in a
month, and Larin-Kyösti decided to devote himself entirely to
writing. For his early collections, Larin-Kyösti found subjects from
his childhood at the City of Hämeenlinna, Häme province, and from its
villages. These books presented hims as a carefree vagabond, a singer
of merry springtunes, but later, especially in his long narrative
poems, the tone became more serious. During his Sturm und Drang years
Larin-Kyösti travelled
widely in Carelia and Lapland, producing from his experiences new works. Following a long bout of heavy drinking in 1904,
Larin-Kyösti was hospitalized for a month. In 1906, Larin-Kyösti went to Italy. He had a spiritual crisis, worsened by physical illness which
required hospitalization. On the journey, he stabbed himself with a
switchblade, and was sent to a asylum, first in Bologna, France, and
then in Florence, Italy. On his return back to Finland, he
tried to hang himself in a train toilet. Larin-Kyösti's depression was
reflected in Vuorivaeltaja
(1908), and the symbolist drama Ad astra (1906),
inspired by August Strindberg's A Dream Play (1902). Noteworthy, Larin-Kyösti was one of the few people from
Hämeenlinna, also Jean Sibelius' home town, with whom the composer kept
in touch. But when Larin-Kyösti asked him to write music for Ad astra,
Sibelius declined: he had read Larin-Kyösti's work in Finnish and admire
it, but he was preoccupied with
other projects. In Ad astra, the
protagonist, Taituri, wavers
between love and art,
happiness to despair. Other character also change, and the logic of the
play follows the logic of a dream. The literary scholar Rafael
Koskimies thought that Larin-Kyösti was a long way out of his familiar
ground; "the lute and the accordion were his instruments, not great
organ music." "Välitön laulaja oli Ad astrassa
etsiytynyt korkeasti kirjalliselle ja myös ajankohtaiselle vuoritielle,
joka sittenkään ei ollut hänen itsenäisin tiensä. Luuttu ja hanuri
olivat hänen soittovälineitään, ei suuri urkumusiikki. Niitä hän käytti
vaihtelevalla onnella pitkän ikänsä lopulle saakka."
(Rafael Koskimies, in Suomen kirjallisuus. 4, Minna Canthista Eino Leinoon, edited by Matti Kuusi, Simo Konsala, Helsinki: Suomalaisen kirjallisuuden seura: Otava,1965) Never a great success in Finland, the play
was staged in 1937 at the Hungarian National Theatre (Nemzeti Színház)
in Budapest. Larin-Kyösti sent the English translation to Somerset
Maugham, who replied with a letter saying, he read the play "with great
interest," but suggested that it should be "rewritten by someone who
understood naturalistic dialogue". When
Maila Talvio created at her home on the Eläintarhantie in
Helsinki
a literary salon, Larin-Kyösti frequented it, along with the Leino
brothers, J. H. Erkko, Ilmari Kianto, L. Onerva, Otto Manninen, and many
young radicals of the time. In addition, he was often seen sitting at
Bronda, a popular gathering place for artists, writers, and
musicians, but by the 1920s he had moved out of his bohemian lifestyle,
and turned into a "petty-bourgeois penny pincher", as his friend Arvi
Kivimaa said. He remained a bachelor throughout his life, but he was
much admired by the ladies. Between 1919 and 1920 he corresponded with
the Norwegian writer Katharina Gjesdahl, who he had met at a writers'
congress in Copenhagen. Larin-Kyösti's writing was inspired by his love for the old
world and its forms of poetry. Ballaadeja ja muita runoja
(1913, Ballads and other poems), which contains also a poem situated in
Spain, 'The Last of the Moors,' and Korpinäkyjä I-II (1915,
1917, Visions of the wilds), which Eino Leino regarded as his most
mature work, brought to his lyrics romantic visions, fairies, elfs and
the
mysticism of ancient times. Some examples of these are 'Filippo Lippi
ja Lucrezia
Buti,' 'Kuisma ja Helinä,' and 'Korven kosto'. Tein minä pajusta hilpeän huilun,
In total, Larin-Kyösti published some 50 books, novels, short stories, poems, song lyrics, music plays as Ulkosaarelaiset (1922, Outer islanders), memoirs, and translated into Finnish works by Gustaf Fröding and Strindberg. Ulkosaarelaiset was adapted to screen in 1938, but it did not receive good reviews and its film and sound material has been destroyed. Two volumes of his collected poems Larin-Kyösti edited by himself. He had the habit of making changes in his poems, but he rejected J. P. Hannikainen's immensely popular choir adaptation of 'Kevätsointuja' (original title: 'Keväisiä sointuja 2', from Kulkurin lauluja, 1899). Hannikainen modified the lyrics without Larin-Kyösti's permission, and he never reprinted the song version in any of his volumes of collected verse. During his career Larin-Kyösti
became one of the best-known ballad poets. The critic and scholar
Rafael Koskimies considered him a collector whose affections are guided
by some kind of blind instinct. (Koskimies,
in Suomalaisia kirjailijoita XX vuosisadan
alussa, Porvoo: WSOY, 1927) His
poems have been set to music by Leevi Madetoja ('Hämärän ääniä,'
'Kehtolaulu,' 'Itkisit joskus illoin', etc.), Oskar Merikanto
('Reppurin laulu,' 'Itkevä huilu,' 'Kevätsointuja', etc.), Erkki
Melakoski ('Kulkurin kannel,' 'Suvisia suruja', etc.), Jean Sibelius
('Humoreski,' 'Ne pitkän matkan kulkijat'), and other composers.
Vesa-Matti Loiri's version of
'Itkevä huilu' (I made a willow whistle), recorded in 1971, has
remained an evergreen: "Tein minä pajusta hilpeän huilun, mut en ääntä
ma siihen saanut". Other interpreters of the songs include Mauno
Kuusisto, Jorma Hynninen, Matti Tuloisela, Martti Talvela, Kim Borg,
Matti Salminen, Tauno Palo, and Tapani Kansa. In
1912, Larin-Kyösti moved to Oulunkylä (now part of Helsinki),
where he lived in a shabby house on the
Jokiniementie for the rest of his life,
mostly alone, although for some time the writer, lyricist and
entertainer Tatu
Pekkarinen (1892-1951) and his wife rented the downstairs. After the
Finnish Civil War, Larin-Kyösti published six books in a two years
period. In the 1920s, he travelled in
France, Estonia, and Hungary, and had his poems translated into several
European languages, but his tendency to promote himself as an
international writer was criticized by his
colleagues. However, he was appointed member of
Petöfi
Association and vice president of the International Mark Twain Society.
The Austrian author Stefan Zweig answered him emphatically in 1933,
that it was difficult to promote foreign literature in the
German-speaking world because of the politically oppressive atmosphere.
At the upper levels of the Finnish literary elite Larin-Kyösti's work
was ignored.
Only three persons paid a visit to him in Oulunkylä, when he celebrated
his 50th birthday. In 1925, he was
granted a state writer's pension. Larin-Kyösti became a member of the
Europäische Schriftsteller-Vereinigung (European Writers' Union) in
1942; the organization was Nazi-dominated. Basically both a romantic
troubadour (as Eino Leino defined him) and a pragmatist
cosmopolitian, Larin-Kyösti was more motivated by financial than
political considerations. Eino
Leino once wrote
that Larin-Kyösti is "one of our most independent and original poets,
maybe because of that he has been always a little bit apart, somewhat
an outsider". "Olisi synti sanoa häntä kansalliseksi uusromantikoksi. .
. . Hän on meidän itsenäisimmin ja omaperäisimmin kehittyneitä
runoilijoitamme, juuri siksi, että hän on kaiken aikaa seisonut
ikäänkuin hiukan syrjässä, ikäänkuin hiukan ulkopuolella." ('Suomalaisia kirjailijoita. Toinen sarja. II: Larin-Kyösti,' Sunnuntai,
N:o 14, 9. huhtikuuta, 1916, p. 1) The poet's sympathy for marginalized groups came to fore in the erotic novella Ilotyttö
(1919), about a servant girl drawn into prostitution. At Eino Leino's funeral in Helsinki in January 1926,
Larin-Kyösti was
one of the coffin bearers together with Viljo Tarkiainen, Santeri
Ivalo, Otto Manninen, Huugo Jalkanen, Joel Lehtonen, and V. J.
Lehtonen. Larin-Kyösti died in Oulunkylä on December 2, 1948. When he
was still at the height
of his literary powers, he wrote in Juvenilia
(1927), his book of memoir, that the face of death is gentle, like the
face of
an old doctor, but the face of life can be hard – like sphinx's face.
Larin-Kyösti Association was founded in September 1952 in Hämeenlinna.
Since Larin-Kyösti had no heirs, he bequeathed his house with its
estate
to the Union of Finnish Writers, in which he was an active member. For further reading: 'Nuoruuden muistoja' by Larin Kyösti, in Kuinka meistä tuli kirjailijoita: suomalaisten kirjailijoiden nuoruudenmuistelmia, Helsinki: Otava (1916): Suomalaisia kirjailijoita XX vuosisadan alussa by Rafael Koskimies (1927); Larin Kyösti hämäläiskylän runoilijana by Eino Salokas (1943); 'Larin-Kyösti,' in Aleksis Kivestä Martti Merenmaahan: suomalaisten kirjailijain elämäkertoja, Porvoo: WSOY (1954); A History of Finnish Literature by Jaakko Ahokas (1973); 'Larin-Kyöstin elämäntavoite' in Kasvoja valohämystä by Arvi Kivimaaa (1974); Kirjailijain kynänjälkiä, ed. by Juhani Niemi (1976); 'Minor Poets' by Kai Laitinen, in A History of Finland's Literatureby, edited by George C. Schoolfield (1998); Larin-Kyöstin Hämeenlinna: tarinoita pienestä kaupungista, ed. by Reima T.A. Luoto (2013); Larin-Kyösti: kansanlaulaja ja kosmopolii by Juhani Niemi (2016); 'Larin-Kyösti,' in Runouden ylistys: suomenkielisen runouden tie Mikael Agricolasta 2000-luvulle by Hannu Mäkelä (2024) Selected works:
|
