  Choose another writer in this calendar: by name: by birthday from the calendar. TimeSearch |
|
Martti Johannes Larni (1909-1993) - surname until 1942 Laine |
|
Writer and journalist, who became the best-known Finnish writer in the Soviet Union after publishing his satirical novel about the American way of life, Neljäs nikama eli Veijari vastoin tahtoaan (1957, The fourth vertebra, or a scamp despite himself). Both Fidel Castro and Mikhail Gorbachev loved the book. Martti Larni works have been translated into some 20 languages. After World War II, Larni lived a few years in Wisconsins, US. When a collection of my satirical sketches was published twelve years ago one critic described me as a "venomous mocker" who, armed with a sharp awl, lies in wait for his victims. I categorically reject such an accusation. I am not at all venomous; I am a kind, soft-hearted person and am especially fond of children and dogs – children, because they bark also on my behalf. As for the awl, it is the writer's tool. The first duty of a writer is to fight against social injustice. In the capitalist world there are still exploitation, racial oppression, political corruption, shameless strivings for personal gains, brazen attempts to establish world domination by force, and total callous disregard of the worth of human beings. (from 'Foreword,' in Laugh with Larni by Martti Larni, Moscow: Novosti, 1973) Martti Johannes Laine (Martti Larni) was born in Helsinki, the
son of Johan Viktor Laine, a master painter, and Matilda Puntila, who
had strong family roots in Hauho, Häme. They had nine children; Martti
was the fourth. In his childhood, Larni spent several summers as a
shepherd, not an idyllic job – later he recalled this time in Hyvien
ihmisten kylä(1942)
and in an autobiographical article: "Päivät olivat pyöreitä ja
ilottomia. Kello seitsemältä aamulla kauaksi synkkään metsään, ja vähän
ennen iltalypsyä takaisin. Se oli ikävää ja yksinäistä aikaa." ('Martti Larni,' in Uuno
Kailaasta Aila Meriluotoon: suomalaisten kirjailijain elämäkertoja,
edited by Toivo Pekkanen & Reino Rauanheimo, Porvoo: Werner
Söderström Osakeyhtiö, 1947, p. 402) At the age of fifteen, Larni wrote his first poems and short
stories. His early lyrics were published in 1926 in the magazine Juttutupa.
Two years later he became a member of the literary association Nuoren
Voiman Liitto, founded in 1921. Larni studied at a cooperative movement school and took
language courses. From 1923 to 1927 he was a horticultural apprentice.
Larni then tried his luck as a businessman. In 1936 he married Gurli
Viola Zetterström. During World War II, Soviet planes bombed their
home. From 1937 Larni worked for Elanto, published by one of the largest cooperative movements in Finland, becoming the editor-in-chief in 1943. Ola Fogelberg's Pekka Puupää comics greatly contributed to the popularity of the customer magazine. Larni translated the texts into Finnish. He also edited and translated some of Fogelberg's picture books, including Yhteisvoimin from 1941. Larni wrote screenplays for the production company Suomi-Filmi Oy, among them Tuomari Martta, based on Ilmari Turja's play. With the director Valentin Vaala he cooperated in several film projects, beginning from Keinumorsian (1943). Larni was appointed in 1943 departmental manager of the
consumer
cooperative Elanto. When Olavi Paavolainen's
war diary Synkkä yksinpuhelu
(1946, Sombre monologue) was critized as false and opportunistic,
Larni joined his defenders (Unto Kupiainen, Hagar Olsson, Maiju
Suvitie, Thomas Warburton, and others). In 1948-49, Larni resided in the
United States and again in
1951-54, working there as an editor at the publishing company Co-op.
Public
Association. Its newspaper, Työväen
Osuustoimintalehti, was printed weekly. After returning to Finland, Larni continued as a departmental manager at The Cooperative Union of Finland, following Yrjö Kallinen. From 1955 he was editor-in-chief of the magazine Me kuluttajat (We consumers). In 1959, Larni went to China as a member of a cultural delegation (other member included Ilmari Harkki, Aarne Ervi and Jack Witikka). He served as chairman of the Finnish Writers' Association (1964-1967). Martti Larni died on March 7, 1993. Larni made his debut as a writer with the young adult's
novel Seikkailuja Saamenmaassa
(1936), which he published under
the Lappish pseudonym Aslak Nuorti. Arvid Lydecken gave the book a
positive review. "Nuortin laaja kertomus on mukaansatempaava, innostava
ja rohkaiseva. Ennustamme sille hyvin pitkää ikää ja suositamme sitä
kaikenikäisille nuorille." ('Aslak Nuortti: Seikkailuja
Saamenmaassa' by A. Ly., Uusi Suomi,
No. 226, 23.08.1936, p. 13) His next novel, Kuilu
(1937), dealt with the traumatic civil war of 1917-18. Until then, the
war had been depicted mostly from the side of the victorious White
army. Notable exceptions were F. E. Sillanpää's Meek Heritage
(1919) and Elmer Diktonius's Janne Kubik (1932). Kuilu is
a story of the journalist and writer Unto Kamara, who has committed
suicide. Kamara's autobiography reveals his homosexual affair with a
literature scholar, "Doctor H." During the Civil War Kamara joins the
Red Army. He is captured by the Whites and sent to the Suomenlinna
prison camp. A white officers demands sexual favors from him. After
being released, Kamara
tries to change his life, but his marriage is doomed, and eventually he
kills his wife in a restaurant.
Especially the right-wing press attacked Larni's book – it was considered
"sick" and "morally harmful." The leftist writer and journalist Raoul Palmgren said in his review that
the novel was intriguing but criticized it for being superficial.
"Martti Laineen
kirjassa on paljon pintapuolista ja puolisivistynyttä. . . . Mutta
yhtäkaikki tämä kirja tempaa mukaansa, kiehtoen ja kauhistaen." (¨Hirmujen kuilu' by RP, Kirjallisuuslehti,
Nos. 21-24, 1937, p. 334) Partly due to harsh criticism, Larni did not publish anything for
five years. In 1942 he changed his name officially from Laine to Larni,
leaving with this act his earlier identity as a writer completely
behind. Under the pseudonym Dan Aster, Larni wrote three books, Kahden
maailma (1944), Malttamaton intohimo (1945), and Musta
Venus
(1946); they all were published by Suomen kirja. From 1947 Larni's
publisher was Tammi, established by an intiative of Väinö Tanner, the
leader of the Social Democratic Party. Lähellä syntiä (1946) tells the melodramatic
story of the son of a waitress and prostitute, who escapes from
home and searches his place in the world. Hannu Leminen made the book
into a film in 1955. Much of the events were changed from the Civil War
period to World
War II. In the historical novel Taivas laskeutui maahan
(1948) the protagonist is René Saillant, the friend
of the poet François Villon. Larni drew partly on Lorenz v. Numers' novel Snäckans bröder (1946) – he had translated its poems into Finnish. Minnesota palaa (1952),
written while Larni was in the United States, told about Finnish immigrants and the great fire of
1918 in Minnesota. One
of the characters, named Jack Hill, searches for his father, Henry
Hill, and is employed in a circus as a babysitter for freak children. Neljäs nikama was translated into some 20 languages (not into English), and
turned into a stage adaptation. The Russian translation came out without the
knowledge of the author – the Soviet Union had not undersigned the Bern
convention on copyright issues. Copies of the book were distributed for free at Soviet airports. Larni realized that he was a bestseller when he saw a woman reading the novel on
an airplane. They say you need three or four months to get back to normal after an operation like that. Do you remember the book "The Fourth Vertebra," by the Finnish author Martti Larni? It is a wonderful book. In my case it was the fifth (vertebra). I've started walking again, but every beginning is difficult. ('They Were Truly Idiots,' interview of Mikhail Gorbachev after a spine operation; Matthias Schepp and Christian Neef, translated from the German by Christopher Sultan, Spiegel, 16.08. 2011) The protagonist is Jeremias
Suomalainen, a teacher and journalist, who is called "the greatest
truth-speaker in the word" by one of his readers, but in the trial, he
is accused of being the world's biggest liar. The character had already
appeared in Arvokkaat köyhät ja
heidän kirjava seurakuntansa (1944), a picaresque novel. Upon
spending eight
moths in a jail, Jeremies moves to the United States. In his new home
country
Jeremias becomes the assistant of the chiropractic Isaac Rivers, who
was modelled after Hannes Kolehmainen's massage therapist, and
later "Professor"
Jerry Finn, a citizen of the world. Rivers has a theory: all backaches
come from the fourth vertebra. Larni mocks quick marriages and quick
divorces, miracle doctors, Hollywood, self-contentedness, ignorance of
other cultures, and advertising. In one scene Jerry peddles books; he
has an abridged edition – 102 pages – of Anatole France's collected
works. At the end, he is catapulted into fame and riches. Noteworthy,
Larni himself had hurt his vertebrae during WWII. The poet Pentti Saarikoski
confessed in his review that his sympathy was on the side
of the cheerful Americans. ('Amerikka (Martti Larni:
Neljäs nikama)' by Pentti Saarikoski, in Parnasso, No. 3, 1958, p. 139) V. A. Koskenniemi compared
Larni's style
to that of Jerome K. Jerome, but he saw that in the choice of his
subject the author follows in the wake of Eric Linklater. On the other
hand, Koskenniemi considered Larni's humor rudely exaggerated, too far
from the reality to be effective. ('Larni, Martti,
Neljäs nikama eli veijari vastoin tahtoaan' by V. A. Koskenniemi, Valvoja, No. 5, 1957, p. 239)
In 1973 the Soviet Novosti Press
Agency published a collection of the author's satirical sketches, Laugh
with Larni. Niko said nothing, but the parrot in the cage screamed: "Down with dictators! Hang the colonels!" Mostly Larni laughed at the U.S., with the exception that 'Putting History into the Corner' condemned Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's novel August, 1914, which he had not read at that time. He even hinted that Solzhenitsyn was of Jewish origin by referring to him with the term "rootless intelligentsia". It is possible that Larni was paid by the KGB, which sent his comments in the German Stern magazine to Swedish and Czechoslovakian papers. (Solženitsyn: elämä ja eetos by Erkki Vettenniemi, Helsinki: Teos, 2015, pp. 160-162) Foreboding Solzhenitsyn's exile from the Soviet Union in 1974, Larni wrote: "Several years ago a Soviet writer who likewise did not love his country and people, set out looking for happiness in foreign lands. He changed his name, declared himself a "citizen of the universe" and . . . was lost in a London fog." For further reading: 'Martti Larni,' in Uuno Kailaasta Aila Meriluotoon: suomalaisten kirjailijain elämäkertoja, edited by Toivo Pekkanen & Reino Rauanheimo (1947); 'Martti Larni' by Sakari Virkkunen, in Suomen Kuvalehti (14.9.1979); Kapinalliset kynät: itsenäisyysajan työväenliikkeen kaunokirjallisuus. 3, Rauhan ja edistyksen optimismista kylmään sotaan (1944-51) by Raoul Palmgren (1984); Suomen kansallisfilmografia. 3, 1942-1947: vuosien 1942-1947 suomalaiset kokoillan elokuvat, edited by Kari Uusitalo, et al. (1993); Kotimaisia sotakirjailijoita by Martti Sinerma, et al. (2001); 'Larni, Martti' by Lasse Koskela, in Suomen kansallisbiografia 5, edited by Matti Klinge, et al. (2005); Satiiri Suomessa by Sari Kivistö & H. K. Riikonen (2012) Selected works:
|
