 
Choose another writer in this calendar:
by name: by birthday from the calendar.
TimeSearch |
|
L. Onerva (1882 - 1972) - Hilja Onerva Madetoja, née Lehtinen |
|
Finnish poet of beauty and humanity, the lover of the poet Eino Leino. L. Onerva was a prolific writer, who also published prose, drama, essays, and Leino's biography. Familiar with French literature, she translated into Finnish works by Voltaire, Honoré de Balzac, Anatole France, Paul Bourget, François Mauriac, and Henri Barbusse. "Yhden kerran elämässä tuliruusu aukee, Hilja Onerva Lehtinen (L. Oneva) was born in Helsinki, the daughter
of Serafina (Sarholm) Lehtinen and Johan Lehtinen, a clerk
and later a superintendent of a lumber business. The two older
children of the family had died before her birth. During
her early years Onerva suffered endless punishments by
her mother. When Onerva was six, her mother was taken to a mental hospital. From then on, Onerva grew up pampered and protected by her father and grandmother. Serafina Lehtinen spent the rest of her life in an asylum – at school Onerva told his classmates that she was dead, but she actually died in the 1930s. For several years, the family lived in Karhula and then in 1900 they moved to Kotka and five years later to Syväsalmi. Johan Lehtinen played violin in Robert Kajanus's orchestra and bought her daughter books of poetry. Onerva's father used to give her a collection of poems every Christmas. She had been writing poems since the age of 13, but she did not plan to become a writer; music and theatre were more close to her heart. Lonely and shy, she wrote lyrics as an outlet for her feelings. While still at school, Onerva showed her texts to Maila Talvio, who encouraged in her literary aspirations. Her first efforts were rejected by publishing companies. Later a frequent visitor at Talvio's famous literary salon, Onerva met there many young writers, including Larin-Kyösti, Ilmari Kianto, Otto Manninen, V.A. Koskenniemi, Kasimir Leino, and Eino Leino. Onerva studied at Suomalainen tyttökoulu (Finnish girls' school) in Helsinki. In the secondary school she was the best student of her class. Upon graduating as a teacher in 1902, Onerva continued her studies at the University of Helsinki, studying and traveling occasionally in Paris, Dresden, Florence, and Roma. Her university thesis from 1905, on Alfred de Musset's female characters, emphasized the differences between male and female approaches to love: "Man can be torn between the most painful contradictions, with his heard jaded with doubts and uncertainties, but woman exists only for love, only for man." ('Free Love, Mystical Union or Prostitution? The Dissonant Love Stories of L. Onerva' by Viola Parente-Čapková, in Changing Scenes: Encounters between European and Finnish Fin de Siècle, edited by Pirjo Lyytikäinen, 2003, p. 56) In 1905 Onerva married the forest officer Väinö Streng, with whom she moved to Räisälä. A year later the couple returned to Helsinki. A central role in Onerva's life played the writer Eino Leino (1878-1926). They had met in 1902. To make Leino interested in her, she asked what arts she should pursue – she painted, sang, composed, wrote and was fascinated by the theatre. Leino answered: "Get married." Angered by his words, Onerva published two years later her first collection of poems, Sekasointuja (1904), about love from woman's point of view. Her penname, L. Onerva, had been suggested by the poet and journalist J.H. Erkko. Sekasointuja was
printed with the help of Albert Gebhard, a painter, with
whom Onerva sang at a choir. 'In the Tropics'
interpreted female erotic passions and new joie de vivre: "But
once within a lifetime opens a fiery rose, / that for but one night
blossoms and in the morning goes..." And in the second stanza she
continued: "It has a leaf all bloody; it has a purple lip / it has a
dizzy fragrance like spring winds on the steppe." (Skating on the Sea: Poetry from Finland, edited & translated by Keith Bosley, 1997, p. 194) This poem shocked some of her conservative readers, but in general, the collection was well received. 'Keinutan kaikua' was set to music by Toivo Kuula in 1910; also Leevi Madetoja turned it into a song, but 36 years later, and his piece is rarely performed. In total 45 of Madetoja's songs were based on Onerva's texts. Onerva was Leino's life companion after his marriage with Freya Schoultz ended. She had made friends with the poet in 1907, when she started to contribute to the daily newspaper Päivälehti. Leino, a celebrated writer, was its most prominent figure. At that time Onerva had became disappointed with her marriage and Leino on his own side felt that he was connected to a strange woman. His first love letters Leino wrote to Onerva in the summer of 1908: "Have mercy on me, my own Onerva." She followed Leino to Rome, they quarreled and she returned alone to Finland in 1909. Leino depicted their relationship in the novel Onnen orja (1913), which did not flatter much her. Onerva contributed art, theatre, and literature reviews to the newspaper Uusi Päivä, and worked as a literary critic for Helsingin Sanomat
in 1910-11 and in the 1920s. In 1913 she married the National Romantic
composer Leevi Madetoja (1887-1947); it was the year when
Leino married Aino Kajanus – their marriage was short-lived. From 1915 to 1917 Onerva worked in Leino's magazine Sunnuntai. Her biography Eino Leino: runoilija ja ihminen I-II (1932) gave an insider picture of the leading Finnish author of the early 20th century and his circle. Onerva's work did not undermine the popular image of Leino as a bohemian fulfilling his inner and higher calling. In their private life, Leino was for some years the only person whom she could turn to after her father died. For researchers the biography has remained an invaluable source. In spite of the shortcomings, it gives first-hand information about Leino's personal life especially in the 1910s. Leino himself did not say much about Onerva, and she was not mentioned in his collection of essays from 1909, dealing with Finnish writers. However, Onerva was Leino's Muse and his great love, although he had other relationships, among others with the writer Aino Kallas. Onerva's best-known works include Murattiköynnös (1911), a collection of poems, and Mirdja (1908), a kind of Bildungsroman. It was the first modern Finnish novel, which brought into literature a new kind woman character, a sexually active, nonconformist personality, the "Decadent New Woman". Challenging prevailing conventions, Onerva reversed the traditional gender stereotypes. Readers, unaccustomed to encounter a book like Mirdja, confused the heroine with the author herself, which made the work a small succès de scandal. When it was awarded the State Prize for literature, there were protests against the decision. Mirdja's life is followed from her youth till her death.
The story is set in
the urban and narcissistic world of intelligentsia and decadent
artists, in which Helsinki is the major scene of events, not Paris,
which is also featured in the story. Mirdja Ast, the protagonist,
admires her own beauty; she wants
to be adored by men. Rolf, an alcoholic dreamer, encourages Mirdja to
become a femme fatale, but her test of love with Mauri is undermined by
bourgeois ideals of sexual roles. "Men are created to rule over women,"
she says. Mirdja's
search for her true self (the inner Übermensch) and struggle with
external and internal pressures is profoundly Nietzschean.Her other
roles turn out to be empty, her marriage ends with
the death of her husband, Runar. At the end, Mirdja has lost her touch
with reality and she is left to wander in search for her imaginary
child. Onerva's female characters often express their anger against the men who play with their feelings. "Love doesn't exist. There is only violence," says one of the characters in the short story collection Mies ja nainen (1912, Man and woman) The titles of her early poetry collections reflected her feelings of freedom, rebelliousness, and confusion of her time: Sekasointuja (Jangled harmonies), Murtoviivoja (1909, Broken lines), Särjetyt jumalat (1910, Shattered gods). "Minä olen vankina vaarallinen / ja kelvoton alamainen," she wrote (I am dangerous as a prisoner, and unworthy as a citizen). The character of Mary Magdalene becomes her "heroine of the fairy tale". In her later work the sensual poetry of instincts changed into meditative silence and melancholy. "Miten ääretön, ah, väsymykseni onkaan" (Oh, how endless is my fatigue). During the Finnish Civil War of 1918, Onerva stayed in
Helsinki much of the time, when it was held by the Red
Guards.
Madetoja's brother was killed by the Reds. Moreover, his good friend Toivo
Kuula was shot dead near the end of the war in a drunken brawl. Like V.A. Koskenniemi and many other writers of her generation, Onerva praised the heroism of the Whites. Gradually pacifistic themes became prominent in Onerva's work – she connected these views with feminist goals, and her own broken ideals with general feelings of loss and aimlessness of her generation. "Me oomme Atlantica, / syvyyteen syösty pallo / meressä eetterin." (Lyhtylasien laulu, 1919) Along with a number of citizens, she signed a petition against the death penalty, too. The Government's proposal in 1936 of bringing back the penalty was not accepted. In
the late 1920s, Onerva's health started to waver. She had
already abandoned plans to finish her dissertation
on the French Rococo art. Partly due to her excessive use of alcohol
and psychic problems, she spent long times in hospitals, but still
writing and also drawing. Her husband fell in love with his young
student, Taru Pellinen; in 1927 he even proposed to her in a letter.
Madetoja was a celebrated composer, and Onerva's own work as a
poet was shadowed by his fame. Pursi, a collection of poems
which came out in 1945, was an expression of her loneliness a cry for
help. Onerva felt that her husband had deserted her, like her
father did to her mother. Moreover, literary circles ignored her. Onerva was not mentioned in Unto
Kupiainen's history of Finland's literature, Suomen kirjallisuuden vaiheet
(1958). She was characterized by Kai Laitinen in 1998 as "the most
clearly oriented toward French literature among the writers of her
time". (A History of Finland's Literature, edited by George C. Schoolfied, 1998, p. 120) In 1947, after Onerva's husband had died of alcohol, she was released permanently from Nikkilä Psychiatric Hospital, where she was sent in 1942 against her will. There is indirect evidence, that she was in the hospital far longer than it was necessary on medical grounds. What is beyond doubt is that she was betrayed by her own doctor. "I am a fully normal person," she wrote to Madetoja, but doctor Jalmari Lydecken, his friend, wanted to let the composer work in peace, and turned down her appeals. During this period Onerva wrote manically in the small study provided her by the hospital. In her last decades Onerva produced the unbelievable amount of over 100 000 poems, of which several thousand can stand on their own merits. By 1963, her eyesight had deteriorated so much that she could not write any more. Onerva died in Helsinki on March 1, 1972. Several collections of her poetry have been published posthumously: Etsin suurta tulta: valitut runot 1904-1952, (1984), Toisillemme: valikoima runoja (1986), Siivet: runoja vuosilta 1945-1952 (2004), Pilvet ja aurinko: runoja vuosilta 1953-1963 (2005), Liekkisydän: valitut runot 1904-1946 (2010). An exhibition of Onerva's paintings, which she made at Nikkilä, was arranged in 2004 at the Helsinki City Art Museum. As an interpreter of woman's personal freedom and sensuality, Onerva has offered for feminist literary research an alternate view to the first decades of the 20th-century Finnish literature, dominated by male writers. For further reading: ''Pari lehteä muistojen kirjasta' by L. Onerva, in Kuinka meistä tuli kirjailijoita (1916); 'Näkymä L. Onervan lyriikkaan' in Lyyrillinen minä by Lauri Viljanen (1959); 'L. Onerva - ensimmäinen huomattava naislyyrikkomme' in Käännekohtia by Eino Krohn (1967); 'Naiset arvojen ja asenteiden muuttajina' in Kirjallisuudentutkijain Seuran vuosikirja 34 by Maria-Liisa Kunnas (1982); Elämän punainen päivä by Reetta Nieminen (1982); 'Eino Leino & L. Onerva' in Suurin on rakkaus by Kaija Valkonen and Elina Koivunen (1997); Suomen kirjallisuushistoria, Vol. 2, ed. by Lea Rojola (1999); 'Free Love, Mystical Union or Prostitution? The Dissonant Love Stories of L. Onerva' by Viola Parente-Čapková, in Changing Scenes: Encounters between European and Finnish Fin de Siècle, edited by Pirjo Lyytikäinen (2003); Nalle ja Moppe: Eino Leinon ja L. Onervan elämä by Hannu Mäkelä (2003); Uponnut pursi by Hannu Mäkelä (2004); L. Onerva. Valvottu yö. Runoilijan maalauksia pimeydestä valoon by Hannu Mäkelä and Berndt Arell (2004); Onnen maa. L. Onervan elämä ja runot by Hannu Mäkelä (2007); Decadent New Woman (Un)bound: Mimetic Strategies in L. Onerva's Mirdja by Viola Parente-Čapková (2014); Uuden etsijät: salatieteiden ja okkultismin suomalainen kulttuurihistoria 1880–1930 by Maarit Leskelä-Kärki (2021); Omat huoneet: missä naiset kirjoittivat vuosisata sitten by Suvi Ratinen (2021) - Film: Runoilija ja Muusa (1978), directed by Jaakko Pakkasvirta, screenplay by Titta Karakorpi, Jaakko Pakkasvirta, starring Esko Salminen (as Eino Leino), Elina Salo (as L. Onerva), and Katja Salminen (as Freya Schoultz), depicted Leino's life and women in it. Selected works:
|
