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Matti Kuusi (1914-1998) |
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Finnish folklorist, writer, professor at the University of Helsinki from 1959-77. Matti Kuusi was a pioneer in applying Roman Jakobson's and Claude Lévi-Strauss' structural analysis into Finnish folk poetry and dating poems. He participated actively in public debate and was unprejudiced about new ideas – Kuusi drew open-mindedly paralles between folk poetry and pop song lyrics. In his essays Kuusi appeared as an ironic observer. Hajamielin metsässä harhaten Matti Kuusi was born in Helsinki into a intellectually
prominent
family, with strong literary and academic roots. His father was Aarne
Kuusi, a director of an insurance company, and mother Alli (Zidbäck)
Kuusi. They had met in Kuopio, where Aarne Kuusi worked as a
mathematics teacher and Alli Zidbäck was his student. Aarne Kuusi's
grandfather was the theologian and professor Axel Fredrik Granfelt
(1815-92), an active and polemical writer, his son Axel August
Granfelt (1846-1919) was a well known advocate of public enlightenment,
who used the pen name 'Kuusi'. The Kuusis represented the Fennomen branch of the family and finnicized their Swedish family name in 1905. The Fennomen promoted Finnish-language culture, making a distinction between the term kansa (the people, "common people") and the upper class with its Swedish speaking members. In his own writings and scientific work Kuusi blurred the distinctions beween high and low culture. Väinö
Linna's
sister Olga worked for the Kuusis as a domestic servant in the 1930s.
She was dismissed when Alli Kuusi started to suspect that she had an
affair with a farmhad at their summer home in Mäntyharju. The family lived in a large apartment building on the Laivurinkatu in the heart of Helsinki. Kuusi's home was religious, his mother hated money, and his father did not smoke, drink coffee or liquor, nor did he like onions. Being more of an atheist, Kuusi never adopted his mother's religious views. From the late 1930s, Alli Kuusi was institutionalized several times. Her mother Anna Wegelius suffered from depression. Kuusi's sister Maija fell in love with her teacher Eino Kaila. In the middle of her studies, Maija Kuusi's mental health broke down. His
first and short poem Kuusi penned at the age of seven – on
the
toilet's door. H. Rider Haggard's adventure stories captured his
imagination. Kuusi continued to write at school and got one of his
early pieces published at the periodical Nuori Voima,
established to help students to develop their literary comperence. After finishing secondary school, Kuusi entered the University of Helsinki, graduating in 1939, on the eve of the Winter War. He studied literature under Viljo Tarkiainen, who was according to Kuusi "clear, hot-tempered, uncompromising". He also attended lectures held by Eino Kaila, whose psychological study Persoonallisuus (Personality) Kuusi read a couple of times. Kaila influenced deeply Kuusi's ideal picture of an academic teacher. Like many students at that time, Kuusi saw Germany as the leading country of Europe. However, he did not count himself among Nazi sympathizers. Kuusi participated in the activities of such right wing organisations as IKL, an ultra-right party, and the Academic Karelian Society (AKS). Both dreamed of Greater Finland. He wrote poems for the AKS; they formed the nucleus of his first collection. It was said that Kuusi was the only intellectual of the society, where he was indispensable as a propagandist but too independent to be given an important position of leadership. In 1936-37 Kuusi spent some time in Germany, mostly in Berlin and Heidelberg, with the help of Alexander Von Humboldt Foundation Scholarship. He attended Karl Jaspers' famous farewell-lecture; some of the students cried. A lecture on Einstein's theory of relativity ended with the 'Horst Wessel Song'. After returning to Finland, Kuusi wrote an essay, which dealt with propaganda and totalitarian war. Kuusi emphasized the importance of national unity over ideological prejudices against the old enemy: Russia. Runon
ja raudan kirja
(Book of verse and iron), Kuusi's first collection of poems, came out in 1935; he was 21. Some years
earlier, Kuusi had assembled enough
poems for a collection, but the publisher sent back the manuscript with
a rejection slip. Kuusi's friend Aulis Ojajärvi, with whom he
corresponded from 1935, published his first and only collection of
poems, Partaan puu, next
year. Kuusi was a great encouragement to Ojajärvi, who chose a pedagogical career. He edited the widely used Maailmankirjallisuuden mestarinovelleja
(1961), a collection of world's best short stories. Kuusi's
poems were a nationalistic answer to the pan-Europeanism of
Tulenkantajat (The
Flame
Bearers) literary movement. Tatu Vaaskivi gave the work a good review.
He praised Kuusi's mastery of language: "On todettava, että sen
nuorella kirjoittajalla on hallussaan tehoisa verbaalinen ilmaisu, että
hänen rikkaat, vaihtelevat rytminsä helkkyvät ja kumisevat todella
tarttuvalla tavalla. Tämä monivivahteinen runokieli alistetaan
palvelemaan väliin paisuneen kansallistunteen sanelemaan julistusta,
väliin – ja tämä koskee Matti Kuusen kestävimpiä säkeitä – satiirista
pohja-ajatusta." ('Keväästä kevääseen' by T. Vaaskivi, Suomalainen Suomi, N:o 3, 1936, p. 188) Olavi Paavolainen, who had been a central figure of Tulenkantajat, had nothing good to say about the book in his war journal: "Sitten
Matti Kuusen esikoiskokoelman ei Suur-Suomi-aate ja karmean
sankarillinen "pohjatuulen torven" törähdys ole kaikunut yhtä selvästi
kuin kaatuneen Paavo Hynysen jälkeen jääneiden runojen kokoelmassa
"Polku kirkkauteen."" (Synkkä yksinpuhelu: päiväkirjan lehtiä vuosilta 1941-1944 by Olavi Paavolainen, Helsingissä: Otava, 2012, p. 297; originally published in 1946) During the Continuation War (1941-44) Kuusi served in the army as an enlightenment officer, among others in Karelia, where he edited a magazine. In addition, he kept a war diary, and reported on the current mood of the troops. Outwardly Kuusi appeared very energetic, but inwardly, he was frustrated at the trench warfare. In 1944 he married the agronomist Kaarina Lumiala. The young couple moved for two years to Varkaus, where Kaarina's parents, Eino Antero and Tyyne Johanna Lumiala, had a farm. After the war in March 1945 Kuusi published a widely discussed
column in the magazine Kansan Kuvalehti under
the title 'Tämän hetken tunnus' (The sign of this time). Kuusi argued
that there is no return to times gone
by. The war, which had brough him in close contact with ordinary
people, prompted him to reevaluate his view of the world. In the
elections, he voted a social democratic candidate. At the same time, he
kept in contact with anti-Communist circles. Pacifism had no place in
his political philosophy, which could be described as "pessimistic
realism". While recovering from tuberculosis, Kuusi finished his second and last collection of poems, Routa liikkuu (1947). With this account of the war years, Kuusi earned a place in Finnish literature history, but his major contribution to Finnish culture lay in folkloristic publications. As a popularizer of scientific ideas Kuusi was prolific right up until the end of his life. . After the Sampo study, Kuusi examined widely Finnish proverbs, and
saw that they reflected the changes in the ways of thinking. He noted
that, for example, the saying "Time is money" was familiar in other
countries several hundred years ago but in Finland it began to spread
across the country in the beginning of the 20th century. ""Aika on
rahaa" sananlasku pantiin muistiin ja lähetettiin Suomalaisen
Kirjallisuuden Seuran kokoelmiin ensi kerran vasta 1896 Liedosta Turun
liepeiltä. Ajan mittaaminen minuutein ja markoin on yhä ilmeisen
luonnonvastaista kehitys-Suomen vaareille ja muoreille, samoin kuin
lapsille, perheenäideille, taiteilijoille, pultsareile jne.
kotipaikkaan katsomatta. Paradoksaalia kyllä ajan puute on huutavin
siellä missä elintaso on korkein ja aikaa säästäviä tavaroita (autoja,
pesukoneita, kopiokoneita, pikaruokapakkauksia) eniten."" (from 'Kansanperinteestä populaarikulttuuriin' (1974), in Perisuomalaista ja kansainvälistä
by Matti Kuusi, edited by Leea Virtanen and Senni Timonen, Helsinki:
Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 1985, pp. 135–165) Although
it is true, that a lot Finnish proverbs have been borrowed from other
languages, Kuusi maintained that it is a field worth researching and
exploring – since the time of Erasmus, proverb collections have been
part of literary culture in Finland. They belong to the wit and wisdom
of the world. ('Maailman kansojen yksi- ja erimielisyys' by Matti Kuusi, in Maailman sananlaskuviisaus, edited by Matti Kuusi & Outi Lauhakangas, Porvoo: WSOY, 1993, pp. 15-17) The Folklore Archives of the Finnish Literature Society is one of the largest in the world. Sampo-eepos:
typologinen analyysi (1949,
The Sampo Epic: A Typological Analysis), Kuusi's doctoral thesis, dealt with Sampo poems, perhaps the most explored element of Kalevala.
Noteworthy, unlike his predecessors, he did not try to solve the
mystery of the Sampo, a magic device, the world mill that makes
flour, salt and money. In 1951 Kuusi lectured on Archer Taylor's The Proverb (1931). They met in 1959 in Kiel, Germany, and in 1961 Taylor flied to Helsinki. He was a driving force in founding the journal Proverbium; Kuusi was first editor-in-chief. Itkemätön lapsi kuolee äitinsä selkään. (Sotho) From
1959 to 1977, Kuusi was Professor of Finnish and Comparative Folk
Poetry Studies at the University of Helsinki. In his academic work,
Kuusi did not confine solely in Finnish folklore. In the 1960s Kuusi
launched an interdisciplinary project under the title "popular songs
are contemporary folk songs". He published works on Southwest African Riddle-Proverbs
(1969), Ovambo Proverbs
(1970), which contains contains 2483 different proverbs in 4631 variants, and Ovambo Riddles
(1974). The unpublished proverbs had been collected by Martti Rautanen,
the son of
an Ingrian serf, in the late 19th century, in Ovamboland (a part of
Namibia and Angola). Kuusi discovered them
when studying the papers of the German theologian and linguist Ernst
Dammann (1904-2003). Kuusi's lifelong project was to create an international classification system of proverbs. During the years his proverb library grew into an extensive collection by any standard; the card index contained tens of thousands of cards. Towards an International Type-System of Proverbs came out in 1972. Mind and Form in Folklore: Selected Articles (1994), published by The Finnish Literature Society, collected Kuusi's articles from over 30 years of writing. Matti Kuusi died on January 16, 1998, in Helsinki. Kuusi's daughter Outi Lauhakangas has continued his father's work. Together they edited Maailman sananlaskuviisaus (1993). Among Kuusi's best known histories of literature is his study of ancient Finnish poetry in Suomen kirjallisuus I: Kirjoittamaton kirjallisuus (1963). Sejd och saga: den finska forndiktens historia (1983), written with Lauri Honko, was translated into Swedish by Thomas Warburton. Kuusi divided the epic poetry recorded by Lönnrot and his successors into five main types: myth, shaman, adventure, church, and historical. Considering the national importance and prestige of Kalevala, Kuusi defended the radical view that the epic was outdated as a work of art, and folk poetry should be presented to public in its original form. Kuusi's last large work in folk poetry was the volume 34 of Suomen kansan vanhat runot (with Senni Timonen). In the late 1940s, Kuusi
wrote a satirical novel, in which the narrator is a Valpo's (state
police) detective. The manuscript came back with polite rejection
letter from both the publishing house WSOY and Gummerus. Kuusi
contributed to Kansan Kuvalehti under the pseudonym
'Savinyrkki'. His essays and columns dealt with a variety of subjects –
among others Otto Manninen's poetry, Hella
Wuolijoki's studies about Estonian folk poetry, and the work of the
political cartoonist Kari Suomalainen. In the
yearbook Kirjokannesta kipinä
(1986), published by the Kalevala Society, he praised the pioneering
Finnish occultist and Rosicrucian Pekka Ervast (1875-1934) for his
visions of Kalevala. Ervast interpreted the Kalevala folklore from the
occultist perspective. The poems explored the secret history humankind.
The Kalevala heroes were archetypes of ancient gods. As an essayist Kuusi combined the attitudes of scholar
and dissident.
Often he tried to find something to hold on in the chaotic world of
changes, or provocatively stepped aside from the conventional way of looking at things. Thus he
suggested in 'Operaatio 10 000 kirjailijaa' that to reduce
unemployment, munincipalities should be obliged to hire munincipal
writers, one writer
per 500 inhabitants. In
1986 he aroused controversy by stating in an interview, that the best
way to help Africa is to leave it alone. At home Kuusi hid himself in
his study, and focused on his work. Despite his kindness, to his children Kuusi remained a
distant figure. For further reading: Sampo ei sanoja puutu: Matti Kuusen juhlakirja, ed. by Pertti Virtaranta et al. (1974); Matti Kuusi - kansakunnan unilukkari by Kirsti Manninen (1984); 'Lukijalle' by Leea Virtanen and Senni Timonen, in Perisuomalaista ja kansainvälistä by Matti Kuusi (1985); Miten minut on kasvatettu, ed. by Ritva Haavikko (1986); Ohituksia by Matti Kuusi (1985); Vuosikirja = Yearbook. 1998, ed. by Pentti Kauranen (1998); 'Matti Kuusi (1914 –1998): In Memory of the Last Giant of International Paremiology' by Wolfgang Mieder, in Proverbium 15 (1998); Suomen tieteen historia 2, ed. by Päiviö Tommila (2000); The Matti Kuusi International Type System of Proverbs by Outi Lauhakangas (2001); Sanottu. Tehty: Matti Kuusen elämä 1914-1998 by Tellervo Krogerus (2014); Sotapropagandan valiojoukko 1941-1944 by Keijo K. Kulha (2021) Selected works:
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