"The first sentence of a novel needs to construct a picture." (Leo Tolstoy)
I have a book consisting of the first sentences in 200 novels. Those books have been published in 1954-1986. When I got the book I thought it would be a treasure. It hasn´t been. I find it very irritating to be able to read the first five lines of a world-famous book and ...
All of a sudden there is nothing more.
The opposite page repeats the same drop out.
And the following.
When now telling you about this I realise that practically all of those 200 books have been written by men: Alberto, Amos, Kurt, John, Ernest, Yashar, Graham, Aleksander, Günter, William, Niko, Jevgeni, Wolfgang, Italo, Saul, Zharia, Ladislav, Yasunari, Wole etc.
When really searching I find three women Alice, Toni and Francoise. Maybe there are more of them, but anyhow it seems that 95 per cent of the influential authors of those days were men. Men must have a special talent for literary expression.
In my childhood men had several gene-bound talents that women did not have. Men composed music, played in symphony orchestras, made laws, run organizations and they even knew how to operate the clutch pedal of the car.
During my life time some of these genes have undergone mutations. We have important female composers. One of the most famous Finnish female composers is Kaija Saariaho. She is not the only one. Women play in symphony orchestras. They also conduct them. Susanna Mälkki, is one example of those ladies. Women are active in Finnish and European politics as well as in international conflict resolution.
Maybe the genes started changing when the women in my mother´s generation learned to drive car and used the clutch pedal, too.
I just wonder if the number of women authors has increased since 1986.
It´s now the evening of the fifth sunny and warm day of this summer. The sun is setting. The night will be short, but it is now dark. Maybe you wonder if it is normal in Finland to continuously refer to the ratio daylight and darkness in the way I do. You may even think it to be as embarassing as being able to read just the first five lines of a novel. Perhaps I had better add a few lines more.
I have told you about Midsummer and what it means to be going towards it, the days getting longer and longer. Now we are going towards the shorter and shorter days. I need not tell you anything more about that because somebody else has already done it. It is a pitty the following text has not been published in English. The name of the book in Spanish is Delicioso suicidio en grupo (ISBN: 978-84-339-7120-3, Finnish original Suloinen joukkoitsemurha). The author is Arto Paasilinna. He is a man, which does not make the text bad at all. If you might ever get interested in Finnish men, Paasilinna might give you an idea what is to be expected in the long run, when you start hearing the other one snoring at night...
"El enemigo más poderoso de los finlandeses es la oscuridad, la apatia sin fin. La melancolía flota sobre el desgraciado pueblo y durante miles de años lo ha mantenido bajo su yugo con tal fuerza, que el alma de éste ha terminado por volverse tenebrosa y grave. Tal es el peso de la gongoja, que muchos finlandeses ven la muerte como única salida a su angustia. Una mente taciturna es un enemigo aún más encarnizado y temible que la propia Union Sovietica.
Sin embargo, el finlandés es un pueblo de guerreros. Todo, menos rendirse. Una y otra vez se alza en rebelión contra el tirano
La Noche de San Juan, la fiesta de la luz y la alegría que marca el solsticio de verano, es para los finlandeses una descomunal batalla en la que, de común acuerdo y uniendo sus fuerzas, intentan derrotar a la melancolía que los corroe. Todo el pueblo se pone en pie de guerra: /.../"
Si te interesa saber más de lo que es normal en Finlandia y que no, vale la pena buscar éste libro por Arto Paasilinna. Leyéndolo vas a participar en un seminario de suicidiología en Helsinki, vas a conocer al criador de renos Uula Lismanki, al aguatragedias Seppo Sorjonen, al capitán en dique seco Mikko Heikkinen etc. Tambíen vas a viajar por todo Finlandia y al extranjero. Y sobre todo, vas a aprender dónde ponemos los limites de la normalidad en éste país.
It is a pitty this book has not been translated into English. You can easily find Arto Paasilinna in Spanish, French, German and Italian, in Swedish of course, but not in English. Maybe the sense of humour in Britain and the rest of the Anglo-American world is too sofisticated to cover the new-potatoes-dill-and-herring attitude towards life typical to Arto Paasilinna and the picaresque novel.
If you read in English, you may test your sense of humour reading The Year of the Hare (ISBN: 0-7206-1017-6, Finnish original Jäniksen vuosi) by the same author. The publisher has considered it important to add an explanative title on its cover: A picaresque novel with an ecological theme.
This is how it starts:
"Two harassed men were driving down a lane. The setting sun was paining their eyes through the dusty windscreen. It was midsummer, but the landscape on this sandy road was slipping past their weary eyes unnoticed; the beauty of the Finnish evening was lost on them both.
They were a journalist and a photographer, out on an assignment: two dissatisfied, cynical men, getting on for middle age. The hopes of their youth had not been realized, far from it. They were husbands, deceiving and deceived; stomach ulcers were on the way for both of them; and many other worries filled their days.
They´d just been wrangling. Should they drive back to Helsinki or spend the night in Heinola? Now they weren´t speaking.
They drove through the lovely summer evening hunched, self-absorbed as two mindless crustaceans, not even noticing how wrethced their cantankerousness was. /.../"
Sometimes we need courage to see the life as it is - full of choices. Paasilinna makes you see choices which normally remain undetected.
"La Finlandia intera entrava nella stagione estiva. La acque si erano liberate, gli umani risvegliati. Il sole splendeva raggiante, una brezza leggera turbinava nell´aria. Dalle parti di Lestijärvi, in campagna, una madre di familia sfornava brioche alla canella, a Kokkola, sulla costa, un automobilista ubriaco provocava un incidente mortale. Insomma, era cominciata l´estate." (Lo smemorato di Tapiola (ISBN: 88-7091-098-9, Finnish original Elämä lyhyt, Rytkönen pitkä).
The first sentence needs to make a picture. If there are just five lines of the text available, we have all reason to feel disappointed. How the story will continue is very much up to you. It depends more on the courage you have than on anything else. If there was a dream in the in the beginning, it was a lively and tempting picture. What was it like? What would be the first step to make your dream become true?
Long ago I got a dream - or the dream got me. I wanted to have some business in Spain. Now it seems that this dream will become true. To be able to share the dream with my friends there I need to brush up my Spanish. Just at present this is the first step.
It is funny, but Juan José Millás has a vocabulary I need not stumble with. When reading Paasilinna I have to use a dictionary. Obviously the world he describes is not reachable by academic concepts, which might be one more recommendation to read him.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Friday, July 18, 2008
Janus-faced Imaginations
"How many words are there?" my son asks when we are driving to the kindergarten.
It is a French kidergarten, free of charge, because the French government pays for the teacher and the city of Tampere for the rent. Pascal and Nady, the teachers, are specialised in Montessory pedagogy. In other words, we have luxury in our life.
Anybody can get their children in there. Anyway, they don´t. The simple reason is that luxury does not look like luxury when it is too near and too easy to reach. It is normal and normality can make things invisible and difficult to detect.
When a child starts wondering how many words there are, it is likely that he is learning to identify differences that make a difference as Gregory Bateson says.
"Imagination is strange. Think of Bill Watterson (the creator of Calvin and Hobbes), for instance. He must have Bill Watterson´s imagination and he must also have the imagination Calvin has." my son says in the car another day.
Obviously the car was an ideal place for deep thinking and sharing ideas. At least it was a place where the next occurence did not immediately wipe out the ideas talked about. They had time to become registered and remembered.
Once more we were on our 15-minute drive to the French kindergarten. My son asks:
"Mother, do you know what you should do when you feel really bad?"
"No."
"You should spread it as wide as possible."
"That sounds interesting."
"Yes, that is what Calvin says we should do."
If you ever have children buy them Legos and read them Calvin and Hobbes. Intelligent children are fun when they are small and a challenge when they grow up. When grown-up they make choices that inevitably make you wonder if they use their intelligence reasonably.
I do not mean that we should be overly rational all the time. I mean that it is extremely easy to seriously mess up one´s life for short-term benefits. Life will offer much more than we first believe possible. Being intelligent, obstinate and in a hurry can result in an accumulation of unnecessary life burden.
Little children think clearly. I do not know what my children were doing. I just overheard them: "There you have a problem." my son states in amatter-of-fact way.
"How are you going to solve it?" he asks.
"With rhetoric and reason." my daughter says without the slightest hesitation.
Her method is perfect. The only problem is that there are people who are not reachable either by means of rhetoric or by reason. God save us from them. May he keep them just rare anomalies that do not disturb what is normal.
Bill Watterson´s imagination came to my mind when I read Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann
(Finnish edition Murha laitumella). Maybe you should not read how the book has been presented. I knew practically nothing about it beforehand. It had never occured to me that the sheep really must have an eye on us human beings. If they didn´t, they would not get along in life.
In Spain my friends have sheep that are taken care of by a couple of shepherds. In Scotland I have seen sheep taken care of by dogs only. I know a sheep shearer from New Zealand. So far we are not personal friends, but maybe one day. He is a very entertaining and highly appreciated organisational trainer. Perhaps, his skill to share information and experience with his audience has its origins in the intelligence and imagination of the sheep he has shorn.
As sheep seem to smuggle their way into this text it is well worth mentioning a book I read in winter. It is Bulibasha King of the Gypsies by Witi Ihimaera (ISBN: 0-14-025432-3). It is an introduction to a world you may never have known to exist.
Life is more or less the same anywhere where people live - and anyhow - there are differences that make a difference. And there are people who are able to describe those differences to us. It is luxury, especially if you think what ambitious writing means in practice. I just finished reading El mundo by Juan José Millas (ISBN:978-84-08-07596-7).
He says "... escritura abre y cauteriza al mismo tiempo las heridas." Writing simultaneuously opens and heals wounds.
Millas also describes how he as a child, by chance, found out what happens to people when they have died:
"Los muertos vivían en otro barrio, pues. Había un barrio ocupado por ellos." ... "Las calles, en aquel lugar, estaban empedradas (en mi barrio, la mayoría eran de tierra) y los edificios, altos y distinguidos, tenían en sus bajos tiendas cuyos escaparates no podías dejar de mirar." There was a district in his town - Madrid - where the dead people lived. It was almost like the district where Millás himself lived, but not exactly.
The secret of rich and luxurious life is hidden into the concept "exactly alike, just a little different."
The origin of the differences that make a difference lies somewhere outside ´you´. You need somebody else to mark out the differences that make a difference. Having been marked, we tend to think that it was me who found it. It is just that shared experiences become our personal experiences and what are you able to own if not your experiences...
Writing is solitary work. People who read lead a priviledged life. They are never lonely, for instance.
We all are lucky to have so many words that can be combined in so many ways to point out so many slight differences that may construct new experiences.
At eleven-thirty I had to put on the lights. Nights are getting dark again. So far the summer has been cold, but beautiful. This is quite normal, athough we would prefer having some hot weather sometime, too. Not for too long, just the normal 11 days a year. So far we have had just two of them.
If you live in Madrid, just look around to see whether your barrio es un barrio de los vivos o de los muertos. The difference might be a bit difficult to detect at the first sight, but I´m sure you´ll learn to pick up the real differences that make a difference.
It is a French kidergarten, free of charge, because the French government pays for the teacher and the city of Tampere for the rent. Pascal and Nady, the teachers, are specialised in Montessory pedagogy. In other words, we have luxury in our life.
Anybody can get their children in there. Anyway, they don´t. The simple reason is that luxury does not look like luxury when it is too near and too easy to reach. It is normal and normality can make things invisible and difficult to detect.
When a child starts wondering how many words there are, it is likely that he is learning to identify differences that make a difference as Gregory Bateson says.
"Imagination is strange. Think of Bill Watterson (the creator of Calvin and Hobbes), for instance. He must have Bill Watterson´s imagination and he must also have the imagination Calvin has." my son says in the car another day.
Obviously the car was an ideal place for deep thinking and sharing ideas. At least it was a place where the next occurence did not immediately wipe out the ideas talked about. They had time to become registered and remembered.
Once more we were on our 15-minute drive to the French kindergarten. My son asks:
"Mother, do you know what you should do when you feel really bad?"
"No."
"You should spread it as wide as possible."
"That sounds interesting."
"Yes, that is what Calvin says we should do."
If you ever have children buy them Legos and read them Calvin and Hobbes. Intelligent children are fun when they are small and a challenge when they grow up. When grown-up they make choices that inevitably make you wonder if they use their intelligence reasonably.
I do not mean that we should be overly rational all the time. I mean that it is extremely easy to seriously mess up one´s life for short-term benefits. Life will offer much more than we first believe possible. Being intelligent, obstinate and in a hurry can result in an accumulation of unnecessary life burden.
Little children think clearly. I do not know what my children were doing. I just overheard them: "There you have a problem." my son states in amatter-of-fact way.
"How are you going to solve it?" he asks.
"With rhetoric and reason." my daughter says without the slightest hesitation.
Her method is perfect. The only problem is that there are people who are not reachable either by means of rhetoric or by reason. God save us from them. May he keep them just rare anomalies that do not disturb what is normal.
Bill Watterson´s imagination came to my mind when I read Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann
(Finnish edition Murha laitumella). Maybe you should not read how the book has been presented. I knew practically nothing about it beforehand. It had never occured to me that the sheep really must have an eye on us human beings. If they didn´t, they would not get along in life.
In Spain my friends have sheep that are taken care of by a couple of shepherds. In Scotland I have seen sheep taken care of by dogs only. I know a sheep shearer from New Zealand. So far we are not personal friends, but maybe one day. He is a very entertaining and highly appreciated organisational trainer. Perhaps, his skill to share information and experience with his audience has its origins in the intelligence and imagination of the sheep he has shorn.
As sheep seem to smuggle their way into this text it is well worth mentioning a book I read in winter. It is Bulibasha King of the Gypsies by Witi Ihimaera (ISBN: 0-14-025432-3). It is an introduction to a world you may never have known to exist.
Life is more or less the same anywhere where people live - and anyhow - there are differences that make a difference. And there are people who are able to describe those differences to us. It is luxury, especially if you think what ambitious writing means in practice. I just finished reading El mundo by Juan José Millas (ISBN:978-84-08-07596-7).
He says "... escritura abre y cauteriza al mismo tiempo las heridas." Writing simultaneuously opens and heals wounds.
Millas also describes how he as a child, by chance, found out what happens to people when they have died:
"Los muertos vivían en otro barrio, pues. Había un barrio ocupado por ellos." ... "Las calles, en aquel lugar, estaban empedradas (en mi barrio, la mayoría eran de tierra) y los edificios, altos y distinguidos, tenían en sus bajos tiendas cuyos escaparates no podías dejar de mirar." There was a district in his town - Madrid - where the dead people lived. It was almost like the district where Millás himself lived, but not exactly.
The secret of rich and luxurious life is hidden into the concept "exactly alike, just a little different."
The origin of the differences that make a difference lies somewhere outside ´you´. You need somebody else to mark out the differences that make a difference. Having been marked, we tend to think that it was me who found it. It is just that shared experiences become our personal experiences and what are you able to own if not your experiences...
Writing is solitary work. People who read lead a priviledged life. They are never lonely, for instance.
We all are lucky to have so many words that can be combined in so many ways to point out so many slight differences that may construct new experiences.
At eleven-thirty I had to put on the lights. Nights are getting dark again. So far the summer has been cold, but beautiful. This is quite normal, athough we would prefer having some hot weather sometime, too. Not for too long, just the normal 11 days a year. So far we have had just two of them.
If you live in Madrid, just look around to see whether your barrio es un barrio de los vivos o de los muertos. The difference might be a bit difficult to detect at the first sight, but I´m sure you´ll learn to pick up the real differences that make a difference.
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