Sunshine and Stomach Ulcers

"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.