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Arvo (Albin) Turtiainen (1904-1980) |
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"He cared about us children, Arvo
Turtiainen was born in Helsinki, the son Ernst
Turtiainen, a
master tailor, and Ida Lovisa Väätäinen. Turtiainen's father was a
Socialist, he played the violen and frequented the public library. For
a period his tailoring business was doing very well, but alcoholism led
him to
commit suicide in the early 1920s.At the age of 13 , Turtiainen
witnessed the tragic fate of
the Reds at Suomenlinna's, the sea-fortress in front of Helsinki, which
served for a period as a notorious concentration camp. Prisoners were
starved into skeletons. Turtiainen heard shots by execution squads. After finishing school (he was a mediocre student), Turtiainen graduated in 1925 as dental technician. He worked then in the profession in Vyborg (1927-30) and in Turku and Helsinki (1930-32, 34-36). Until the Depression years and rise of the right-wing Lapua movement, which campaigned to root out all vestiges of Marxism, Turtiainen was not much interested in workers' movement. Between the years 1931 and 1932, he studied at the Social Institute journalism and social sciences, and began to contribute in Jyväskylä to the leftist magazine Työn Voima (1932-34). From this period, Turtiainen's faithful companion was his portable Remington typewriter, which he used over 40 years. In 1934, Turtiainen settled in Helsinki, and published poems in the magazine Tulenkantajat (The Fire Bearers). Soon he became one of the central members of the literary group Kiila, serving as its chair until 1951. Kiila's members favored radical free verse and were more or less Marxists. From 1936 to 1938, Turtiainen was a subeditor of Kirjallisuuslehti. Between 1945 and 1947 he edited the magazine 40-luku. Muutos (1936. A
change), Turtiainen first book, was a
praise of the
workers at factories and buildings, the poems cursed the evils of the
unemployment. It was followed
Rautakourat
(1938, Iron hands), a strike
story illustrated by Tapio Tapiovaara. To gather material for his only
novel, Turtiainen worked for some time at a dockyard. This work a
lukewarm reception from critics. Due to the economic depression,
publishing poetry books was not very profitable business. Along with such names as Saima Harmaja, Yrjö Kaijärvi, Viljo
Kajava, and Aale Tynni, Turtiainen was one of the rare poets who debuted
in the 1930s. In Tie pilven alta
(1939, Under the cloud and away) Turtiainen used the technique of epitaph similar
to that of Spoon River Anthology. All major publishing houses rejected the work. It was eventually
accepted by the progressive, short-lived Kirjailijain kustannusliike, which was run by Erkki Vala. A couple of its
poems was based
on true life accounts. 'Tehtailija Salovaara' told of a manufacturer,
who accidentally shot his gardener, believing him to be a crow. A
member of parliament for Isänmaallinen kansaliike, IKL (Patriotic
People's Party), a nationalist and anti-communist party, threatened
Turtiainen with an action of libel. During the Winter War (1939-40), Turtiainen served in the army
as an officer in Virojoki. It was "a mental and physical hell," as Turtiainen said in an autobiographical sketch. ('Arvo Turtiainen,' in
Uuno Kailaasta Aila Merilutoon,
edited by Toivo Pekkanan and Reino Rauanheimo (1947, p. 434) On leave, Turtiainen broke
his leg, and was hospitalized for six months due to embolus. At the
battle of Summa, where Turtiainen's company was sent when he was
convalescenting, about 60 % of its men died or were wounded. While in
Finland (1940-41) during his Nordic exile, Bertolt
Brecht made a free translation of Turtiainen's poem 'Sotakoira'
(Der Kriegshund), in which a dog is sent to get help for a troop under
a heavy fire. Turtiainen wrote poem in 1939, when German tanks invaded
Poland. 'Der Kriegshund' was included in Brecht's Arbeitsjournal (1974). Following the break out of the
Continuation War (1941-44), Turtiainen went underground, to avoid
participating alongside Nazi Germany in
the war against the Soviet Union. In the winter of 1942, Turtiainen's
hiding place was revealed to
the authorities. He was arrested and imprisoned for two years. Despite
the difficult circumstances and overzealous prison officers, Turtiainen
managed to write a collection of poems, Palasin kotiin (1944, I came back
home), which drew
its subject from the war. The book was published by Tammi, founded in
1943; with some exceptions, Tammi was his publisher for the next decades. Laulu
kiven ja raudan ympyrässä
(1945, A song in a circle of stone and iron) was a collection of prison
poems. Turtiainen's diary from this period, Ihminen
n:o 503/42 (1946), described the penalty system
lively and satirically. At Riihimäki Turtiainen was denied the right to
have books and pen and paper. The situation changed after he was sent
to Sukeva, where he met a doctor with whom he talked about poetry.
"Myrkky-Iivari" (Poison-Ivar), as the doctor is called in the diary,
considered Turtiainen an idealist. In the beginning of 1944, during the
bombings of Helsinki by the Soviet airforces, Turtiainen's home was
destroyed, but after the Red Army launched a massive attack at the
Isthmus of Karelia, Turtiainen wrote optimistically in his diary: "The
day of freedom is coming!" Turtiainen's translation of Edgar Lee
Masters's Spoon
River Anthology came out in 1947; he had begun to work on it
already in
Turku County Prison (Turun lääninvankila). For Tammi, Turtiainen also
translated such writer as Vladimir Mayakovsky,
Graham Greene, and Walt Whitman. With Helvi Juvonen he translated
Pasternak's poems
from Doctor Zhivago. As translator, Turtiainen in general adhered quite faithfully to the source text. Alexander Throckmorton Laulu puolueelle (1946,
A song to the Party), published by Kansankulttuuri, was a collection of
poems written for various occasions and speech choirs. Turtiainen was
never very found of these pieces done on commissions, but like
translating books, they allowed him to earn extra income. Turtiainen's easily recognizable style was parodied by Kullervo Rainio in the humorous yearbook Lipeäkala
(1946): "Takasillalla seisoi / vanha vaimo, / jonka kuihtuneista
kasvoista näin, / että hän oli syönyt aamiaiseksi / kaksi kellastunutta
silakanpäätä." (Kirjojen virrassa by Kai Laitinen, 1999, pp. 208-209)
Accompanied by the artist and future writer Henrik Tikkanen, Turtiainen
traveled in 1948 to Italy to witness the parliamentary elections.
Ideologically, they had little in common, but both were heavy users of
alcohol, and had nightmares of the war. While in Milan, Turtiainen went
to hear the Communist leader Palmiro
Togliatti's speech and Tikkanen headed to a brothel. After a fight,
their ways
separared in Rome. This drunken odyssey was later featured in Aapo
Kukko's
graphic novel Sosialisti ja nihilisti (2019).
His own journey Turtiainen contined to
Hungary, where he joined a Finnish cultural delegation and returned via
Moscow to Helsinki. The plans to make a travel book together,
illustrated by Tikkanen and written by Turtiainen, never realized. Turtiainen's first marriage ended in 1951 – he had married at the early days of the Winter War Helena Vormula, whom he had known for years. Another blow was that his new collection of poems, Runon kalvas kalkki, was rejected by the publishing company Otava. Eino S. Repo, who sent the poems back, had served in the army as an officer during the war. Later in the 1960s he was appointed director of the Finnish Broadcasting Company. Repo considered it questionable whether all texts in Turtiainen's book could be classified as poems. This stormy period of life also included a passionate affair with the woman who would become his second wife. In 1953 Turtiainen married the critic and translator Brita Polttila (1920-2008); she made her debut as a poet at the age of 43 with the collection Katson tästä (1963). Turtiainen received his first state literature award for Laulu ajasta ja rakkaudesta in 1954. A rise to popularity among general readers took place roughly at the same time as Turtiainen began to take his subjects from his own life and utilize in his lyrics elements of city slang, culminating in Minä paljasjalkainen (1962, Me, barefoot). Turtiainen and Polttila became regular guests at the home of the liberal journalist and literary critic Pekka Tarkka, who had written a positive review of the book. Tarkka's article on the new edition of Ihminen n:o 503/42 was not published in the bourgeois newspaper Uusi Suomi, instead it appered in the magazine Ajankohta, edited by the writer Pentti Holappa. In the 1950s and 1960s, Turtiainen was both know for his leftist political stand and his verse depicting with humour and satire the streets, places, and people of Helsinki. His poems drew from the richenss of the "Stadi" slang, the everyday language of the turn-of-the-century Helsinki, which borrowed words among others from Russia and Swedish. These poems earned Turtiainen the name "Stadin Arska" (Big City Archie). Several of his odes were inspired by his own neighborhood, Punavuori (Redhill), called"Rööperi" by its slang name. "You have disappeared, old Rööperi, disappeared / to live in the images of my memories, in the summer of my childhood. / You disappeared like the old maples and lindentrees in our your yards / after they grew mossy, decrepit, no longer bloomed." 'A farewell to the Rööperi of my childhood,' translated by Anselm Hollo, in A Way to Measure Time, edited by Bo Carpelan, et al., 1992, p. 102) Besides poems, Turtiainen wrote radio plays, literary
criticism, and essays. In 1973 Turtiainen was
made honorary doctor at the University of Helsinki. Turtiainen's poems
have been set to music by Rauno Lehtinen, Caj Chydenius,
Toni Edelmann, M.A. Numminen, Asko Vilén, Anna-Mari Kähärä, and others. Turtiainen's vernacular coarseness, and critical attitude toward society, was largely accepted as a part of his folksy, talkative character. Remaining faithful to the ideals of commitment, Turtiainen had his own special role at the time, when modernism began to dominate the literary scene. Open to new visions and ideas, Turtiainen showed understanding to the work of Pentti Saarikoski, the most visible poet of the younger generation. With Saarikoski, whom Turtiainen once called a "naughty, kicking, recalcitrant, grinning black sheep," he disputed at the House of Culture in Helsinki in 1965. Saarikoski read poems from his latest work Mitä tapahtuu todella? Turtiainen made cracks about it and sang a folksy poem, with his beard trembling. The literary show ended in a draw. Unlike Elvi Sinervo, who expressed her sorrow after Stalin's
death and had a personal crisis after Khrushchev condemned the '"cult
of personality," Turtiainen fought against Stalinism. Especially in
cultural policy the Stalinist heritage it was seen in the ideological
line of Armas Äikiä (1904-64), a hard-line
Communist,
who returned in 1947 from the Soviet Union to Finland. For some time
Turtiainen's position as the major poet of the Communist Party was
threatened by Äikiä's self-promotion. However, his poems never gained a
critical acclaim
in the leftist press, not to mention the bourgeois press. In
order to be recognized as an authority in the literary field, Äikiä
attacked
Turtiainen's Mayakovsky translations published in the anthology Venäjän runotar (1946). When the Nobel Laureate Boris Pasternak was expelled from the Union of Soviet Writers in 1958, Turtiainen sent with the writer Elvi Sinervo a protest letter to the Union. Kansan Uutiset at first refused to published their letter but finally did so in order to prevent Turtiainen and Sinervo from making it available to bourgeois newspapers. In 1964 Turtiainen visited China. He was disappointed at the level of literature, and noted that Chinese writers can quote classic drinking songs, but they don't drink. Nevertheless, like Pentti Haanpää, who had travelled in China in 1953, Turtiainen did not condemn restrictions on free speech. After the Soviet intervention in the Hungarian revolution of 1956, Turtiainen gradually left the Communist Party, eventually resigning in 1965. The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia (August 20-21, 1968) divided the leftist parties. Officially the invasion was condemned by the Communist Party, although its minority wing strongly opposed the decision. Turtiainen's disappointment in the crushing of the "Prague Spring" came out in Puhetta Porthaninrinteellä (1968). Turtiainen compared the Soviet Union to an elephant in 'Pettyneelle rakastetulle' but also praised the courage and faith of Communists in 'Kommunisteille', dated 21 August, 1968. However, most of the poems in the collection dealt with aging, love, Helsinki, and the work of a poet. 'Rukous Hannu Salaman puolesta' defended the novelist Hannu Salama, who had been found guilty of "deliberate blasphemy" in a court process. Later the judgement was overturned. For further reading: Työn kuvaus Arvo Turtiaisen runoudessa by Tero Eskola (pro-gradu, 2020); Kiila 1936-2006 by Matti Rinne (2006); A History of Finland's Literature, edited by Arthur C. Schoolfield (1998); 'A farewell to the Rööperi of my childhood,' translated by Anselm Hollo, in A Way to Measure Time, edited by Bo Carpelan, et al. (1992); Lilü: Manfred Peter Heins Übersetzung des Gedichts "(1905)" von Arvo Turtiainen by Andreas F. Kelletat (1988); Kapinalliset kynät II-III by Raoul Palmgren (1984):'Arvo Turtiainen,' in Salt of Pleasure: Twentieth-century Finnish Poetry, translated by Aili Järvenpää (1983); 'Arvo Turtiaisen tie 30-luvun pilvien alta' by Vesa Karonen, in Rivien takaa, edited by Ritva Haavikko (1976); Arvo Turtiainen - elämää ja ystäviä, edited by Erkki Savolainen (1980); Luokka ja yksilö Arvo Turtiaisen runoudessa: sisällönanalyyttinen tutkimus Arvo Turtiaisen runouden ihmiskuvasta by Helena Lassila (1975); Arvo Turtiaisen sotarunot by Helena Lassila (pro-gradu, 1974); A History of Finnish Literature by Jaakko Ahokas (1973); 'Proletaari kotikaupungissa' in Kansakunnan kaapin päällä by Matti Kurjensaari (1969); 'Arvo Turtiainen,' in Uuno Kailaasta Aila Merilutoon, edited by Toivo Pekkanan and Reino Rauanheimo (1947) Selected works:
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