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Joel Lehtonen (1881-1934) |
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Finnish short story writer and
novelist, a colorful personality, who arose from a poor background to a
world
traveler. Joel Lehtonen was one of the most acclaimed Finnish authors
of the 1910s and 1920s. He started as a Neoromantic writer but after
the Finnish Civil War (1917-18), his works became disillusioned and
melancholic. Eino Leino and later the scholar and literature critic
Pekka Tarkka have compared Lehtonen to the Swedish writer August
Strindberg. Lehtonen's major novel is Putkinotko (1920),
a humorous story about a poor, lazy moonshiner and his idealistic
landlord. "Slavery . . . for a poor man . . . perhaps the councillor tricked me . . . He promised the flour at half-price and what can a poor fellow do . . . what Mauno Kypenäinen's newspaper says about the gentry is true, every word of it! But this sack will be carried out of sheer defiance! It was heavier than I thought. They foolded me into taking it." (from Putkinotko, 1920; translated by Helen af Enehjelm, in Voices from Finland: An Anthology of Finland's Verse and Prose in English, Finnish and Swedish, edited by Elli Tompuri, Helsinki: Sanoma Osakeyhtiö, 1947, p. 262) Several of Joel Lehtonen's books were based on his own experiences. He was born at Sääminki, but he did not know who his father was and his mother, Karoliina Heikarainen, a country servant girl, suffered from mental illness. Having been abandoned by his mother soon after birth, he became an "auction child." At the age of four, he was sold in an auction to Augusta Wallenius, a clergyman's widow, who gave him the surname Lehtonen, and supported his education. Thus Lehtonen was given an opportunity to become a member of the established society but he had early developed a suspicion of bourgeois life style. He admired adventures and wanted to see the world. At school Lehtonen established a secret society which adopted ideas from the anarchist thinker Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921). Among his close friends was Rudolf Holsti (1881-1945), who made a distinguished career in politics and diplomacy. For some years, Lehtonen studied literature at the University of Helsinki, but eventually considered the life of a civil servant unsuitable to him. Moreover, after participating in 1902 at demonstrations against the Bobrikov regime and the Military Service Law, he was dismissed from the university. During the studies he was already making career as a journalist, working for several newspapers and writing at the same time novels and poems. Between the years 1904 and 1905 Lehtonen published Perm (1904), composed in the Kalevala meter, and three novels, Paholaisen viulu (1904, The Devil's violin), written in the Neoromantic tradition, Villi (1905, Wild), and Mataleena (1905), in which the mother of the narrator appears as a kind of madonna of decay and madness, ill-treated and ostracized. "Väliin on hän tullut aivan raivohulluksi. Silloin ovat ihmiset kulettaneet häntä velhojen — vuoroin metsän runoja popottavain noitain, vuoroin käskyjä popottavain pappien — luo, mutta lääkärin luo eivät koskaan." (Ibid., p. 119) Lehtonen received positive reviews, but Viljo Tarkianen did not share the enthusiasm: "Niistä ylistyksistä päättäen ei Joel Lehtonen olisi enempää eikä vähempää kuin kirjallisuutemme tuleva messias. Mitään messias-lupauksia ei ainakaan tämän kirjoittaja ole Permissä havainnut." ('Joel Lehtonen, Perm' by V. T. [Viljo Tarkiainen], Valvoja, Nro 2, Helmikuu 1905, p. 130) With his earnings Lehtonen bought in 1905 a cottage and a piece of land near his birth place, called Inha (later Putkinotko), where he spent many of his summers, but otherwise left it in the care of his half-brother Aleksander Muhonen, and his mother, who threatened to set house on fire. When his relatives threatened with a libel suit after the publication of Putkinotko, he sold the place and bought another from Sääksmäki, called Lintukoto, referring perhaps to a poem by Aleksis Kivi with that title. In 1906 Lehtonen moved to Lahti to work for the newspaper Lahden
Lehti, edited by his old friend Rudolf Holsti. In Lahti he met
Sylvia Avellan, his great love who was married to a local politician
and whose social position was for the writer a constant barrier. During
the following 13 years Lehtonen wrote to her over three hundred
letters. Sylvia's death in 1920, apparently by suicide, was a hard
emotional shock for him. Sylvia Avellan became the model for Julia Oljemark in the novels Sorron lapset (1923, The children of violence) and Punainen mies (1925, The red man), portraits of torn society. The protagonist, Isidor Tistelberg, was Lehtonen's alter ego as a land surveyor who falls in love with Julia. Lehtonen's letters to Sylvia Avellan, published in 1969, were exceptionally open. He wrote about his poor economic situation, details of his physical condition – also mentioning the location of his boils – literary projects, and disappointments. In a letter, written in Rome in 1908, he mentions his affair with a prostitute, who gave him fleas. Lehtonen's letters also reveal Sylvia's small gestures of caring – she sends him during their correspondence, besides letters, Christamas presents, medicine, thread, pillows, oat grits, all kinds of needful things. Lehtonen's sojourns in Switzerland and Italy (1907-08), France (1911-12), and North Africa and Italy again (1914) led to an admiration for French and Italian literature. During this period he wrote the travel stories of Myrtti ja alppiruusi (1911, The myrtle and the alpen rose), and the prose poems, influenced by Baudelaire, of Punainen mylly (1913, Red mill). This depressed work shows Lehtonen's disenchantment with Paris. He saw there the first organized group showing by Cubists and did not like the paintings. Two years later he traveled in the Mediterranean and North Africa. Seeking relief from worsening rheumatism, he took mud baths. This trip produced a collection of poetry, Puolikuun alla (Under the half moon). Some of the poems are straightforwardly anti-Semitic: "Itse Israel, hän kärkkyy valtaa rahan, / koska muun se korvaa pahan, / perheinensä synagoogaan kulkee, / kiittää Jehovaansa, ettei heikko / ole heimo esinahka-leikko: / lisääntyy kuin Syrtin santa . . . " ('Juutalaisten katu,' in Puolikuun alla: matka- ja mielikuvia murjaanien maasta by Joel Lehtonen, Hämeenlinnassa: Arvi A. Karisto Osakeyhtiö, 1919, p. 39) Lehtonen also began to write a play, entitled Satu, but never finished it. Rakkaita muistoja (1911, Dear memories), a collection of poems, in which the author returned to his roots and Finnish themes, was followed by a sequel, Markkinoilta (1912, From the fair). From 1912 to 1913 Lehtonen worked for the newspaper Helsingin Sanomat – it was the longest hire he ever had. While staying in Helsinki, he had an affair with a modiste named Olga. At this time he contracted gonorrhea and an infestation of crabs. It has been assumed that his ill-health in later years resulted from a veneral disease. In the beginning of the 1900s several Finnish writers started to translate world classics into Finnish. Eino Leino chose Dante's Divina Commedia, Otto Manninen focused on Homeros and Joel Lehtonen, inspired by Renaissance, decided to take up Boccaccio's Decamerone. Although the work was never totally completed – Lehtonen published in 1914 a selection of Boccaccio's stories – his intensive reading of world classics sharpened his own literary tastes. Lehtonen also translated into Finnish works from such authors as Knut Hamsun, August Strindberg, Edward Westermack, Stendhal, Alexandre Dumas, Henrik Ibsen, Romain Rolland, Anatole France, and Jules Verne. Kerran
kesällä (1917, Once in summer) launched Lehtonen's most creative period. The novel tells of a depressed composer, Lauri Falk, who
returns to his home country from abroad; the Civil War has not yet been fought. Lehtonen continued with Kuolleet
omenapuut (1918, The dead apple trees), a collection of masterful short stories, and
the classic Putkinotko,
a naturalistic story of the clash
between two worlds – primitive and cultured. There is new angle to the
story: peasants do not represent the soul of the nation, but the
traditional countryside has fallen into decadence. The events take place between morning and sunset on a hot August day. The time is the prohibition period. Aapeli Muttinen, a fat book-dealer, has put part of his estate idealistically into the care of Juutas Käkriäinen, an ignorant tenant farmer, who is trying to survive by illicit distilling. Juutas himself is compared with a savage, Judas. He harbours a secret hatred towards his landlord, partly a caricature of the author himself. A gunshot ends the novel, prefiguring the Civil War. Nothing remarkable is done during the day, but in the hopeless misery of Käkriäinen the sun smiles and man, animals, and nature are united in a close friendship. Lehtonen's half-brother Aleksander Muhonen served as a model for the character. In Korppi ja puutarha (1923, The raven and the garden), a collection of short stories, Lehtonen reveals, that Juutas was killed in the war. The independence proclamation on December 6, 1917, and the
following bloody Civil War, which ended in May 1918 to the victory of
White Army and the defeat of the Reds, left deep marks on Lehtonen's
mind. In a letter to Sylvia Avellan he condemned both sides: "This
country is disgusting, with its white and red monsters." The traumatic
division of the nation troubled Lehtonen, and shadowed his later works.
Among them is Rakastunut rampa (1922), a pessimistic story
of Sakris Kukkelman, a cripple who admires Nietzsche and is
plagued by pains. After two prostitutes swindle Kukkelman out of his
money, he hangs himself. Of all of Lehtonen's characters, Kukkelman is the most grotesque, as if he were coming from a expressionist or cubist painting: "Tuossa hän tulee, selvenee yhä raskaassa sumussa. Tulee kuin neliskulmainen puulaatikko. Laatikon alla huojuu kaksi hyvin lyhyttä jalkaa, joiden polviin hän kävellessään nojautuu käsillään. Jaloissa on hänellä suuret nauhakengät; pohkeiden ympärille kääritty kapeat, repaleiset säärystimet. Hän ähkii ja huohottaa." (Ibid., p. 5) In Henkien taistelu (1933, The battle of the spirits), a devil conducts the hero on a tour of the scenes of Finnish corruption, to prove to God that he can force a pious man to lose his faith. The story ends in Helsinki. In 1920 Lehtonen married Lydia Thomasson, a masseuse, whom he had met in the mid-1910s and who later worked as her husband's secretary. In 1915 she had had an illegitimate child. Lydia appeared in Putkinotko as Lyygia, and in Sorron lapset and Punainen mies as Klara Merve. At the cafe Brondin Lehtonen became in 1920 in contact with the radical young painters Sallinen and Ruokokoski of the November Group, sharing their critical views on the conservative establishment. Other artist and writers who frequented the cafe included Anton Lindforss, who painted a portrait of Lydia, Ilmari Aalto, Ragnar Ekelund, Viljo Kojo, Larin Kyösti, and Alex Matson. Several illnesses made Lehtonen in the 1930s occasionally unable to move or to write. To escape his his 50th birthday celebrations, Lehtonen went with Lydia to Italy. While in Florence, he met by accident in Buca San Giovanni the young art student Pietro Annigoni, who sketched his portrait. The solitary life, melancholy, sufferings from rheumatism and insomnia, ended in 1934 when Lehtonen committed suicide by hanging himself with a rope, that had been used to wrap up a parcel of books. "The triumph of death" – also name for a collection of poems Lehtonen wrote in 1933 – was evident in his last letters to Otto Manninen, Rafael Koskimies, Anna-Maria Tallgren, and Kaapo Wirtanen. In the posthumously published collection, Hyvästijättö Lintukodolle (1935, Farewell to the bird's nest), the title referred to a farewell to his haven of peace, or the "Island of the Blessed." For further reading: Joel Lehtonen:piirteitä ja vaikutelmia by Eino Palola (1927); Joel Lehtosen Putkinotko by Magnus Björkenheim (1955); Joel Lehtonen runoilijana by Unto Kupiainen (1956); A History of Finnish Literature by Jaakko Ahokas (1973); 'Putkinotkon tausta' by Pekka Tarkka, in Joel Lehtonen I. Kodin suuret klassikot (1977 ); 'Joel Lehtonen and Putkinotko' by Pekka Tarkka, in Books from Finland, 11, pp. 239-45 (1977); Kirjailijatar ja hänen miehensä: sekä muita esseitä by Eila Pennanen (1982); Ääneen kirjoitettu: vapautuvien mittojen varhaisvaiheet suomenkielisessä lyriikassa by Auli Viikari (1987); Talo ilmassa: Joel Lehtosen Putkinotko by Aarne Kinnunen (2005); Löytötavaraa by Markku Turunen (2007); Joel Lehtonen I: vuodet 1881-1917 by Pekka Tarkka (2009); Joel Lehtonen II: vuodet 1918–1934 by Pekka Tarkka (2012): Alkukantaisuus ja tunteet: primitivismi 1900-luvun alun suomalaisessa kirjallisuudessa by Riika Rossi (2020); Nordic Literature of Decadence, edited by Pirjo Lyytikäinen, Riikka Rossi, Viola Parente-Čapková, Mirjam Hinrikus (2020) Selected works:
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