Book Review | Leftism took grants, tuberculosis to a child, friends and eventually life – Katri Vala was a celebrated poet until society rejected her

Nonfiction book

Minna Maijala: Katri Vala – The Wanderer & the Seer. Big Dipper. 414 s.

In the previous in his autobiography Minna from Canth (2014) Minna Maijala broke many myths that had defined perceptions of the author for decades.

She wasn’t a sex slave to her husband until then Ferdinand Canthin early death liberated art into making. The martyrdom story was built and repeated because it fit into the early agenda of the Finnish women’s movement.

In a book on years of oppression The underground resistance of the golden age (2017) Maijala (b. 1975) confirmed the analysis of how a community, in this case a nation striving to emerge, always strives to strengthen its unity through its stories, even imaginary ones.

this is one main idea in the new biography of the poet Katri Valasta (right: Karin Wadenström, later Heikel, 1901–1944).

Along with its author name, Vala was, in a way, a product or brand used by various literary and political factions to consolidate its position.

He himself has always been hidden behind his reputation, and a new biography does not completely permeate a person – of course, that is certainly not Maijala’s goal.

In his preface, he hopes to be “drawn behind the myth of man,” but he also explains the impossibility of the task.

There is simply not enough material: for example, most of the letters left are only those sent to Vala, on the basis of which he could only guess his own thoughts.

There are more recollections of the Whale, but according to Maijala, they are also often differently colored and purposeful.

An important source, however, was Valan Erkki-a brother’s unfinished, unpublished manuscript about his sister. The previous actual biography of Katri Vala was published Kerttu Saarenheimo 1984

It was one front view of the written Firefighters movement (or rather the movements) of the 1920s and 1930s, and according to Maijala, the whole “Firefighters is a story about the power of telling”.

Thus, the image of the Whale was shaped, in part during his lifetime, by two of its leaders: a writer, a journalist, and a cultural influencer. Olavi Paavolainen and his own brother Erkki Vala.

Against this background, I see Maijala’s intention to present as much the author and human Katri Vala as the cultural currents of this short lifetime.

The new work reveals many shocking things about the time of Finland and its attitudes, and interestingly they have similarities to this day.

Written The Firefighters Group has its roots in the magazine Nuori Voima, founded in 1908, which published the texts of its readers. In the 1920s, there were many future cultural figures as assistants, including Wadenström’s siblings Karin and Erkki.

Their background was half Swedish, and Edith Södergran was one of Vala’s early inspirers.

What Vala and Södergran had in common, in addition to poetry, pulmonary tuberculosis, which eventually killed both, as did poverty, caused by falling out of the previous social class.

The lifelong lack of oath began when the forester’s father died in a mental hospital in 1911.

After that, he and Erkin had to earn a living and take care of an impractical mother and little brother who also later developed mental health problems.

Vala studied as a primary school teacher, and the reluctance to bend to general conventions was already evident in the seminar.

It was also related to the expression of poetry, the expressionism and originality of which was soon noticed in the circle of Young Power.

This is how Olavi Paavolainen’s influence began to slip: Minna Maijala describes Paavolainen’s interest in Vala’s desire to build her “own image, a feminine counterpart” from this.

Paavolainen, who writes for Nuoreen Voima and Ylioppilaslehti, among others, was familiar with European culture and admired its decadence.

The letter started a relationship that became a close friendship, even an erotic one. The oath seems to have been quite vigilant and active sexually, but those feelings were directed at people other than Paavolainen; one of the lovers was a poet Yrjö Jylhä.

Many young people the writers were marked in the 1920s by crossing borders, which Maijala vividly tells about.

There were several bisexuals in the firefighters, and alcohol and drugs were consumed. At the party, Paavolainen dressed Vala in exotic costumes and jumped as a fauna himself. Being naked was also fashionable.

However, during the life of the Society of Paris in 1928, shadows also began to appear in the life of the Artists’ Society: Yrjö Gustafsson, drowned (or jumped) in the Seine.

In the background it seemed already in Finland, the growing nationalism, which also opposed international modernism and the free-standing poetry of Vala and other firefighters.

It led the loose cultural community to organize itself first as a corporation and a magazine, then as a club, with the aim of supporting pacifism and Europeanism and opposing fascism.

Erkki Vala played a significant role in this, fortunately Minna Maijala says a lot. The whole work can be considered almost as much as Erkki’s biography as Katri Vala’s biography.

In addition, it is a sharp description of how literature was sought in the young Finland of the 1920s. Namely, the contradictions continued and escalated in the 1930s, both among the Fire Carriers and in cultural life, as well as in Finland as a whole.

Under the guise of the threat of communism, the Lapuan movement was lobbied for an amendment to the law in 1930, which led to the surveillance of suspicious associations (such as the Fireworks Society). The pacifist Coal Association, in which Katri Vala was involved, was completely abolished.

Minna Maijala describes well how the growing political polarization is exacerbating voices and attitudes throughout society.

This was also the case for Katri Valalla, who, in addition to the growing Finnish fascism, was surrounded by poverty and her own worsening illness.

Marriage Dear Heikelin was also not easy, and the first pregnancy ended in the death of a newborn baby – tuberculosis and its treatments had damaged the fetus.

During the war, Heikel was imprisoned on a couple of occasions for “treacherous activities”. The oath was evacuated in both Lapland and Sweden and was born in 1934 Moorson in foster care when the mother’s condition worsened.

Katri Vala died at a tuberculosis clinic in Eksjö, Sweden, in May 1944, at the age of only 42.

Five in addition to the collection of poems, Vala wrote sharp magazines in the 1930s, about which I would have liked to read more in my biography.

Fortunately, Maijala gives a sufficient picture of the lyric by presenting and analyzing the key poems of different years. It becomes clear why the Whale has been loved for decades: he is a depictor of nature, senses and instincts without deception or constellation.

As a reader, I wonder how a different production would have been if the writer’s life had been easier – the same question arose in the biography of Minna Canth, who died at the age of 53.

What if the writer didn’t have to take care of his family members? If the scholarship policy of a young, culturally controversial state had been okay? If the author’s Spouse had been mentally healthier? Or if tuberculosis had been avoided?

That’s it Of course, Minna Maijala is not into hobbies, and that’s good.

In a shocking epilogue, however, he recalls how different cultural cycles affected Vala’s life – and even his death.

“Leaving Katri Vala for years was not due to injury or a blind spot, but it was a conscious cultural policy activity,” she writes.

From the popularity of Olavi Paavolainen, Valan dropped tuberculosis early on, which he treated with indifference and even disgust. Pacifism and the spouse’s reckless leftism, in turn, took grants and an artist’s pension.

But a year after Vala’s death, as an ally of the Soviet Union, Finland suddenly began to take a completely different view of the rejected dissident.

The state sponsored a commemoration in which he was described as “the great poet of the morning in the world”. After that, the procession ceremoniously took the Vala urn to Sörnäinen, now Katri Vala Park, where it was also buried.

The spectacle-like event was, of course, organized and written by Olavi Paavolainen.

An equally violent turn took place in the life of Armas Heikel, the widow of Vala, only half a year after the memorial service, when she met a woman in a café who had arranged for Vala’s affairs before she left for Sweden. Heikel took his mother-in-law to an empty apartment and killed him with an ax.

Even in the light of these events, it is clear that there is still something to explore and reflect on in our cultural history: traumas, jacket twists and tragedies.

Katri Vala has now been brought up, and she will remain on display, if only Hanna Rytin and Cécile Orblinin in dialogue Hobo & Seer –written with a biography Oath!The play will hit the stage next spring.

Read more: The poet Katri Vala experienced great moments of loss in Sörnäinen in the early 1930s, but also experienced the most creative time of her life.