Editorial

On civic virtue

Today I walked through Senaatintori Square on the way to work. It is little Helsinki’s great urban open space, of the Cathedral, the Senate buildings, the University Library, a creation of its architect, C.L. Engel, in the early 19th century.

The day before yesterday, in the square and on the Cathedral steps, 25,000 people watched the Eurovision Song Contest on big screens; yesterday, 15,000 sports fans followed this year’s finals of the Ice Hockey World Championship (Finland lost to Canada, 4–2). Every time I cross the square I remember my grandmother Alina, who told me how, as a young girl, she watched the Russian Cossacks ride up and down the Cathedral steps, at the time of the General Strike, a hundred years ago.

Since 1938, the Mayor has spoken on New Year’s Eve from those steps; on Mayday the red flags of the working class are flown. The drama of history is interleaved there, with the widest range of cultural events — sports and pop included.

Culture? Workers, class? In this issue of Books from Finland, we take a look at politics, culture and the media as well as history.

What people are now offered in the mainstream media appears more and more uniform and populist in content. The press’s shrinking and uncritical arts sections, the pawing of the private lives of trivial celebrities, the cheaply made, run-of-the-mill entertainment of even uncommercial television…. So what else is new? Yes, but isn’t it just odd that although the Finns are now more educated than ever, here intellectualism, critical thinking and discussing all seem to be feared. This also leads to a fear of art.

When a Finnish writer is asked whether he thinks he is an intellectual, he contests it, reports the translator Stefan Moster, page 133. ‘In Finland, nobody in their right mind would claim to be an intellectual,’ confirms the writer Arto Kivimäki on page 132; ‘It would be letting the side down.’

‘Serious news reporters say they feel ashamed as they queue up to interview the Prime Minister’s ex-girlfriend. They still do it, though,’ writes Anna Rotkirch on page 135. Well, market liberalism rules OK, even in culture. Consumer polls determine everything: because the majority ‘wants’ this and that, the minorities — and in small Finland they are really small — are invited to get by on less. No point in a minority member whining about what he gets for the taxes he or she pays!

Tuomas Nevanlinna examines the relationship between politics and culture: in his view the opportunities for cultivating education — in order to produce top achievers for the use of the culture export, for example — look pretty slim, for both left and right (page 137).

In this issue we also discuss blogs, the rapidly-growing blogosphere of online diaries — it is estimated a new blog is born every second! Blogs represent a fundamental change to the public sphere, as well as to the very concept of mass media, as the writer Leena Krohn points out (page 121).

The Finnish government has recently expressed its wish to increase its subsidies to ‘culture export’ in the future. That’s great, in principle.

A Finnish-language author is somewhat harder to export, though, than, say, a rock band, because he / she creates culture in his / her mother tongue — but fortunately there are artists available to import the text into the English-speaking world, for example. In this issue the fascinating, Zen-inspired poetic universe of Aaro Hellaakoski is interpreted by Herbert Lomas (page 111).

Oi kimmellystä ilman pielen. Oi rikkautta laulun kielen.

Ah limitless bright light: the gift of lyrical flight!

Happy summer to all our readers!

Soila Lehtonen
Editor-in-Chief