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Editorial

This’n’that
Maria Antas on Thomas Warburton’s fables; Maria Säntti on Jari Järvelä; Soila Lehtonen on Petri Tamminen; Kristina Carlson on Eeva Tikka; Finland’s internet summer bestseller; literary prizes; Alpo Ruuth in memoriam

Claes Andersson
On the uselessness of poetry
Poems from Dessa underbara stränder, förbi glidande. (‘These wonderful shores, gliding by’, Söderströms, 2001), translated by Rika Lesser
To be sawn in two halves is an experience Claes Andersson has had – twice. After two heart bypass operations the psychiatrist, poet, politician and jazz pianist takes a look back at life so far

Thomas Warburton
Cautionary tales
Short stories from Förklädnader. Sagor, parabler (‘Disguises. Stories, allegories’, Schildts, 2001; Valepukuja. Satuja, vertauksia, WSOY, 2002), translated by Hildi Hawkins
What’s it like being visited by Apollo? What exactly happened to Sleeping Beauty after she woke up? How does a museum’s staff cope with a director who insists being put on show after his death? Thomas Warburton alters the ends of old fairy-tales and creates completely new ones

Jari Järvelä
Dog
A short story from Paljon on Afrikasta kertomatta (‘Much is still untold about Africa’, WSOY, 2002), translated by Herbert Lomas
A father has forgotten the power of a little boy’s imagination. Loneliness gives birth to invisible friends who can disappear just like mother. In Jari Järvelä’s short story, it is the adult, not the child, who is helpless

Petri Tamminen
Secret lives
Short prose from Piiloutujan maa (‘The land of the hider’, Otava, 2002), translated by David Hackston
Is Petri Tamminen (born 1966) a loser, or a modern storyteller-philosopher? He flees angst by hiding in an attic or a crowd. ‘Anxiety is a hiding place. Anxiety is liberating’, his narrator claims. See for yourself

Eeva Tikka
Letter to the wind
A short story from Haapaperhonen (‘The butterfly’, Gummerus, 2002), translated by Hildi Hawkins
This short story by Eeva Tikka (born 1939) paints a portrait of the life of a father, a daughter – or son; the reader is left to decide – and an elderly dog in the winter moonscape of their log cabin, on the borderline between dreams and sleeplessness. Spring and death are both present in Tikka’s lucid, gentle story

Merja Salo
Making faces
Photographs and extracts from the essay ‘Ilmeitä kameralle’ (‘Faces for the camera’), published in Virne. Huumori suomalaisessa valokuvassa (‘Grin. Humour in Finnish photography’, edited by Olli Jaatinen; Suomen valokuvataiteen museo & Musta Taide, 2002), translated by Hildi Hawkins
A funny photo may be created in the studio; a comic snapshot is born by catching the subject at the right instant. Virne records the humour of two photographic exhibitions; Professor Merja Salo takes a look at a 1920s face-pulling competition and the comedy of mimicry

Juhani Tolvanen
Subversive strategies
The ‘spirit of the Winter War’ is a mythical hero comparable to an oriental genie in the comic strips of Heikki Paakkanen (born 1948). He is a footsoldier from the Finnish Winter War (1939–40), who is joined by a conscientious objector who has refused to touch a weapon and must therefore serve his compulsory military service by other means. The odd couple sets out for Paris. The third in the series of four articles on new Finnish cartoon art

Juhani Pallasmaa
Cinema as architecture
Extracts from an essay published in The Architecture of Image – Existential Space in Cinema (Rakennustieto, 2001)
Film directors paint or compose on celluloid, claimed Jean-Luc Godard. The architect Juhani Pallasmaa explores the architecture of the cinema; in the work of Hitchcock and Tarkovsky, settings create a spatial metaphysics of fear and melancholy

Reviews

Pekka Suhonen
Hero-worship?
20th-Century Architecture: Finland [Ed. by Marja-Riitta Norri & Elina Standertskjöld & Wilfred Wang]

David Kirby
On top of the world
Juha Nurminen & Matti Lainema: Ultima Thule: Arctic Explorations

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Letter from Brittany
Outi Nyytäjä, renaissance woman of Finnish theatre, lives half her year among the Celts, half in Finland. Her France is not fashionable Provence, but the rugged shoreline of Brittany, which she hopes to make her home eternally
 
 
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