Focus on Finnish Writers |
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Leena Krohn– The Alchemist |
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Science looks for explanations; art allows for mystery. In many of her works, Leena Krohn (born 1947) combines fact and fiction, constructing her fantasies around scientific truths and hypotheses in equal measure; she is interested in what might be but is not – or not yet – and what might never be. Krohn mixes elements of science and art as an alchemist mixes chemical elements. Indeed, she depicts the world of alchemy in her novel Oofirin kultaa (Gold of Ophir, 1987).
Krohn began her career writing works for children, but since 1983 she has written mostly for adults. Set in a city of insects, the novel Tainaron (1985) consists of the letters of a writer living in a strange universe. The resulting form, one combining the short story and the novel, shows Krohn at the height of her powers. Her use of language is transparent, cool, reserved even, leaving the reader the necessary space for personal reflection and interpretation.
“That which we call reality is merely a shared dream,” wrote Krohn in her Finlandia Prize winning essay collection Matemaattisia olioita tai jaettuja unia (‘Mathematical beings or shared dreams’, 1992). The relationship of flesh and silicon, the differences and similarities between humans and computers, the potential of digital intelligence and human utopias as well as paradoxes that grow from human experience are all subjects in Krohn’s fiction, now translated into twelve languages.
Krohn has called art “the meeting place of play and logic”. In her novel Pereat mundus (1998), all the characters are called Håkan. Through these characters Krohn explores a variety of genetic and technological hypotheses: one of the Håkans is a chimera, a cross between a chimpanzee, a wolf, a goat and a human, a patented hybrid. Horror sci-fi? A gloomy, moralising premonition of the dangers of genetic modification? No, not if we accept that human genes are not universally superior.
In her bitingly satirical novel Unelmakuolema (‘Dream death’, 2004) Krohn explores the numerous dimensions of the self, our thinking and senses. The novel brings to mind Aldous Huxley’s classic 1930s dystopia, Brave New World. Here, Krohn’s characters are in pursuit of a ‘designer death’ and eternal life by having themselves cryogenically stored in the hope of possible resurrection sometime in the future.
The Bee Pavilion – Krohn’s ninth novel and her 26th book to date – is a collection of stories whose themes again grow from the contention that “reality is more fantastical than the imagination ”. The book’s narrator joins the Fluctuating Reality Club, which meets at a former mental institution called the Bee Pavilion. The club’s members all share their strange and / or paranormal experiences. Various other associations hold meetings there too, among them the Throat Singers, the Storm Chasers, the Promoters of Municipal Science and the Car Dwellers. Indeed, the city’s inhabitants come from all walks of life, and the reality they live in fluctuates – much like our own, that of Krohn’s readers.
In the novel’s rich structure, which inspires the reader to return to its universe more than once, fact once again mingles with fiction. Just as in the misleading contemporary world, the narrative explores the paradox of how easy it is to access all human knowledge, of which only a fraction can ever be taken in and fully understood. At the end of the novel, the following claims – true or false? – are made: “No one knows how to manufacture the blue glass in the cathedral at Chartres. The sun’s core is ice. Colder regions are inhabited by lonelier bees.”
Beneath Krohn’s sarcasm, irony and intellectual, perceptive moral criticism in this surreal and fantastical narrative there also lies a deep personal sorrow caused by the inherent idiocy of humankind and the looming realisation that our species seems to be heading for self-extinction. The author fully accepts the fact that nature’s endless cycle implies that human supremacy is perishable. In Krohn’s highly original fiction, moral and ethical problems intertwine like the double helix of DNA.
Soila Lehtonen |
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