Frans Eemil Sillanpää

by FransEemil Sillanpää

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Analysis

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Frans Eemil Sillanpää’s writings are rooted in his home region, the area around Tampere. Its people—crofters and farmhands—its animals, its changing seasons, and its natural surroundings constitute his fictional world. Only seldom did Sillanpää depart from this milieu to depict city life and the higher social classes, and then frequently with satire. His characters are for the most part passive beings governed by their instincts who, without intellectual insight, yield to blind fate. These characters are analyzed either undramatically and with cool objectivity or with concern and compassion, framed by descriptions of nature showing superb poetic inspiration.

Together with this duality innarrative attitude, readers find, on the stylistic level, a fluctuation between harsh, realistic expression and suggestive, lyric sequences of the highest sophistication, almost imperceptibly following the rhythms of nature. Sillanpää did not regard life from a psychological or metaphysical standpoint; rather, he treated it as a totality that includes all living things—humans, animals, and nature. This biological monism elevates his humble and tragic characters above their sufferings, breaks the pattern of decay and catastrophe, and lends them a heroic stature either through resignation or through a realization of their affinity with an ever-revitalizing nature.

Elämä ja aurinko

Sillanpää’s first novel, Elämä ja aurinko (life and the sun), turned out to be very different from all previous Finnish fiction. Animated nature was described with a hitherto unseen precision, counterbalanced by evocative sensitivity, together reflecting the undercurrents of the human mind: The internal and the external, the self and surrounding nature, merged in a unique and refined pattern. Into the magic world of a few summer months—and of rather secondary importance—is placed a love story describing the short-lived affairs of a peasant student who has returned to his village, with both a young girl of his own social background and, at the same time, a mature, upperclass woman.

Meek Heritage

In Sillanpää’s next novel, Meek Heritage, the narrative structure has been tightened and the characters have been given firm and precise contours. Meek Heritage was written immediately after the Finnish Civil War and reflects the author’s discouraging experiences with both the communist and the anticommunist factions. It concentrates entirely on the destiny of the main character, containing few lyric descriptions of nature or philosophical reflections.

The novel is mainly about the life of Juha Toivola before the war. It tells of his childhood during the famine of the 1860’s as a penniless orphan and the abuses to which he is subjected by relatives and other people for whom he works. He marries almost unthinkingly, leases a small piece of land, drifts because of his poverty into the Socialist movement, joins the Red Guard, and is shot by mistake at the end of the war. The book, however, is no novel of indignation and social accusation. Everything goes wrong for Juha because he is unable to take care of himself. He never commits any dishonest act; he simply falls prey to the whims of fate in a world in which dreariness and evil can be found everywhere. He remains, in spite of his spinelessness and filthiness, a pitiful yet valuable representative of humanity, worthy of protection.

Meek Heritage is considered the classic description of the Finnish Civil War and one of the literary catalysts in the process of national reconciliation. Twelve years went by—a period in which Sillanpää established his profile as a short-story writer—before he published his second masterpiece, The Maid Silja, his longest and most widely read novel.

The Maid Silja

In The Maid Silja , the narrative, too, is disrupted by exquisite descriptions of the Finnish summer....

(This entire section contains 1198 words.)

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Sillanpää tells of the extinction of an old peasant family, the last years in the lives of an old man and his daughter. Like Juha inMeek Heritage, they, too, are unable to protect themselves, but unlike him, they are intellectually and emotionally mature. Somewhat idealized—and not without sentimentality—is the portrait of the girl Silja, who is placed in an everyday reality in which she does not belong and who finds escape from this reality mainly in her romantic fantasies. Her first and only erotic experience, with a student, becomes both the climax and the turning point in her life. He abandons her, her latent tuberculosis surfaces, and after hardship and suffering, she dies the following spring. The dramatic events are, however, presented not as tragic but rather as the entry into blissful peace. The story is enveloped in a chiaroscuro atmosphere, a manifestation of the inner strength of humankind when facing death—the author’s demonstration of the spirit’s victory over matter.

Miehen tie

Greater epic breadth distinguishes the novel Miehen tie (the way of man), which, in contrast to Sillanpää’s previous works, focuses on determined and hardworking human beings. The weak farmer, Paavo, must make many mistakes, including an unsuccessful marriage, before he is united with the strong-willed Alma, his youthful love and a direct contrast to the vulnerable Silja. Alma, who defies all conventional moral concepts, is from the outset aware that she and Paavo, by nature, are destined for each other—the influence of Lawrence has been suggested—and here we find Sillanpää’s moral message: The peasant family is able to survive because of its acceptance of this fate. The otherwise somewhat robust character delineation and narrow realism of this novel alternates with poetic passages in which humans and nature fuse.

People in the Summer Night

In People in the Summer Night, the description and the mystique of nature again dominate. The action takes place during a few days and nights of summer and offers a cross section of human destinies from birth to death, either peaceful or violent. Here, Sillanpää allows a number of separate events and characters to appear as apparently insignificant and transitional elements of what proves to be an invisible and timeless totality.

Elokuu and Ihmiselon ihanuus ja kurjuus

In part as a result of his severe illness, Sillanpää’s bright and optimistic mood in his early works yielded to a dark pessimism in his late novels. Elokuu (August), through its portrayal of a failing writer who succumbs to daydreams and alcoholism, presents a relentless study of human destruction. Related in topic and atmosphere is Sillanpää’s last novel, Ihmiselon ihanuus ja kurjuus (life’s beauty and mystery), theprotagonist of which is a successful poet who is haunted by the tragic realization of having reached his peak artistically—perhaps a reflection of Sillanpää’s own doubts.

In his last works, Sillanpää does not, with the same ease as earlier, offer an escape from disillusionment and decay through resignation, heroism, or consolation in nature. This skepticism adds a new dimension to his oeuvre and indicates that his pantheistic harmony is only tentative. The late works exhibit a tension between idealized Romanticism and brutal naturalism, with greater psychological nuances, a more complex narrative technique, and frequent changes in point of view; Sillanpää increasingly enhances the action with his own comments.

Sillanpää is a master in Finnish literature. His works are living classics, accessible in translation to a wide audience and still highly readable despite their period flavor.