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Of the change in world-view, too, was born literature reflecting the new fragmentary nature of life-experiences and moral conflict, its leading writers Juhani Aho, with his concentration on emotional experiences, and Minna Canth, with her unwavering analysis of the position of women. Juhani Aho developed language as a means of expression of psychological sensitivity and found a lasting symbol in the Finnish landscape. In her many plays and stories, from Ty miehen vaimo ( A working man s wife , 1885) onward, Canth gave voice to the disappointment and feelings of emptiness of married women. Women lived at the mercy of men, and the leap to freedom of which they dreamed did not generally succeed. In the end, religious redemption was, for Canth too, the solution to human problems.

A realist trend describing people in their social setting has continued unbroken in Finnish literature via K.A. Tavaststjerna, Joel Lehtonen, F.E. Sillanp and V in Linna to the prose-writers of today, such as Eeva Joenpelto, Paavo Rintala, Hannu Salama and Christer Kihlman. Realism has constantly developed toward a more internalised description and a psychologically oriented perspective.

Artistic ambition directed the human destinies described subtly by Maria Jotuni, Hella Wuolijoki and Aino Kallas, most of them stories about women and often taking the form of plays. Wuolijoki s Niskavuori series became a handsome tribute to the strength of the Finnish peasant, in whose care the countryside lives and also encounters new winds. Among novels, Maria Jotuni s Arkiel m ( Everyday life , 1909) and Joel Lehtonen s Putkinotko (1919-20) took depiction of ordinary people in a more intellectual and critical direction. Volter Kilpi brought his narrative style, based as it was on the personal richness of language, to a climax in his novel Alastalon salissa ( In Alastalo s parlour , 1933), whose slow tempo describes the nature and life of the islanders of south-west Finland through a shipbuilding project. Frans Eemil Sillanp , too, found a sensitised descriptive style that reflected the ultimate questions of life in his novels of the 1930s, Nuorena nukkunut ( Fallen asleep while young ) and Ihmiset suviy ss ( People in a summer night ). In 1939 he was awarded the Nobel prize for literature.

The modernism of the lyrics and “the new poetry”

The 80 years of Finnish independence are divided, in poetry, into two periods by the years of the Second World War. The starting signal for each was given by change. Symbolism and late romanticism, however, continue to echo in the verses of the representatives of the older generation, Eino Leino, V.A. Koskenniemi and Otto Manninen. The first transition led to the breakthrough of modernism in Finland-Swedish poetry, to free form and new imagistic expression. Edith S dergran (1892-1923) employed the daring expressive devices of the new European poetry, which transcended genre, and filled them with the colourful inner visions of her eremitic life.

The Finnish-language poets of the Fire-bearers group of the 1920s opened windows noisily to Europe and farther afield, on exotic, strangely glowing gardens of images. Gradually these poets, such as Katri Vala and Elmer Diktonius, also awoke to the growing violence in Europe and spoke up strongly for peace. Close to them in ideas was Hagar Olsson, who wrote in both Swedish and Finnish and whose essays and plays pulse with the angst of the times and with the question of individual responsibility. Olsson s play Lumisota ( The snow war , 1939) was such an accurate anticipation of future political reality that it could be performed only after the war was over.

The next phase of modernism was associated with the ending of the Second World War, and with the recovery of Finnish cultural life, which had been isolated or caught in the mills of propaganda. The new poetry, supported by Swedish poetry of the 1940s and by the work of T.S. Eliot, settled its accounts emphatically with past values, experimented with a diversity of stylistic and formal possibilities and interpreted mystical experience and new freedoms. Eeva-Liisa Manner, Paavo Haavikko, Pentti Saarikoski and Lassi Nummi approached the uncertain feeling of the time through philosophy, history, politics and experience of nature.

The starting-points of Eeva-Liisa Manner s poetry include her experiences as a refugee in her childhood and existential questions that are reflected in both her mould-breaking collection T m matka ( This journey , 1956) and in the conflict between dreams and the cruelty of everyday life, which recurs in many radio and stage plays. Paavo Haavikko has developed into a master of many genres, who wields his pessimistic philosophy of life like a surgeon s life to dissect the apparent truths of power, money, love and death. Pentti Saarikoski represented a new kind of detective nomad who was given a home by the classical poetic tradition and a constant, ardent opposition to conventionality that also expressed itself in political terms; for him, quotidian introspection was the fount of poetry. In Lassi Nummi s poetry, the atmospheres of nature have consistently deepened and taken on a devotional quality that expresses itself in imagery that ranges from the metaphysical to the religious, without losing their highly individual, fluent melancholy. Solveig von Schoultz, Bo Carpelan, Claes Andersson and Tua Forsstr m have continued to develop the expressive language of modernism in Swedish-language poetry.

The novel after the Second World War

In novels, the war continued for a long time to influence subjects and coming to terms with experiences. Helvi H m l inen s critical depictions of cultural circles in Helsinki, S dyllinen murhen ytelm ( A genteel tragedy ), appeared on the eve of war and was the subject of

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