Finnish Novelist Who Won The Nobel Prize

New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 35, 23 February 1940, Page 15

Finnish Novelist Who Won The Nobel Prize

NTIL Frans-Eemile Sillanpaa was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature last year, few people outside his own country had ever heard the name of this Finnish author, "SainteMisére," published in 1919, was the first of his novels to bring him fame. It has been translated into both French and German with great success. "Prés de Sol," published in 1924, has also been translated into French. These are his only novels known outside Finland, where all his works have achieved great popularity, and are widely known and _ read Sillanpaéa was born of peasant‘farmer parents on September 16, 1888. His father was a small independent land-owner living near -Mameenkyro, in the Hame district. The family home, a small cabin built on an island, was connected with the mainland by a bridge, hence the family name, for Sillanpa&é .means "Bridgehead." The author’s childhood was peaceful and happy, despite the family’s poverty. He roamed the countryside, wandering round the lakes near his home and through the silent forests’ which cover a great deal of Finland. His parents made many sacrifices to enable their son to go to school, first to a college in Tampere, which is the Manchester of Finland, and later to the University at Helsinki. Only the assistance of some wealthier

families in the district enabled this to be done. At Tampere, Sillanpéa took his degree. At the university he took courses in physics, chemistry and biology, but after five years of study, he failed to pass his examinations, and returned to his parents’ home on Christmas Eve, 1913. The family fortunes had declined with the years, and when the young student returned, he found his people .eating only bread and potatoes. This brought about a violent spiritual crisis, and the young Sillanpaa decided to abandon science and to live by his pen. "Life And The Sun" He returned to his old life of wandering, and in the silent forests and among the mirrors of the lakes found the solution to. his problems. In 1916 he married the daughter. of.a peasant-farmer, and published his first novel, "Life and the Sun," which was really

his own story. Meanwhile, he was writing short stories for Finnish magazines and papers. Many of these have since been collected and published in a volume entitled "Dear Country." Sillanpaa is a true child of his native province of Hame, and spends the greater part of each year there with his wife and large family. It is a region of many tiny lakes and vast forests-beautiful, calm and always fresh, and the people who inhabit that country" are the subjects of his novels. Slaves of Destiny Like most of the Scandinavian writers, Sillanpaéa’s novels have an underlying note of sadness. He has been greatly influenced by Hamsun, Strindberg and Maeterlinck, particularly the last. In his strength and realism Sillanpaa also recalls the work of Emil Zola, though some have found suggestions of James Joyce. But he seems to recall Maeterlinck most of all, for the characters of Sillanpaa’s novels : are driven on by their own destiny, a destiny they do not understand, but which they accept without revolt and without question. There have been no great or moving events in Sillanp&a’s life. It has run smoothly and tranquilly, like the visions he gives us of his own wooded and watered country; like the lives of the peasant people he so brilliantly analyses for us. Sillanpaéa’s most important novels, apart from those mentioned above, are: "Hiltu and Ragnar," published in 1923; Tollinmaki," 1925; ‘" Confessions," 1928; "Give ‘Thanks to "God," 1930; "The Return of Man," 1932; and "The Fifteenth,’ 1936. .