The Kalevala

Tomorrow, February 28th, we celebrate our national epic, The Kalevala in Finland. It’s a compilation of 19th century poems collected by Elias Lönnrot (1802-1884). Before him, the poems had only existed in oral form, meant to be sung, but they were already disappearing. Lönnrot saved them and gave them the epic form. The first version was published in 1835. The first English translation is from 1888.

While never my favourite reading, The Kalevala is nonetheless part of my heritage. The stories are interesting. Complete with a creation myth, they depict life in the prehistoric Finland, with tribal clashes, lust, seduction, warfare and magic. It ends with an allegory of Christianity's arrival to Finland. They’re written in a unique Kalevala metric, but personally I like the stories best in prose form.

The Defence of the Sampo by Akseli Gallen-Kallela, 1886.

Here’s a small sample of the second rune, Wainamoinen’s sowing. The translation doesn’t do justice to the rhythm, but it’s the only one I could find.

Straightway rose a form from oceans,

Rose a hero from the waters,

Nor belonged he to the largest,

Nor belonged he to the smallest,

Long was he as man's forefinger,

Taller than the hand of woman;

On his head a cap of copper,

Boots upon his feet were copper,

Gloves upon his hands were copper,

And its stripes were copper-colored,

Belt around him made of copper,

Hatchet in his belt was copper;

And the handle of his hatchet

Was as long as hand of woman,

Of a finger's breadth the blade was.

Then the trusty Wainamoinen

Thought awhile and well considered,

And his measures are as follow:

"Art thou, sir, divine or human?

Which of these thou only knowest;

Tell me what thy name and station.

Very like a man thou lookest,

Hast the bearing of a hero,

Though the length of man's first finger,

Scarce as tall as hoof of reindeer."

Then again spake Wainamoinen

To the form from out the ocean:

"Verily I think thee human,

Of the race of pigmy-heroes,

Might as well be dead or dying,

Fit for nothing but to perish."

Answered thus the pigmy-hero,

Spake the small one from the ocean

To the valiant Wainamoinen

"Truly am I god and hero,

From the tribes that rule the ocean;

Come I here to fell the oak-tree,

Lop its branches with my hatchet."

Wainamoinen, old and trusty,

Answers thus the sea-born hero:

"Never hast thou force sufficient,

Not to thee has strength been given,

To uproot this mighty oak-tree,

To upset this thing of evil,

Nor to lop its hundred branches."

Scarcely had he finished speaking,

Scarcely had he moved his eyelids,

Ere the pigmy full unfolding,

Quick becomes a mighty giant.

*** 

Since last week, I’ve finished reading The Golem and the Djinni, and Do Unto Others. Click the names for my reviews of them. I enjoyed both books immensely. However, The Golem and the Djinni left me a little sad, and Do Unto Others mightily frustrated, like only short stories can. But both were well written, wonderful stories that I warmly recommend for everyone.

This week, I’m reading Wicked Business by Janet Evanovich. I have no excuse, other than wanting to give the series another try. There isn’t a third book in the series that I know of, perhaps mercifully so. The book is mildly entertaining, but it’s nowhere near the delightfulness of some of her earlier books.

Around the world, Verne style

Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days was published on this day in 1873. It’s a busy date. Charles I was beheaded in 1649, Oliver Cromwell likewise, though posthumously in 1661, Hitler came to power in 1933, Ghandi was assassinated in 1948, and Churchill was buried in 1965. Verne didn’t make it on Clement K. Shorter’s list of a hundred best books from 1898, because he was still alive at the time of its compiling, but since the date fits so nicely, I’ll write about the book anyway.

I’ve already written about my favourite Verne novel earlier, Journey to the Center of the Earth. Around the World would be my second favourite Verne. But I have only read it once. The story in all its variations is more familiar to me from films and TV series.

Like the Three Musketeers I wrote about last week, an animated series first introduced me to the story in the early 80s. In Around the World with Willy Fog, Phileas Fogg – the fearless adventurer – was depicted as a lion named Willy Fog. All characters were anthropomorphisms of various animals; the good guys were felines and all the crooks were canines. It was shown once a week, and woe if I missed an episode. (This was before we had a VCR.)

I was a bit older, twelve or so, before I read the book. It turned out to be quite different from the animated series with themes I was too young to fully comprehend. Some plots, like saving Aouda from the funeral pyre, were changed in the cartoon. And while it’s perhaps natural to avoid that topic in a children’s series, it’s actually very rarely used in other adaptations I’ve seen either. The woman is rescued, but from various other perils.

Around the World in 80 Days was a wonderful book to read as a child. All those exotic countries, the adventures, and the excitement of the chase, as the detective Fix from Scotland Yard tries to keep up with Fogg, tickled my imagination perfectly. Not all adaptations I’ve seen have managed the same, but they are rarely so bad I wouldn’t watch them. And nothing beats the cartoon. Perhaps not even the book.

Here are the opening credits – the English version, which I have to say is not as good as the version of my childhood. You can also watch full episodes on YouTube.

The mostly forgotten

This is a second post about the list of a hundred best novels selected by a literary critique Clement K. Shorter in 1898. I’m not familiar with the next five books on it and only know one of the authors, Robert Louis Stevenson. I haven’t read the book chosen from him, The Master of Ballantrae (1889). Modern readers remember him by Treasure Island (1883) or The Strange Case of Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde (1886), though as a short story, the latter probably wouldn’t make on similar lists.

I haven’t read the books, but since I’m probably not alone in this, I’ll mention them anyway. The books may not be interesting, but the author of the book number 99 definitely is. Reuben Sachs (1889) was written by Amy Levy, of whom Wikipedia mentions her feminist positions, engagement with homosexual romance, and suicide by inhaling carbon monoxide. Clement K. Shorter must have been more open-minded than the men of his time in general to include her. That, or he truly liked her book that was “concerned with Jewish identity and mores in the England of her time”. 

Black but Comely was a 1879 novel by a Scottish novelist G. J. Whyte-Melville. He was a productive writer of historical novels, none of which have interested modern audience so much that they would have made a mention of them in Wikipedia. Equally forgotten is P.G. Hamerton, an English artist and art critic who wrote two novels. Shoreter has chosen Marmone, which Hamerton published as Adolphus Segrave in 1877.

The first translated book on the list is Fromont Junior and Risler Senior. It was written by a French author Alphonse Daudet in 1874, and it was translated into English in 1894. It was the novel that made Daudet famous and he was hailed as a great author already in his lifetime so it’s presence on the list isn’t surprising.

After five unknown books, the sixth is more familiar: Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1868, first English translation 1885). Not that I have read it either, but it’s one of those books I feel I ought to read. I’ve tried, even.

I went through a Russian classics phase at seventeen and waded through a couple of easier ones. I started to read Crime and Punishment a couple of times too, but I never managed more than tenth of it before giving up. Mostly because I was hopelessly lost with all the characters.

Perhaps I ought to give it another try. Of the hundred books on the list, counting from the bottom, it is the first one that has retained its value to our days. As you’ll see later, there aren’t many of those on Shorter’s list. But more on that next week.

News from Nowhere

A list of a hundred best novels has been circulating the Internet. What makes this one stand out among many similar lists is that it was compiled by an English literary critic Clement K. Shorter in 1898 and it contains many books that most people have never heard of. Tastes in books have changed greatly in a century, which explains some differences, but it has a lot to do with his method of selecting the books too.

Shorter accepted only one book per author and he didn’t select books from authors who were still alive. This excluded such great names as Jules Verne, Leo Tolstoy, and Mark Twain. The list is chronological so within it the books haven’t been given any preference. Often he has selected the first novel the author has written despite there being many better to select from.

While some books on the list have retained their value, many have completely disappeared. The oldest book on it, Don Quixote (1604), is still popular today. But Shorter had chosen delightfully many books written by women and many of them are among those that time has forgotten.

Although this blog is about the books that I have read, and I haven’t read most of those on Shorter’s list, I thought to go through it during the next few weeks. Not in detail though, and the emphasis will be on the books that I’ve actually read.

One of those is the last – and thereby the newest – book on the list, William Morris’s News from Nowhere (1891). It doesn’t often appear in modern equivalents. It was a relatively new book so perhaps it had novelty value. However, it was overshadowed at the time of its publication by Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward (1887), a veritable bestseller. Morris’s book was written as an answer to Bellamy’s and the books are fairly similar so why the first was chosen over the latter is a mystery. Perhaps Shorter favoured his countryman, or maybe Bellamy, who died in May 1898, was still alive at the time the list was made and so was excluded.

News from Nowhere (or an Epoch of Rest) is a socialist utopia set in 21st century London. The protagonist, William Guest (a clever name there) wakes up one morning to find himself in the future. He sets out to study his new surroundings and is very impressed by what he sees. Labour has ceased to be painful so people work joyously. Moreover, work is recycled so that people do both manual labour and creative tasks like writing poetry. Everyone is expected to do all kinds of work and they do it happily.

Morris’s utopian society is an idyllic place where the industrialisation has been stopped and the world has returned to a kind of pseudo medieval, agrarian society. Since the industry has ceased from polluting, the nature has recovered too; an important theme in the book. It’s possible to swim in the Thames, which was unheard of in Morris’s time. Beauty is valued above everything else, which isn’t surprising. Morris is best known today from his textiles and tapestries he patterned after a romanticised medieval ideal and that is evident in his utopia too.

It’s difficult to see why Morris’s book has ended up on the list. It’s written in the form of a medieval chivalric romance that must have seemed old-fashioned already a decade later. It’s not a terribly interesting book either. Perhaps the notion of a clean London has appealed to Shorter who had to suffer the worst consequences of British industrialism. Perhaps, only a decade after its publishing, Morris’s vision of the future seemed plausible. Or, it could be that Shorter simply liked the book. Whatever the reason, modern time has largely forgotten Morris’s book. Perhaps rightly so.

   

Kafkaesque

I read a short story by Haruki Murakami called Samsa in Love that appeared in the New Yorker yesterday. It tells the story of Gregor Samsa who wakes up one morning and finds to his surprise that he has turned into a human. Everything feels odd to him. His body has become soft, he finds it difficult to walk with only two legs, and dressing up is impossible because he doesn’t know how to use his hands. He has no idea how he has got that way – the house is empty, abandoned in the middle of breakfast, so he can’t ask anyone. He isn’t completely ignorant. He understands that he is human and he rues that he hasn’t been turned into a fish or a sunflower. He is afraid of birds. All these worries he will put behind, though, when a locksmith arrives in the form of a hunchbacked girl and, as the title suggests, Gregor falls in love. The end is very hopeful, even though there is a hint of a war brewing.

Kafka: Metamorphosis

It’s a wonderful story and a great homage to Kafka’s Metamorphosis (1915). That, of course, tells the opposite story. Gregor Samsa, a travelling salesman, wakes up one morning to find that he has turned into a giant insect. He doesn’t question how it could have happened, nor is any explanation given. He is abhorrent to his family who doesn’t understand that he has retained some of his humanity despite his looks. Little by little, though, he begins to deteriorate and becomes more insect-like. Eventually, the family can’t take it any longer and – dutifully – Gregor dies. The end is very hopeful in this story too; his parents and sister who had relied solely on Gregor’s income have learned to take care of themselves, and it’s possible that Gregor’s sister, Greta, might see herself married one day.

I’ve had to read Metamorphosis twice before; first at school and the second time at the university. On both times, it was important to learn how to analyse a novel, to identify its climax and turning point, and its motives and themes. Thus pressured, it was difficult to simply read and enjoy the story. Not much of it had remained with me either.

Inspired by Samsa in Love, I read Metamorphosis today and enjoyed it very much. I didn’t give a thought for novel analysis. Instead, I tried to identify some of the details Murakami had used in his story. Gregor’s family send for a locksmith at the beginning of Kafka’s story that then isn’t needed; that the locksmith arrives in Samsa in Love could suggest it takes place right after Gregor has first turned to an insect. Maybe the family has abandoned the house in horror having discovered the transformation that is then reversed in their absence.

Samsa in Love could take place after Gregor’s death too. At the end of Kafka’s story, the family leaves the house for a day of fun, ignoring their cleaning lady’s amused announcement that the creature has been taken care of. Maybe she had noticed that Gregor had turned back to human. Gregor in Murakami’s story seems used to being an insect so perhaps he had been that way for a long time already.

Both stories are great. Murakami’s language is fresher and his expressions are more forward, but Kafka’s story isn’t in any way hampered with the old-fashioned tone. Both are worth reading. Kafka has endured for almost a century already; only time will tell if Murakami’s homage has similar staying power.