Juhani Aho
Encyclopedia
Lapinlahti
Lapinlahti is a municipality of Finland.It is located in the province of Eastern Finland and is part of the Northern Savonia region. The municipality has a population of and covers an area of of which is water...
– August 8, 1921; Helsinki
Helsinki
Helsinki is the capital and largest city in Finland. It is in the region of Uusimaa, located in southern Finland, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, an arm of the Baltic Sea. The population of the city of Helsinki is , making it by far the most populous municipality in Finland. Helsinki is...
) was a Finnish
Finland
Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
author and journalist.
Aho's literary output is wide-ranging since he pursued different styles as time passed.
He started as a realist and his first novel Rautatie (Railroad, 1884), which is considered one of his main works, is from this period. Later he moved towards neoromanticism with novels Panu and Kevät ja takatalvi as well as Juha. The last one is one of his most famous works and has been twice as adapted an opera, by Aare Merikanto
Juha (Merikanto)
Juha is a three-act opera by Aarre Merikanto, with a Finnish libretto by Aino Ackté based on the 1911 novel of the same name by Juhani Aho. Although completed by 1922, it was only finally staged at the music college in Lahti on 28 October 1963. The story is a drama of a love triangle : the older...
and by Leevi Madetoja
Leevi Madetoja
Leevi Antti Madetoja was a Finnish composer.-Life and career:Born in Oulu, he was the son of Antti Madetoja and Anna Hyttinen...
, and to film four times, most recently in 1999 by Aki Kaurismäki
Juha (film)
Juha is a 1999 Finnish film written and directed by Aki Kaurismäki. The film is based on a famous 1911 novel by the Finnish author Juhani Aho marking this as the fourth time the novel was adapted for the screen. The original story takes place in the 18th century but Kaurismäki's remake is set in...
.
His novel Yksin (Alone), published in 1890, controversially bold by the standards of Finnish literature in that epoch, is a roman à clef
Roman à clef
Roman à clef or roman à clé , French for "novel with a key", is a phrase used to describe a novel about real life, overlaid with a façade of fiction. The fictitious names in the novel represent real people, and the "key" is the relationship between the nonfiction and the fiction...
. Its tale of unfulfilled love is the autobiographical novel of Aho's passion for Aino Järnefelt who, at that time, was secretly engaged to Jean Sibelius
Jean Sibelius
Jean Sibelius was a Finnish composer of the later Romantic period whose music played an important role in the formation of the Finnish national identity. His mastery of the orchestra has been described as "prodigious."...
, whom she would later marry. The initial feelings of anger and jealousy that reading the novel provoked in Sibelius were soon forgotten and, in later life, Aho and Sibelius were close friends as well as neighbours in Järvenpää, where the composer had a villa baptized "Ainola" (the Realm of Aino).
In addition to his novels Aho wrote a number of short stories of distinct style, called "splinters" ("lastuja" in Finnish). Their topics could vary from political allegories to depictions of everyday life.
The first and most famous of the short stories is When Father Brought Home the Lamp, depicting the effect of the innovation on people living on countryside. Nowadays the title is a Finnish saying used when something related to new technology is introduced.
Aho was one of the founders of Päivälehti
Päivälehti
Päivälehti was a newspaper in Finland, which was then a Grand Duchy under the Czar of Russia. The paper was founded in 1889 as the organ of the Young Finnish Party and published on six days a week....
, the predecessor of the biggest newspaper in Finland today, Helsingin Sanomat
Helsingin Sanomat
Helsingin Sanomat is the largest subscription newspaper in Finland and the Nordic countries, owned by Sanoma. Except after certain holidays, it is published daily. In 2008, its daily circulation was 412,421 on weekdays and 468,505 on Sundays...
.
External links
- The English translation When Father Brought Home the Lamp which appears in Stories by Foreign Authors : Scandinavian - note that they are original Finnish versions, not translations.
- Free audiobook of Helsinkiin at LibrivoxLibriVoxLibriVox is an online digital library of free public domain audiobooks, read by volunteers and is probably, since 2007, the world's most prolific audiobook publisher...