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Abstract
The Finnish public was introduced to Beat literature at the end of the 1950s. The movement continued to attract wide-ranging interest throughout the decade that followed, influencing the development of Finnish poetry and the evolution of personal morality in Finnish society. This chapter discusses the different contexts in which American Beat authors were discussed and translated and shows how Finnish authors positioned themselves in relation to the movement and to the literary and real-life role models it embodied. It shows how debates about Beat were motivated more by tensions within Finnish culture and society and by the evolving media landscape in the country than by the literature itself. While the restless 1960s and two of that decade’s prominent literary figures – Anselm Hollo and Pekka Kejonen – are the focal points of the analysis, the chapter traces the enduring presence of Beat literature up to the present.
Abstract
The article discusses Finnish avant-garde and modernist writers’ and intellectuals’ positioning in the 1920s and 1930s in relation to the international movements of the time and to the Finnish cultural and political field. The focus is on articles in journals, essays and travel-writing (written both in Finnish and in Swedish) that show how the appropriation of avant-garde and modernism was a manifold project: historical reconstruction, contemporary critical interpretation and translation into the domestic context, reflection on Finland’s place in the map of Europe and, finally, interrogation of the very nature of modernity.
Abstract
The article discusses Finnish avant-garde and modernist writers’ and intellectuals’ positioning in the 1920s and 1930s in relation to the international movements of the time and to the Finnish cultural and political field. The focus is on articles in journals, essays and travel-writing (written both in Finnish and in Swedish) that show how the appropriation of avant-garde and modernism was a manifold project: historical reconstruction, contemporary critical interpretation and translation into the domestic context, reflection on Finland’s place in the map of Europe and, finally, interrogation of the very nature of modernity.
Abstract
In Finland several scholars working in sociology, philosophy and art history welcomed the arrival of postmodernism in the 1980s and 1990s as a new chapter in the emancipatory history of the avant-garde. The two movements were perceived as similar in their critical experimentation, which sought to question and transgress frontiers and divisions controlled by the modern. Finnish poetry from this period up to the first decades of the twenty-first century preserved some elements of this interpretation of postmodernism and the avant-garde, while also tapping into other movements such as punk. Yet there was also a wish to distinguish oneself from the previous periods and to pursue critical reflection under the neutral concept of “experimental” poetry only. This article analyses these threads in the reception and interpretation of postmodernism and the avant-garde in theory and poetry from the 1980s to the 2010s.