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tove jansson gets it
1/12/20 23:42so i don't know how generally known tove jansson is outside finland. maybe you know that she created the moomins? maybe you know the moomins? i'm not sure. anyway, she did, very much create the moomins. she was also gay as hell, wrote poetry, did illustrations and drank booze. i struggle naming "inspirations" for myself. i feel like i'm too chaotic and lacking in mindfullness to curate such specific ways to describe how i think and what i think about. but if i had to name an inspiration, i'd say tove jansson.
she wrote the moomins in swedish, the second official language in finland. during the early 20th century, swedish had more of a foothold in the finnish intelligentsia. it used to be that swedish was the language for the rich and the cultured, a stereotype that still lives on, although it's not nearly as accurate anymore.
(my best friend is swedish-speaking. i've been to her mother's speedboat and sat in her stepfather's porche. sometimes... stereotypes still hit the mark.)
even though i'm not good enough at swedish to read the moomins in tove jansson's original language, i've always thought that it's a credit to the uniqueness of her voice that even through the translation you get a very particular, aching sense of her style. she writes with so much echoing emotion and plaintiveness that her prose feels like it sticks to your bones and tugs at all the little griefs you've pushed to the back of your mind. i think her work is a golden standard for children's literature. a beautiful balance of approachability and depth of complex thoughts and emotions that never underestimates the audience. she creates such vivid, specific moods without describing them and doesn't shy away from melancholy. i love her voice.
some of tove jansson's personal correspondence has been published after her death, including letters to her long-term spouse, tuulikki pietilä. i read a post script of one of them probably five years ago and i don't know what it was about it that struck me so hard, but i feel like i could've quoted the whole paragraph after reading it once. maybe a part of the charm was that her spouse was finnish-speaking, so tove wrote to her in finnish.
i'm gonna flex my extremely atrophied translator muscles now. stand by.
P.S It was such fun receiving your letter! It is with me everywhere. Yes, I would like to sit at the Kaivari rocks, where my bottom gets cold and my nose red, and eat a difficult orange that stains the gloves, and tire awfully, and step into puddles, and then go home to the poodles, and fall into your arms and asleep, whole head full of spring!
I love you!
i just think that's such a wonderfully evocative 50-word snippet that paints a picture of a whole winterspring day bathed in the pale kind of light that all light is in finland before may. the pacing borders on manic, like you're bursting with joy just thinking about spending an ordinary day with the woman you love. i just love her! and i'm so gay! fuck! oh to eat an orange with your wife, perched on a cold rocky hillside.
she wrote the moomins in swedish, the second official language in finland. during the early 20th century, swedish had more of a foothold in the finnish intelligentsia. it used to be that swedish was the language for the rich and the cultured, a stereotype that still lives on, although it's not nearly as accurate anymore.
(my best friend is swedish-speaking. i've been to her mother's speedboat and sat in her stepfather's porche. sometimes... stereotypes still hit the mark.)
even though i'm not good enough at swedish to read the moomins in tove jansson's original language, i've always thought that it's a credit to the uniqueness of her voice that even through the translation you get a very particular, aching sense of her style. she writes with so much echoing emotion and plaintiveness that her prose feels like it sticks to your bones and tugs at all the little griefs you've pushed to the back of your mind. i think her work is a golden standard for children's literature. a beautiful balance of approachability and depth of complex thoughts and emotions that never underestimates the audience. she creates such vivid, specific moods without describing them and doesn't shy away from melancholy. i love her voice.
some of tove jansson's personal correspondence has been published after her death, including letters to her long-term spouse, tuulikki pietilä. i read a post script of one of them probably five years ago and i don't know what it was about it that struck me so hard, but i feel like i could've quoted the whole paragraph after reading it once. maybe a part of the charm was that her spouse was finnish-speaking, so tove wrote to her in finnish.
i'm gonna flex my extremely atrophied translator muscles now. stand by.
P.S It was such fun receiving your letter! It is with me everywhere. Yes, I would like to sit at the Kaivari rocks, where my bottom gets cold and my nose red, and eat a difficult orange that stains the gloves, and tire awfully, and step into puddles, and then go home to the poodles, and fall into your arms and asleep, whole head full of spring!
I love you!
i just think that's such a wonderfully evocative 50-word snippet that paints a picture of a whole winterspring day bathed in the pale kind of light that all light is in finland before may. the pacing borders on manic, like you're bursting with joy just thinking about spending an ordinary day with the woman you love. i just love her! and i'm so gay! fuck! oh to eat an orange with your wife, perched on a cold rocky hillside.
