Nordic Poetry Center

Eino Leino’s poem, “Tuulikannel” (Aeolian Harp, from 1904), gives expression to a poetics we aim to explore in this seminar: poems as instruments, machines, production – instead of expression.

In my reading of the poem, I emphasized its “Non-Finnishness”: its sounds and chords are Finnish, the iambic beat again represents a foreign, “Western” influence.

The idea of Finland’s own language was invented by the reactionary, Tsarist, Imperial Russia that liked to see Finland as isolated – as not taking influence from the West. And if taking, not being able to forward it to the Russia proper.

As to its “content”, the Leino poem comes close to Velimir Khlebnikov’s concept of “transrational language”, zaum. After all, Leino was a contemporary to Mayakovsky and Khlebnikov, yet hardly ever heard of them. The border between Finland and Russia – still today – is not only one between two countries. It is a border separating two worlds.

It is also a border between a big and a small country. Between the dominator and the dominated. Between the exploiter and the exploited.

Except that it is not that easy always to tell, which one is which. Back in the 70’s, Paavo Haavikko, another great Finnish poet, who recently passed away, used to say that Finland has always succeeded by skillfully exploiting Russia.

Be that as it may, the counterside of exploitation tends to be indifference toward to exploited one. Especially during the Soviet time, this used to take the handy form of limiting all mutual interaction to official, institutional, liturgical contexts. This tradition is alive and well – in Finland, it is still easiest not to know what is going on in Russia. To me, it means that if democracy in Russia runs into problems (as it, in many of ours’ view, has done lately), these are problems for the Finnish democracy as well.

In poetry (inclined as it is to bypass institutional levels), the above situation has meant very few contacts during the recent decades. Here, contacts and interaction can only take place between real human beings.

On the other hand, poetry – just because of its tendency to bypass institutions – can sometimes, and in surprising ways, overcome (or pass under) the border I’ve been talking about. In what we are about to hear and see in this seminar, there are unmistakable echoes from Russian Futurism from a century or so back. Perhaps there are other “Russian” elements as well in the new anthology, Govorit pogranichnaya strana, that I edited and published in connection to the seminar.

Is this because poetry helps us to better “understand” each others? I would rather say the reason lies in poetry’s ability reject understanding language as a medium of understanding.

One of the dominant experiences of my own youth had to do with the Soviet Power’s persistent belief in its command of the Finnish language – the frequent interferences in our affairs were always carried out in our language, used in a way that in hour ears was absolutely ridiculous and monstrous at the same time.

Today, that experience is part of my personal poetics. It has helped me to understand that all communal languages – the so-called official Finnish included – can (and should!) be seen as equally ridiculous and monstrous. More than that: it is the task of poetry to make us hear and see their ridiculousness and monstrosity.

Poetry, perhaps, is not so much interested in the “beyond” of understanding (cf. zaum), than in staying at “this side” of it. In refusing the kind of “understanding” that demands one to close their eyes.

As well as in enjoying the ridiculousness and monstrosity of language. I regret that none of us does not yet know your language well enough to reach that level with it. But who knows, maybe the day will come…

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