Dedicating 25 years to Tove Jansson

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By Suvi Ahola
     
      The relationship between literary researcher Boel Westin and Tove Jansson (1915-2001) began already in the 1950s. The first Moomintroll book of the six-year-old Boel was Moominland Midwinter. She was captivated from the first sentence: "The sky was almost black, but the snow shone a bright blue in the moonlight."
      "It felt wonderful that there was light in the dark of the winter. It is often claimed that children do not care about the depictions of nature in books, but I disagree. In Jansson's books they, as well as the seasons and fluctuations in weather, are quite significant."
      "In addition I immediately felt a kinship with Moomintroll - another lonely child."
     
Eventually the reader of Moomin books started to research them, and became a professor of literature at the University of Stockholm.
      Westin's doctoral thesis Familjen I dalen ("The Family in the Valley) in 1988 was the most extensive study on the Moomin books, investigating Jansson's output from a completely different angle from what had gone before.
      Instead of handling the Moomins as a series of children's books, Westin emphasised their meticulously-constructed world, comparing Moomin Valley with other literary universeses such as the Macondo of Gabriel García Márquez.
     
Already while writing the thesis, Westin became acquainted with Jansson. She was allowed access to the author's private archives, from her diaries to her letters. "Tove suggested it herself - apparently nobody had been very interested in them before."
      "The key to everything was certainly that we became friends, and that she appeared to trust me and my interpretations. She also liked it that I tried to be thorough and diligent - it reminded her of her own working methods. When the thesis came out, I got a card from Tove which read: You did it!"
     
Today, the research, which West says began "exactly a quarter of a century ago", has reached a new and important milestone. Her extensive Tove Jansson biography, Ord, liv, bild ("Word, Life, Image") appears in Sweden and in Finland.
      The book, which is a rich and tantalising depiction of both Jansson and the cultural history of Finland, will appear next year translated into Finnish by Jaana Nikula.
     
The most important sources of the book, according to Westin, are Jansson's early diaries.
      "In them she explains on a concrete level how she draws and paints, and discusses the relationship between words and pictures. It is through them that an image emerges of an artist whose production includes literature and pictoral art as equal, inseparable parts."
      Jansson herself described her working methods with the Swedish term dona, which might be translated as "tinkering".
      It could be that Jansson, who was known to have a strong sense of self-criticism, used the word out of a sense of humility, but for Westin it specifically means immense diligence and productivity, which continued from the 1930s into the present decade.
      Throughout her life, Jansson was always doing something: painting or drawing, or writing. Even when she was exhausted with drawing cartoons, or after a massive project, she would proofread her manuscripts tirelessly.
      "Jansson appreciated the Renaissance artists Benvenuto Cellini and Cennino Cennini because she felt that she was similar to them", Westin says.
     
Jansson was a Renaissance person in ways other than in art, and Boel Westing describes that openly as well. Her love relationship with Atos Wirtanen in the 1940s was followed by a passionate affair with Vivica Bandler. It was through the latter that Jansson ultimately realised that she was homosexual.
      However, in notes found by Westin she also ponders marriage and motherhood - fear of a new war rises as the main impediment.
      Jansson dealt with these kinds of intimate issues very much during her decades of correspondence with her friend Eva Konikoff, who had emigrated to the United States.
      Jansson found a life partner in graphic artist Tuulikki Pietilä in the 1950s, but friendships with former lovers remained warm. Also her parents Signe Hammarsten and Viktor Jansson were accepting of their daughter's great love, even though there was no direct talk of her sexual orientation.
     
Although it comprises 597 pages, Boel West laments that she has had to leave much out of the biography.
      "I could have analysed the prose more closely, or written about Jansson's family. Also, the letters to Eva and her mother could have material for entire books on their own - that is how good their quality was!"
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 8.5.2007


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Tove Jansson, creator of the Moomins, dies at 86 (28.6.2001)

SUVI AHOLA / Helsingin Sanomat
suvi.ahola@hs.fi