Cleve, Anders 1937–1985

(Anders Zachris Cleve)

PERSONAL: Born July 25, 1937, in Helsinki, Finland; died March 26, 1985; married; children: two. Education: Earned M.A. degree.

CAREER: Taught history.

WRITINGS:

Dagen (poems), Söderström & Co. (Helsinki, Finland), 1955.

Det bara ansiktet, Söderström & Co. (Helsinki, Finland), 1956.

Gatstenar (stories), Söderström & Co. (Helsinki, Finland), 1959.

Vit eld; en paradoxal saga, Bonniers (Stockholm, Sweden), 1962.

Påskägget; en berettelse om vänskap, Bonniers (Stockholm, Sweden), 1966.

Labyrint, Söderström & Co. (Tammerfors, Finland), 1971.

Locknät, Söderström & Co. (Helsinki, Finland), 1981.

SIDELIGHTS: Finnish educator and writer Anders Cleve made his debut as a poet in 1955 with his collection Dagen. Several years later he published Gatstenar, a collection of short stories about life in Helsinki. Cleve has been an inspiration to more recent generations of Finnish and Swedish authors, and was one of the first writers to mix Finnish into an otherwise Swedish text. While some of the stories in Gatstenar, such as "Licentiaten," are written entirely in Swedish, "Kråkan—en individualist" mixes Finnish with Swedish, sometimes in the same sentence.

In 1919, when Finland drafted its national constitution, the Swedish-speaking Finns made up one fifth of the population, and the two extremely different languages were then given equal status by law. The Swedish-speaking Finns formed a minority group in Finland, yet often enjoyed a higher social position than did the Finnish-speaking population. The linguistic differences in Finland was a frequently occurring subject in Finnish-Swedish literature during the 1970s and 1980s, because these differences were closely related to issues of identity. While the younger generations became increasingly more tolerant of mixing Finnish with Swedish, Cleve was one of the first to introduce this feature to Finnish-Swedish literature.