Kivi, Aleksis

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Aleksis Kivi

Aleksis Kivi (1834-1872) is considered the first writer of fiction in the Finnish language to earn a living professionally. Coming of age during an era when Finland was rejecting seven centuries of Swedish colonial dominance, Kivi produced his novels, plays, and poems as the Finnish language was newly emerging as a modern literary force. His best-known work is the comic novelSeitsemän Veljestä (Seven Brothers), published in 1870.

Kivi was not the writer's surname at the time of his birth on October 10, 1834. His family name was actually of Swedish origin, Stenvall, but his ancestors' roots were in the town of Palojoki, in the Nurmijärvi parish of southern Finland, about 20 miles distant from Helsinki, where his great-grandfather had settled around 1766. On occasion, the Stenvalls lived in Helsinki, Finland's major city, such as the time when Kivi's paternal grandfather had earned a living as a sailor, but later went back to Palojoki and the Uusimaa province. Kivi's mother, Annastiina (Hamberg) Stenvall, was five years older than his father, Eerik Johan Stenvall, who was a tailor by profession. The elder Stenvall could read and write, probably as a result of childhood years spent in Helsinki.

That brief level of education was a rarity in a family of rather humble status, particularly because the ability to read and write meant that the elder Stenvall could read and write Swedish. Finland had been conquered by the Swedish king in 1154, and Christianity officially introduced thereafter. Until the early nineteenth century, Finnish was considered merely the language of the peasantry, and mainly confined to religious tracts. All educated Finns spoke Swedish, and native Finnish culture was virtually nonexistent.

Rural Finnish Background

Kivi's family was poor. He had three older brothers and a sister who died at the age of 13. By the time he began his formal schooling, he was taught in the Swedish language, but this would eventually change. In 1808 the country was conquered by Imperial Russia, and became an autonomous grand duchy. Rather than supplant the dominant Swedish language with Russian, Finnish language and native culture was encouraged by the local rulers. The Kalevala, Finland's national epic, was committed to paper in 1835, based on a wealth of folklore from Finland's past, and a nationalist "Fennoman" movement began to flourish.

Kivi having received a formal education was somewhat uncommon for the son of a tailor from the countryside, but he showed promise. At the age of 12, he was sent for further study to the Helsinki area, where he first boarded at the home of a prison warder and was tutored by an elderly sailor. He then went to live at the home of a master tailor, and was able to satisfy his voracious reading habits from the shelves of their home library. Now a teenager, Kivi fell in love with the daughter of the family, Albina Palmqvist. Like his mother was to his father, Palmqvist was five years his senior. He proposed marriage, but in the rigid class hierarchy of the time, it was unlikely her family would ever consent to the union unless he passed the onerous civil service examination. It is known that Palmqvist went to Denmark in 1853, and the chronic neuralgia from which she suffered led to a morphine addiction. Neither ever married, and when Palmqvist occasionally returned to Finland over the following years she was known to meet with Kivi. Critics believe she was the inspiration for several female characters in Kivi's fiction and drama.

In 1857, Kivi completed his secondary schooling, and two years later entered the University of Helsinki. Upon doing so, he became one of just seven boys from Nurmijärvi ever to pass the entrance examination for university enrollment between 1821 and 1868. Of those seven, he was the sole commoner. His original intention was to become a priest in the Lutheran church, which dominated Finnish life at the time. At some point, however, he jettisoned this career path and decided to become a writer instead, and to write in Finnish. It was a somewhat audacious move to choose Finnish over Swedish, for there were as yet no examples for him to follow.

Won Impressive Prize

In Helsinki, Kivi became entranced by the theater, and in 1859 wrote his first play, Kullervo, based on a tragic tale from the Kalevala. It won it him a prize of the Finnish Literature Society, and he used the small stipend to settle for a time in his home village of Nurmijärvi in order to concentrate on his writing. Eventually he moved on to Siuntio, a municipality also in the Uusimaa province, which had a large Swedish population. Finding a patron in Charlotta Lönnqvist, he stayed on the Lönnqvist estate, called Fanjunkars, but wrote sometimes to his family back in Nurmijärvi that he was homesick for true Finnish culture and language.

Kivi was still nominally enrolled at the University of Helsinki, and proved an intermittent student. At times, he disappeared for stretches, drinking in Helsinki taverns. His years in the city and around the university did serve to introduce him to a number of influential mentors, including J.V. Snellman, a renowned philosopher, journalist, and politician who provided Kivi with financial support at times. Another was Fredrik Cygnaeus, who had been Kivi's entrance examiner and served as a professor of aesthetics and modern literature at the university. Cygnaeus staked his reputation on Kivi's literary career. Both Snellman and Cygnaeus were active in the Fennoman movement, and some of the more ardent members advocated the Finnicization of surnames. Kivi himself did so, translating the Swedish Stenvall, or "stone-bank," into Kivi, which is Finnish for "stone."

After 1863, Kivi decided to concentrate exclusively on writing, abandoning his literature studies at the university, though he did continue to read voraciously. He produced a dozen plays, among them the 1865 work Nummisuutarit (The Heath Cobblers), which won the Finnish state prize. The language in this particular work was said to be the direct fruit of the development of the Finnish language over several decades; Nummisuutarit would become the most frequently performed play ever written in the language well into the modern era. Some of Kivi's initial success came thanks to another high-placed friend, Kaarlo Bergbom, the founder of the Finnish Theatre in Helsinki.

Only Novel a Masterpiece

Kivi's 1870 novel Seitsemän Veljestä (Seven Brothers) took Kivi nearly a decade to write. The comic tale centers around an orphaned septet, who inherit their family farm. They come of age with a resentment of all authority, and frequently quarrel with their neighbors, local officials, and anyone who challenges them. No local family will allow their daughter to marry one of the brothers, and when they learn that they must learn to read and write before their Lutheran church confirmation, they head to the forest in Impivaara in order to escape society. There, the hapless brothers endure a series of misadventures, including accidentally burning down their own house on Christmas Eve, and spend two years clearing forest for arable land. In the end, they return to their home village chastened by their experiences, several measures wiser and ready to participate in adult life. Each become responsible adults, husbands, and fathers.

Seitsemän Veljestä sparked somewhat of a controversy when it first appeared. Renowned critic August Ahlqvist, a professor of Finnish language and literature, disliked the novel's realism—romanticism was in vogue in Scandinavian culture at the time—and called it "a ridiculous work and a blot on the name of Finnish literature," in his review for the newspaper Finlands Allmäna Tidningen, according to the Kirjasto Website. Others, particularly some of the more strident elements among the Fennoman movement, felt Kivi's novel portrayed rural Finns in a distinctly unflattering light.

By the late 1860s, Kivi had lost the financial support of Charlotta Lönnqvist, and his health declined along with his finances. He suffered from schizophrenia, had a breakdown, and was placed in a mental hospital in Lapinlahti for nearly a year. His brother Albert took him home and settled Kivi in a small rented cottage in Tuusula in May of 1872, and he died on the last day of 1872. Finnish legend claims his last words were characteristically perverse: "Minä elän!"—"I am alive!"

Enduried Force in Finnish Culture

Seitsemän Veljestä went on to earn a place as one of the first masterpieces of Finnish literature. It was made into a 1939 film, a 1979 animated version, and a 12-part miniseries for Finnish television in 1989. The critic Ahlqvist, in the intervening years, is best remembered for disparaging Kivi's work. Other works from Kivi's pen also endured: the poem "Sydämeni laulu" (Grove of Tuoni), about a mother possibly contemplating infanticide, became the basis for work by renowned Finnish composer Jean Sibelius in 1898, his Opus 18 Number 6.

Kivi continues to occupy a prominent place in Finnish literary traditions and culture. His life was the subject of a 1946 film, Minä elän, as well as Aleksis Kiven elämä, a 2002 film by Jari Halonen. Operatic composer Einojuhani Rautavaara wrote a 1997 opera based on Kivi's life, Aleksis Kivi, that enjoyed some North American performances. Kivi's works for the stage, which include Kihlaus, Kanervala, Yö Ja Païvä, Karkurit, Lea, and Margareta, continue to be performed in Helsinki theaters. Only a volume of his poetry, Aleksis Kivi: Odes, has appeared in English translation.