Llythyr olaf o'r Ffindir

Llythyr olaf o'r Ffindir

01 Rhagfyr 2012

IMG 00751 2

Darn o #8 Forests, rocks, lakes gan Christopher Meredith

A couple of days later, I went to an art opening in the Galleria Becker, next door to the Kirjailijatalo.
The work was a series of constructions mainly made from the detritus of abandoned rural places. One was a spirit level that sprouted branches at one end and roots at the other. Another was a wooden agricultural shovel. When you looked closely you saw tiny roots bursting through the metal edge fixed onto the blade. The most striking was four wooden crutches arranged in a circle, their rubber-ferruled ends pointing outward vertically and horizontally. It reminded me immediately of a propeller. It seemed to me an ironic joining of notions of lameness and flight that set off a small explosion in my head.

It turned out that the title of this piece was ‘Under the North Star’. I still felt I’d been in the right territory with my first reaction. Under the North Star is the title of Väinö Linna’s trilogy, Täällä Pohjantähden alla, a seminal series of Finnish novels I’ve yet to get hold of and which several people had recommended to me.
I told the artist, Pekka Suomäki, that I found this striking. He asked me if I didn’t think it was ‘too Finnish’.

I had to admit to myself that there was some stuff here I didn’t get. I thought of the warm weekends when roads fill with Finns driving long hours on wide roads to their summer houses, quiet, dream places, sometimes furnished simply with old sticks of furniture, and of the quietly emptying real homes. I thought of the word ‘nostalgia’, ugly and negative. Yet when you broke it down it came from two Greek words for ‘homecoming’ and ‘pain’. It seemed to me that there was little or nothing of nostalgia in the negative sense in these neglected sticks he’d nailed to the white walls.
I considered as we stood under his north star. ‘No,’ I said.


Gellir darllen y testun ar ei hyd yma.