Panu Rajala: Suomussalmen sulttaani – Ilmari Kiannon elämä (a book)

Poster for Matti Kassila's film adaptation of Punainen viiva / The Red Line (1959).

Panu Rajala: Suomussalmen sulttaani. Ilmari Kiannon elämä / [The Sultan of Suomussalmi. The Life of Ilmari Kianto]. ISBN 978-952-222-698-3. 525 p. Helsinki / Riika: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2018

Ilmari Kianto (1874–1970) belongs to a small nucleus of key Finnish authors. He was incredibly prolific, lived to be almost a hundred years, and continued writing almost to the end, but his fame now rests on two novels, The Red Line (1909), and Ryysyrannan Jooseppi [title untranslatable, meaning something like "Joseph from the Rag Shack"] and several songs that were composed to his poems, including ones credited to his original name Ilmari Calamnius, such as Jean Sibelius's "Lastu lainehilla" ("Driftwood"). But the number of distinguished works in his oeuvre is bigger, and Kianto often had a magical touch with the language even in minor publications.

Kianto also belonged to the generation of the first anti-heroic authors in Finland, infamous for their irresponsible ways with family and fortune. Today they would be dragged through the mud by the tabloid media. It is a sordid story, and the chore must have been at times tedious for Panu Rajala to go through the enormous archives documenting decades of misery.

To sum it up: Ilmari Kianto had internalized an extremely severe religious discipline at his home boasting a long clerical lineage. Until 30 he lived in abstinence. After that, "it was an eternal wedding night".

We all know about the crisis of the book, but Panu Rajala seems to have ignored the news. In little more than ten years he has published an entire library about prominent Finnish authors, including Ilmari Kianto (2018), Eino Leino (2017), F. E. Sillanpää (2015), Olavi Paavolainen (2014), Veikko Huovinen (2012), Juhani Aho (2011), Aila Meriluoto (2010), Yrjö Jylhä (2009, with Vesa Karonen), Mika Waltari (2008), and J. H. Erkko (2006). All weighty tomes, usually boasting major new sources of information.

And Rajala seems not about to become crushed under the weight of documentation, rather the opposite: he revels in it. In his new Kianto biography he benefits enormously from first-hand sources studied for his Leino and Sillanpää books, for instance. Because of Kianto's exceptionally long life he was the contemporary of all of Rajala's previous subjects.

In our Year of Remembrance 1918 Kianto is an infamous figure because of his dehumanizing and brutalizing words about those who thought differently, especially female fighters. But Kianto was nothing if not a contradictory figure. His honesty as a writer was too much for the victorious White Guards to bear, and Kianto had to postpone his account of the Civil War for ten years, when it was still found uncomfortable and inflammatory. Kianto was also a militant champion of the "Greater Finland" idea: "Suomi suureksi, Viena vapaaksi" ["Make Finland Great, Free the White Sea"] was a slogan coined by him.

But there was also always a Don Quijote quality in Kianto's political aspirations. He was not a harmless figure, but an aspect of the clown was always there, probably consciously and intentionally. He landed into disgrace for his behaviour in the Winter War, but he was rehabilitated as an elder statesman of Finnish culture.

Kianto's most famous novel The Red Line is a memorial to the first democratic parliament election in Finland in 1907. Finland was the first county in the world where also women had full political rights, including the right to be elected. The first female members of the parliament were Finnish. The title "the red line" refers to the voting procedure. There is also an allusion to the red colour of the Social Democratic Party. And the blood red wound from the paw of the bear who strikes the protagonist in the finale.

In his books Panu Rajala has not generally been bashful about the sexual side of his protagonists. Now for once he seems to be happy to tone down the account of his sultan's excesses.

For the film-interested Rajala's books are rewarding because of his inside view in film and television adaptations of many of his subjects' works. In the case of Kianto Rajala was a screenwriter for Mikko Niskanen's Kianto biopic Omat koirat purivat ([Bitten by His Own Dogs], 1974).

I like the subtly distanced stance of Rajala confronting his material. It's not his task to judge his character. The reader is allowed to draw his own conclusions.

This book is engagingly written like a picaresque novel. The story would be incredible if it were presented as fiction.

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: INFORMATION FROM THE PUBLISHING HOUSE:
BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: INFORMATION FROM THE PUBLISHING HOUSE:

Tuotetiedot

Nimeke:     Suomussalmen sulttaani - Ilmari Kiannon elämä
Tekijät:     Rajala, Panu (Kirjoittaja)
Tuotetunnus:     9789522226983
Tuotemuoto:     Kovakantinen kirja
Hinta:     34,00 € (30,91 € alv 0)
   
Lisätiedot

Kustantaja:     Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura
Sarja:     Kirjokansi 154
Painos:     2018
Julkaisuvuosi:     2018
Kieli:     suomi
Sivumäärä:     525
Tuoteryhmät:     Syksy 2018
Kirjastoluokka:     86.2 Suomen ja suomalais-ugrilaisten kielten kirjallisuuden historia ja tutkimus

Esittelyteksti

”Mikä mies oli Iki-Kianto? Syrjitty kirjailija, maanpetturi ja naissankari? Soturi ja sorrettujen puolustaja. Vapaan rakkauden ja moniavioisuuden kannattaja. Kirkon ja yhteiskunnan kaataja. Isänmaallinen intoilija ja asettumaton anarkisti. Papin poika, Nälkämaan keisari ja Rämsänrannan ruhtinas, Kainuun khaani ja Suomussalmen sulttaani. Epiteettejä ja salanimiä riittää. Löytyykö piiloleikin takaa oikeaa minää ollenkaan?”

Panu Rajala kertoo vihdoin kirjallisuutemme värikkäimpiin hahmoihin kuuluvan Ilmari Kiannon (1874-1970) tarinan. Punaisesta viivasta kaikkien tuntema Kianto eli vaiherikkaan elämän vaihtuvine vaimoineen, ikämiehen rakkausdraamoineen ja tragikoomisine talousvaikeuksineen. Suomussalmella kirjailijan koti Turjanlinna paloi kaksi kertaa, ja talvisodan alkaessa isänmaan ystävää kohtasi vankilatuomio ja maineen menetys.

Kurimuksistaan selvittyään kirjailijasta kehkeytyi hersyvä muistelija, ärisevä aikalaiskriitikko, Kekkosen juttukaveri ja koko kansan tuntema Iki-Kianto.