Welcome to Modern Finnish Writers!
The database includes the authors’ personal details and introduces their work. The sources selected for further reading are mainly web-based, but there are references to other documents as well. Some texts on these web pages have been especially written for the database by the authors. The English pages are not identical to the Finnish and Swedish ones, as they mainly focus on authors whose work has been translated into English.
We hope you enjoy your visit!
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This section is only in Finnish!
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Oh my boy, my little boy. You won't have your gran to hold your hand on this sandpit journey where nightmarish creatures dismember and maul, it is the worst thing there is and worst of all is that it is all there is. The Underground dead have no oblivion, people can bear everything that has an end, everything the clock knows, but in eternity clock faces are made into torture-wheels that constantly spin and crush. Into ihat den of Satan walks my daughter's son, in his shorts, a sticking-plaster on his leg, and a bat snatches his blue-and-red cap from his head. He would like to weep the evil away, but the tears will not come, the tears will not come to sever the horror. And the voice, the voice moans. The young man bends over me.
The coffin has been lowered. The men throw the cloths into the grave. I remember that, before, the cloths were pulled up. Sarlotta says something, throws a wreath into the grave, and bursts into tears. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, the poor girl rnoans. What evil have you done to Marzipan, nothing. You merely tried to harden yourself against your brother, but because you are a good girl, you committed a crime against yourself, that's what's making you cry, cry away, that's your way of remembering your brother. You can't go against your blood.. If you do, you kill yourself.
Of the mourners, some throw flowers, individual flowers, into the grave. If Marzipan could take them with him on his nocturnal journey, if he could press the soft flowers to his ears so that he would not hear the terrible voice of judgement as he walked through the field of desolation, which rages incessantly, the voice of judgement turns into little arrows that pierce the ears so that the cheeks are red with ear-blood. The nose is blocked by the burning scent of mutilating fresh, which is pushed into the nose like a doctor's long tube.
A bird sings, the young man says he does not know birds, there the birds are songless, there winged wounds fly, just pierced, throbbing wounds that pause to drip blood on the branch of the burned tree, which is slippery as a petrified snake. From the underground sky rains boiling liquid sprayed by lizards that couple in the air, their activity is terrible to behold, because they do not make a sound, they are the size of a large town and they all look the same, so they are all lit from inside, but dark and horrible nonetheless. They fly with their stomachs open. They turn on their backs in the air, push their long, sharp snouts into their stomachs and eat themselves. The pastor is about to begin, the young man says.
From the novel Pyhiesi yhteyteen ('Numbered among your saints',)
translated by Hildi Hawkins
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