Helsinki. WSOY. 2001. 286 pages FIM 150. ISBN 951-0-25732-X THE AUTHORS SAY that theirs is the first published work dealing with Paavo Haavikko's "prose" (i.e., fiction and autobiography). Markku Eskelinen is a writer and literary scholar. Raine Koskimaa is a cybertext scholar...

Finnish Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen thinks that Finland will be able to sustain its rapid economic growth in the future. The Finnish government has implemented plans designed to install the country as a major business center in Northern Europe. Finland will also be developed...

[Two important poles are represented in the poetry of Paavo Haavikko.] On the one hand, the world is real, unavoidable, but difficult to understand. One cannot help listening to its voice. On the other hand, man cannot expect permanence or stability. The world flows like his own speech, and in this changing world the only possibility of orientation is to "know almost everything yourself." This is man's basic situation in Haavikko's poetry. (p. 41) Haavikko was twenty when he publ...

When Finnish poets broke with tradition in the 1950s, there was no leader among them, no innovator bolder than the others who could mark a road for others to follow. Haavikko's first collection of poems … was not the very first to be written in the new manner; but the author almost immediately established himself as the most individual of the new poets and also … the least accessible to the average reader. At times critics and essayists have expressed bewilderment when attempting to ana...

Paavo Haavikko has always been a prolific writer. Poetry, prose, plays, whatever he turns his hand to he executes with ease and assurance. The year 1975 was a gala year for him: in addition to his collected poems in two large volumes, Runot 1949–1974 … and Runoelmat …, he also produced a highly successful opera libretto, Ratsumies (The Horseman …). (p. 337) Haavikko's poetry as a whole forms a tightly-woven, complex tapestry, in which many themes merge and emerge. Most poe...