Tuula Karjalainen: Tove Jansson was a complex person, and not all her actions could be understood without being Tove.

Tuula Karjalainen

Tee Työtä Ja Rakasta

Original edition published by Tammi Publishers

Reprinted with permission from Tammi Publishers and Elina Ahlbäck Literary Agency, Helsinki, Finland

The book was published with the support of the Institute of Finland in St. Petersburg

***

Tove Jansson is a writer, illustrator, graphic artist, costume designer, playwright, poet and, of course, a world-famous storyteller, author of stories about the Moomins.

This book is about her, about her friends and relatives, about the 20th century, with the events of which her fate is inextricably linked, about the small island on which she lived, and about her beloved boat, about real people and fictional creatures, about work and love - the two main components of her life.

***

“I thought it’s so funny when they say that it’s difficult to be happy.”

Tove Jansson

From the author

The child moved for the first time. The movement is light and at the same time perceptible even through clothes, as if someone from there, from the inside, was trying to say: it’s me! Tove Jansson's future mother, Signe Hammarsten-Jansson, was walking around Paris and came out onto Rue Gaete - the Street of Joy. The child, who had not yet been born, first declared himself here. Was this a sign foreshadowing the girl happy life? Be that as it may, she is destined to bring immense joy to the world.

Times were difficult. The threat of war hung over Europe, like a heavy and stuffy veil before an inevitable storm. But despite this, and maybe that’s why art experienced another period of prosperity. In the early 1900s, new art was born in Parisian salons and creative workshops: cubism, surrealism and fauvism, and a stream of writers, composers and artists literally poured into the city, whose names the twentieth century will sing: Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Salvador Dali and many , a lot others. This motley crew of talents included newlyweds Viktor Jansson from Finland and Signe Hammarsten from Sweden, and with them the unborn baby Tove.

Tove Jansson was born in Helsinki on August 9, 1914, when the first World War has already spread to Europe.

When writing a biography, the author has to immerse himself in inner world another person and live his life again, as if in a parallel reality. Immersion in the world of Tove Jansson left me rich and strong impressions, despite the constant awareness that my presence may not be welcome. Many biographies, studies and dissertations have been written about Jansson, in which her work is examined from different points of view. She herself did not oppose this, although she did not show any enthusiasm for the hype around her person. Jansson often repeated that if the time comes to write about a writer, it is only after his death. But it is clear that Tove Jansson was ready to explore her work further, as she has preserved much of her extensive correspondence, as well as notebooks and notes.

I met Tove only once - in 1995, when Jansson was already eighty-one years old. I was organizing a creative exhibition about Sama Vanni, an artist of Russian origin who had died several years earlier. I was interested in the shared background of Jansson and Vanni, who had a close relationship from the thirties to the forties. Vanni was also my dear and beloved friend. By that time, I had already defended my dissertation on his work. I was afraid that Tove would not have the time or desire to meet with me, but she agreed to accept me. We sat down in her studio in Ullanlinna and talked about art, life and Herself. Tove recalled their youth and how Sam taught her to paint. She mentioned a joint trip to Italy, and about Vanni’s wife, Maya, and told a lot more about the years of their friendship. I received answers to my questions, and in addition, Tove promised to prepare a story for the exhibition catalog about how Sam, then still named Samuil the Besprozvanny, taught her how to use a brush. Suddenly Tove invited me to drink whiskey. And we drank, and then lit a cigarette, as was customary then, and switched roles. Now Tove was asking questions, and I was talking about Sam, his wife and sons, about whom she obviously knew little. My work became the reason that many people significant to Tove migrated from her life to mine. For example, I was closely acquainted with Tapio Tapiovaara, an artist and ex-lover Jansson. I met both the graphic artist Tuulikki Pietilä and the theater director Vivica Bandler, who were particularly significant figures in Tove Jansson’s life.

The second time I found myself in Tuve’s studio, I was already working on this book and researching the Jansson archive. What interested me most were her letters and notebooks. I spent many months in the workshop all alone while reading letters that could not be copied or taken out of the room. The workshop was the same as during Tove’s life. Her self-portrait, known as “Lynx Boa” (1942), still stood on the easel, and from the painting it was as if Tove herself was looking attentively and sternly directly at me. Shells and bark boats were scattered on the table and on the window sills, and along the walls there were huge, floor-to-ceiling cabinets filled with rows of books. Her paintings were also stacked here. The walls of the toilet were full of newspaper photographs depicting natural disasters, sinking ships and raging waves. Tove herself cut them out from newspapers and magazines. The atmosphere of the house was permeated with the spirit of Tove.

Over the three decades that Tove Jansson lived here, a lot of letters accumulated. The most important and interesting were those that she sent to Eva Konikova in America: a large stack of sheets of tissue paper covered in beaded handwriting. Some lines were cruelly erased, literally mutilated by wartime censorship. Eva's answers were not found in the pile. These letters brought back memories of the 1940s, the war and the subsequent period of reconstruction. They give a vivid idea of what a woman felt, who at that difficult time was experiencing the heyday of her youth, striving to achieve success in her professional field and build her life. And about how she felt after the war ended. In addition to these letters, I was allowed to read notebooks Tove and with her other correspondence. Particularly important for my book were the letters addressed to Athos Virtanen and Vivica Bandler. I also noticed that the plots of many of Tove's adult stories originate in her letters and notes from notebooks.

After I had the opportunity to immerse myself in the world of Tove Jansson, I wanted to consider her work in the context of the society and inner circle in which she moved. This is what determined my approach and point of view when writing the book. The war years are extremely important for understanding the life and work of Tove Jansson. Tuva had such a hard time at this time that later she even refused to remember the war. But these years were not lost, although at times she claimed so. It was then that the most important events regarding her career and later life. During the war and because of the war, the first stories about the Moomins were born, her development as an artist took place, and caricatures and drawings that were unique in their boldness were created.

The title of my book is Tove Jansson. Work and love,” taken from Jansson’s bookplate. Work and love - it was in this order that these two most important components existed in her life. The life and art of Tove Jansson were closely intertwined. She wrote her life on canvas and in texts, from which she drew subjects close to her heart, which she found in friends, islands, travels and in her experiences and impressions. The legacy she left behind is enormous and extremely diverse. In fact, it would be appropriate here to talk about “legacies” in plural, since Tuva managed to successfully realize herself in several fields at once. Tove was a successful writer, illustrator, graphic artist, costume designer, playwright, poet, author of cartoons and comics, and, of course, a world-famous storyteller.

The work of Tove Jansson is so large-scale that anyone who tries to study it is simply drowned in the amount of material. I felt like Aunt Gerda from Jansson’s novel “The Listener.” This old woman decided to make a map of family relationships and love affairs of her relatives and friends. Children and parents were connected on this map by red lines, lines Pink colour designated love affair, and forbidden relationships are double underlined. Over time, the task became less and less feasible. Love disappeared, relationships melted away. Amendments to the map had to be made more and more often, and no parchment would be enough to indicate all the vicissitudes of life. Aunt Gerda's work was never completed. The present moves forward, the past changes over time. Sometimes it seems that the past is especially defenseless. On art, as well as on human destiny, you can endlessly look from different angles, but in life there is no plot, only disparate events that follow in parallel or one after another. Either highlighting or obscuring one another. The longer you watch them, the more three-dimensional picture opens up to view. This was especially true for Tuva, since she liked to do several things at once. Tove Jansson has been painting all her life, delighting the world with books about the Moomins for thirty years in a row, and at the same time writing stories, novels and short stories and illustrating various printed publications.

The volume and scale of Tove Jansson's work influenced the order of the book's narrative. The content is divided into chapters, united by a temporal or thematic component, and represents a compromise of these two components. A chronological narrative would only confuse the reader. On the other hand, time, its most important phenomena and the ideals that reigned then represent an important part of the art and life of Tove Jansson.

The bibliography of works about Tova Jansson is very extensive. More than twenty years ago, art historian Eric Kruskopf wrote a detailed study of Jansson's paintings and her career as an artist. Ten years later, a professor of literary studies from Sweden, Buel Westin, who wrote a lot about the Moomins, published full biography Jansson. Finnish writer Juhani Tolvanen throughout for long years researched comics created by Jansson. Countless books, dissertations and scientific research, the last of which were released relatively recently. Many researchers were interested in the topic of homosexuality in Jansson's books.

I decided not only to focus on Jansson’s art in its most diverse manifestations, but also to show her herself as a part of her time, its values and cultural history. Jansson's environment is of great importance here. Tove lived a long and exciting life. She wasn't afraid to question moral values and dogma in a society in which the ball was ruled by prejudices relating primarily to sexuality and behavioral norms. A revolutionary spirit lived in her, but at the same time she did not strive to be a provocateur. She certainly influenced the values and beliefs of her contemporaries, without carrying the banner of innovation, but calmly living in accordance with her own preferences and without trading on principles. The position of women, independence, creativity and their recognition on an equal basis with men - that’s what was important to Jansson. She herself never agreed to the role of the average “man’s girlfriend” in any way. professionally, neither in personal life. As a little girl, she wrote: “The best thing that can be is freedom.” It was freedom that remained the most important principle for Tove Jansson throughout her life.

Per il mio carissima Trinca. Self-portrait, 1939, oil

Part one
Father's sculptures, mother's drawings

Father broken by war

Newborn Tove in her mother's arms

Tove’s first and main creative idol was her father. The sculptor Viktor Jansson believed that art is something grandiose and very important, and Tove learned this idea very early. The relationship between father and daughter was contradictory, as they say, due to the rupture of the aorta. There was everything: from great love to deep hatred. Victor Jansson hoped that his daughter, the flesh of her parents, would follow in their footsteps and join the artistic environment. Tove made this wish of her father come true, but she did not limit herself to him alone. She was engaged not only in painting, but also in many other things, which was incomprehensible or frankly unpleasant to her father. However, Victor Jansson was proud of the success that Tove achieved as a painter.

Victor Jansson (1886–1958) was born into the family of a haberdashery merchant, a native of Finnish Swedes. The father died when the boy was still very young, and the widow continued her husband's work. Little Victor often had to help her at the counter with his brother. The trade went on with varying degrees of success, and the family sometimes had to tighten their belts, but there was still enough money to send young Victor to Paris to study sculpting.

Victor Jansson's career began promisingly, but he never became a significant figure among his contemporaries. This fact, of course, hit the pride of the ambitious, striving for fame young man. At that time, the development of Finnish sculpture was determined by the universal admiration of Väino Aaltonen, and all others remained in his shadow. It was believed that one recognized genius at any given time was more than enough for a small country.

In those days, being both the head of a family and an artist was not easy. According to the prevailing values of that time, a man had to earn enough to support his wife and children. Surely Victor Jansson's pride was hurt by the fact that the family could not get by without his wife's earnings, not to mention the fact that from time to time the Janssons had to resort to the help of Signe Hammarsten's wealthy Swedish relatives.

The Janssons' financial situation was precarious, as often happens in families of creative people. A sculptor's income depended on many factors, such as luck, chance, and the changing values of the art world. The Jansson family lived modestly, if not poorly. The most important thing for them was creativity, but, alas, they paid little for it. Vivica Bandler later recalled the already adult Tove’s attitude towards money. According to her, in Tuva, even as a child, a feeling of pity for everyone who did not belong to creative environment. This attitude probably made it easier to accept the hardships associated with a constant lack of money.

After the First World War, Viktor Jansson's income, like many other sculptors, was ensured by the creation of monuments, monuments to the dead and sculptures in honor of the heroes of the Finnish White Movement. The sculptor Faffan, and it was under this name that his friends and relatives knew Victor Jansson, sculpted four monuments dedicated to the Civil War; the two most interesting ones are in Tampere and Lahti. The nude male figures cast in bronze are reminiscent of ancient Greek athletes in the prime of youth and beauty. A warrior on the Freedom Monument in Tampere raises his sword to the heavens, as if attacking an enemy. His figure is elevated on a granite pedestal and looks soaring above earthly worries and vanity. The sculpture, heroic in spirit, is phallic in form and composition. The bronze warrior combines beauty, aggression and challenge - concepts that were important at that time from an ideological point of view and therefore became the focus of art.

Victor Jansson was involved in the creation of monuments rather out of necessity, due to difficult financial circumstances, rather than out of sincere desire. Most of the sculptures that came out of his hands are sensual female figures and tender images of children. As Tove wrote in her book “The Sculptor’s Daughter,” her father did not like women. Women, in his opinion, were too loud, wore hats that were too big to cinemas, had bad manners and, in addition, were unlikely to obey commands in the event of war. Only in the guise of statues did they become real. The only flesh-and-blood women Viktor Jansson put up with were his wife and daughter.

Close people often became both models and muses for creators. Victor's wife, Signe, or Ham, as her family called her, posed for her husband, and little Tove too. It was her features that Victor Jansson captured in his work “Head of a Girl” (1920). The gentle features and calm expression of the face carved from marble seem to emit a soft light. Jansson's work also includes several fountains, and at least one of them, located in Esplanade Park in the heart of Helsinki, depicts little Tove as a cheerful little mermaid. The daughter managed to turn from a baby into a young girl when her father depicted her in his new sculpture “Convolvulus”. Convolvulus is the Latin name for bindweed, which in Finnish has a second name, “thread of life.” The girl cast in bronze truly resembles, with her flexibility and eroticism, a climbing bindweed. The sculpture was installed in the central park of Kaisaniemi, where it is still located. In 1937, Tove spoke about her impressions of posing: “I took the pose of the bindweed, which my father showed me. Step forward, arms slightly raised. A small slow step, toes tucked, hand movements slightly uncertain. Everything together, according to my father’s plan, was supposed to express awakening, youth.”

Quarrels in the relationship between father and daughter were frequent, but despite this, the connection between Victor and Tove was never interrupted, although it was sometimes overshadowed by outright anger at each other. Both Tove and her father had strong political and social views, so different that it was often absolutely impossible for them to accept and understand each other's values. Signe's mother told the children that their father was broken by the war and that his soul was forever marked with incurable scars. Once a carefree, cheerful fellow, after the war Faffan became bitter, harsh and intolerant. He had changed so much that even smiling was difficult for him, like any other expression of feelings. He moved away from his family, the center of which was his mother and the children who rallied around her. And yet, Tove admired her father immensely and in her work was completely dependent on his judgment.

Faffan was a typical patriot of his time. Like many war heroes, he was unable to fully return to normal life and preferred to relive and rethink his military past again and again in the circle of friends, veterans like him. Difficult memories were drowned in unbridled joy. Companies gathered in restaurants, men left their wives at home so that they would not interfere, and spent the night drinking and talking about high matters. Wine flowed like a river, although it was not at all easy to get alcohol during the harsh prohibition law that was in effect everywhere.

Viktor Jansson's best friend was his old student friend Alvar Kaven, also a hero Civil War. In their youth, they rented a studio together in Paris, and later in Helsinki. The men managed to maintain friendship throughout their lives, spending both everyday life and holidays together. The artists' wives also became friends; the two families loved to have parties together. During Prohibition, they produced alcoholic drinks themselves, underground, in full accordance with the spirit free creativity. The painter Marcus Collin was also part of Faffan and Kaven's circle of friends. Since 1933, both families, the Janssons and the Collins, lived together in the artistic commune of Lallukka, located in the Töölö district of Helsinki. Living in the same house, the artists and their loved ones communicated almost constantly and with pleasure.

During Prohibition in Helsinki, underground entertainment establishments multiplied like mushrooms after rain. There were certain risks associated with their visit: the police were not asleep. Therefore, parties were often held at home. The Jansson family often invited guests to late-night gatherings that lasted until the next morning. The most famous and caressed by success gathered at the Janssons' place creative people that time. Even as a child, Tove secretly watched the fun of the adults, their “feasts.” Being very young, she received her first impressions of the art world and the people within it, but at the same time she had to learn what war and male aggression. It is these impressions that will later form the basis of the book “The Sculptor’s Daughter,” which contains the following lines: “All men feast, and they are comrades among themselves who never betray each other. A friend may say terrible things to you, but tomorrow everything will be forgotten. A comrade does not forgive, he only forgets, but a woman - she forgives everything, but never forgets. That's it! Therefore, women cannot feast. It’s very unpleasant if they forgive you.”

Self-portrait at age 14, charcoal

In her book, Tove returns to childhood memories: her mother, who before Christmas carefully wiped the dust from the figurines in her father’s workshop. My father did not allow anyone else to do this. However, in the house there were things more sacred than figurines: grenades from the Civil War. They were a legacy of the war, a real fetish for Victor Jansson. No one had the right to wipe the dust off them, under no circumstances, ever. The military past, which came up in conversations during parties, and men's recklessness became the plot of Tove Jansson's story, in which the daughter indulges in her childhood memories of these evenings. “I love daddy’s parties. They can last for many nights in a row, and I like to wake up and fall asleep again, and feel how the smoke and music lull me to sleep... After the music, memories of the war begin. Then I wait a little longer under the blanket, but I always get up again when they attack the wicker chair. Dad takes off his bayonet hanging over the bags of plaster in the workshop, everyone jumps up and screams, and then Dad attacks the wicker chair. During the day it is covered with a woven carpet, so you can’t even see what it is like.”

Viktor Jansson, like many other White Finns who went through the Civil War, considered leftist views and especially communism a threat to the fatherland. Pro-German sentiments flourished in Finland, especially during the Soviet-Finnish war. Jansson had absolute faith in Germany and considered the Germans as liberators and friends. He was hostile to Jews. The father's anti-Semitism deeply hurt the daughter. In this regard, she was irreconcilable and uncompromising, “fire and flame,” as she herself described it. Many of her inner circle were Jewish, such as Sam Vanni (born Samuil Besprozvanny) and Eva Konikova. It was not easy for Victor Jansson to come to terms with the fact that his daughter, in her cartoons published in Garm magazine, sharply criticized the actions of Germany and Hitler. In her letters, Tove often complained about her father’s shameful intolerance and his political views, which, in her words, made her daughter’s hair stand on end.

Tove's dependence on family opinion and her fear of her father's disapproval, as well as Viktor Jansson's dislike of communists, are well described in one of her notebooks. Tove's classmate Tapio Tapiovaara received an invitation to the USSR Embassy for an evening dedicated to A.S. Pushkin. Tapio managed to lure Tove there as his lady. The holiday was a great success: women in evening dresses and many important guests walked around the embassy. The Soviet minister was also among the guests. Among the guests was also a journalist from the Swedish-language newspaper Svenska Pressen, who knew Tove’s father. She was horrified at the thought that the journalist would tell her father that she was attending communist meetings. She humiliatingly asked the journalist to remain silent about their meeting, and, apparently, he kept his promise.

Victor Jansson had a hard time coming to terms with his daughter's friends and affections. All these people often turned out to be either Jews or communists, or at least adherents of extreme leftist views. Tapio Tapiovaara, whom Tove met during World War II, was a member of the leftist association of artists “Kiila” and adhered to communist views. Atos Virtanen, who was Tove's partner for many years, stood out even more.

Tove's open and free relationship with Atos Virtanen, a well-known and highly publicized man, caused unrest among people whose moral values ran counter to Tove's. The father also did not like his daughter’s free relationship, and the leftist views of the chosen one and his prominent position in society only worsened the situation. At that time, open relationships were not accepted, and in the circle of the middle class to which the Janssons belonged, such relationships were severely condemned. Sex life was limited by many conventions, it was not customary to talk about it, and women were expected to marry as virgins. In a society where norms of sexual abstinence reign, it was extremely difficult for an unmarried couple living in an open union to maintain the respect and trust of others. At that time, sexual relationships were in no way a private matter for lovers. Tove's father simply could not step over the boundaries of the norm within which he was raised and reject the values close to him. And yet Tove’s male friends were not turned away from the house. Yes, they did not enjoy the respect of the father of the family, however, he never openly attacked them. Although the atmosphere sometimes became seriously tense.

Tuula Karjalainen

Tove Jansson: Work and love

“I thought it’s so funny when they say that it’s difficult to be happy.”

The child moved for the first time. The movement is light and at the same time perceptible even through clothes, as if someone from there, from the inside, was trying to say: it’s me! Tove Jansson's future mother, Signe Hammarsten-Jansson, was walking around Paris and came out onto Rue Gaete - Street of Joy. The child, who had not yet been born, first declared himself here. Was this a sign foretelling a happy life for the girl? Be that as it may, she is destined to bring immense joy to the world.

Tove Jansson was born in Helsinki on August 9, 1914, when the First World War had already engulfed Europe.

When writing a biography, the author has to immerse himself in the inner world of another person and live his life anew, as if in a parallel reality. Immersing myself in the world of Tove Jansson left me with rich and powerful impressions, despite the constant awareness that my presence might not be welcome. Many biographies, studies and dissertations have been written about Jansson, in which her work is examined from different points of view. She herself did not oppose this, although she did not show any enthusiasm for the hype around her person. Jansson often repeated that if the time comes to write about a writer, it is only after his death. But it is clear that Tove Jansson was ready to explore her work further, as she has preserved much of her extensive correspondence, as well as notebooks and notes.

I met Tove only once - in 1995, when Jansson was already eighty-one years old. I was organizing a creative exhibition about Sama Vanni, an artist of Russian origin who had died several years earlier. I was interested in the shared background of Jansson and Vanni, who had a close relationship from the thirties to the forties. Vanni was also my dear and beloved friend. By that time, I had already defended my dissertation on his work. I was afraid that Tove would not have the time or desire to meet with me, but she agreed to accept me. We sat down in her studio in Ullanlinna and talked about art, life and Herself. Tove recalled their youth and how Sam taught her to paint. She mentioned a joint trip to Italy, and about Vanni’s wife, Maya, and told a lot more about the years of their friendship. I received answers to my questions, and in addition, Tove promised to prepare a story for the exhibition catalog about how Sam, then still named Samuil the Besprozvanny, taught her how to use a brush. Suddenly Tove invited me to drink whiskey. And we drank, and then lit a cigarette, as was customary then, and switched roles. Now Tove was asking questions, and I was talking about Sam, his wife and sons, about whom she obviously knew little. My work became the reason that many people significant to Tove migrated from her life to mine. For example, I was closely acquainted with Tapio Tapiovaara, an artist and former lover of Jansson. I met both the graphic artist Tuulikki Pietilä and the theater director Vivica Bandler, who were particularly significant figures in Tove Jansson’s life.

The second time I found myself in Tuve’s studio, I was already working on this book and researching the Jansson archive. What interested me most were her letters and notebooks. I spent many months in the studio, completely alone, reading letters that could not be copied or taken out of the room. The workshop was the same as during Tove’s life. Her self-portrait, known as “Lynx Boa” (1942), still stood on the easel, and from the painting it was as if Tove herself was looking attentively and sternly directly at me. Shells and bark boats were scattered on the table and on the window sills, and along the walls there were huge, floor-to-ceiling cabinets filled with rows of books. Her paintings were also stacked here. The walls of the toilet were full of newspaper photographs depicting natural disasters, sinking ships and raging waves. Tove herself cut them out from newspapers and magazines. The atmosphere of the house was permeated with the spirit of Tove.

Tuula Karjalainen

Tee Ty?t? Ja Rakasta

Original edition published by Tammi Publishers

Reprinted with permission from Tammi Publishers and Elina Ahlb?ck Literary Agency, Helsinki, Finland

The book was published with the support of the Institute of Finland in St. Petersburg

***

Tove Jansson is a writer, illustrator, graphic artist, costume designer, playwright, poet and, of course, a world-famous storyteller, author of stories about the Moomins.

This book is about her, about her friends and relatives, about the 20th century, with the events of which her fate is inextricably linked, about the small island on which she lived, and about her favorite boat, about real people and fictional creatures, about work and love - two main components of her life.

***

“I thought it’s so funny when they say that it’s difficult to be happy.”

Tove Jansson

From the author

The child moved for the first time. The movement is light and at the same time perceptible even through clothes, as if someone from there, from the inside, was trying to say: it’s me! Tove Jansson's future mother, Signe Hammarsten-Jansson, was walking around Paris and came out onto Rue Gaete - the Street of Joy. The child, who had not yet been born, first declared himself here. Was this a sign foretelling a happy life for the girl? Be that as it may, she is destined to bring immense joy to the world.

Tove Jansson was born in Helsinki on August 9, 1914, when the First World War had already engulfed Europe.

But it is clear that Tove Jansson was ready to explore her work further, as she has preserved much of her extensive correspondence, as well as notebooks and notes.

I met Tove only once - in 1995, when Jansson was already eighty-one years old. I was organizing a creative exhibition about Sama Vanni, an artist of Russian origin who had died several years earlier. I was interested in the shared background of Jansson and Vanni, who had a close relationship from the thirties to the forties. Vanni was also my dear and beloved friend. By that time, I had already defended my dissertation on his work. I was afraid that Tove would not have the time or desire to meet with me, but she agreed to accept me. We sat down in her studio in Ullanlinna and talked about art, life and Herself. Tove recalled their youth and how Sam taught her to paint. She mentioned a joint trip to Italy, and about Vanni’s wife, Maya, and told a lot more about the years of their friendship. I received answers to my questions, and in addition, Tove promised to prepare a story for the exhibition catalog about how Sam, then still named Samuil the Besprozvanny, taught her how to use a brush. Suddenly Tove invited me to drink whiskey. And we drank, and then lit a cigarette, as was customary then, and switched roles. Now Tove was asking questions, and I was talking about Sam, his wife and sons, about whom she obviously knew little. My work became the reason that many people significant to Tove migrated from her life to mine. For example, I was closely acquainted with Tapio Tapiovaara, an artist and former lover of Jansson. I met both the graphic artist Tuulikki Pietilä and the theater director Vivica Bandler, who were particularly significant figures in Tove Jansson’s life.

The second time I found myself in Tuve’s studio, I was already working on this book and researching the Jansson archive. What interested me most were her letters and notebooks. I spent many months in the studio, completely alone, reading letters that could not be copied or taken out of the room. The workshop was the same as during Tove’s life. Her self-portrait, known as “Lynx Boa” (1942), still stood on the easel, and from the painting it was as if Tove herself was looking attentively and sternly directly at me. Shells and bark boats were scattered on the table and on the window sills, and along the walls there were huge, floor-to-ceiling cabinets filled with rows of books. Her paintings were also stacked here. The walls of the toilet were full of newspaper photographs depicting natural disasters, sinking ships and raging waves. Tove herself cut them out from newspapers and magazines. The atmosphere of the house was permeated with the spirit of Tove.

Over the three decades that Tove Jansson lived here, a lot of letters accumulated. The most important and interesting were those that she sent to Eva Konikova in America: a large stack of sheets of tissue paper covered in beaded handwriting. Some lines were cruelly erased, literally mutilated by wartime censorship. Eva's answers were not found in the pile. These letters brought back memories of the 1940s, the war and the subsequent period of reconstruction. They give a vivid idea of what a woman felt, who at that difficult time was experiencing the heyday of her youth, striving to achieve success in her professional field and build her life. And about how she felt after the war ended. In addition to these letters, I was allowed to look at Tove’s notebooks and her other correspondence. Particularly important for my book were the letters addressed to Athos Virtanen and Vivica Bandler. I also noticed that the plots of many of Tove's adult stories originate in her letters and notes from notebooks.

After I had the opportunity to immerse myself in the world of Tove Jansson, I wanted to consider her work in the context of the society and inner circle in which she moved. This is what determined my approach and point of view when writing the book. The war years are extremely important for understanding the life and work of Tove Jansson. Tuva had such a hard time at this time that later she even refused to remember the war. But these years were not lost, although at times she claimed so. It was then that the most important events concerning her career and future life took place. During the war and because of the war, the first stories about the Moomins were born, her development as an artist took place, and caricatures and drawings that were unique in their boldness were created.

The title of my book is Tove Jansson. Work and love,” taken from Jansson’s bookplate. Work and love - it was in this order that these two most important components existed in her life. The life and art of Tove Jansson were closely intertwined. She wrote her life on canvas and in texts, from which she drew subjects close to her heart, which she found in friends, islands, travels and in her experiences and impressions. The legacy she left behind is enormous and extremely diverse. In fact, it would be appropriate to talk about “heritages” in the plural here, since Tuva managed to successfully realize herself in several fields at once. Tove was a successful writer, illustrator, graphic artist, costume designer, playwright, poet, author of cartoons and comics, and, of course, a world-famous storyteller.

The work of Tove Jansson is so large-scale that anyone who tries to study it is simply drowned in the amount of material. I felt like Aunt Gerda from Jansson’s novel “The Listener.” This old woman decided to make a map of family relationships and love affairs of her relatives and friends. Children and parents were connected on this map by red lines, pink lines indicated a love affair, and forbidden relationships were double underlined. Over time, the task became less and less feasible. Love disappeared, relationships melted away. Amendments to the map had to be made more and more often, and no parchment would be enough to indicate all the vicissitudes of life. Aunt Gerda's work was never completed. The present moves forward, the past changes over time. Sometimes it seems that the past is especially defenseless. Art, like human destiny, can be endlessly looked at from different angles, but in life there is no plot, only disparate events that follow in parallel or one after another. Either highlighting or obscuring one another. The longer you watch them, the more voluminous the picture reveals itself to your gaze. This was especially true for Tuva, since she liked to do several things at once. Tove Jansson has been painting all her life, delighting the world with books about the Moomins for thirty years in a row, and at the same time writing stories, novels and short stories and illustrating various printed publications.

The bibliography of works about Tova Jansson is very extensive. More than twenty years ago, art historian Eric Kruskopf wrote a detailed study of Jansson's paintings and her career as an artist. Ten years later, a professor of literary studies from Sweden, Buel Westin, who wrote a lot about the Moomins, published a full biography of Jansson. Finnish writer Juhani Tolvanen has been researching the comics created by Jansson for many years. Countless books, dissertations and scientific studies have been published about the Moomins, the latest of which were published relatively recently. Many researchers were interested in the topic of homosexuality in Jansson's books.

I decided not only to focus on Jansson’s art in its most varied manifestations, but also to show her herself as part of her time, its values and cultural history. Jansson's environment is of great importance here. Tove lived a long and exciting life. She was not afraid to question moral values and dogmas in a society in which prejudices primarily related to sexuality and behavioral norms ruled the day. A revolutionary spirit lived in her, but at the same time she did not strive to be a provocateur. She certainly influenced the values and beliefs of her contemporaries, without carrying the banner of innovation, but calmly living in accordance with her own preferences and without trading on principles. The position of women, independence, creativity and their recognition on an equal basis with men - that’s what was important to Jansson. She herself never agreed to the role of the average “man’s girlfriend” either professionally or in her personal life. As a little girl, she wrote: “The best thing that can be is freedom.” It was freedom that remained the most important principle for Tove Jansson throughout her life.

Per il mio carissima Trinca. Self-portrait, 1939, oil

Part one
Father's sculptures, mother's drawings

Father broken by war

Newborn Tove in her mother's arms

Victor Jansson's career began promisingly, but he never became a significant figure among his contemporaries. This fact, of course, hit the pride of an ambitious young man striving for fame. At that time, the development of Finnish sculpture was determined by the universal admiration of Väino Aaltonen, and all others remained in his shadow. It was believed that one recognized genius at any given time was more than enough for a small country.

The Janssons' financial situation was precarious, as often happens in families of creative people. A sculptor's income depended on many factors, such as luck, chance, and the changing values of the art world. The Jansson family lived modestly, if not poorly. The most important thing for them was creativity, but, alas, they paid little for it. Vivica Bandler later recalled the already adult Tove’s attitude towards money. According to her, in Tuva, even as a child, a feeling of pity for everyone who did not belong to the creative environment was formed. This attitude probably made it easier to accept the hardships associated with a constant lack of money.

Victor Jansson was involved in the creation of monuments rather out of necessity, due to difficult financial circumstances, rather than out of sincere desire. Most of the sculptures that came out of his hands are sensual female figures and gentle images of children. As Tove wrote in her book “The Sculptor’s Daughter,” her father did not like women. Women, in his opinion, were too loud, wore hats that were too big to cinemas, had bad manners and, in addition, were unlikely to obey commands in the event of war. Only in the guise of statues did they become real. The only flesh-and-blood women Viktor Jansson put up with were his wife and daughter.

Viktor Jansson's best friend was his old student friend Alvar Kaven, also a hero of the Civil War. In their youth, they rented a studio together in Paris, and later in Helsinki. The men managed to maintain friendship throughout their lives, spending both everyday life and holidays together. The artists' wives also became friends; the two families loved to have parties together. During Prohibition, they produced alcoholic drinks themselves, underground, in full accordance with the spirit of free creativity. The painter Marcus Collin was also part of Faffan and Kaven's circle of friends. Since 1933, both families, the Janssons and the Collins, lived together in the artistic commune of Lallukka, located in the Töölö district of Helsinki. Living in the same house, the artists and their loved ones communicated almost constantly and with pleasure.

During Prohibition in Helsinki, underground entertainment establishments multiplied like mushrooms after rain. There were certain risks associated with their visit: the police were not asleep. Therefore, parties were often held at home. The Jansson family often invited guests to late-night gatherings that lasted until the next morning. The most famous and successful creative people of that time gathered at the Janssons' place. Even as a child, Tove secretly watched the fun of the adults, their “feasts.” Being very young, she received her first impressions of the art world and the people within it, but at the same time she had to learn what war and male aggression were. It is these impressions that will later form the basis of the book “The Sculptor’s Daughter,” which contains the following lines: “All men feast, and they are comrades among themselves who never betray each other. A friend may say terrible things to you, but tomorrow everything will be forgotten. A comrade does not forgive, he only forgets, but a woman - she forgives everything, but never forgets. That's it! Therefore, women cannot feast. It’s very unpleasant if they forgive you.” 1
Translation by L. Braude. The sculptor's daughter. Quote based on the publication of Tove Jansson, The Sculptor's Daughter. – St. Petersburg: Amphora 2005, p. 19–64.

Self-portrait at age 14, charcoal

Tuula Karjalainen

Tee Työtä Ja Rakasta

Original edition published by Tammi Publishers

Reprinted with permission from Tammi Publishers and Elina Ahlbäck Literary Agency, Helsinki, Finland

The book was published with the support of the Institute of Finland in St. Petersburg

Tove Jansson is a writer, illustrator, graphic artist, costume designer, playwright, poet and, of course, a world-famous storyteller, author of stories about the Moomins.

This book is about her, about her friends and relatives, about the 20th century, with the events of which her fate is inextricably linked, about the small island on which she lived, and about her favorite boat, about real people and fictional creatures, about work and love - two main components of her life.

“I thought it’s so funny when they say that it’s difficult to be happy.”

Tove Jansson

The child moved for the first time. The movement is light and at the same time perceptible even through clothes, as if someone from there, from the inside, was trying to say: it’s me! Tove Jansson's future mother, Signe Hammarsten-Jansson, was walking around Paris and came out onto Rue Gaete - the Street of Joy. The child, who had not yet been born, first declared himself here. Was this a sign foretelling a happy life for the girl? Be that as it may, she is destined to bring immense joy to the world.

Tove Jansson was born in Helsinki on August 9, 1914, when the First World War had already engulfed Europe.

I met Tove only once - in 1995, when Jansson was already eighty-one years old. I was organizing a creative exhibition about Sama Vanni, an artist of Russian origin who had died several years earlier. I was interested in the shared background of Jansson and Vanni, who had a close relationship from the thirties to the forties. Vanni was also my dear and beloved friend. By that time, I had already defended my dissertation on his work. I was afraid that Tove would not have the time or desire to meet with me, but she agreed to accept me. We sat down in her studio in Ullanlinna and talked about art, life and Herself. Tove recalled their youth and how Sam taught her to paint. She mentioned a joint trip to Italy, and about Vanni’s wife, Maya, and told a lot more about the years of their friendship. I received answers to my questions, and in addition, Tove promised to prepare a story for the exhibition catalog about how Sam, then still named Samuil the Besprozvanny, taught her how to use a brush. Suddenly Tove invited me to drink whiskey. And we drank, and then lit a cigarette, as was customary then, and switched roles. Now Tove was asking questions, and I was talking about Sam, his wife and sons, about whom she obviously knew little. My work became the reason that many people significant to Tove migrated from her life to mine. For example, I was closely acquainted with Tapio Tapiovaara, an artist and former lover of Jansson. I met both the graphic artist Tuulikki Pietilä and the theater director Vivica Bandler, who were particularly significant figures in Tove Jansson’s life.

The second time I found myself in Tuve’s studio, I was already working on this book and researching the Jansson archive. What interested me most were her letters and notebooks. I spent many months in the studio, completely alone, reading letters that could not be copied or taken out of the room. The workshop was the same as during Tove’s life. Her self-portrait, known as “Lynx Boa” (1942), still stood on the easel, and from the painting it was as if Tove herself was looking attentively and sternly directly at me. Shells and bark boats were scattered on the table and on the window sills, and along the walls there were huge, floor-to-ceiling cabinets filled with rows of books. Her paintings were also stacked here. The walls of the toilet were full of newspaper photographs depicting natural disasters, sinking ships and raging waves. Tove herself cut them out from newspapers and magazines. The atmosphere of the house was permeated with the spirit of Tove.

Over the three decades that Tove Jansson lived here, a lot of letters accumulated. The most important and interesting were those that she sent to Eva Konikova in America: a large stack of sheets of tissue paper covered in beaded handwriting. Some lines were cruelly erased, literally mutilated by wartime censorship. Eva's answers were not found in the pile. These letters brought back memories of the 1940s, the war and the subsequent period of reconstruction. They give a vivid idea of what a woman felt, who at that difficult time was experiencing the heyday of her youth, striving to achieve success in her professional field and build her life. And about how she felt after the war ended. In addition to these letters, I was allowed to look at Tove’s notebooks and her other correspondence. Particularly important for my book were the letters addressed to Athos Virtanen and Vivica Bandler. I also noticed that the plots of many of Tove's adult stories originate in her letters and notes from notebooks.

After I had the opportunity to immerse myself in the world of Tove Jansson, I wanted to consider her work in the context of the society and inner circle in which she moved. This is what determined my approach and point of view when writing the book. The war years are extremely important for understanding the life and work of Tove Jansson. Tuva had such a hard time at this time that later she even refused to remember the war. But these years were not lost, although at times she claimed so. It was then that the most important events concerning her career and future life took place. During the war and because of the war, the first stories about the Moomins were born, her development as an artist took place, and caricatures and drawings that were unique in their boldness were created.

The title of my book is Tove Jansson. Work and love,” taken from Jansson’s bookplate. Work and love - it was in this order that these two most important components existed in her life. The life and art of Tove Jansson were closely intertwined. She wrote her life on canvas and in texts, from which she drew subjects close to her heart, which she found in friends, islands, travels and in her experiences and impressions. The legacy she left behind is enormous and extremely diverse. In fact, it would be appropriate to talk about “heritages” in the plural here, since Tuva managed to successfully realize herself in several fields at once. Tove was a successful writer, illustrator, graphic artist, costume designer, playwright, poet, author of cartoons and comics, and, of course, a world-famous storyteller.