Country and City Arto Paasilinna – The Year of the Hare

Keywords

Arto Paasilinna (1942-) Country/City/Village Nature/Culture Tradition/Modernity

Arto Paasilinna

Arto Paasilinna was born in 1942, one of four famous ‘author brothers’ (Erno, Reino, and Mauri) whose family came from the Petsamo district of Finland, from which they resettle. Paasilinna is known for his satires, which use exaggeration and invention to mock aspirations and expectations of Finland’s urban middle class, and which are popular literature that does not fit into the ‘high’ literary tradition of Finnish culture.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pechengsky_District)

Country/Village/City Finland is a sparsely populated country, with large forests, especially in the north. Today, many Finns prize time spent in the countryside (maaseutu) or in lake country, picking berries and mushrooms, spending time at summer cottages, and doing outdoor activities and sports. Love of nature has its roots in agrarian society, and its basic social unit the village.

The village (kylä) denominates a small cluster of farms and homes, often built according to the agricultural practice and geographical features. The village is a form of intimate, face-to-face social organization, a form of quasi-feudal economic organization, and a unit of administrative organization, as the church and state taxed the population through village units up through the early twentieth. During the 19th and 20th century, voluntaristic and political organizations, such as volunteer fire departments and lending libraries, came to be important parts of village social life.

The city (kaupunki) is dense population center organized around economic and political activities and institutions, and governed by special rules and rights, which stand in contrast to a less populated countryside. For example, ip until 1859, areas designated as cities in Finland enjoyed trade privileges that villages and the countryside did not, for example permission to engage in foreign trade. The root for the Finnish word Kaupunki comes from the word kauppa, which means trade, commerce, or store. Finland’s five largest cities are Helsinki, Espoo, Tampere, Vantaa, Turku.

Nature/Culture: A rough distinction between the material world, environment, and its creatures, and the historical world constructed by humans. Nature is often thought of as pure in contrast to the harmful characteristics of human society. The contrast between the hare and Vatanen in The Year of the Hare is an example of this contrast.

Tradition/Modernity: Tradition means a set of practices and knowledge that has been received through transmission by way of intimate and face-to-face relationships. To follow tradition, then, is to observe teachings, conventions, and regulations that previous generations have practiced and passed to their children. Modernity by contrast designates institutions, practices, and beliefs premised on taking a skeptical view of tradition, aspiring instead to a society grounded in rational principles and function. Modernity is often dated historically to the eighteenth-century and the Enlightenment.

Questions for Discussion

1. How begins this novel’s narrative, that is, its plot? 2. What is Vatanen’s motive? (Does his motive change as the novel progresses?) 3. What associations does the novel create with the first three keyword a. Country b. Village c. City? 4. What are three important images of nature in the first part of the novel? 5. What are three important images of culture?