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Om Axel Galléns Kalevalamystik

1972; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 41; Issue: 1-4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/00233607208603805

1651-2294

Salme Sarajas‐Korte,

Scientific and Historical Analyses

Summary After his return from Berlin in 1895, Axel Gallén returned to the Kalevala motifs which he had abandoned during his year of symbolism in 1894. First to “Väinämöinen and Marjatta,” “The Defence of Sampo”, “Lemminkäinen's Mother” and “The Fratricide”. These works are all quite different from the earlier naturalistic Kalevala paintings. In style they are synthetic, adhering to the Studio's aspirations in England. The Kalevala romanticism, coloured by Karelianism, now received an undertone of mysticism through the influence of symbolism. In the 1890's the Kalevala was made into an esoteric Holy Scripture. H. P. Blavatsky chose as a motto for her book The Secret Doctrine extracts from the first poem in Kalevala and interpreted in the same book the deep esoteric wisdom in the legend about Lemminkäinen. In analogy with the other symbolists, Gallén was interested in theosophy and owned a copy of Mme Blavatsky's publication. The correspondence of the Finnish artist Werner von Hausen includes letters from which it is clear that the French theosophist Charles Grolleau had obtained the Kalevala translated into French. The Swede Ivan Aguéli wrote to Hausen that in the theosophic journal Le Lotus Blue he wanted to publish from the Kalevala “such extracts as deal with esoteric teachings and occultism”. In a letter Aguéli fully accounts for his conception of the occultism in Kalevala: Väinämöinen is in this interpretation a hero and a prophet, a high priest for the whole of mankind, the first Adam, living in the nearness of the original light. Ilmarinen is the intermediary of the secret knowledge, representing science, the rational wisdom, Lemminkäinen is the hero and poet who causes golden fruit to grow on the trees, Vipunen is a kind of Pan and lastly the song, Kantele, the divine voice which fills the Universe, silencing the creation, making it listen and obey. In another connection the nature mysticism which is found in Gallén's paintings is dealt with. Through his pantheistic view on nature he unites ancient Finnish myths with folkloristic details given him by ethnographers: to this picture world belongs the Evil One holding court in the forest and the Maidens of Tapiola and Vellamo. To this subject sphere also belongs the motif with the Maiden of Illnesses, which he depicted on a box—(Pandora's box!): the Maiden of Illnesses who at the beginning of time grounded out pain in the Lower Regions. In his sketch book this motif introduces the infernal landscape which is perfected in Lämminkäinen's Mother with the bloody stones. It is characteristic that the Kalevala motif wich particularly interested Gallén during the years 1894–95 was the tale of Marjatta and Väinämöinen, about the arrival of Christianity in Finland and the yielding heathenism—in reality the question of the primordial belief in Kalevala, the holy wisdom falling into oblivion. The motif was connected with the dreams of a Finnish renaissance concentrating on the return of Väinämöinen. In the 1890's it was thought that this renaissance was getting close. In 1894 Gallén wrote a few words denoting this belief in a national renaissance for “little Finland"—the weak and spiritless decadence was to be transformed into a period of renaissance. Only a month earlier Väinö Blomstedt had in a letter from Paris propounded breathtaking theosophic analysies of the periodically returning decadence‐renaissance cycle. A new large movement was being born. According to the cyclic law it was now the turn of the Nordic countries to be in ascendancy. In the following year Gallén again spoke about the Finnish people's freshly tuned forgotten Kantele. The ideas about the departure of Väinämöinen were obviously mixed up with dreams of bygone times when the different religions were closer to one another, when “the inner spiritual life of the people seemed to have been finer, more poetical and by nature richer than now”. In 1897 Gallén wrote: “I yearn back to the time before the separation of heathenism and Christianity”. All this is closely connected with the theosophic interest in the late Hellenic period, the rupture between heathenism and christianity, the Alexandrian philosophers and neoplatonism. Inspired by The Last Athenian by Viktor Rydberg Juhani Aho in Panu in 1897 described the struggle of religions in which the Karelian heathenism, the Lappish mysticism and magic, the Roman‐Catholic, the Orthodox and the Lutheran Christianity unite. Gallén calls his work "Götterdämmerung”. The name denotes the perhaps undecided connection with Old German mythology and Wagnerian mysticism. While Gallén worked on “Lemminkäinen's Mother” Eino Leino wrote his poetic drama “The Swan of Tuonela”. In his memoirs of his youth Leino tells of the strong impressions he received from Gallén, this “creative gigantic spirit”. In both cases the artist's own interpretations have been preserved: it is a question of the ultimate meaning of art, of the artist, the poet and the search for the eternal secret of life. In Leino's “The Swan of Tuonela” Lemminkäinen has been made into a titan, a hero of faith who with the torch in his hand plunges to the river of Tuonela. The swan is the queen of death, the symbol of the secrets of the infernal regions. He wants to shoot the swan with the bow of thought and thus win peace for himself and also bring the joyous message to a suffering humanity. Lemminkäinen is just about to shoot when Pohja's shepheard, the arrow of his own sins, hits him. “That man must be without sin (Christ), who can shoot this swan.” In Gallén's sketch book Lemminkäinen is depicted lying deathly green near the black water where a swan “with a neck expressing mockery” is gliding away. Golden vibrating rays from the sun inspires the kneeling mother with hope and she sends a bee to fetch balm from the source of the rays. The content of the picture is further enlarged upon in a letter to K.A. Tavaststjerna: “Can I still manage to tell you that I as yet am dwelling in Tuonela with my pale red swan. Could I but pull one pale red feather from its tail! I would give it to Lemminkäinen ...” Lemminkäinen, the white prophet, a hero of faith and a poet, lies slain on the shore; the swan, the symbol of the infernal region's secret, swims mockingly away. The blue snake, gliding out of a skull, is the symbol of evil. Love, the platonic love of the symbolists and here changed into mother love, is the only way to the source of life. A certain similarity can be found in the pendant which Adolf Paul suggested to Gallén's painting “Conceptio artis”: the man who tried to catch the Sphinx, the secret of life, lies phrostrate on the ground while the Sphinx mockingly sits just out of his reach.