Letters from Tove

by Tove Jansson

  Then the TV people despatched a dramaturge to help me improve the end of my Doomsday. She was awfully nice and we went to the theatre quite a lot. But Vivica now says the first version is better – though I believe in the second one …

  And then a gentleman arrived from the publisher’s in London and kicked up a fuss about me writing more Moomin books, he came over just for that! And two more will be here next week, there’s a terrible to-do about “children’s books” and “grown-up books”, Bonniers are nagging and I ought to be madly flattered but just feel uncomfortable. Every time there’s a row one feels less like writing. It’s a blank!

  And then Pentti appeared! Pentti the younger has a new job, at the hotel, which he likes – a permanent position – so he couldn’t come. If only that week hadn’t been so icy cold. Rain and snowstorms. But even so, we rootled our way through the rows of bookstalls along the Seine and at the flea market and Ferraille. The weather’s been freezing for two months, as it happens. Spring arrived in January, but then there was another blast of winter. The week with Pentti was pleasant, how could it be otherwise! We ate in the studio and then went out to brave the icy cold again.

  It was just as bad for Reima & co., all three of them, of course. They were frozen numb in the gale at the Arc de Triomphe, petrified with cold up on the Eiffel Tower. They came here with two gentlemen from Tampere to study the most advanced housing estates in the banlieu (I don’t think Reima and Raili liked them) and the men stuck to us doggedly because they didn’t know how to make their own way to the sinful life of Montmartre, unfortunately. Then we celebrated Annukka’s twelfth birthday in the studio with much festivity and lots of guests. I had quite a bad cold but it’s gone now.

  Tooti went and did her back in while she was using the press in the graphic art room and took three weeks to get over it, some of the time in bed. That back of hers isn’t good. That’s the main reason I’m reluctant to leave her on her own at Harun.

  Tooti’s busy with hammer and nails, making four huge boxes for sending home all our books, printing plates, cassettes and gramophone records. I reckon her intensive graphics period is over. She always goes through phases. As long as the weather clears up it’ll be filming next, I bet …

  And around the 20th April we’re going to the south of France for a while. We’ll be coming back to Finland in the final days of May.

  There’s been a worse spate of work correspondence than ever, but I hear relatively little from home. [ … ]

  Let me sum up by saying that Tooti and I are getting on fine – as we always do with each other – and that we’ve managed to make the studio our own in this dreadful building which is a cross between Lallukka and a hospital. We’ve found some friends, too, Christina Snellman and her husband Manolo, absolutely wonderful.

  Best wishes to Mary. And to everybody! Tooti sends a hug –

  your Tove.

  Annukka: Architect Annukka Pietilä, Reima and Raili Pietilä’s daughter.

  Wizo: Women’s International Zionist Organization

  Svenska: The artist Sven Grönvall died on 20.3.1975.

  that vision-of-the-future play for TV: The Window, a 1976 radio play.

  Chaplets’: Kersti and Pierre Chaplet who translated the Moomin books for the French publisher Nathan. TJ wrote a radio play called “The PE Teacher’s Death” in 1976.

  Ferraille: One of the Parisian markets.

  TWO SAD EVENTS LEAVE THEIR MARK ON THE SHORT LETTER written in June 1981. TJ’s childhood friend Abbe (Albert Gustavsson) died in the winter of that year, and there were break-ins on Klovharun. Nor was that the end of it; there were further island break-ins over the next two years.

  NEAR MIDSUMMER –81 [Klovharun]

  Hello dearest Maya,

  Today it was gale force six from the east again, the worst possible direction for the boat, so we didn’t go over to Viken as planned for post and provisions and to ring Reima and family to congratulate him on the State Prize. And, above all, to be with Greta. But we would have been too worried about the strengthening wind to sit calmly conversing in the right sort of way.

  This spring hasn’t been all that much fun. We’re doing all right but something of the joy, the whole notion of archipelagic life, vanished with Abbe. We haven’t talked about it, not much.

  And then there was the unpleasantness of the break-in at our place after the military were out on manoeuvres again. Some soldiers broke windows – idiots, the key was hanging there on the wall – and took most of the things we were fond of – probably about 8000 marks’ worth, all told. Being robbed is actually a rather interesting phenomenon – by which I mean, one feels ashamed. Not angry exactly, but there’s a sense of shame. And everything rearranges itself, in the wrong way.

  Still, I’m carrying on with my work. The weather’s been so awful this June that we know nothing of what’s happening on the other islands. We can’t go there and they don’t come here, either.

  It’s good weather for working, though, so that’s okay. Tooti sends her regards!

  Tove

  5.6.82 [Klovharun]

  Dearest Maya,

  Here are the comments I told you about, I’m sure the protagonists’ fine-tuned and irony-laden phrases will amuse you. Save the cutting!

  Tooti got the tent up the other day, our great summer treat, and in fine weather for once, so now we’re sleeping out there, fly-free and to the accompaniment of gulls and waves. Pellura’s wife is sitting on her eggs 2 m away from us and as for Pellura, he recognized his food pot before I even had time to whistle for him and took some bread in flight when I held up the pot – how nice that sort of thing is.

  Less nice is the fact that our military burglars from last year have been at it again and this time they smashed five panes in the east-facing window – no one will be able to sit in the sand on the mini-beach now. And the grass was littered with smashed bottles. They didn’t get much more than Faffan’s accordion, as far as we can see. But we can tell from the repeat pattern of their behaviour that it was the same characters as last spring. Isn’t it tiresome.

  We’ve now decided we’ll cover the windows with shutters and get some Abloy padlocks – and how will all our shipwrecked darlings fare when they can’t come in to get warm, sort out their nets, fix their motors …?

  The vandals never realised the house key was hanging beside the door! Ha. Oh, and they chucked the guest book into the sea, I found it dripping with seaweed.

  Oh well. We’ve had an unspoilt paradise for a very long time – and are grateful. But every time we need to leave the island for a while we do it with great foreboding.

  I used my time on Nyttis mostly to clear up things I’d been feeling guilty about (and the forest, to some extent), answering letters from as far back as December, and now everything’s tidy.

  Prolle and Saga are planning a Nyttis week at the end of June. Lasse and Sophia are out at Bredskär, we went to visit them, with a message that arrived via Viken to say Kiki Hielm’s greenhouse would need ventilation and watering, plus the usual wretched business stuff, currently the fact that neither Lasse or nor I will renew any film contracts or sign new ones. Japan and Poland keep telegraphing like crazy but, you see, one reaches a certain limit and after that I’m as hard as the worst business type. She said boastfully.

  One nice thing that happened was Tooti’s suggestion that we (At last …!) speak Finnish every other day. I’m glad. [ … ]

  They’ve now refloated practically all the boats that were laid up for the winter at Viken, with the help of the boys when they’re not on pilot duty, and of some friends from the village. This is their busiest time. Greta alternates between boat work and cooking for the men, never runs out of patience whatever happens and keeps the house and yard in perfect order.

  It’s blowing a gale again, but any day now I daresay I shall get this message off to you.

  If you hear from Mary, do give her my best wishes. And Salme!

  Tooti sends

  and so d
o I.

  Your Tove

  Nyttis: Abbreviation of “Nyttisholmen”, a small island just off the mainland.

  UNDATED [1983, Klovharun]

  Dearest Maya,

  We’ve been on the island for almost a week now and the news is good: the latest marauders didn’t break the windows for a change, but broke in by forcing the cellar lock and floor hatch – and our teetotal life isn’t causing any difficulties or negative consequences.

  And the things we planted are all obligingly coming up again, not a trace of voles this year. Incidentally, I’m aware as I clamber about the rocks that my legs feel stiffer than before, I can’t do quite as much as last summer and I’m being considerably more cautious. We come up with ingenious solutions; for example we lowered out luggage on a hook and line from Viken jetty (incredibly low water) and dragged it across the plank walkways on the island on a sled.

  I’ve planted the window boxes with lots of lobelia, which will withstand gales and seawater, as well as onions, parsley, beans and peas, and indoors morning glory, to climb up to the ceiling, and we also have pelargoniums and other pot plants in the house.

  In the peace out here and the quiet of spring, it’s hard to comprehend the fear of break-ins that one felt in town – after all, the house is still standing even though so much of what we liked and needed has gone.

  This idea of taking more of our goods and chattels to town is no longer a gesture of defiance (God knows of what or whom) but has grown almost interesting; we could turn it into a fishermen’s cottage with plainer walls, uncluttered surfaces, a beautiful emptiness so Reima can’t call it a maritime museum any more!

  I’ve been reading a remarkable book by Thorkild Bjørnvig, “The Pact”, about his friendship with Karen Blixen. It’s complex, almost fiendish in its intensity. Like you, I generally save books of that kind for when things are quiet around me.

  It’s raining now, which is good, the island needs water and so do we. The same gulls have returned and they come when I whistle for them. So as you see, all is as it should be.

  I can’t remember when it was you were going to Paris, perhaps any day now. I’m sure it will be a splendid spring trip! I must do a bit of cooking now. Bye and hugs –

  Tove

  “So just conceivably another book”

  LETTERS TO ÅKE RUNNQUIST 1965–1988

  Åke Runnquist

  A REQUEST TO ILLUSTRATE LEWIS CARROLL PROVED THE STARTING point for thirty years of collaboration and friendship between Tove Jansson and Åke Runnquist of the Bonniers publishing house in Stockholm. Åke Runnquist (1919–1991) was appointed a director at Bonniers in 1960 and edited the venerable literary magazine BLM (Bonniers Litterära Magasin) for many years. Their first contact was over pictures for a Swedish translation by Lars Forssell of Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark. The project went ahead and Snarkjakten was published in 1959. In the same year Tove Jansson contributed a short essay about Swedish children’s writer and illustrator Elsa Beskow to BLM, another commission that came from Åke Runnquist. But what really brought them together was their collaboration over the illustrations for his new translation of Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. The text had an attraction for Tove Jansson that she could not resist: sheer “horror”, as she termed it, using the English word. By the time Alice i underlandet came out in 1966, with her illustrations, the foundations of a lasting relationship between author and publisher were firmly laid. They became close friends and met periodically in Stockholm or Helsinki, along with Tuulikki Pietilä and Åke’s wife Ingrid Runnquist. One of the interests they shared was writing limericks.

  When Tove Jansson published her first volume of short stories Lyssnerskan (1971, The Listener), Bonniers was her choice of Swedish publisher and Åke Runnquist her editor. She left her previous publisher in Sweden, Gebers, but the Moomin books did not move with her. Runnquist did his best to gather all her titles under one roof, but was ultimately unable to do so. Bonniers, however, established itself as Tove Jansson’s publisher for short-story collections and novels for adults. The letters reveal how Tove Jansson would present her current book or writing projects to her editor, examples being Sommarboken (1972, The Summer Book), Solstaden (1974, Sun City) and Dockskåpet (1978, published in English as Art in Nature). The collection was originally called “Flower Child” and the order of the stories, discussed in Tove Jansson’s letter to Åke Runnquist in February 1978, was altered several times. It is also worth noting her frank declaration that the stories “Den stora resan” (The Great Journey) and “Dockskåpet” (The Doll’s House) both signal a “homophile relationship”, something barely registered by reviewers when the book was published. The last letters are brief, taking the form of fragmentary reports on her writing conditions. “It’s good for me to be able to work slowly, without a deadline”, admitted Tove Jansson in a letter dated 15.6.1988, when she was almost seventy-four. The book she was then working on was Rent spel (Fair Play), which came out the following year. “There was always such a sense of calm when I met Åke; nothing seemed hurried and most things would sort themselves out eventually,” wrote Tove Jansson later, in a letter to Boel Westin in 1998.

  The emphasis in the letters to Åke Runnquist is on professional matters, but they also offer glimpses of Tove Jansson’s life in the 1970s and 1980s: travel, writing, Moomintrolls and her longing for a new island so far away that it even lacks a channel through the sea ice in winter and she can work in peace.

  * * *

  8.2.65 [Helsingfors]

  Dear Åke Runnquist,

  Thank you for your letter of quite a while back, which so splendidly shored up my teetering self-esteem.

  It’s all decided now, of course, but think of it: illustrating Alice in Wonderland after Tenniel is like trying to put Fänrik Ståls Sägner into pictures when Edelfeldt has already produced the definitive version.

  Now, though, I’m consoling myself with the fact that Alice’s head is actually far too big, among other quibbles.

  But shall we try to keep her, at least. That rather delicate face, lots of hair and skirts, utterly naturalistic and prim-looking in such a surreal context?

  We can’t make her into a modern Stockholm girl. Not even with a ponytail. (Assuming they are still modern)

  These stories are terrifying. Can I draw them in horror style? The way I saw them when I was little. (I love horror stories nowadays, too)

  Are they being published for children or grown-ups? Or both?

  And is the translation already partly done? Thinking of the special magic of the words, the names of the creatures, wouldn’t it be best to let me see the Swedish translation – or part of it – before I start? How much time can you give me? I’m working on the illustrations for a new Moomin book at present, and they’re urgent. That’s why I didn’t write sooner.

  But Alice is always in my mind, of course.

  It was exciting to do The Hunting of the Snark with the translation beside me, a real tightrope adventure.

  Alice is an even more serious undertaking, though. She’s a kind of symbol. Shall we take the surreal approach? Not Poe, a little lighter. Keep the court of playing cards more on the margins. Dare one go for a bit of adult symbolism? The worst part is that they talk such an awful lot. Tenniel picked out all the scenes that could bear illustration – there aren’t as many as one might think – anyone assuming his mantle will have to draw exactly the same thing.

  What sort of completion date is Bonniers hoping for?

  If you feel like it, do drop me a line and let me know what you think.

  Anyway, I shall start work this summer and just draw whatever feels right, as soon as I can.

  I’m trying to gather material from period prints including the horror type. I think the sub-terranean element of what happens should be accentuated.

  Lewis Carroll was clearly completely pathological, there’s no way of making anything idyllic out of it. English people must be pretty dysmorphic, don’t you think, for all their c
ool understatement – or maybe because of it.

  Can’t we just do an out-and-out horror book. Because that’s what it is.

  Warm regards,

  Tove Jansson

  Fänrik Ståls Sägner: The Tales of Ensign Ståhl, a famous epic poem by the national poet of Finland Johan Ludvig Runeberg, who wrote in Swedish. One edition of the poem was illustrated by renowned Finland-Swedish artist Albert Edelfeldt.

  a new Moomin book: Pappan och havet (Mooominpappa at Sea) came out in the late summer of 1965.

  8.6.71 [Klovharun]

  Dear Åke,

  I’m so pleased you liked the book – particularly The Squirrel, which I worked so hard on!

  Of course I know people don’t like the idea of short stories and I’m not expecting miracles, far from it.

  And as I said, a person can feel a chill wind blowing round her legs as she emerges from a Moomin valley.

  I hope to get the cover design to you very soon. As regards the contract, I expect it will be the usual, including the guaranteed sum. Schildts usually draws up the contract.

  Yes, I wrote to Gebers about a paperback series but they want to do it themselves. And they hold the rights, after all.

  I won’t be coming to Stockholm this autumn, Tooticki and I are going on the Big Trip we’ve dreamt of for so long. We’re off to Japan, can you believe (I’ve got a job to do there) and then round America. So we won’t be coming home until about the start of spring. I can still barely believe it’s true.

  It’s a fine, cold summer. We’ve moved out of the house and are sleeping in a tent, a good way to work off a winter.

  Remember me to Ingrid! All the best, and warm wishes –