After nearly four decades of a writing career, Juha Seppälä has published his first essay, focusing on his literary mentor and role model, Paavo Rintala.
Essays
Juha Seppälä: Chest while reading. Bridge. 188 pp.
Author Paavo Rintala (1930–1999) has seen a significant decline in his popularity since his death. His work, Guerrilla Lieutenant (1963), was a major talking point when it was published, sparking one of the biggest book wars of its time, due to his portrayal of the Lotties as sexually active. Prior to this, his Grandma and Mannerheim series (1960–62) was seen as mocking a revered figure.
Presently, Rintala, known for his masculine worldview, might be accused of misogyny, but not to the extent of causing a major uproar or another book war. Despite not being as widely read as The Unknown Soldier and Manillaköyten, his absolute classic, Guerrilla Lieutenant holds its own as a Finnish war novel.
In 1963, Rintala had an eventful year with the release of the movie adaptation of his novel, Boys, whose final scene is a memorable one for people of a certain age. Although his body of work spanning over sixty works mainly focuses on war, peace, art and God, the image of a young Loirikaa endlessly chasing after a train doesn’t fully encapsulate his extensive production.
Seppälä is intimately familiar with Rintala’s works.
In his debut work, Chest while reading, long-time writer Juha Seppälä acknowledges that writing essays about Rintala in 2024 will inevitably be seen as an elitist endeavor, regardless of the work’s content. The essays themselves are elitist in the sense that without basic knowledge about Rintala, their purpose is lost. Seppälä, who knows Rintala’s works inside out, isn’t shy about critiquing research done on Rintala’s production and his essays also contribute to diversifying Rintala’s public image.
Besides Boys and A guerilla lieutenant, Rintala’s artist novel is usually mentioned alongside God is beauty (1959) and For war and peace. However, Along the lines of leather quilters, a massive novel (1976–79), isn’t mentioned as often. Seppälä also remembers Rintala’s active work in the peace movement, resulting in The woes of Vietnam (1970), a surprisingly topical work about Finns’ relationship to the Vietnam War.
Paavo Rintala was an important mentor for Juha Seppälä, with whom he corresponded.
Letters reveal that Rintala was a significant role model and mentor for Seppälä. Their relationship began with a random drunken encounter in a Helsinki bar in the 1980s, after Seppälä had received the Kalevi Jänti award, and developed into an exchange of letters.
The letters published within the essays resemble Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a young poet, private correspondence that offers insights to all writers when published. The letters reveal Rintala’s importance as a mentor to Rilke, who he admired, and even turned the German poet into a desk drawer. Rintala writes, “I became interested in him when I read somewhere that he required that his texts be treated as if God were expressing himself through them.”
Seppälä, who has almost matched Rintala in his production, has now published his most personal work, where he appears as himself, not a fictional character. The work manages to validate Rintala’s relevance in the present time, or perhaps it’s more accurate to say it highlights his timelessness.
Rintala, who lost his father in the Winter War and wrote about characters without fathers, had a cautious yet obsessive attitude towards God, shaped by his experience of fatherlessness. In one letter, Rintala admits that he doesn’t relate to the idea of resurrection and that his gospel ends at the cross.
Rintala, who often mused over individual and collective suffering and had an increasing fascination with obscure German theologians in his later works, was a unique Finnish writer. That’s why his current status as a cult writer is much more fitting than being a thriller writer in the 1960s.
As an experienced columnist, Seppälä’s writing in his essays feels as though it could have been enhanced by the magazine text format. Even though Chest while reading makes shaky claims at times, the overall impact of the work, which combines personal and general elements, is intriguing.
Although Seppälä doesn’t discuss his own works unless Rintala comments on them in his letters, noticeable connections to the prototype can be observed by those familiar with his works. Like Rintala in the 1980s, around 2004, Seppälä’s novel art also evolved to emphasize thoughts and social phenomena with works like Frost year. Hence, the publication of his first essay only now is actually surprising – but a welcome one.
