Tove Jansson
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| Tove Jansson | |
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| Birth name | Tove Marika Jansson |
| Born | August 9, 1914 Helsinki, Finland |
| Died | July 27, 2001 (aged 86) Helsinki, Finland |
| Nationality | Finnish |
| Area(s) | artist, writer |
| Notable works | The Moomins |
| Awards | Hans Christian Andersen Award, 1966 |
Tove Marika Jansson (pronunciation ; August 9, 1914 – June 27, 2001) was a Finnish novelist, painter, illustrator and comic strip author. She was the author of, among other works, the Moomin books.
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[edit] Life and family
Tove Jansson was born and died in Helsinki, Finland, and was the daughter of the sculptor Viktor Jansson and the illustrator Signe Hammarsten-Jansson. Her brothers were also artists in different fields: Per Olof Jansson was a photographer, and Lars Jansson was an author and comic strip artist.
As a Finnish citizen whose mother tongue was Swedish, she was part of the Swedish-speaking Finns minority. Thus, all her books were originally written in Swedish.
The sea was Tove Jansson's greatest inspiration. When she was a child her family lived in summer in the islands of the Gulf of Finland. Later in life, she had her atelier in Helsinki, but lived much of her life on a small island called Klovharu, one of the Pellinki Islands near the town of Porvoo. Tove Jansson lived with her partner, the graphic artist Tuulikki Pietilä.
Her book Bildhuggarens dotter (1968, Sculptor's Daughter) is an autobiographical account of her youth.
[edit] Painter and illustrator
Tove Jansson studied at Stockholm Art School 1930 – 1933 and at the Graphic School of the Finnish Art Academy 1933 – 1937. Although she became known first and foremost as an author, Tove Jansson considered her careers as author and painter to be of equal importance. She painted her whole life, changing style from the classical impressionism of her youth to the highly abstract modernist style of her later years.
She worked as illustrator and cartoonist for the Finland-Swedish satirical magazine Garm from the 1930s to 1953. One of her political cartoons achieved a brief international fame: she drew Adolf Hitler as a crying baby in diapers, surrounded by Neville Chamberlain and other great European leaders, who tried to calm the baby down by giving it slices of cake - Austria, Poland, Czechoslovakia, etc.
In addition to her own Moomin books Jansson also illustrated Swedish translations of other classics such as J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit and Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
The figure of the Moomintroll appeared first in Tove Jansson's political cartoons, where it was used as a signature character near the artist's name. This "Proto-Moomin" was thin and ugly, with a long, narrow nose and devilish tail.
Jansson said that she had designed the Moomins in her youth: after she lost a philosophical quarrel about Immanuel Kant with one of her brothers, she drew "the ugliest creature imaginable" on the wall of their WC and wrote under it "Kant".
This Moomin later gained weight and a more pleasant appearance, but in the first Moomin book The Moomins and the Great Flood (originally Småtrollen och den stora översvämningen), the Immanuel-Kant-Moomin is still perceptible.
The name of the creature comes from Tove Jansson's uncle: when she was studying in Stockholm and living with her Swedish relations, her uncle tried to stop her pilfering food by telling her that a "Moomintroll" lived in the kitchen closet and breathed cold air down people's necks.
[edit] Author
Tove Jansson wrote and illustrated her first Moomin book, The Moomins and the Great Flood (1945, during World War II. She said later that the war had depressed her, and she had wanted to write something naïve and innocent.
The publisher refused to use the name "Moomin" in the title of the book, afraid that it would confuse the public, and used the term "Little Trolls" instead. The first book was hardly noticed, but the next Moomin books Comet in Moominland (1946) and Finn Family Moomintroll (1948) (English title - the original title translates to "The Magician's Hat") made her famous.
The style of the Moomin books changed as time went by. The first books, up to Moominland Midwinter (1957), are adventure stories including floods, comets, and supernatural things.
Comet in Moominland is the story of a comet that almost destroys Moominvalley (some critics have considered this as an allegory of nuclear weapons).
Finn Family Moomintroll is a loose collection of summer tales. The Exploits of Moominpappa (1950) tells the story of Moominpappa's adventurous youth and cheerfully parodies the genre of memoirs.
Moominsummer Madness (1955) pokes fun at the world of the theatre: the Moomins explore an empty theatre and perform Moominpappa's pompous hexametric melodrama. The characters in these books do not undergo any psychological development.
Moominland Midwinter marks a turning point in the series. The books take on more realistic settings ("realistic" in the context of the Moomin universe) and the characters start to acquire some psychological depth. Moominland in Midwinter focuses on Moomintroll, who wakes up in the middle of the winter (Moomins sleep from October to March), and has to cope with the strange and unfriendly world he finds. The short story collection Tales from Moominvalley (1962) and the novels Moominpappa at Sea (1965) and Moominvalley in November (1970) are serious and psychologically searching books, far removed from the light-heartedness and cheerful humor of Finn Family Moomintroll. After Moominvalley in November Tove Jansson quit writing about Moomins and started writing for adults.
Besides the Moomin novels and short stories, Tove Jansson also wrote and illustrated four original and highly popular picture books: The Book about Moomin, Mymble and Little My (1952), Who will Comfort Toffle? (1960), The Dangerous Journey (1977), and An Unwanted Guest (1980).
[edit] Comic strip artist
In 1952, after Comet in Moominland and Finn Family Moomintroll had been translated into English, a British publisher asked if Tove Jansson would be interested in drawing comic strips about the Moomins. Jansson had already drawn a long Moomin comic adventure, Mumintrollet och jordens undergång ("Moomintrolls and the End of the World"), based loosely on Comet in Moominland, for the Finland-Swedish newspaper Ny Tid, and she accepted the offer. The comic strip Moomintroll, started in 1954 in the Evening News, a newspaper for the London area and London commuters (no longer in business). Tove Jansson drew 21 long Moomin stories from 1954 to 1959, writing them at first by herself and then with her brother Lars Jansson. She eventually gave the strip up because the daily work of a comic artist did not leave her time to write books and paint, but Lars took over the strip and continued it until 1975.
The series was published in book form in Swedish, and books 1 and 2 have been published in English, Moomin: The Complete Tove Jansson Comic Strip.
[edit] Jansson's cultural heritage
In 1966 Tove Jansson won the Hans Christian Andersen Award for her contributions to children's literature.
Jansson's Moomin books, originally written in Swedish, have been translated into 33 languages. After the Kalevala and books by Mika Waltari, they are the most widely translated works of Finnish literature.
The Moomin Museum in Tampere displays much of Jansson's work around the Moomins. There is also a Moomin theme park named Moomin World in Naantali.
[edit] Bibliography
[edit] The Moomin books
[edit] Novels
- Småtrollen och den stora översvämningen (1945, The Moomins and the Great Flood)
- Kometjakten (1946, Comet in Moominland) (translated into English)
- Trollkarlens hatt (1948, Finn Family Moomintroll; in some editions The Happy Moomins) (translated into English)
- Muminpappans bravader (1950, The Exploits of Moominpappa) (translated into English)
- Farlig midsommar (1954, Moominsummer Madness) (translated into English)
- Trollvinter (1957, Moominland in Midwinter) (translated into English)
- Pappan och havet (1965, Moominpappa at Sea) (translated into English)
- Muminpappans memoarer (1968, The Memoires of Moominpappa; reworked edition of The Exploits of Moominpappa) (translated into English)
- Sent i November (1970, Moominvalley in November) (translated into English)
[edit] Short story collections
- Det osynliga barnet och andra berättelser (1962, Tales from Moominvalley) (translated into English)
[edit] Picture books
- Hur gick det sen? (1952, The Book about Moomin, Mymble and Little My), (translated into English)
- Vem ska trösta Knyttet? (1960, Who Will Comfort Toffle?) (translated into English)
- Den farliga resan (1977, The Dangerous Journey) (translated into English)
- Skurken i Muminhuset (1980, An Unwanted Guest)
- Visor från Mumindalen (1993, Songs From Moominvalley) (songbook. With Lars Jansson and Erna Tauro)
[edit] Comic strips
- Mumin, Books 1-7 (Books 3-7 with Lars Jansson) (all seven printed in Swedish, Books 1 and 2 printed in English)
[edit] Other books
[edit] Novels
- Sara och Pelle och neckens bläckfiskar (under the pseudonym of Vera Haij) (1933, Sara and Pelle and the octupusses of necken)
- Bildhuggarens dotter (1968, Sculptor's Daughter) (semi-autobiographical, translated into English)
- Sommarboken (1972, The Summer Book) (translated into English)
- Solstaden (1974, Sun City) (translated into English)
- Den ärliga bedragaren (1982, The Honest Swindler)
- Stenåkern (1984, The Field of Stones)
- Anteckningar från en ö (autobiography; illustrated by Tuulikki Pietilä) (1993)
[edit] Short story collections
- Lyssnerskan (1971, The Listener)
- Dockskåpet och andra berättelser (1978, The Dollhouse and Other Stories)
- Resa med lätt bagage (1987, Travelling with Light Luggage)
- Rent spel (1989, Fair Play) (translated into English)
- Brev från Klara och andra berättelser (1991, Letters from Klara and Other Stories)
- Meddelande. Noveller i urval 1971-1997 (1998, A Winter Book) (compilation of earlier material. Translated into English)
[edit] External links
- Tove Jansson biography: writer, painter and illustrator
- The Moomins History and links
- Moomin Voices The Original Moomin Songs.
- The Moomin Trove Comprehensive lists of Tove Jansson's Moomin books
- Tove Jansson bibliography on SciFan
- tove-jansson.ru Tove Jansson ru Extensive Russian Moomin site (Russian)
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