Muutokset Aaro Hellaakosken"Vieras"-runon ulkoasussa
Abstract
Changes in the Visual Form of Aaro Hellaakoski’s Poem ”Vieras” (”The Stranger”)
The present article shows how genetic criticism (critique génétique) can enrich our understanding and interpretation of visual poetry by examining the manuscript, proofs and published versions of the poem ”Vieras” (” e Stranger”) from the typographically experimental collection Jää- peili (”Ice Mirror”, 1928) by the Finnish poet Aaro Hellaakoski (1893–1952). e collection is regarded as a forerunner of Finnish modernism, and particularly its experimental typography got successors only as late as in the 1960s. Besides omitting punctuation and upper case letters, Hellaakoski experiments with the auditory and visual dimensions of ”Vieras” by dividing metrical stanzas and line units into typographically separate groups. In his later selected poems Valitut runot (”Selected poems”, 1940) and Runot (” e Poems”, 1947), Hellaakoski stripped ”Vieras” from these experimental features. e examination of the manuscripts and proofs of ”Vieras” shows that Hellaakoski’s later revisions actually revert the poem to a form closer to its early, visually more traditional, manuscript versions. e article suggests, that it was probably the integrity of Jääpeili as a modernist collection that motivated Hellaakoski into the experimental typography and ortography of ”Vieras”. ese features became dispensable when the poem was released from the context of the collection.
