”Meidän ja teidän välillä suuri juopa”

Köyhät ja rikkaat Pentti Haanpään romaanissa Isännät ja isäntien varjot

• Juhani Sipilä Helsingin yliopisto

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30665/av.74635

Abstract

”The wide gap between us and you”. The Poor and the Rich in Pentti Haanpää’s Novel Isännät ja isäntien varjot (Masters and Masters’ Shadows)

The novel Isännät ja isäntien varjot (1935) by Pentti Haanpää contains a significant amount of allusions to the Bible. This fact has been taken note of in earlier study, and the novel has been proved to have as its intertexts a few very well known Old Testament stories: The story of Esau and Jacob, the story of the journey to the Promised Land, The book of Job and a few others.

This article shows that one interesting intertext has not been discovered in earlier studies: The story of a rich man, poor Lazarus and Abraham in Luke’s gospel (Luke 16: 19—31). Perceived intertext arranges and at the same time enriches in a new way the thematic field of the novel. Through the intertext the gap between the rich and the poor becomes even more noticeable. At the same time, the social criticism in the novel appears sharper than ever.

The connection with the story in Luke’s gospel deepens also the existential level of the novel as the messages from another world or another reality troubles the hero of the novel. In the world of the novel, justice does not win, but it gives a hint that in the invisible world even the poor can gain justice.