Tylyjen rivien rehevät välit

Juha Seppälän ”Taivaanranta” -novellin tyylistä

• Tuomas Juntunen Helsingin yliopisto

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30665/av.74746

Abstract

The Lush Spaces between the Harsh Lines – Style in Juha Seppälä’s Short Story “Taivaanranta”

In this article I analyse the style of Juha Seppälä’s short story “Taivaanranta” (The Horizon), taking as my theoretical point of departure “the stylistics of deeper meanings” suggested by Antoine Compagnon. My aim is to show that an analysis based on traditional stylistics is unable to reveal the most important aspects of Seppälä’s story which is usually read as a realistic or even naturalistic portrayal of Finnish everyday life.

I concentrate on five different levels of style in the story: linguistic, narrative, intertextual, representational, and philosophical. I lay special emphasis on intertextuality. I propose that, instead of being a representative of realism, the story is through and through intertextual. Indeed, the whole tradition of Finnish literature can be found lurking in between the lines of the text. The thematics of the story is deepened by numerous allusions to texts exemplifying different stylistic currents of Finnish literature from the 19th-century realism to mid-20th-century modernism and to the postrealism of contemporary Finnish prose fiction.

However, I do not wish to dissociate the story from the extratextual reality. I suggest that metonymical and allusive style makes it possible to interpret the events from different perspectives. My concluding interpretation is that this multiplicity of possibilities reflects the uncertainty of the modern man’s way of inhabiting his world.