Vapauden muunnelmia

Naturalismi ja eksistentialismi Maria Jotunin Arkielämää -kertomuksessa

• Riika Rossi Helsingin yliopisto

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30665/av.74823

Abstract

Variations of Freedom: Naturalism and Existentialism in Maria Jotuni’s novella Arkielämää

This article analyses Maria Jotuni’s (1880–1943) novella Arkielämää (Everyday Life, 1909) as an early version of the existentialist novel in Finnish literature. I discuss Jotuni’s work in the context of the cultural revolt against 19th-century literary traditions. It is my contention that Jotuni’s work can be considered as a hybrid text combining features both from naturalist and existentialist novels. On one hand, the novella draws from the naturalist ideal of the everyday by exploring the occasional events of quotidian life during a single day – the lives of ordinary people in a remote countryside village, focusing especially on women and their fortunes in love while also unfolding the primitive in human nature. However, by means of a comparative analysis and by studying the figure of the vagabond Nyman in particular, I demonstrate how Jotuni’s work is also rooted in the existentialist novel tradition emerging from Dostoyevsky’s works. The existentialist aesthetics inscribed in Arkielämää reconfigures primitive naturalism into a new form. Despite feelings of anxiety and estrangement, the continuation of life by nature and daily communication establish a positive “counterforce” to balance the entropic, naturalist vision.