”Sanakirjat pitkin pöytää”

Kuvallisuuden suhde avantgardeen Pentti Saarikosken 1960-luvun poliittisessa lyriikassa

• Riikka Ylitalo Jyväskylän yliopisto

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30665/av.74879

Abstract

The Relation of the Figurativeness to the Avant-Gardism in Pentti Saarikoski’s Political Lyrics of the 1960’s

In Saarikoski’s political poems, there are two things combined: figurativeness which is the traditional medium of poetry, and political radicalism. This combination is part of Saarikoski’s “political poetics”. Not much academic research has been carried out about Saarikoski’s lyrics, but it’s been studied earlier by for example Janna Kantola and H. K. Riikonen.

In Saarikoski’s political-regarded works of the 1960’s, the most avant-garde-influenced are Mitä tapahtuu todella? (“What really happens?”) (1962) and Ääneen (“Aloud”) (1966). According to my interpretation, Mitä tapahtuu todella? is mostly influenced by artistic avant-gardism: collage and montage are used, among other things. In Ääneen, the speaker of the poem is continually saying that he’s a communist, and implores his audience to choose this ideology too. The traditional figurativeness containing “birds”, “flowers” and “trees”, is used. This concerns also Mitä tapahtuu todella?. There is both indirect imagery and concrete images in poems.

Peter Bürger has stated that the avant-gardists wanted to re-establish art back to every-day life (Lebenspraxis). In Saarikoski’s lyrics, this can be seen for example in how daily things such as a photo in a newspaper or having dictionaries lie about the table are described. Figurativeness, being one medium of poetry, plays an important role in this kind of description.