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L. Onerva (1882 - 1972) - Hilja Onerva Madetoja, née Lehtinen | |
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Finnish poet of beauty and humanity, the lover of the poet Eino Leino. Onerva was a prolific writer, who also published prose, drama and essays, and was familiar with French literature. Her translations include works from such French authors as Voltaire, Honoré de Balzac, Anatole France, Paul Bourget, François Mauriac, and Henri Barbusse. "Yhden kerran elämässä tuliruusu aukee, Hilja Onerva Lehtinen (L. Oneva) was born in Helsinki as the daughter of Johan Lehtinen, a clerk and later a superintendent of a lumber business, and Serafina (Sarholm) Lehtinen. Her mother was taken to a mental hospital when Onerva was seven-years old. The two older children of the family had died and Onerva grew up pampered and protected. Her mother spent the rest of her life in a hospital - at school Onerva told his classmates that she was dead, but her mother actually died in the 1930s. At the age of seventeen Onerva showed her texts to Maila Talvio who encouraged her to continue with her writing. Until 1900 the family lived in Karhula and then moved to Kotka and five years later to Syväsalmi. Onerva studied at Suomalainen tyttökoulu in Helsinki. In the secondary school she was the best student of her class. Onerva graduated as a teacher in 1902, and continued her studies at the University of Helsinki, studying later also in Paris, Dresden, Florence, and Roma. In 1905 Onerva met the forest officer Väinö Streng; they married in the same year. Between 1909 and 1910 she wrote art, theatre, and literature reviews for newspaper Uusi Päivä, and worked as a literary critic for Helsingin Sanomat in 1910-11 and in the 1920s. Her penname as a poet, L. Onerva, was suggested by the poet and journalist J.H. Erkko, a friend on Maila Talvio. A central role in Onerva's life played the writer Eino Leino (1878-1926). They had met in 1902 when Onerva was still a student. She had asked Leino what arts she should pursue - she painted, sang, composed, wrote and was fascinated by the theatre. Leino answered: "Get married." Angered by his words, she published two years later her first collection of poems, SEKASOINTUJA (1904). 'In the Tropics' interpreted female erotic passions and new joie de vivre: "But once within a lifetime opens a fiery rose, / that for but one night blossoms and in the morning goes..." And in the second stanza she continued: "It has a leaf all bloody; it has a purple lip / it has a dizzy fragrance like spring winds on the steppe." (trans. by Keith Bosley) This poem shocked some of her conservative readers, but in general, the collection was well received. The poem 'Keinutan kaikua' was composed by Toivo Kuula in 1910; also Leevi Madetoja composed it, but 36 years later, and his work is rarely performed. Onerva was Leino's life companion after his marriage with Freya Schoultz ended. She made friends with the poet in 1907, when she started to write for the magazine Päivälehti. Leino was the most prominent figure of the publication and a celebrated writer. At that time Onerva had became disappointed with her marriage and Leino felt that he was connected to a strange woman. Leino wrote his first love letters to Onerva in the summer of 1908: "Have mercy on me, my own Onerva." She became Leino's Muse and his great love, although he had other relationships, among others with the writer Aino Kallas. Onerva followed Leino to Rome, they quarreled and she returned alone to Finland in 1909. However, Leino was for some years the only person whom she could turn to after her father died. Leino depicted their relationship in the novel Onnen orja (1913), which did not flatter much Onerva. In 1913 she married the great Finnish composer Leevi Madetoja (1887-1947), and in the same year Leino married Aino Kajanus - their marriage was short-lived. From 1915 to 1917 Onerva worked in Leino's magazine Sunnuntai. Her biography EINO LEINO: RUNOILIJA JA IHMINEN I-II (1932) gave an insider picture of the leading Finnish writer of the early 20th century and his circle. Onerva's work did not undermine the popular image of Leino as a bohemian author fulfilling his inner and higher calling. However, for researchers it is still invaluable source, which gives first-hand information about Leino's personal life especially in the 1910s. Leino himself did not write much about Onerva, and she is not mentioned in his collection of essays dealing with Finnish writers, published in 1909.
Onerva broke the traditional psychological concepts of human nature and came closer Freudian psychoanalytical insights. The titles of her early poetry collections reflected her feelings of freedom, rebelliousness, and confusion of her time: Sekasointuja (disharmonies) and SÄRJETYT JUMALAT (1910, broken gods). "Minä olen vankina vaarallinen / ja kelvoton alamainen," she wrote (I am dangerous as a prisoner, and bad as citizen). The character of Mary Magdalene becomes her "heroine of the fairy tale". In her later work the sensual poetry of instincts changed into meditative silence and melancholy. "Miten ääretön, ah, väsymykseni onkaan" (Oh, how endless is my fatigue). After World War I pacifistic themes are prominent in her work - she connects these views with feminist goals, and her own broken ideals with general feelings of loss and aimlessness of her generation. In the late 1920s Onerva's health started to waver. Partly due to her excessive use of alcohol and psychic problems, she spent long times in hospitals, but still writing and also drawing. Her husband fell in love with his young student, Taru Pellinen; in 1927 he even proposed to her in a letter. Madetoja was a celebrated composer, and Overva's own work as a poet was shadowed by his fame. In 1945 she published a collection of poems, PURSI, a cry for help and expression of her loneliness. She felt that her husband had deserted her, like her father did to her mother. Also literary circles ignored her - Onerva was not mentioned in Unto Kupiainen's history of Finland's literature, Suomen kirjallisuuden vaiheet (1958). In 1947, after Onerva's husband died of alcohol, she was released permanently from Nikkilä Psychiatric Hospital, where she was sent in 1942 against her will. "I am a fully normal person," she wrote from the hospital to Madetoja, but his doctor wanted to let the composer work in peace, and turned down her appeals. During this period Onerva wrote ceaselessly. It has been estimated that in his last decades Onerva wrote manically over 100 000 poems. Onerva died in Helsinki on March 1, 1972. Posthumously have appeared VALITUT RUNOT in 1984, and a collection of Leino's and Onerva's poems TOISILLEMME (1986). An exhibition of Onerva's paintings, which she made at Nikkilä, was arranged in 2004 at the Helsinki City Art Museum. As an interpreter of woman's personal freedom and sensuality, Onerva has offered for feminist literary research an alternate view to the first decades of the 20th-century Finnish literature. For further reading: 'Näkymä L. Onervan lyriikkaan' in Lyyrillinen minä by Lauri Viljanen (1959); 'L. Onerva - ensimmäinen huomattava naislyyrikkomme' in Käännekohtiaby Eino Krohn (1967); 'Naiset arvojen ja asenteiden muuttajina' in Kirjallisuudentutkijain Seuran vuosikirja 34 by Maria-Liisa Kunnas (1982); Elämän punainen päivä by Reetta Nieminen (1982); 'Eino Leino & L. Onerva' in Suurin on rakkaus by Kaija Valkonen and Elina Koivunen (1997); Suomen kirjallisuushistoria, vol. 2, ed. by Lea Rojola (1999); Nalle ja Moppe: Eino Leinon ja L. Onervan elämä by Hannu Mäkelä (2003); Uponnut pursi by Hannu Mäkelä (2004); L. Onerva. Valvottu yö. Runoilijan maalauksia pimeydestä valoon by Hannu Mäkelä and Berndt Arell (2004); Onnen maa. L. Onervan elämä ja runot by Hannu Mäkelä (2007) - See also: L. Onervan Seura - Film: Runoilija ja Muusa (1978), directed by Jaakko Pakkasvirta, starring Esko Salminen as Eino Leino and Elina Salo as L. Onerva, depicted Eino Leino's life and women in it. Selected works:
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