UUTENA TORONTOSSA?
Mitä kaupungin perinteinen suomalaiskenttä
voi tarjota tulokkaalle?
VS Book review by William Durbin:
Winter War – nothing lost in this translation
Winter War by Antti Tuuri
translated by Richard Impola
review by William Durbin
Though most Winter War literature tends to focus on the military strategy and the geopolitical factors behind Russia’s decision to invade Finland, Antti Tuuri’s novel, Winter War (published as Talvisota in Finland in 1984), describes the war from a much more personal perspective. Told through the eyes of a soldier named Martti Hakala, who is fighting in the trenches on the Karelian front, the novel recounts the day to day events of the war in telling and dramatic detail.
Richard Impola’s translation of Tuuri’s work combines the realistic style of a classic war novel such as The Red Badge of Courage with a frank, modern tone reminiscent of Catch 22 and Slaughterhouse 5. The language is sparse throughout, and the author sets aside literary subtleties such as foreshadowing in favor of being direct and immediate. For example, as early as Chapter Two the narrator flashes forward to reveal the fate that awaits his companions, many of whom were friends and relatives from his hometown:
“I was the only one who came out alive.” Then he adds a touch of black humor with the ironic understatement: “It was no good luck squad they put together at Seinäjoki.”
As the novel opens, Tuuri establishes a clear sense of foreboding by describing 400 members of the Civic Guard who have been summoned to report for “refresher training.” Without being told their ultimate destination, the soldiers ride cattle cars to Seinäjoki and are later shipped to the Karelian front. Hakala is initially struck by the disorganized nature the deployment and the appalling lack of supplies. Most of the men wear civilian clothes and carry their own outdated rifles. So poorly equipped is his unit that the men unanimously agree to contribute a portion of their pay to better outfit themselves.
The second tonality that dominates the novel is waiting. The men spend much of their time doing nothing. Rumors are prevalent, and many of the men believe that Russia will be reluctant to attack Finland because Sweden and the United States would immediately come to Finland’s aid. Hakala is not so gullible.
He is also troubled by the fact that he never knows what is going to happen next “until someone comes along and gives him an order.” Hakala’s unease is worsened when he sees that the company commander himself only finds out about their orders when a superior hands the commander an envelope.
The waiting continues as Hakala’s unit is stationed in Konnitsa for an extended period. Then a two-day march brings them to the edge of Taipale River. The arrival of the soldiers gives the local Karelians a false sense of security. Since there is no sign of impending hostilities, many of the townspeople and farmers return to homes they had only recently evacuated.
But Hakala doesn’t allow the reader to forget that the war is only days away when he wonders to himself how many of his companions will be heading home under the power of their own two feet and how many will be “brought home in a wooden overcoat.”
The flat tone of the narrative is maintained as the war begins. The matter-of-fact reporting some how makes the horror of the battles even worse than it would be had the author chosen to embellish the events. Whether Hakala is describing the deafening concussion of an artillery barrage, the vicious biting of the bed bugs and lice, the metallic grinding of the Russian tank treads, or a body being blown apart by the direct hit of a shell, he maintains an almost scientific detachment.
To counterbalance the unremitting violence Tuuri wisely uses black humor. On one occasion he has Hakala laugh at himself for jumping into a Russian latrine in the dark that he mistakes for a foxhole.
And even as Hakala bloodies his hands in the darkness, searching the frozen bodies of Russian soldiers for documents, he maintains his dry sense of humor, referring to the Russians as “neighbor boys.” By calling the Finnish soldiers “our boys” and the Russian soldiers “their boys” throughout the narrative, Tuuri makes it clear that he believes that all men are brothers who have no real quarrel with each other, but they have been victimized by the demagoguery of Molotov, Stalin and their cronies.
When the 105 days of carnage suddenly ends, Hakala is left numb. “I sat at the bottom of a pit,” he says, “waiting for the next order.” The order that finally comes is a shock to the entire company. No one can believe that they will have to give up the ground that they have fought so hard to hold. The men thought all along that they had been winning the war, and they were crushed by the terms of the cease fire.
“We were bitter when we heard the peace terms that afternoon,” Hakala reflects, “And we were bitter when we had to march for three days from The Isthmus toward our homeland before we arrived at the new border.
William Durbin is the author of the Finnish-American novels The Journal of Otto Peltonen, Song of Sampo Lake, and The Darkest Evening, a story of Soviet Karelia, due out in September of 2004.)
