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Alex (Alexander) Matson (1888-1972) | |
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Finnish novelist, essayist, critic, artist, and scholar who spent his childhood in England. Matson's major work on literature theory, ROMAANITAIDE, appeared in 1947. It became a very influential source for modernist writers, and was compared to Rafael Koskimies' academic study Theorie des Romans. Matson was among the first who advocated of New criticism in Finland, emphasizing the self-contained nature of the text. He used close reading of particular text instead of explaining it by biographical details. Matson saw that the text is an object with its own inherent structure, and a writer can express much by the structure of the book, and arranging scenes and changing points of view. "Eihän toki kriitikon ole etsittävä taiteesta perusideaa. Mutta onkohan hänen taideteoksessakaan etsittävä 'ideaa'? Mikä on Sibeliuksen V sinfonian perusidea tai johtoajatus? Tai Cézannen hiljaiselon? Ja jos halutaan väittää että musiikki ja kuvataiteet ovat eri asia, mitä ne eivät ole, niin mitkä ovat 'Rouva Bovaryn', ja 'Odysseuksen', 'Putkinotkon' ja 'Seitsemän veljeksen' perusideat?" (from Mielikuvituksen todellisuus, 1969) Alex Matson was born in Koivisto, as the son of Matias Matson, a seaman and merchant, and Judit Torckel. The family moved soon to England. The first years were hard for the family and due to malnutrition, Matson suffered from rickets. At the age of 14 he finished his school and started to help his father, who had bought a tailor's shop in Hull. After contracting tuberculosis he spent some time in Germany in a sanatorium, and went then to Finland. From 1905 to 1909 Matson worked at an export firm. During this period he read Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Socialist literature, Bernard Shaw's Man and Superman, and poetry. In Viipuri he visited regularly bookstores and planned a career as a writer or an artist. He started to draw, made some watercolors and then went to study art in Hull. Especially he admired Turner, and pre-Raphaelites, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Burne Jones. Meanwhile Matson's first great love in Finland, Kaisa, had found another suitor. Matson himself sought consolation in Heine's poetry. At the age of 21 Matson read Upton Sinclair's writing on fasting, and recovered with its help from a depression. Matson abandoned his art studies and worked as an interpreted on a ship bound to Montreal. In its toilet, among obscenities, he found a poem: "It makes one think to see such wit / that Shakespeare's ghost came here to shit. / Or Byron with his flowery tongue / had dropped in here to drop his dung." Matson had his first exhibition in Helsinki and then participated to several joint exhibitions. From 1914 he worked as an artist. During the Finnish Civil war (1917-18) he was an art teacher. As a writer Matson started his career with the novel MAATA PAOSSA (1920), in which the cover picture was drawn by the author himself. The book was based on his experiences as a seafarer. "I thank art that my life has been worth living," he confessed in MUISTIINPANOJA (1959), a collection of observations and notes on literature and art. "Taide on tehnyt elämän todelliseksi minulle ja todellisuuden konkreettiseksi. Se on laajentanut ja syventänyt elämysteni piiriä. Taide on herättänyt minussa vastuuntuntoa. Se on saanut minut tajuamaan, ettei mikään ole olemassa erillisenä, kaikki on yhtä, jokaisella teolla on seuraamuksensa. Kuinka tämän nähtyäni voisin olla tuntematta vastuuta teoistani ja tulevaisuudestani? Taide on saanut minut uskomaan tahdon ehdolliseen vapauteen." (from Muistiinpanoja) In 1922 Matson married the writer and playwright Kersti Bergroth (1886-1975), whose works include the play Anu ja Mikko, juvenile books, memoirs, essays, and novels. After spending some time in London, where Matson worked at the Embassy of Finland in London, they bought a house in Tyrisevä in the Karelian Isthmus. Matson encouraged Bergroth to establish the short-lived literary magazine Sininen kirja (1927-1930), which introduced British culture to Finnish readers and underlined the importance of spiritual values. When Matson tried to participate literary discussion in Finland in the mid-1930s and said that critics were too soft, the writer Lauri Viljanen answered that Finnish literature should not be viewed from London's horizon. Matson and Bergroth separated in 1930. Interested in the thought of Rudolf Steiner, she was a member of Anthropolosophical Society in Finland. From 1950 Bergroth lived in Rome. From 1930 to 1934 Matson wrote for the Finnish Trade Review and contributed to such papers as Aamulehti, Näköala, Suomalainen Suomi, Parnasso. His first translation from Finnish into English was Aino Kallas's collection of Estonian tales, The white Ship, foreword by John Galsworthy. After the war he translated into Finnish works by John Steinbeck, James Joyce and William Faulkner and into English Aleksis Kivi's Seven Brothers and F.E. Sillanpää's The Maid Silja. It has been said, that Matson's work with Kivi is the best along with Elmer Diktonius's translation into Swedish. According to some sources, Matson rendered Väinö Linna's war novel The Unknown Soldier into English, but the work was heavily edited and considered a failure. Matson was also a reader for the publishing company Tammi, and turned down Saul Bellow's early novel, The Victim from 1947. According to Matson, its protagonist, Asa Leventhal, was not interesting enough. Long periods of his life Matson in Tampere. He became the central figure of the so-called Mäkelän piiri, a literature group, which had its meetings at the Library of Tampere. Among its members were Lauri Viita, Väinö Linna, Harri Kaasalainen, Viljo Paula, Reino Mantere and Mirkka Rekola. (See alsoKalle Päätalo, who has lived from the 1950s in Tampere City.) In the 1950s Matson criticized in several essays academic literature research. When Aatos Ojala tried to analyze in Kohtalon toteuttaminen (1959) F.E. Sillanpää's philosophy through his characters or the author's statements, Matson states that the "thought is found in form." In his review of Kaarlo Marjanen's book Näkökulmia (1958) Matson wrote that essential in the work of art is its form. "Ei ole muotoa ilman materiaa taiteessakaan. Teos eio kuitenkaan olen taidetta materiaalinsa vaan muotonsa ansiosta. Muodon muuttuessa mutta materiaalin pysyessä samana teos voi lakata olemasta taidetta. Olennaisinta siis on muoto." (from 'Muoto ja materiaali' in Parnasso 6/1959). Form was for Matson the organic principle dominating a work of art. He also emphasizes the importance of intuition in understanding art, and showed some influence of Marxist literature theory, especially Lukács. Matson died on November 29, 1972. His book of memoir, MUISTELEN, appeared in 1971. It depicted his childhood in England, youth in Finland and early art studies. Matson focuses on his own experiences and development, never mentioning the name of his father or mother. Crucial for his childhood was his inner revolt against his father. Matson characterized him as a hypocrite. This dichotomy between inner thoughts and formal behavior - form and content - curiously marked his approach to literature. In Parnasso, Finland's most influential literary magazine, Jouko Tyyri criticized Matson's view that a work of art is aesthetically autonomous. Tyyri writes that art is language, expression, and no language can be born without a system of agreements. "Taide on kieltä, ilmaisua, eikä mitään kieltä saada syntymään ilman sopimuksien järjestelmää. Matson tahtoisi aloittaa sopimuksettomasta alkutilasta, joka on romanttinen myytti. Taide tapahtuu sosiaalisessa ja psykologisessa kentässä, ja tuohon kenttään kuuluu paljon historiaa." (Parnasso 4/1960) Although Matson had been interested in Socialism and argued that "a writer cannot criticize the society too much," he considered all ideologies a burden to a writer. Pentti Haanpää's great fault was according to Matson the author's commitment to Marxism or cultural radicalism. Haanpää was too weak to break out of the materialistic determinism. Matson himself advocated the romantic idea, that hard living conditions and low wages are not the basic problem but spiritual poverty. This narrow methodological approach is especially evident in his essay on Väinä Linna's war novel The Unknown Soldier. He compares it to such works as Aleksis Kivi's Seven Brothers and Tolstoy's War and Peace, and sees it basically as an universal depiction of man and war, never mentioning that the Finnish soldiers were fighting against the Soviet Union during the Continuation war (1941-44). The Unknown Soldier focused on the experience of ordinary soldiers, but was set in a clear historical context with references to world politics. However, Linna and Lauri Viita have admitted that Matson's theories influenced their views of the novel. According to Matson, the content dictates the form in Here Beneath the North Star, Linna's historical novel. The central theme is the conflict between Akseli, a tenant farmer, and the minister who owns the land. They are symbols of the great antagonism between tenats and farm-owners. For further reading: Muistelen by Alex Matson (1971); 'Alex Matson' in Delfiini ja muita esseitä by Pekka Suhonen (1973); Mäkelän piiri by Yrjö Varpio (1975); Unessa ja elämässä by Arvi Kivimaa, pp. 148-49, 153-154 (1983); Lukemisen alkeet ja muita kertomuksia kustantajan elämästä by Jarl Hellemann (1996) Selected works:
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