Selected WritingsMirjam Tuominen was a major poet and short story writer, as well as a distinguished essayist, translator and artist. Her work progressed through traditional prose, modernist poetry and abstract painting to Roman Catholic mysticism. She is one of the trio of great Scandinavian women poets, along with Edith Sodergran and Karin Boye - all three published in English by Bloodaxe Books. Her stories are often about love's intensity, its eroticism and tenderness, about jealousy and struggles for power between men and women. They are acute in their depiction of small town life in Finland in the 1940s, and in capturing her sense of dread at the alarming upsurge of Nazi sympathies during the War. Everything she wrote afterwards was scarred by the horror of the Holocaust, and in particular by one news story of a German soldier who threw a Jewish boy into a sewer because the boy cried when the soldier was whipping his mother. Mirjam Tuominen had a frightening, self-destructive ability to react directly to the suffering of others, and much of her poetry can be traced to her anguished response to this one incident. Her poems are obsessive in confronting guilt, vulnerability and power, in their searching for absolute truth in a world she saw as split between victims and tormentors. |
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User Review - Michael Murray - GoodreadsPoetry and prose works from multi-talented Finno-Swedish writer. Died 1967. Read full review
Contents
Introduction by TUVA KORSSTROM | 9 |
from Early Doubt 1938 | 27 |
The Lost Notes | 29 |
Copyright | |
30 other sections not shown
Common terms and phrases
accused ADAM THORPE animals Anna Sten atoms beautiful became become Besk brygd birds Bitter Brew breath burn burn burn child Claude colours contempt Cora Sandel dance dark DAVID McDUFF dead death demons dreams earth everything existence eyes face fallen fear feel felt Finland Finland-Swedish Finnish forehead forgiveness Franz Kafka freedom gaze hands happened HERBERT LOMAS Holderlin homeless horror human indifferent inner inside intensely Irina Kafka Kaveri live longer looked Magdalena Mamma Manja Mirjam Tuominen mother movement nerve never night Nykarleby pain Papa Papa's perhaps poems poet poetry Proust punishing R.S. Thomas Rasmus realised revulsion rock Rose the smoke sadness seemed short stories sick silence Simone Weil smile soul spirit suddenly suffering Swedish tenderness thing tormentor TRANSLATED turned Tuva victim violent Visible voice whole women words write
Bibliographic information
| Title | Selected Writings |
| Author | Mirjam Irene Tuominen |
| Publisher | Bloodaxe Books, 1994 |
| Original from | the University of California |
| Digitized | Jul 14, 2008 |
| ISBN | 1852242183, 9781852242183 |
| Length | 160 pages |
| Subjects | › Literary Criticism / General |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |