Novel
The Song of the Blood-Red Flower
Laulu tulipunaisesta kukasta
Johannes Linnankoski · 1905
Opening lines
Iltapäivän aurinko oli vieraisilla metsäisen kukkulan rinteellä. Loitommille puiden lomitse kättä pisti tai silmää vilkutti, lähimmät lämpimään syliinsä otti.
The afternoon sun was paying a visit to the slope of a wooded hill. To the farther ones it held out a hand or winked an eye through the trees, the nearest it took into its warm embrace.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
Olavi, son of the great farm of Koskela, seduces the girls of his village in the spring. His parents object to his marrying a servant; he quarrels with them, leaves home and joins the log floaters. By day he guides the logs down the rapids, by night he charms the girls of the riverside villages, whom he calls by the names of flowers. Then he meets Kyllikki, the daughter of the rich Moisio, who resists him, and to win her he throws himself into the most dangerous rapid.
Context
Published by Werner Söderström in 1905, the novel was at once read en masse, caused a scandal, and was translated into some twenty languages. The author drew on the landscapes of his youth at Vakkola and on the world of the timber floaters that he had known; flowers on a windowsill comment on the hero's conduct. It was also the Finnish novel most often brought to the screen: five times, three of them in Sweden, notably by Mauritz Stiller in 1919 and Gustaf Molander in 1956, and by Teuvo Tulio in 1938. In French, it appeared from Rieder under the title Chant de la fleur rouge.
Who it is for
A novel of two hundred and forty pages, in Finnish, divided into chapters bearing the names of the young women; the opening, in the manner of a folk song, sets the tone.
Prizes and reception
The first great bookshop success in its country, its author's most famous book, and the only Finnish novel filmed five times.