Novel
Barndomsvänner
Not translated into English
Karl August Tavaststjerna · 1886
Opening lines
Den gula gardinen var nedfäld för matsalsfönstret i karaktersbyggningen, ty derinnanför slamrade syster Emmi vid symaskinen och eftermiddagssolen låg alltid och baddade in.
The yellow blind was let down over the dining-room window of the main house, for behind it sister Emmi was rattling at the sewing machine and the afternoon sun always came pouring in.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from doria.fi
Synopsis
Ben Thomén grows up in a small provincial town and goes up to Helsingfors to study. He leads a dissolute student life there, torn between his childhood friends and Sigrid Walborg, the ideal he admires in spite of himself and whom he tries to hurt by courting her best friend at a ball. His classes bore him: he drops them and leaves for Paris, where he wants to make a career as a singer.
Context
The first novel by its author, published in two parts by Werner Söderström in Borgå and subtitled “a destiny of today”, it was reissued as early as 1887. The author wanted to follow the model of French naturalism in it and break with the historical and idealising narrative, and the literary circles of Helsingfors expected much of it. The theme of the artist who must leave his narrow country for a wider world runs through his work from his first verses.
Who it is for
Two parts, in Swedish from the late nineteenth century; the text is freely readable online on Project Runeberg.
Prizes and reception
It is with this first novel that realism enters the Swedish-language literature of Finland.