Tuula Karjalainen: Tove Jansson was a complex person, and not all her actions could be understood without being Tove. Work is more important than love

Suomi lovers have another reason to visit the Finnish capital. The Ateneum Museum has opened an exhibition dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the world-famous mother of the famous Moomins.

At the exhibition she appears as a painter, illustrator, graphic artist, author of “adult” books and monumental wall paintings. Tove Jansson's work has never been collected in such quantity in one place, since most of her works are in private collections, and many returned to their homeland for the first time from abroad.

The book “Tove Jansson. Work and Love,” written by the curator of the exhibition, art critic Tuula Karjalainen. The book was published in Finnish and Swedish, but perhaps on August 9, Jansson’s birthday, it will be published in Russian. Tuula noted that she would be happy if the same number of photographs were preserved in the Russian version. They allow the viewer to imagine the richness of the writer’s paintings. After all, painting was the main thing for Tuve herself in her work.

“Like many in Finland, I knew Tove Jansson as the creator of Moominvalley,” says Tuula Karjalainen, “but her talents would have been enough for 6-7 different specialties.”

Work is more important than love

In her youth, Tove said that work is more important than love, and confirmed this thesis in her later years: first work, then love. And the love for work and creativity began in early childhood. Tove was born into a family of a sculptor and an illustrator. As a three-year-old baby, Tove learned to draw while sitting on her mother's lap. Drawing in this family was as natural as air. When Tova was 13 years old, she published a small children's book under a pseudonym. And at the age of 14 she made her first commercial project - pictures for the school Christmas newspaper.

Tove dropped out of regular school and subsequently always said that she immediately forgot everything she was taught there. But she received a good art education - first in Stockholm at an art school, then at an art school at the Athenaeum Museum. Later, Tove went to Paris and studied there at several art schools.

Tove painted a lot: relatives recall that in the forties, many paintings were sold as soon as the artist applied the last strokes. The most remarkable, Tuula is sure, are the self-portraits that she made throughout her life, starting from adolescence. Since Tove smoked from her early youth, she depicted herself with a cigarette in many paintings. One of the self-portraits, “Smoking Girl,” was purchased by the owner of a tobacco factory and hung it as an advertisement in the shop window.

“If you analyze Jansson’s work,” says Tuula Karjalainen, “you can recognize in books and paintings specific people who surrounded her during her life - friends and lovers. Of course, she modified them, but retained the main - recognizable - features.

Thus, the good-natured Moominmama is recognized as Signe Hammarsten, Tove’s mother, to whom she was tenderly attached. It is significant that Tove left her parental home late, at the age of thirty. But the relationship with her father, whom she adored in childhood and adolescence, later did not work out largely due to the difference in their political views. Victor Jansson returned from the civil war sharply opposed to leftist views, and he was also against the Jews. And Tuve just had many friends both among the left and among the Jews, although she herself did not join any political parties.

Tove Jansson, in her own words, hated the war, which was reflected in the political cartoons that were published on the cover of the popular Swedish-language magazine Garm. Several times the magazine was on the verge of closure: the cartoons were so harsh and harsh. There was another quality in her works: they showed tyrants in a satirical, funny way, which helped reduce the level of fear. Tove herself, in order to distract herself from wartime fears, in those years invented characters that brought her worldwide fame.

In the Shadow of the Moomins

There are many speculations about when the Moomins appeared. For example, there is a version that the first image of a creature vaguely reminiscent of popular characters appeared on the wall in the toilet of the Janssons’ summer house, according to another version - on the stove. A famous painting from the 1930s shows a similar black figure with red eyes.

“None of these versions can be absolutely correct, if only because Tove each time answered the question of where the Moomins came from in a new way,” Tuula Karjalainen is sure. “She once told an American magazine that in Finland there are cold winters, a lot of snow is poured on the tree stumps, and these snow caps are the prototypes of the Moomins.

For the first time, the Moomin figurine, as Jansson’s personal emblem-signature, was published on her anti-Hitler poster in the late 30s, and the first book, “Little Trolls and the Big Flood,” was published in 1945 in Sweden, but it was not successful. In 1946, Moomintroll and the Comet was published, and in 1948, The Wizard’s Hat. After this, great success came to Tuva. In total, eight stories were written about funny creatures with a philosophy of life, which, according to Tuula Karjalainen, brought success to these books. And although books about the Moomins are considered children's, their message - creativity, tolerance, denial of violence and war - is understandable at any age. It is significant that the Moomin series echoes events from the real world. For example, the book “Moomintroll and the Comet” reflects the theme of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In 1954, the most popular British newspaper “Evening news” invited Tove to draw comics with the Moomins. The proposal was accepted, and for the next seven years the Moomins became her main occupation. On the one hand, this brought crazy fame and money; together with their brother Lars, they began to create what later turned into the Moomin industry. But on the other hand, it was a lot of stress caused by the need to deal with one topic every day. Later, these experiences formed the basis of the book “Magic Winter.”

Seven years later, Tove abandoned the contract and wanted to return to real painting. The Finnish creative community did not accept her, reproaching her for selling her talent. It got to the point that she started receiving threatening calls and had to remove the phone number from the directory. Nevertheless, Tove coped with both this problem and the fact that she had to work in a new, abstract direction that was not close to her. It was in the 70s that her most significant paintings were created, says Tuula Karjalainen, but soon Tove left painting and began writing “adult” books.

Dreams of paradise

“Tove worked a lot, but it’s a mistake to imagine her as a slave to hard work,” says Tuula Karjalainen. “She loved the pleasures of life: dancing, good company, drinks, beautiful clothes, and she had her own dreams.

One of them is to find a warm and comfortable place on earth and establish a creative settlement there. Morocco and Spain were considered, but the move never took place. However, Tove was happy in another way: she was able to implement creative ideas with her loved ones. Artu Virtanen, a newspaper editor and later a politician with whom Tove lived in a civil marriage for seven years, pushed her to draw comics about the Moomins. By the way, Snusmumrik is none other than Virtanen, the embodiment of Tove’s always busy and never-fulfilled fiancé.

Vivica Bandler, a theater director and Tove's first lover, adapted the Moomins for stage productions. Tove and Vivica themselves are depicted in the images of the funny Tofsla and Vifsla, who speak a funny language. The first one spoke English with an accent, and the second one distorted Swedish. As a result, their union did not work out: Vivika got married and left Finland.

The most significant person in Tove’s life, Tuulikki Pietilä, is written under the name Tuu-tikki in books about the Moomins. It was with her that the artist found happiness and peace on the small island of Klovharu in the cold Baltic Sea. There was almost no vegetation on the island and there was no source of fresh water. It was not always possible to get there. Local fishermen said that when the east wind blew, they could not land on the shore. Then Tove jumped into the water and swam to the shore. The small house had windows on all four sides, and when guests arrived, the friends had to spend the night on the street. But this did not bother them. They worked, fished, collected rainwater and were happy.

The exhibition at the Athenaeum Museum will last until September 7, and with Tuula Karjalainen’s book “Work and love" can be found in the libraryat the House of Finland.

Tuula Karjalainen

Tee Ty?t? Ja Rakasta

Original edition published by Tammi Publishers

Reprinted with permission from Tammi Publishers and Elina Ahlb?ck Literary Agency, Helsinki, Finland

The book was published with the support of the Institute of Finland in St. Petersburg

***

Tove Jansson is a writer, illustrator, graphic artist, costume designer, playwright, poet and, of course, a world-famous storyteller, author of stories about the Moomins.

This book is about her, about her friends and relatives, about the 20th century, with the events of which her fate is inextricably linked, about the small island on which she lived, and about her favorite boat, about real people and fictional creatures, about work and love - two main components of her life.

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“I thought it’s so funny when they say that it’s difficult to be happy.”

Tove Jansson

From the author

The child moved for the first time. The movement is light and at the same time perceptible even through clothes, as if someone from there, from the inside, was trying to say: it’s me! Tove Jansson's future mother, Signe Hammarsten-Jansson, was walking around Paris and came out onto Rue Gaete - the Street of Joy. The child, who had not yet been born, first declared himself here. Was this a sign foretelling a happy life for the girl? Be that as it may, she is destined to bring immense joy to the world.

Times were difficult. The threat of war hung over Europe, like a heavy and stuffy veil before an inevitable storm. But despite this, and maybe that’s why art experienced another period of prosperity. In the early 1900s, new art was emerging in Parisian salons and creative workshops: cubism, surrealism and fauvism, and a stream of writers, composers and artists literally poured into the city, whose names the twentieth century will sing: Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Salvador Dali and many , a lot others. This motley crew of talents included newlyweds Viktor Jansson from Finland and Signe Hammarsten from Sweden, and with them the unborn baby Tove.

Tove Jansson was born in Helsinki on August 9, 1914, when the First World War had already engulfed Europe.

When writing a biography, the author has to immerse himself in the inner world of another person and live his life anew, as if in a parallel reality. Immersing myself in the world of Tove Jansson left me with rich and powerful impressions, despite the constant awareness that my presence might not be welcome. Many biographies, studies and dissertations have been written about Jansson, in which her work is examined from different points of view. She herself did not oppose this, although she did not show any enthusiasm for the hype around her person. Jansson often repeated that if the time comes to write about a writer, it is only after his death.

But it is clear that Tove Jansson was ready to explore her work further, as she has preserved much of her extensive correspondence, as well as notebooks and notes.

I met Tove only once - in 1995, when Jansson was already eighty-one years old. I was organizing a creative exhibition about Sama Vanni, an artist of Russian origin who had died several years earlier. I was interested in the shared background of Jansson and Vanni, who had a close relationship from the thirties to the forties. Vanni was also my dear and beloved friend. By that time, I had already defended my dissertation on his work. I was afraid that Tove would not have the time or desire to meet with me, but she agreed to accept me. We sat down in her studio in Ullanlinna and talked about art, about life and about Herself. Tove recalled their youth and how Sam taught her to paint. She mentioned a joint trip to Italy, and about Vanni’s wife, Maya, and told a lot more about the years of their friendship. I received answers to my questions, and in addition, Tove promised to prepare a story for the exhibition catalog about how Sam, then still named Samuil the Besprozvanny, taught her how to use a brush. Suddenly Tove invited me to drink whiskey. And we drank, and then lit a cigarette, as was customary then, and switched roles. Now Tove was asking questions, and I was talking about Sam, his wife and sons, about whom she obviously knew little. My work became the reason that many people significant to Tove migrated from her life to mine. For example, I was closely acquainted with Tapio Tapiovaara, an artist and former lover of Jansson. I met both the graphic artist Tuulikki Pietilä and the theater director Vivica Bandler, who were particularly significant figures in Tove Jansson’s life.

The second time I found myself in Tuve’s studio, I was already working on this book and researching the Jansson archive. What interested me most were her letters and notebooks. I spent many months in the studio, completely alone, reading letters that could not be copied or taken out of the room. The workshop was the same as during Tove’s life. Her self-portrait, known as “Lynx Boa” (1942), still stood on the easel, and from the painting it was as if Tove herself was looking attentively and sternly directly at me. Shells and bark boats were scattered on the table and on the window sills, and along the walls there were huge, floor-to-ceiling cabinets filled with rows of books. Her paintings were also stacked here. The walls of the toilet were full of newspaper photographs depicting natural disasters, sinking ships and raging waves. Tove herself cut them out from newspapers and magazines. The atmosphere of the house was permeated with the spirit of Tove.

Over the three decades that Tove Jansson lived here, a lot of letters accumulated. The most important and interesting were those that she sent to Eva Konikova in America: a large stack of sheets of tissue paper covered in beaded handwriting. Some lines were cruelly erased, literally mutilated by wartime censorship. Eva's answers were not found in the pile. These letters brought back memories of the 1940s, the war and the subsequent period of reconstruction. They give a vivid idea of what a woman felt, who at that difficult time was experiencing the heyday of her youth, striving to achieve success in her professional field and build her life. And about how she felt after the war ended. In addition to these letters, I was allowed to look at Tove’s notebooks and her other correspondence. Particularly important for my book were the letters addressed to Athos Virtanen and Vivica Bandler. I also noticed that the plots of many of Tove's adult stories originate in her letters and notes from notebooks.

After I had the opportunity to immerse myself in the world of Tove Jansson, I wanted to consider her work in the context of the society and inner circle in which she moved. This is what determined my approach and point of view when writing the book. The war years are extremely important for understanding the life and work of Tove Jansson. Tuva had such a hard time at this time that later she even refused to remember the war. But these years were not lost, although at times she claimed so. It was then that the most important events concerning her career and future life took place. During the war and because of the war, the first stories about the Moomins were born, her development as an artist took place, and caricatures and drawings that were unique in their boldness were created.

The title of my book is Tove Jansson. Work and love,” taken from Jansson’s bookplate. Work and love - it was in this order that these two most important components existed in her life. The life and art of Tove Jansson were closely intertwined. She wrote her life on canvas and in texts, from which she drew subjects close to her heart, which she found in friends, islands, travels and in her experiences and impressions. The legacy she left behind is enormous and extremely diverse. In fact, it would be appropriate to talk about “heritages” in the plural here, since Tuva managed to successfully realize herself in several fields at once. Tove was a successful writer, illustrator, graphic artist, costume designer, playwright, poet, author of cartoons and comics, and, of course, a world-famous storyteller.

The work of Tove Jansson is so large-scale that anyone who tries to study it is simply drowned in the amount of material. I felt like Aunt Gerda from Jansson’s novel “The Listener.” This old woman decided to make a map of family relationships and love affairs of her relatives and friends. Children and parents were connected on this map by red lines, pink lines indicated a love affair, and forbidden relationships were double underlined. Over time, the task became less and less feasible. Love disappeared, relationships melted away. Amendments to the map had to be made more and more often, and no parchment would be enough to indicate all the vicissitudes of life. Aunt Gerda's work was never completed. The present moves forward, the past changes over time. Sometimes it seems that the past is especially defenseless. Art, like human destiny, can be endlessly looked at from different angles, but in life there is no plot, only disparate events that follow in parallel or one after another. Either highlighting or obscuring one another. The longer you watch them, the more voluminous the picture reveals itself to your gaze. This was especially true for Tuva, since she liked to do several things at once. Tove Jansson has been painting all her life, delighting the world with books about the Moomins for thirty years in a row, and at the same time writing stories, novels and short stories and illustrating various printed publications.

The volume and scale of Tove Jansson's work influenced the order of the book's narrative. The content is divided into chapters, united by a temporal or thematic component, and represents a compromise of these two components. A chronological narrative would only confuse the reader. On the other hand, time, its most important phenomena and the ideals that reigned then represent an important part of the art and life of Tove Jansson.

The bibliography of works about Tova Jansson is very extensive. More than twenty years ago, art historian Eric Kruskopf wrote a detailed study of Jansson's paintings and her career as an artist. Ten years later, a professor of literary studies from Sweden, Buel Westin, who wrote a lot about the Moomins, published a full biography of Jansson. Finnish writer Juhani Tolvanen has been researching the comics created by Jansson for many years. Countless books, dissertations and scientific studies have been published about the Moomins, the latest of which were published relatively recently. Many researchers were interested in the topic of homosexuality in Jansson's books.

I decided not only to focus on Jansson’s art in its most varied manifestations, but also to show her herself as part of her time, its values and cultural history. Jansson's environment is of great importance here. Tove lived a long and exciting life. She was not afraid to question moral values and dogmas in a society in which prejudices primarily related to sexuality and behavioral norms ruled the day. A revolutionary spirit lived in her, but at the same time she did not strive to be a provocateur. She certainly influenced the values and beliefs of her contemporaries, without carrying the banner of innovation, but calmly living in accordance with her own preferences and without trading on principles. The position of women, independence, creativity and their recognition on an equal basis with men - that’s what was important to Jansson. She herself never agreed to the role of the average “man’s girlfriend” either professionally or in her personal life. As a little girl, she wrote: “The best thing that can be is freedom.” It was freedom that remained the most important principle for Tove Jansson throughout her life.

Per il mio carissima Trinca. Self-portrait, 1939, oil

Part one
Father's sculptures, mother's drawings

Father broken by war

Newborn Tove in her mother's arms

Tove’s first and main creative idol was her father. The sculptor Viktor Jansson believed that art is something grandiose and very important, and Tove learned this idea very early. The relationship between father and daughter was contradictory, as they say, due to the rupture of the aorta. There was everything: from great love to deep hatred. Victor Jansson hoped that his daughter, the flesh of her parents, would follow in their footsteps and join the artistic environment. Tove made this wish of her father come true, but she did not limit herself to him alone. She was engaged not only in painting, but also in many other things, which was incomprehensible or frankly unpleasant to her father. However, Victor Jansson was proud of the success that Tove achieved as a painter.

Victor Jansson (1886–1958) was born into the family of a haberdashery merchant, a native of Finnish Swedes. The father died when the boy was still very young, and the widow continued her husband's work. Little Victor often had to help her at the counter with his brother. The trade went on with varying success, and the family sometimes had to tighten their belts, but there was still enough money to send young Victor to Paris to study sculpting.

Victor Jansson's career began promisingly, but he never became a significant figure among his contemporaries. This fact, of course, hit the pride of an ambitious young man striving for fame. At that time, the development of Finnish sculpture was determined by the universal admiration of Väino Aaltonen, and all others remained in his shadow. It was believed that one recognized genius at any given time was more than enough for a small country.

In those days, being both the head of a family and an artist was not easy. According to the prevailing values of that time, a man had to earn enough to support his wife and children. Surely Victor Jansson's pride was hurt by the fact that the family could not get by without his wife's earnings, not to mention the fact that from time to time the Janssons had to resort to the help of Signe Hammarsten's wealthy Swedish relatives.

The Janssons' financial situation was precarious, as often happens in families of creative people. A sculptor's income depended on many factors, such as luck, chance, and the changing values of the art world. The Jansson family lived modestly, if not poorly. The most important thing for them was creativity, but, alas, they paid little for it. Vivica Bandler later recalled the already adult Tove’s attitude towards money. According to her, in Tuva, even as a child, a feeling of pity for everyone who did not belong to the creative environment was formed. This attitude probably made it easier to accept the hardships associated with a constant lack of money.

After the First World War, Viktor Jansson's income, like many other sculptors, was ensured by the creation of monuments, monuments to the dead and sculptures in honor of the heroes of the Finnish White Movement. The sculptor Faffan, and it was under this name that his friends and relatives knew Victor Jansson, sculpted four monuments dedicated to the Civil War; the two most interesting ones are in Tampere and Lahti. The nude male figures cast in bronze are reminiscent of ancient Greek athletes in the prime of youth and beauty. A warrior on the Freedom Monument in Tampere raises his sword to the heavens, as if attacking an enemy. His figure is elevated on a granite pedestal and looks soaring above earthly worries and vanity. The sculpture, heroic in spirit, is phallic in form and composition. The bronze warrior combines beauty, aggression and challenge - concepts that were important at that time from an ideological point of view and therefore became the focus of art.

Victor Jansson was involved in the creation of monuments rather out of necessity, due to difficult financial circumstances, rather than out of sincere desire. Most of the sculptures that came out of his hands are sensual female figures and gentle images of children. As Tove wrote in her book “The Sculptor’s Daughter,” her father did not like women. Women, in his opinion, were too loud, wore hats that were too big to cinemas, had bad manners and, in addition, were unlikely to obey commands in the event of war. Only in the guise of statues did they become real. The only flesh-and-blood women Viktor Jansson put up with were his wife and daughter.

Close people often became both models and muses for creators. Victor's wife, Signe, or Ham, as her family called her, posed for her husband, and little Tove too. It was her features that Victor Jansson captured in his work “Head of a Girl” (1920). The gentle features and calm expression of the face carved from marble seem to emit a soft light. Jansson's work also includes several fountains, and at least one of them, located in Esplanade Park in the heart of Helsinki, depicts little Tove as a cheerful little mermaid. The daughter managed to turn from a baby into a young girl when her father depicted her in his new sculpture “Convolvulus”. Convolvulus is the Latin name for bindweed, which in Finnish has a second name, “thread of life.” The girl cast in bronze truly resembles, with her flexibility and eroticism, a climbing bindweed. The sculpture was installed in the central park of Kaisaniemi, where it is still located. In 1937, Tove spoke about her impressions of posing: “I took the pose of the bindweed, which my father showed me. Step forward, arms slightly raised. A small slow step, toes tucked, hand movements slightly uncertain. Everything together, according to my father’s plan, was supposed to express awakening, youth.”

Quarrels in the relationship between father and daughter were frequent, but despite this, the connection between Victor and Tove was never interrupted, although it was sometimes overshadowed by outright anger at each other. Both Tove and her father had strong political and social views, so different that it was often absolutely impossible for them to accept and understand each other's values. Signe's mother told the children that their father was broken by the war and that his soul was forever marked with incurable scars. Once a carefree, cheerful fellow, after the war Faffan became bitter, harsh and intolerant. He had changed so much that even smiling was difficult for him, like any other expression of feelings. He moved away from his family, the center of which was his mother and the children who rallied around her. And yet, Tove admired her father immensely and in her work was completely dependent on his judgment.

Faffan was a typical patriot of his time. Like many war heroes, he was unable to fully return to normal life and preferred to relive and rethink his military past again and again in the circle of friends, veterans like him. Difficult memories were drowned in unbridled joy. Companies gathered in restaurants, men left their wives at home so that they would not interfere, and spent the night drinking and talking about high matters. Wine flowed like a river, although it was not at all easy to get alcohol during the harsh prohibition law that was in effect everywhere.

Viktor Jansson's best friend was his old student friend Alvar Kaven, also a hero of the Civil War. In their youth, they rented a workshop together in Paris, and later in Helsinki. The men managed to maintain friendship throughout their lives, spending both everyday life and holidays together. The artists' wives also became friends; the two families loved to have parties together. During Prohibition, they produced alcoholic drinks themselves, underground, in full accordance with the spirit of free creativity. The painter Marcus Collin was also part of Faffan and Kaven's circle of friends. Since 1933, both families, the Janssons and the Collins, lived together in the artistic commune of Lallukka, located in the Töölö district of Helsinki. Living in the same house, the artists and their loved ones communicated almost constantly and with pleasure.

During Prohibition in Helsinki, underground entertainment establishments multiplied like mushrooms after rain. There were certain risks associated with their visit: the police were not asleep. Therefore, parties were often held at home. The Jansson family often invited guests to late-night gatherings that lasted until the next morning. The most famous and successful creative people of that time gathered at the Janssons' place. Even as a child, Tove secretly watched the fun of the adults, their “feasts.” Being very young, she received her first impressions of the art world and the people within it, but at the same time she had to learn what war and male aggression were. It is these impressions that will later form the basis of the book “The Sculptor’s Daughter,” which contains the following lines: “All men feast, and they are comrades among themselves who never betray each other. A friend may say terrible things to you, but tomorrow everything will be forgotten. A comrade does not forgive, he only forgets, but a woman - she forgives everything, but never forgets. That's it! Therefore, women cannot feast. It’s very unpleasant if they forgive you.” 1
Translation by L. Braude. The sculptor's daughter. Quote by Tove Jansson, The Sculptor's Daughter. – St. Petersburg: Amphora 2005, p. 19–64.

Self-portrait at age 14, charcoal

In her book, Tove returns to childhood memories: her mother, who before Christmas carefully wiped the dust from the figurines in her father’s workshop. My father did not allow anyone else to do this. However, in the house there were things more sacred than figurines: grenades from the Civil War. They were a legacy of the war, a real fetish for Victor Jansson. No one had the right to wipe the dust off them, under no circumstances, ever. The military past, which came up in conversations during parties, and men's recklessness became the plot of Tove Jansson's story, in which the daughter indulges in her childhood memories of these evenings. “I love daddy's parties. They can last for many nights in a row, and I like to wake up and fall asleep again, and feel how the smoke and music lull me to sleep... After the music, memories of the war begin. Then I wait a little longer under the blanket, but I always get up again when they attack the wicker chair. Dad takes off his bayonet hanging over the bags of plaster in the workshop, everyone jumps up and screams, and then Dad attacks the wicker chair. During the day it is covered with a woven carpet, so you can’t even see what it is like.” 2
Translation by L. Braude. Right there.

Tuula Karjalainen

Tee Työtä Ja Rakasta

Original edition published by Tammi Publishers

Reprinted with permission from Tammi Publishers and Elina Ahlbäck Literary Agency, Helsinki, Finland

The book was published with the support of the Institute of Finland in St. Petersburg

Tove Jansson is a writer, illustrator, graphic artist, costume designer, playwright, poet and, of course, a world-famous storyteller, author of stories about the Moomins.

“I thought it’s so funny when they say that it’s difficult to be happy.”

Tove Jansson

Tove Jansson was born in Helsinki on August 9, 1914, when the First World War had already engulfed Europe.

Tuula Karjalainen

Tove Jansson: Work and love

“I thought it’s so funny when they say that it’s difficult to be happy.”

The child moved for the first time. The movement is light and at the same time perceptible even through clothes, as if someone from there, from the inside, was trying to say: it’s me! Tove Jansson's future mother, Signe Hammarsten-Jansson, was walking around Paris and came out onto Rue Gaete - Street of Joy. The child, who had not yet been born, first declared himself here. Was this a sign foretelling a happy life for the girl? Be that as it may, she is destined to bring immense joy to the world.

Tove Jansson was born in Helsinki on August 9, 1914, when the First World War had already engulfed Europe.

Tuula Karjalainen: Tove Jansson was a complex person, and not all her actions could be understood without being Tove. Work is more important than love

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From the author

Part one Father's sculptures, mother's drawings

Father broken by war

Part one
Father's sculptures, mother's drawings