Katri Vala
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Katri Vala (1901-1944) - Karin Alice Heikel
Finnish poet, critic, school<br>teacher, central member of the literary group Tulenkantajat (The<br>Fire Bearers) with Olavi Paavolainen,<br>Elina Vaara, Lauri Viljanen, Ilmari Pimi�, Viljo<br>Kajava, and Yrj� Jylh�. As a<br>modernizer of the Finnish poetry, Katri Vala has been generally compared to Edith<br>S�dergran.<br>But when S�dergran was self-absorbed, Vala also wrote poems that had<br>radical social views and attacked war and Fascism. Her brother, Erkki<br>Vala, became a writer and journalist – he edited for some time the<br>magazine Tulenkantajat.
"En ole lipunkantaja,
en kotkansyd�minen tienn�ytt�j�
matkallanne aamun maahan.
Olen virran partaalla paju,
jonka l�vitse tuulet puhaltavat,
josta maailman kapinallinen henki
taittaa yksinkertaisen pillin
soittaaksensa s�velm�n,
jossa on myrsky�, tuskaa, rakkautta
ja hiukan aamunsarastusta."
('Pajupilli,' in Paluu: runoja by Katri Vala, Porvoossa: Werner S�derstr�m Osakeyhti�, 1934, p. 5)
Katri Vala was born Karin Alice Wadenstr�m in Muonio, the<br>daughter<br>of Robert Waldermar Wadenstr�m and Alexandra Frederika (M�ki)<br>Wadenstr�m. The family moved in 1902 to Porvoo and then in 1905 to<br>Ilomantsi, where Vala spent her childhood. Her father, who was a<br>official of the Forest Services, died in 1911 in a hospital – he<br>suffered manic-depressive psychosis and refused to eat. The family fell<br>into poverty and returned to Porvoo. Vala's mother tried different<br>occupations and once she established a small shop, which did not live<br>long.
Vala began to write already at the age of 11. She was educated<br>in<br>Porvoo and in 1922 she graduated from the teacher's training school in<br>Heinola. The future writer and theatre director Arvi Kivimaa<br>(1904-1984) met her first time there at a concert. Some of her poems<br>had appeared in the literary magazine Nuori<br>Voima. "Her eyes were brown and big and shining with happiness,"<br>Kivimaa recalled. "There was no hint of the sufferings she<br>would experience in the future." (Kasvoja<br>valoh�myst� by Arvi Kivimaa, Helsinki: Otava, 1974, p. 85)
During this period, Vala tried to find her own voice as a poet<br>and at the same time read such writers as Hamsun, Johan Boijer, Viljo<br>Kojo, Aaro Hellaakoski, and later Tagore. Through correspondence with<br>the writers Elina Vaara and Olavi Paavolainen, she established contacts<br>to literary circles. Especially Paavolainen influenced her. In a letter<br>to Vala, Paavolainen descibed himself as a "dandy, chatterbox, and<br>blas� – in other words - too cultured". In return Vala told about her<br>humble life. Their relationship was perhaps never physical –<br>Paavolainen preferred much older, mature women, but he remained her<br>ever-faithful defender. In the mid-1920s, Vala had an affair with the<br>poet Yrj� Jylh�, a friend of Paavolainen. He was the<br>opposite of the dandyish and high spirited Paavolainen – a strong,<br>silent, masculine type. Possibly she was Jylh�'s first great love.
For several years, before devoting herself entirely to<br>writing, Vala<br>worked as an elementary schoolteacher in out-of-the way places, in<br>Kuopio's rural commune, Valkeala, Askola, and Ilomantsi (1922-28),<br>where she began a relationship with Edvin Stolt, who was married.<br>Stolt, a member of the Civil Guard, was an outdoorsman and Vala<br>followed him to his trips to the woods and swamps.
Vala's early poems were published in the periodical Nuori<br>Voima<br>in the 1920s. The periodical and organization, Nuoren Voiman Liitto,<br>were originally founded to help secondary school students to develop<br>talents and pursue hobbies. Vala's first collection, Kaukainen<br>puutarha (The<br>Distant Garden), which came out in 1924, was written when she worked in<br>the small schools of Vaajasalo and Valkeala. Eight of Vala's poems<br>appeared in the same year in the anthology Nuoret runoilijat.
Kaukainen puutarha opens<br>with ecstatic images of the sun, eath, and moon, but the part five ends<br>in sorrow and loneliness, "my heart fell down on the earth / like a<br>crushed flower." The moon is a symbol of love, the earth is a symbol of<br>regeneration. With this this collection, which won the<br>literary prize of the government, Vala introduced free verse into<br>Finnish poetry.
In<br>1928, Vala contracted tuberculosis, of which she never fully<br>recovered. After gaining enough health, Vala travelled to Riviera.<br>While enjoying the warmth of the sun, she met the Polish poet Jan<br>Brzekowski (1903-1983), who gave her his book Tetno<br>and introduced her to the Futurist cult of machines. From Riviera Vala<br>went to Paris, where she bought fashionable clothes. In 1929, she spent<br>some time in the Halila sanatorium on the Karelian Isthmus. Due to her<br>illness, her teaching contract in Ilomantsi was not renewed.
Stolt and Unto Koskela, a friend of Uuno Kailas, disappeared<br>from Vala's life when she married in 1930 Armas Heikel. Her husband...