Juhani Aho

Juhani Aho (born Sept. 11, 1861, Lapinlahti, Finland, Russian Empire—died Aug. 8, 1921, Helsinki, Finland) was a novelist and short-story writer who began as a realist but toward the end of his life made large concessions to Romanticism.

A country clergyman’s son, Aho studied at Helsinki University, worked as a journalist, and was an active member of the liberal group Nuori Suomi (“Young Finland”).

Aho’s early realistic stories and novels humorously describe life in the Finnish backwoods he knew so well. His novel Rautatie (1884; “The Railway”), the story of an elderly couple’s first railway trip, is a Finnish classic. Influenced by contemporary Norwegian and French writers—Henrik Ibsen, Bjørnstjerne Martinius Bjørnson, Guy de Maupassant, and particularly Alphonse Daudet—he described the life of the educated classes in Papin tytär (1885; “The Parson’s Daughter”) and Papin rouva (1893; “The Parson’s Wife”).

In the 1890s Aho was drawn toward romantic nationalism: the long novel Panu (1897) dealt with the struggle between paganism and Christianity in 17th-century Finland, and Kevät ja takatalvi (1906; “Spring and the Untimely Return of Winter”), with the national awakening of the 19th century. His soundest romantic work, Juha (1911), is the story of the unhappy marriage of a cripple in the Karelian forests. Aho’s short stories, Lastuja, 8 series (1891–1921; “Chips”), have been most enduring; they are concerned with peasant life, fishing, and the wildlife of the lakelands. In these, as in his reminiscences of childhood, Muistatko—? (1920; “Do You Remember?”), Aho displays a quiet lyricism.