Eeva-Liisa Manner (5 December 1921 – 7 July 1995) was a Finnish poet, playwright and translator.

Biography

She was born in

Helsinki Helsinki ( or ; ; sv, Helsingfors, ) is the Capital city, capital, primate city, primate, and List of cities and towns in Finland, most populous city of Finland. Located on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, it is the seat of the region of U ...

, 5 December 1921, but spent her youth in

Vyborg Vyborg (; rus, Вы́борг, links=1, r=Výborg, p=ˈvɨbərk; fi, Viipuri ; sv, Viborg ; german: Wiborg ) is a town in, and the administrative center of, Vyborgsky District in Leningrad Oblast, Russia. It lies on the Karelian Isthmus ne ...

(Viipuri). Manner started as a poet in 1944 with ''Mustaa ja punaista'' ("Black and Red"). From her breakthrough collection of poems, ''Tämä matka'' ("This Journey", 1956) she was seen as one of the most influential

modernists Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...

in post-war Finland. Manner wrote over fifteen original collections of poems, plays for theater and radio, novels and short prose. She translated widely in both contemporary and classic literature, including names like

William Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...

Lewis Carroll Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (; 27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, poet and mathematician. His most notable works are ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (1865) and its sequel ...

Hermann Hesse Hermann Karl Hesse (; 2 July 1877 – 9 August 1962) was a German-Swiss poet, novelist, and painter. His best-known works include ''Demian'', ''Steppenwolf (novel), Steppenwolf'', ''Siddhartha (novel), Siddhartha'', and ''The Glass Bead Game'', ...

, and

Franz Kafka Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It ...

. Her work has been translated to many European languages. Translation of Manner's ''Selected Poems'' in English was published in 1997, and the novel ''Girl on Heaven's Pier'' in 2016 by

Dalkey Archive Press Dalkey Archive Press is an American publisher of fiction, poetry, foreign translations and literary criticism specializing in the publication or republication of lesser-known, often avant-garde works. The company has offices in Funks Grove, Il ...

. Regarding her youth, she said:—

The war years shadowed my youth. I was seventeen when the Russian planes started bombarding my home town of Wiborg on 30 November 1939, damaging it badly. At armistice, Wiborg had to be yielded, it remained behind the border – an endless source of nostalgia for one who had a catlike, persevering fondness for homestead. Even as a ten-year-old, I had spine-chilling dreams about the destruction of Wiborg, and from those times onwards I have been haunted by reflections about the nature and mystery of time. I believe that we have a false conception of time; everything has already happened somewhere in an unknown dimension.

She died 7 July 1995 in

Tampere Tampere ( , , ; sv, Tammerfors, ) is a city in the Pirkanmaa region, located in the western part of Finland. Tampere is the most populous inland city in the Nordic countries. It has a population of 244,029; the urban area has a population o ...

References

External links

Britannica Online Encyclopedia.

{{DEFAULTSORT:Manner, Eeva-Liisa 1921 births 1995 deaths People from Tampere Finnish dramatists and playwrights 20th-century Finnish poets Translators to Finnish Finnish translators Finnish women poets Finnish women dramatists and playwrights 20th-century women writers 20th-century translators 20th-century dramatists and playwrights Thanks for the Book Award winners